Tesla's unsold inventory is creating stockpiles you can see from space

Last quarter, Tesla produced 433,371 autos. It delivered just 386,810, meaning there were about 47,000 extra Teslas around, more than double what it was a year ago and the company’s biggest imbalance to date.

This surplus is happening as the electric car company deals with a number of headwinds, including slowing electric vehicle sales growth, growing competition, and chaotic leadership.

“The primary driver of this was an increase in inventory from a mismatch between builds,” Tesla Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said of the company’s -$2.5 billion in free cash flow (spending on AI compute was also to blame). “We expect the inventory built to reverse in the second quarter and free cash flow to return to positive again.”

Until then, we wondered: Where have all the unsold Teslas gone?

I used satellite imagery and object detection analytics from the earth observation marketplace SkyFi, to take a look at some images of Tesla’s Gigafactory outside Austin, Texas. Comparing a Thursday from last October to a Thursday in March, you can see that the parking lots outlined in green in the images below became much more full.

A production lead at the gigafactory who was recently laid off along with more than 10% of Tesla’s workforce told Sherwood those parking lots hold finished Teslas before they’re shipped off.

Tesla does store inventory in the other parking lots but those are primarily for employees and contractors. We were unable to discern if extra Teslas are being parked in those, too. Tesla did not respond to questions about the images or requests for comment on this story.

SkyFi also shared satellite imagery of Chesterfield Mall, a soon-to-be-demolished mall west of St. Louis, where Jalopnik previously reported Tesla has been storing excess inventory.

The firm counted 465 Teslas parked there in May, bringing in much-needed revenue for the doomed mall, where before there had been none.

We were unable to get comparable satellite imagery of Tesla’s Fremont factory but a series of drone videos by a YouTuber show what look to be increasingly cramped lots across the property. Here’s a flyover from last week:

People have reported Tesla stock taking up space at a mall nearby the factory as well as in parking lots and airports around the world. Just this week, a local news network in Australia showed aerial footage of a “Tesla graveyard,” a port in Melbourne where “thousands” of unsold Teslas are piling up.

Of course, some of these Teslas could be en route to happy owners. But the mass of them piling up is getting harder to ignore.