UPDATE: Almost the entire article below can be ignored. The reason for Tesla’s dramatic drop in US inventory in the past couple of days is actually that Tesla has blocked the site behind these charts from accessing the root data. So, we are simply losing insight into US Tesla inventory if this doesn’t change again. Here are a few tweets regarding the change:
I’m getting a lot of questions about why the inventory charts here https://t.co/wuPJXJPhfk and here https://t.co/CV8EFTPlFC show a huge drop.
This is related to a technical change Tesla made today. The charts don’t work correctly anymore. https://t.co/kXGrq1DM9e
— Troy Teslike (@TroyTeslike) June 20, 2023
Looks like Tesla blocked my server today. Not clear if it was due to the volume of API requests (I tried to keep it light where possible), or if they don’t want their inventory scraped.
Anyways, it looks like my site won’t be showing any new inventory data for now. pic.twitter.com/ubd3IxVcHu
— Matt Jung (@Mattjungphoto) June 19, 2023
Tesla inventory charts here https://t.co/wuPJXJOJpM and here https://t.co/CV8EFTONQ4 that were pulling data from Tesla’s website don’t work correctly anymore because Tesla changed something. This will make it more difficult to estimate US sales. Production est are not affected. pic.twitter.com/LRFIhTtvSa
— Troy Teslike (@TroyTeslike) June 21, 2023
There have been some concerns about consumer demand for Tesla vehicles in the US lately. That’s not because there isn’t massive demand for Tesla vehicles. It’s just that Tesla production and sales have risen so high that there are questions and concerns about whether they can stay at this level, or even grow from here. Furthermore, a refreshed/new version of the Model 3 is expected to be coming out soon, which logically slows down sales of the current version of the Model 3.
Concerns have been raised recently due to Tesla cutting prices and offering buyer incentives, like free Supercharging for a few months. Also, inventory levels have been fairly high … until the last few days.
Graph courtesy of Tesla Inventory Tracker.
This website tracks Tesla inventory data, as listed by Tesla on its own site, and then also graphs it by model. What you can see (screenshot above) is that Model X inventory spiked in early April, and inventory of all of the models climbed a bit for different periods of time. But in the past couple of days, inventory of all 4 models has dropped like a rock.
Another way to visualize the data is as a stacked bar chart. That looks perhaps even more dramatic. See here:
Chart courtesy of Tesla Inventory Tracker.
And, a third and final graphic is the line graph below showing total Tesla inventory in the US for the same time period.
Graph courtesy of Tesla Inventory Tracker.
That last one does help to show that inventory right now is very similar to what it was at the end of February and beginning of March.
The big question is: what has caused Tesla inventory to drop so much in the last day or two? Perhaps it is that recently produced Tesla vehicles are being shipped elsewhere now, draining inventory. Though, that doesn’t seem super likely since Tesla has historically focused on nearby, US shipments with vehicles produced at the end of quarters.
Perhaps the 3 months of free Supercharging is getting more vehicles out the door. That seems unlikely, though, since the monetary value of that is quite low.
Perhaps the change in US policy giving the base Model 3 the full $7,500 tax credit (instead of half of that, $3,750) is showing up in these numbers. That change was made a couple of weeks ago. This is around the time that might start kicking in when looking at inventory numbers. Maybe.
Tesla also started offering discounts (up to $2,410 off, as Chris Boylan found) a couple of weeks ago. That may be the biggest factor of all. Who isn’t a bit inspired to buy when a car they want drops in price by a couple thousand dollars, or by more than $5,000 if you can take advantage of the full US EV tax credit and take that into account? Heck, I’m not even in the market for a Model 3 (I have one) and that looks tempting.
But how do last last two matters explain inventory of the other models dropping? Well, there have also been price cuts of other models (even if not as much in the case of the Model Y), and if you look again at that first line graph, the bulk of the drop has come from Model 3 inventory dropping.
Any other thoughts on these numbers, charts & graphs, and related topics?
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