With Consumer Happiness Dropping, Is Tesla In Real Trouble?

Holes have started to appear in Tesla Inc TSLA's sunny outlook. 

A new report from LikeFolio, which tracks social media mentions of brands and products, shows a drop in consumer happiness levels for the company, as well as some bright spots in the social data.

Consumer Reports said Tesla Model 3 was fun, but had flaws and some features were disappointing. Real trouble arose in late March when a Bloomberg Model 3 tracker indicated Tesla would not hit the pace goal for Q1: 2,500 Model 3 units/week. 

Musk attempted to control the narrative with an April Fools Bankruptcy joke. In the meantime, production increased to 2,000 units per week (but still fell short of 2,500 unit per week goal set to be reached by end of Q1). This was enough to bump the stock back up a little. But on April 3, Tesla missed Q1 production pace goals. 

Are Consumers Happy With Tesla Vehicles?

Yes, but…

Happiness has begun to drop, and recently hit new lows, as the company has pushed back delivery dates and delivered a product that is not quite living up to the expectations of the consumer. This has competitors like GM GM, Ford F and Mercedes licking their chops…and catching up on technology.

In fact, we've even seen BMW overtake Tesla in terms of consumer happiness... not a great signal.

Tesla's outlook from here

While the consumer sentiment numbers are quite concerning, the report goes on to lay out reasons for investors to have faith in Elon Musk, and details the impact of his success at getting a Tesla to actually orbit the Earth…

Read full report here.