It seems that Tesla’s sales rate is struggling to match the production rate. The manufacturer is thus forced to fill entire parking lots with its unsold cars, so numerous that it is possible to spot them using satellite images. In total, more than 40,000 cars were over-manufactured last quarter.
In 2023, Tesla had a record year in sales. But this year, the tide has turned, so much so that the manufacturer is posting much more timid figures for the last few months. However, its production capacity continues to grow, with new Gigafactories recently opened. So where do all these unsold cars go while waiting to be delivered? To put it simply, in gigantic parking lots.
Tesla occupies former military land converted into a parking lot to store all these cars waiting to be sold. In the United States, in different states, the manufacturer has also requisitioned parking lots of old shopping centers. In short, there are now several thousand vehicles parked in these huge areas. So large, in fact, that it is possible to spot them with Google Maps.
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Tesla requisitions giant parking lots to store its thousands of unsold cars
Indeed, a Reddit user discovered satellite images of these parking lots occupied by Tesla in Germany where we can see thousands of parked cars. According to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, the manufacturer’s trucks transporting these vehicles make between 300 and 400 trips per day to drop them off there. For your information, the Berlin Gifactory is approximately 60 km from this former military base, which can accommodate up to 5,000 cars.
Also on Reddit, another Internet user published a video in which he walks through one of these parking lots, this time in Virginia, in the United States. Models S, X and other Cybertrucks are packaged there waiting to be sold. Last quarter, Tesla produced an excess of 46,561 vehicles, or nearly 11% of its total production. Last year, this figure barely reached 2%.