Tesla delivered a record 343,830 vehicles during the third quarter of 2022

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Tesla delivered a record 343,830 vehicles in the third quarter of 2022, a sign that the Elon Musk-owned company has bounced back from a slower second quarter related to COVID-related factory shutdowns.

In a report on the automaker’s site, Tesla says the Model S and X made up 18,672 of its quarterly deliveries, while the Model 3 and Y accounted for 325,158. Tesla made a total of 365,923 cars during the quarter, leaving about 20,000 cars in its inventory.

The automaker clarifies that some of these electric vehicles (EVs) were “in transit at the end of the quarter,” adding that they “have been ordered and will be delivered to customers upon arrival at their destination.” Tesla also notes that it had been difficult to “secure vehicle transportation capacity and at a reasonable cost during these peak logistics weeks,” which is why some of the EVs still haven’t been delivered. Last year, Musk told employees to stop rushing to increase quarterly deliveries and to instead focus on minimizing costs related to transit.

Tesla ended its two-year streak of record-breaking deliveries last quarter after its Shanghai factory suffered a series of closures stemming from the city’s COVID lockdown restrictions. At the time, the company delivered 254,695 vehicles, its lowest since the third quarter of 2021. Tesla was able to dial up production this quarter now that Shanghai is no longer under lockdown, and the new Gigafactories in Texas and Berlin have started production (despite a cardboard fire).

During Tesla’s AI Day event last week, the company announced that 160,000 Tesla drivers now have access to its Full Self Driving beta, the driver-assist software that’s currently the center of two lawsuits. The California DMV and a Tesla owner both accuse the company of making misleading statements about the software’s self-driving capabilities.