"Other automakers" include capitalized engineering costs on their COGS lines and sell their vehicles at a 10% discount to their dealers; if Tesla made THOSE adjustments to "facilitate" comparisons with other automakers, its gross margins would be in the single digits. Instead, these costs show up in its (negative) operating margins, which is why it likes to distract you by focusing on its self-defined "gross" margin.
This is total bullshit. They've known about the factory shut-down all year-- they have a demand problem.
Unlike any other auto company, Tesla includes no engineering costs in its "cost of revenues"; thus its gross margin is deceptively high and what should be focused on instead is the operating margin.
Warranty expense was $9.3 million. If this was distributed among 28,000 cars (Tesla had delivered approximately 31,000 by the end of that quarter, but many of those came in late June and thus probably wouldn't have yet needed warranty work), it would come to $332 per car for the quarter which is $1328 per car per year which-- over a four year warranty period-- would be $5300 in repairs per car. Yet Tesla appeared to be accruing a "normalized reserve" of only approximately $2800 per car (adding $17.93 million to the reserve while delivering 6457 cars, with that $17.93 million figure excluding a one-time addition of $2 million more to pay for titanium undershields. Thus, Tesla could be "under-reserving" by as much as $2500 to $5200 per car.