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Comment by sgt | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like you are confusing imports with sales. If you import 1000 Tesla's, they surely won't all sell at the same time? I'd expect them to be spread out across several months until the next shipment comes in to replenish. It would however make sense if the deliveries are late and the market had been waiting for months.

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It's not a sale until it's delivered. It's an order before then.

Are you saying that they have no inventory control?

That has been Tesla's model from the beginning right? They don't have dealerships, they don't have inventory, you order your car, the car is made and then delivered.

Correct, there is no huge parking lot in south korea full of thousands of vehicles to smooth out deliveries over multiple quarters.

You don't need that if you have proper inventory control....

Right, they ship cars to delivery centers to match current demand. Most cars do not sit in inventory very long, they are already spoken for by orders.

This is especially true in countries where the cars are delivered by container ship. You can easily make headlines about "Tesla has record sales in <month>" and "Tesla has poor sales in <month>" based on which months the ships arrive and the cars are delivered to customers.

I'm not sure what about this indicates that they don't have inventory control.

That's exactly what I've seen so far. "Record sales of singular <type of car> in March, outsells XYZ competitor". I assumed that was part of their strategy.

This is often due to the bulk deliveries at end of quarter and only really having 1 model "per line" vs other manufacturers splitting their car lines into several variants.

Tesla generally ships cars on a JIT basis and avoids large inventory.

When a ship arrives with imported cars, the majority are likely already spoken for with pending orders and will be delivered within a month.

Not sure if you are being literal with your numbers, but selling 1000 Teslas in a month in Korea has been achieved multiple times. Go look at the stats.

You "order" your Tesla before it arrives in country, Tesla doesn't have dealerships.

The title says "sold" and an order counts as a sale in my books. Is the title incorrect and should say "delivered"?

Generally car sales are counted at delivery, or when the manufacturer gets paid for the car. A Tesla order is a $250 deposit. They don't get paid for the car until it gets delivered, and the order can be cancelled at any point before that.

Tesla has been fairly consistent on this and as far as I know it matches how most auto companies account for sales. The difference is that some companies count cars sold to dealerships, even if they aren't sold to an end customer yet, but Tesla does not have franchised dealerships.

And it's also how recognition of revenue works for accounting for all companies.

> an order counts as a sale in my books

It doesn't in Tesla's books in how they report sales. A sale is only considered complete, and revenue recognized once the customer takes delivery.

Saying delivered would remove this possible misinterpretation and make the headline non-newsworthy.

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