On Thursday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his favorite medium “Twitter”, to announce his company’s acquisition of trucking capacity. While his statement wasn’t very clear at the moment (after all, what is trucking capacity anyways?) it now appears that Musk was referring to Tesla’s takeover of trucking companies.
In his original tweet, Musk had said:
Tesla just acquired trucking capacity to ensure Model 3 can be delivered in US by Dec 31 if ordered by Nov 30.
He later elaborated on his statement, after Fred Lambert of Electrek requested him to shed some light on the topic. As per Musk:
We bought some trucking companies & secured contracts with major haulers to avoid trucking shortage mistake of last quarter.
It is important for Tesla to sell as many vehicles as it can within this same year. Why? Well, the federal electric vehicle tax credit gives customers a $7,500 credit on the purchase of an all-electric vehicle. The credit starts winding down once the automaker sells its 200,000th vehicle.
Tesla achieved this landmark earlier in the year. This has in effect initiated a countdown for the tax credit. Tesla must now deliver all the Model S, Model X, and Model 3 to customers who ordered them by the 31st of December, to ensure that they receive the full tax credit.
After production, ensuring timely delivery has been a key area where Tesla has faced issues. In the third quarter itself, Tesla customers reported delays and a lack of clarity with respect to taking delivery of their vehicles. Clearly, the electric carmaker is in no mood to repeat its mistake – and hence, the acquisition of trucking companies.
Meanwhile, its unclear exactly which trucking companies have been acquired by the carmaker. However, we expect to receive more clarity on the topic in the near future as the company begins leveraging the acquired entity to make deliveries.
