Chinese EV makers shine in Sept. deliveries, while Tesla lags in Q3

Chinese EV makers Nio Inc. (NIO), Li Auto (LI), XPeng Motors (XPEV) reportedly delivered 66,831 vehicles in the month of September, while Tesla (TSLA) shares tick down in early market trading after missing on third-quarter delivery estimates.

Yahoo Finance Live compares the electric vehicle manufacturers' performances, breaking down potential regional trends.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

BRAD SMITH: Nio, Li Auto, and XPeng delivering a total of 66,831 vehicles in September.

That's a jump of 116% from the same time last year.

Nio alone delivered 15,641 vehicles in the month.

That's a 43.8% jump on the year.

The big winner, however, appears to be Li Auto with its numbers outpacing those two rivals here.

You're seeing shares moving higher pre-market fractionally for Li Auto here.

I think the important thing too is to remember, and we mentioned at the outset of this conversation was the pricing wars that have really initiated in China to try and make sure that you get consumers into the vehicle ecosystem for a lot of these major auto manufacturers within the region trying to make sure that if they can get them into that ecosystem perhaps you can get them as part of that larger brand affinity base going forward as well.

- Yeah.

Certainly.

That's going to be a huge focus here.

We know that the price wars are really sparked by Tesla.

We also just got those delivery numbers out as well.

But the price wars having an impact when it comes to demand, helping demand in China as we talk about this transition to EVs.

When you talk about Li Auto being one of the outperformers here of the most recent quarter, analysts expecting third quarter revenue to come in above about 245% up on a year over year basis to 4.6 billion on the heels of indications of strong demand here from these monthly sales data that we've been getting over the last several months.

But Nio, Li Auto, and XPeng combined selling just over 66,000 vehicles in the month of September.

That's up 116% year over year, the second best month on record.

And switching on focus here and talk about Tesla because we know there was a lot of focus on these delivery and production numbers, third quarter total deliveries of 435,000 just over that production of 430,488.

That was a decline from the previous quarter.

That slide that we're seeing comes as Tesla did close some factories here that, of course, having an impact on production and has slowed production.

So certainly a mover to the downside, not a big surprise on the heels of these delivery and production numbers that we're getting from Tesla off just about 2.5%.

BRAD SMITH: And yeah, that's so key.

I mean, when you think about the 3 and the Y, which really make up the majority, almost all of those production and delivery figures, you know, you strip out the S and X, which are really just about 13,000 of the production figures, 16,000 of the deliveries here.

All that considered, it shows that people are continuing to gravitate towards the mass market offerings here.

And on a regional basis, that's amazingly important because it's the entry point for a company like Tesla in so many of these international markets China, but also Europe as well here.

And so even as you're thinking about the success rate of the 3 and the Y going forward, it's a larger question of, OK, at what margin can investors expect Tesla to continue to be able to sell these vehicles, deliver these vehicles, and that's going to be the more important and critical perhaps figure that investors pay close attention to going forward.

- Yeah.

We know that it's been slashing prices for many of its models really since the start of the year.

Markdowns as large as 34% for the Model X.

So significant pricing discounts here.

We'll see--