Tesla forecasted the production of 17,000 cars. They fell short by about 20%. I think the market was reacting to that more than GAAP figures.
Source: http://ir.tesla.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyid=A...
Edit: fixed link to correct source, as pointed out below. In this pdf, it's on bottom of page 3, under "Outlook".
Edit: I guess you mean this one: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-4CW8X0/200707627...
That does indeed say 20,000. They actually produced 18,345, for a miss of about 8%. They ramped up production from about 1,000 cars/week to 2,000 cars/week, so being short 1,655 indicates that their production ramp-up was delayed by about 10 days. Doesn't seem like a very big deal to me, and a slight miss of estimated production increases is way different from the "sales are down, Tesla is doomed" that got reported.
[1] http://insideevs.com/teslas-2nd-production-line-capable-pump...
Here's a long video of the assembly process in 2015.[1] This is useful, rather than the usual quick montage of cool robot scenes. There was a surprising amount of manual assembly in areas where other manufacturers are automated.
Edit: see below for slightly more accurate numbers, 4,000 in transit is not entirely correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#Production_and_sa...
The delta was about 2,500 cars. Adding cars in transit from Q1 to the Q2 production numbers, then subtracting sales and cars in transit, there are about 1,400 missing cars. I'm not sure exactly what those would be, perhaps filling out their Model X loaner and showroom fleet or something.
Tesla can do no wrong with the SV crowd, as evidenced by your statement of fact being down-voted.
If you step away from the hype for a second, Tesla are building some great products, but they play a little fast and loose with their numbers. That's why the Street is skeptical. First it's all about deliveries. Then deliveries falter a bit, so the focus moves to production. Then those numbers are low, so the focus moves to the fact that cars are in transit.
If there was some consistency with how Tesla represented their financials maybe there would be less scrutiny and skepticism. We hear about things (battery swamp, PowerWall), then they are hardly mentioned. But I think the Tesla fans consider this "sticking it to the man" (Wall Street), even though Tesla and some major banks are tight.
Up to this point their emphasis has always been on deliveries. But, since that missed, the focus turns to production numbers, which they just happened to outperform on (after a big miss in Q1 on the same metric).
What numbers matter, then? They promote whatever "looks best". It's not unusual, but it induces skepticism.
They roughly doubled their production rate near the end of the quarter. They have a product that takes weeks or months to ship to the customer. What happened is exactly what you'd expect.
Historically, Tesla has been constrained by production, not demand. The numbers show that production has substantially improved, and demand has not weakened, so it's good news all around. Why should that induce skepticism? Just because of what they "promote"? If you're skeptical just based on what they emphasize, are you not allowing your thinking to be controlled by them just as much as the mindless fanboy who parrots their lines without thinking?
What metric are you basing this off of? Did they not miss sales expectations?
Tesla doesn't build many cars without a buyer already lined up. They build a few for showrooms and service center loaners, but it's not a big number.
You might say that demand is falling off and Tesla is just producing a bunch of cars without corresponding orders to try to hide that fact, or whatever. But that's a rather conspiratorial interpretation, and would directly contradict Tesla's statement that the delivery miss was due to the sudden increase in production rates near the end of the quarter and resulting large number of cars still in transit.