Tesla announced its delivery and production numbers for the third quarter at the weekend, reporting 343,000 total deliveries and 365,000 vehicles built, falling below analysts’ forecasts, CNN reported.

The report said the automaker produced 19,935 and delivered 18,672 Model S and X vehicles and built 345,988 Model 3 and Y cars and delivered 325,158.

The lower than expected numbers resulted from production stoppages to update its factory in Shanghai, CNN said – Refinitiv analysts expected Tesla to deliver 359,162 cars.

“While Tesla had delivery challenges in the quarter, this is clearly a soft number that [Wall] Street will fret about it,” Daniel Ives, managing director and senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities told CNN. “Given the macro environment, a disappointing delivery number from Tesla will be a near term step back for the bull story with a lot riding on 4Q deliveries.”

The CNN report showed an increase in production from the same period last year when Tesla made 237,823 cars and a quarter on quarter rise when the EV maker built 258,580 cars. The Model S and X vehicles are higher priced at over US$100,000.

July sales of China built Teslas plummeted 64% month on month due to an ambitious upgrade of the company’s Shanghai factory. The shutdown in production came as the company began recovering from a months long Covid lockdown in the city that had disrupted production and supplies, the report noted.

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In August, vehicle wholesale volume of Tesla’s China-made vehicles surged more than 172% from the month prior.

Tesla said in its report cited by CNN that, towards the end of quarter, it had become “increasingly challenging” to secure vehicle transportation capacity at a reasonable cost.

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