In a press release, Tesla Motors said that its delivery count for the first quarter of the year was affected by severe shortages from suppliers for Model X parts, spurred by the company's own hubris.
The company stated that it delivered 12,420 units of the Model S in the first quarter, but only 2,400 units of the Model X over the same period. Deliveries for the first quarter were up by nearly 50 percent compared to the same quarter last year, with Tesla saying that it is still on track to fulfill its target of 80,000 to 90,000 units delivered within the year.
Tesla noted that the shortages from its suppliers had a negative impact on its first quarter deliveries, with the issues lasting much longer than anticipated over the months of January and February.
The company frankly admitted that the shortages were caused by its own hubris, with Tesla putting too much new technology into the first version of the Model X. Other reasons that contributed to the issue include insufficient validations made on the capability of chosen suppliers and the company's lack of ability to manufacture some of the parts in-house.
The shortages covered only about half a dozen parts out of the more than 8,000 unique parts of the Model X, though of course it would still be impossible to manufacture a complete vehicle without these few parts.
Production and delivery speeds hastened significantly once the issues were resolved though, and by the last full week of March, the company was manufacturing 750 units of the Model X a week. Unfortunately, these vehicles were built too late to be shipped within the first quarter to be counted as fulfilled deliveries.
Since early on, the Model X has failed to meet sales expectations, with the company revealing in January that it was only able to deliver 200 Model X units in the fourth quarter of last year.
Tesla said that it is studying the problems that it encountered with the manufacturing of the Model X to ensure that the issues are not repeated for the recently unveiled Model 3.
