Tesla Inc. (TSLA) – Get Report shares slipped lower Tuesday as founder and CEO Elon Musk played down the near-term impact of the clean-energy carmaker’s Battery Day event even as he touted increases in demand.
The delayed event, which will be held under social distancing guidelines in Palo Alto, California later today, is expected to unveil a new ‘million mile battery’, which would triple the current range for Tesla Model 3 sedans, as well as new batteries for the group’s still-to-be-produced semi truck and robotaxi.
Musk is also likely to detail plans to increase in-house manufacturing in order to ease supply-chain bottlenecks, following a Tweet late Monday that indicated increasing cell purchases from outside vendors.
“We intend to increase, not reduce battery cell purchases from Panasonic, LG & CATL (possibly other partners too),” Musk said. “However, even with our cell suppliers going at maximum speed, we still foresee significant shortages in 2022 & beyond unless we also take action ourselves.”
However, he also noted that the overall Battery Day event would affect “long-term production, especially Semi, Cybertruck & Roadster, but what we announce will not reach serious high-volume production until 2022.”
Tesla shares were marked 4.8% lower in early trading Tuesday $428.00 each, a move that would still leave the stock with an astonishing gain of around 400% over the past six months.
Tesla shares have eased somewhat over the past three weeks, however, following its failure to win inclusion in the S&P 500 on September 4 by officials from S&P Dow Jones.
Tesla has cleared what was assumed to be the final hurdle towards its inclusion on the benchmark after it published its fourth consecutive quarterly profit in July, helped in part by the sale of government emissions credits.
Tesla said GAAP earnings for the three months ending in June were pegged at 50 cents per share, compared to a loss of $2.31 per share over the same period last year, on revenues of $6.04 billion. Tesla also confirmed its full-year vehicle delivery target of 500,000, despite a first half tally of 179,050 units.
Tesla, which assumed the mantle of the world’s most-valuable carmaker in July despite its modest — less than 1% — contribution to total global sales, will sell, at most, 500,00 cars this year.
Ford Motor Co. (F) – Get Report, which has a market value that is 15.5 times less, will likely shift 2.2 million vehicles and Toyota Motor Co. (TM) – Get Report, with a market value of $215 billion, will sell 10.7 million vehicles this year.