If there is some truth in what people say that safety in numbers then Tesla stocks have become less reliable investments following the latest news. The world's largest and most hyped EV manufacturer reported disappointing first-quarter deliveries. The Elon Musk brainchild giant not only missed consensus expectations by far, as Tesla factories shipped only 386,810 vehicles vs the preliminary estimated number of nearly 450,000, but its actual numbers dropped in absolute terms for the first time after the pandemic spring of 2020. An important detail to consider is that the best-selling Model 3 and Model Y stood at 369,783 to mark a 10% decline YoY, falling deep below 426,940 units in consensus forecasts on Bloomberg. In fact, Tesla doubters have long suspected possible troubles with demand due to tight competition in China amid still expensive prices for electric cars for consumers. Their concerns intensified since the end of January when Tesla warned investors that the growth rate of its vehicle volume may become "notably lower" in 2024, compared to the previous year. Elon Musk personally urged the Fed to cut interest rates sooner rather than later, mentioning that too high borrowing costs inevitably continue to weigh on car sales all over the world. Overall, Tesla share price came down from $250.08 on the first trading day of January to $175.22 at closing price on April 1, which already formed a 30% retracement. However, a shocking effect with delivery numbers the next day led the stock to more than 6% lower levels below $165, which makes the price closer to diving to its new multi-month lows since May 2023.

Meanwhile, a gap between production and deliveries increased. Q1 2024 production numbers reached 433,371 vehicles, against an anticipated 452,976, with Model 3/Y making up 412,376 of that total, vs a missed 439,194 forecast. “Decline in volumes was partially due to the early phase of the production ramp of the updated Model 3 at our Fremont factory and factory shutdowns resulting from shipping diversions caused by the Red Sea conflict and an arson attack at Gigafactory Berlin,” the company's official explanation is. However, the incident at Gigafactory happened in the last month of the quarter, while other reasons could only partially cover short delivery as well as lower production facts of the report. Thus, we can just agree with Wedbush analysts group words who literally said: "While we were anticipating a bad 1Q, this was an unmitigated disaster 1Q that is hard to explain away", so that "some darker days could clearly be ahead that could disrupt the long-term Tesla narrative". Elon Musk and his professional team now need to put efforts turning this around.

The only good story behind the scene is that Musk probably may get a good chance of purchasing more shares of Tesla later if he is still sticking to his idea of owning a larger stake in Tesla before investing more into AI technologies. This may give little comfort for short-sellers, also promising brilliant opportunities for the crowds who are extremely interested in buying more Tesla shares later at a well discounted price. We sincerely belong to this waiting-for-purchase group, even though we expect that a good purchase for Tesla stock may be somewhere within a potential technical range between $125 and $140 per share, without reaching the January 2023 low at $101.81.

All Tesla troubles are here, yet we believe troubles are temporary. Ultimately, Tesla is more than car deliveries; it's the energy hub and gateway for numerous EV producers. It could be compared with Google, which is much more than the search engine. Tesla domination in North America, Europe and global markets would grow.