Tesla misses 2nd-quarter forecast for deliveries

Tesla Motors Inc. fell after the electric-car maker missed second-quarter forecast for global deliveries and lowered its full-year outlook, citing an “extreme” increase in output in the period’s final month. Deliveries of 14,370 vehicles trailed a projection of about 17,000, after an “extreme production ramp” came too late in the quarter to get the cars to their buyers, Tesla said Sunday. “Tesla’s ongoing difficulty in managing launch and production of its vehicles reinforces our concerns around its ability to launch the Model 3 well and reach its pulled-forward goal of 500,000 deliveries in 2018,” Emmanuel Rosner, an analyst with CLSA, wrote in a note to clients. Tesla is increasing output at its Fremont factory with an eye toward making 500,000 cars a year by 2018 — an ambitious timeline that also depends on the carmaker’s battery factory east of Reno, Nev., coming online with battery-cell production. The company now faces a preliminary investigation by U.S. regulators, announced last week, into a fatal May crash involving a Model S that had Tesla’s Autopilot feature engaged. In a blog post, Tesla said that the crash was the first known fatality in more than 130 million miles of Autopilot driving and that the feature, disabled by default in the cars, requires explicit acknowledgment by drivers who enable it that the system is new technology still in testing. The company releases global sales figures quarterly, instead of the monthly country-by-country results typically announced by larger automakers.