Elon Musk tells Tesla employees in leaked email that the company needs to catch up on car deliveries before the end of the quarter

60 Minutes

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk emailed employees to highlight the urgency of vehicle deliveries ahead of the quarter's end next month.
• Musk said the company has "a lot of vehicles to catch up to in order to have a successful quarter."
• End of quarter rushes to get cars to customers have become a pattern at Tesla.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk told employees that delivery struggles hurt the company's first-quarter results in an email seen by Business Insider.

Echoing his previous company-wide email sent on May 22, Musk said that demand for Tesla vehicles was still strong, despite Wall Street worries that buyer interest is waning. He also added that the company needs to address the high costs of delivering cars.

Read more: Elon Musk tells Tesla employees in leaked email that customer demand is still high, despite the stock crashing in recent weeks

Bloomberg News first reported on the contents of Wednesday's email.

Cutting costs has been a new tack for Musk this month. In another company-wide email on May 17 that was seen by Business Insider, Musk told employees that the "only way" for Tesla to return to profitability was through "hardcore" cost-cutting measures.

Read more: Elon Musk says in email to employees that new cost-cutting measures are the 'only way for Tesla to become financially sustainable'

End-of-quarter rushes have become the norm at Tesla, as the company races to get cars into customers' driveways. In the first quarter, Tesla asked for employee volunteers to help with deliveries. The company cannot count a car as sold until a customer has received their vehicle.

Shares of Tesla rose out of the red following Bloomberg reports of Musk's email. The stock is currently trading near $189, up about 0.2% in trading Wednesday.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Here's the full text of Musk's email from Wednesday:

From: Elon Musk

To: Everybody

While our demand is strong, we have a lot of vehicles to catch up to in order to have a successful quarter.

Starting tomorrow, I will be holding skip-level calls with the America, Asia and Europe delivery teams every 2 days to understand what's needed to accelerate our rate of deliveries.

We also need to address the total cost of getting a car form our factory to the customer. Last quarter, there were many expedites fees and routing inefficiencies that led to higher than expected delivery costs. This makes it much harder for Tesla ro break even,

Per my earlier email, if we execute well, Q2 will be an all-time record for Tesla vehicle deliveries and an awesome victory!!

Super excited to make this happen with you,

Elon

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