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Tesla delivered 139,300 vehicles last quarter, breaking its previous record

Its best tally before that was 112,000 shipments in Q4 2019.

Justin Sullivan via Getty Images

Tesla delivered more vehicles than it has in any quarter to date between July and September. In its Q3 vehicle delivery and production report, Tesla said it shipped 139,300 vehicles during those three months.

That’s 45 percent more than the number of cars it delivered in the same quarter in 2019, and an increase of 53 percent from Q2 2020. Tesla’s previous shipment record was 112,000 vehicles in Q4 2019.

Breaking down the latest record-breaking shipment numbers, 15,200 of those were Model S/X cars and 124,100 were Model 3/Y deliveries. During the quarter, Tesla built 145,036 vehicles — 16,992 Model S/X vehicles and 128,044 Model 3/Y EVs.

At the start of the year, Tesla targeted 500,000 deliveries in 2020. It has shipped 318,000 vehicles so far. Its plans (just like everyone else's on the planet) were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The new Shanghai Gigafactory was closed briefly at the start of the year, as was the Fremont factory for about two months. If production hadn’t been halted, Tesla would surely have been closer to its target by now.

The company plans to open two more factories in the next couple of years. It'll be able to ramp up production, which is crucial given that it has new vehicles on the way in the form of the Model S Plaid, Cybertruck and next-generation Roadster.