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A Tesla Model S car is displayed at a Tesla showroom on November 5, 2013 in Palo Alto, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Some Tesla customers in Florida and California have experienced delivery delays of weeks or months, forcing them to rely on borrowed cars, costly rentals and ride-hailing apps while they weather the unexpected wait.

Tesla acknowledged Model S delays earlier this year, but the delivery issues extend to the Model Y, Tesla’s crossover SUV and most popular vehicle in North America, according to several customers who spoke to CNBC.

The continuing delays are a sign that Tesla is still struggling with the “delivery logistics hell” that Elon Musk referenced in 2018 as the company dramatically increases its vehicle production. The company delivered more than 201,250 vehicles in Q2, a company record and a 144% increase from the year-ago quarter. Supply chain shortages, which the company discussed on its last two earnings calls, may also be playing a part in the delays.

A Tesla sales employee in California told CNBC that sales and delivery staff are doing the best they can to answer questions from upset customers, but do not have enough information from higher-ups or the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, to answer them precisely. This person asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press about company matters.

The employee said a colleague in another state resigned after managers threatened to fire him last quarter because he “broke the chain of command” by sending an e-mail to CEO Elon Musk and other managers in Fremont seeking information about the Model S delays.

After that, some sales staff felt hesitant to seek further details on behalf of customers, the sales employee said. CNBC reviewed internal correspondence corroborating the sales employee’s account of events.

Generally, sales and delivery workers are aware that Tesla has faced parts shortages and challenges implementing the use of new machinery at the Fremont plant, this person said. Those issues were discussed by executives on prior Tesla earnings calls.

The dates keep slipping

One bemused Tesla customer, Steve Salem, placed his order for a long-range all wheel drive Model Y with premium interior and silver metallic paint on May 31. He had test-driven the vehicle outside of New York City, and later ordered online, arranging to pick up the car in Los Angeles where he would soon be living.

According to records and correspondence he shared with CNBC, Tesla’s site initially said a Model Y should be available in an estimated 4 to 8 weeks, putting the late end of his estimated delivery window around the week of July 26.

After placing his order online, paying a $100 non-refundable fee to do so, the Tesla site showed Salem a new estimated delivery window with Aug. 10 as the latest possible delivery date. The dates continued to change in his Tesla account, and Salem says he did not receive apologies from sales staff or even email notifications with each change. The date range shifted all the way into October at one point, and then back to a date in late August. As of Monday this week, the estimated date was between Sept. 4 and Sept. 24.

Three other customers who are waiting for Model Y and Model S vehicles also told CNBC that they had to keep checking their accounts to detect changes to their estimated delivery dates.

While he hasn’t given up on his Tesla, Salem said he might have to eventually. “I’m fortunate that I’m not in desperate need for a vehicle. But I’d like to drive the car,” he said.

He arranged financing through a third-party lender, and doesn’t expect any trouble getting another loan approved. But delays could effect his loan rate, and he will also need to get a new insurance quote. “It’s a hassle,” he said. “At a certain point do you say the heck with this and try to get something else? It’s frustrating — not just the delays but the total lack of communication.”

Tesla cars are delivered to a showroom in Brooklyn, New York on April 25, 2019.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images

If Tesla cannot firm up a delivery date, Salem said he may order a Ford Mach-E or revert to a high-performance internal combustion engine vehicle. The Model Y was going to be his first battery electric.

Another would-be owner of a long-range, all-wheel-drive Model Y in Southern California ordered from the Tesla site and received a confirmation by e-mail on June 6. This customer, who asked to remain unnamed to avoid confrontations on social media, had roughly the same experience as Salem.

She shared records indicating that her original estimated window for delivery was between Aug. 4 and Aug. 24 in Burbank, California. The date slipped repeatedly, and she says the company never proactively reached out to her about the changes.

When she saw the dates changing in her Tesla account online, she texted a sales employee to ask whether the delivery dates would keep getting pushed further out. The employee failed to give specifics, but reassured her that staff would keep an eye out for a black Model Y that may become available sooner in the area.

In one text message to this sales employee, this customer asked if there were problems in manufacturing. The employee replied in early August that Tesla had manufacturing delays due to a chip shortage, and said many other car companies were dealing with the same thing.

As CNBC has previously reported, chip shortages have recently caused production and delivery delays of Ford’s Mustang Mach-E crossover and in July, caused Rivian to delay production and deliveries of its debut RIT electric pickup, and R1S SUV (but not its commercial delivery vans which it is making for Amazon).

This customer is now expecting to receive her Tesla some time between Sept. 8th and Sept. 28th. She told CNBC she has spent more on rentals and ride-sharing than she and her finacee planned to spend leasing and insuring their Model Y from Tesla.

She’s willing to wait for the Tesla, but wants an explanation from the company. And now, since she’s planning to be out of town for a few weeks, she is worried the company will make her wait months more if she can’t take delivery.

Finally, two customers who have been waiting for Tesla’s higher-end Model S luxury sedans told CNBC they have been waiting for months.

One engineer, who works in utility-scale renewables, ordered his Model S Plaid in January, and planned to take delivery at the Ft. Meyers, Florida, Tesla dealership. He asked to remain un-named citing privacy concerns, and said he is annoyed every time a YouTuber shows up in a video with a Model S Plaid. It made him wonder if the company is allowing people to cut the line if they have dedicated fan accounts on social media.

While he has already waited for months, he said he will never give up on getting his dream car from Tesla. He is drawn to the Model S Plaid’s design, performance and the appeal of a vehicle that will have new features added or old features refined via over the air software updates.

Barry Stuppler, founder of a rare coins and precious metals wholesale business, first ordered a Model S Plaid in January, as CNBC previously reported. On Aug. 10, he told CNBC, Tesla moved his delivery date to the very end of the third quarter — Sept. 21 through Sept. 30.

Last week, he went to a Mercedes dealer and configured and ordered an all-electric Mercedes 450 EQS, with no deposit required. The sales staff there said he would have a price quote and vehicle identification number by late September, and he could take delivery in November. He said if the Mercedes arrives before his Tesla, and isn’t more than the price he’s expecting, he’ll cancel the Model S Plaid order.

Even famous people aren’t immune. On Tuesday, rock musician David Crosby tweeted that a Tesla he ordered seven months ago has still not showed up, and alleged that Tesla had “lied to us 4 times about when we would get it.”

Crosby was not immediately available for comment.

Tesla and Troy Jones, the company’s Vice President of North American Sales, Service and Delivery, did not immediately respond to a request for further information.

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Nvidia to join Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing rival chipmaker Intel

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Nvidia to join Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing rival chipmaker Intel

CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, speaks during the launch of the supercomputer Gefion, where the new AI supercomputer has been established in collaboration with EIFO and NVIDIA at Vilhelm Lauritzen Terminal in Kastrup, Denmark October 23, 2024.

Ritzau Scanpix | Mads Claus Rasmussen | Via Reuters

Nvidia is replacing rival chipmaker Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a shakeup to the blue-chip index that reflects the boom in artificial intelligence and a major shift in the semiconductor industry.

Intel shares were down 1% in extended trading on Friday. Nvidia shares rose 1%.

The switch will take place on Nov. 8. Also, Sherwin Williams will replace Dow Inc. in the index, S&P Dow Jones said in a statement.

Nvidia shares have climbed over 170% so far in 2024 after jumping roughly 240% last year, as investors have rushed to get a piece of the AI chipmaker. Nvidia’s market cap has swelled to $3.3 trillion, second only to Apple among publicly traded companies.

Companies including Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon are purchasing Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), such as the H100, in massive quantities to build clusters of computers for their AI work. Nvidia’s revenue has more than doubled in each of the past five quarters, and has at least tripled in three of them. The company has sginaled that demand for its next-generation AI GPU called Blackwell is “insane.”

With the addition of Nvidia, four of the six trillion-dollar tech companies are now in the index. The two not in the Dow are Alphabet and Meta.

While Nvidia has been soaring, Intel has been slumping. Long the dominant maker of PC chips, Intel has lost market share to Advanced Micro Devices and has made very little headway in AI. Intel shares have fallen by more than half this year as the company struggles with manufacturing challenges and new competition for its central processors.

Intel said in a filing this week that the board’s audit and finance committee approved cost and capital reduction activities, including lowering head count by 16,500 employees and reducing its real estate footprint. The job cuts were originally announced in August.

The Dow contains 30 components and is weighted by the share price of the individual stocks instead of total market value. Nvidia put itself in better position to join the index in May, when the company announced a 10-for-1 stock split. While doing nothing to its market cap, the move slashed the price of each share by 90%, allowing the company to become a part of the Dow without having too heavy a weighting.

The switch is the first change to the index since February, when Amazon replaced Walgreens Boots Alliance. Over the years, the Dow has been playing catchup in gaining exposure to the largest technology companies. The stocks in the index are chosen by a committee from S&P Dow Jones Indices.

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Super Micro’s 44% plunge this week wipes out stock’s gains for the year

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Super Micro's 44% plunge this week wipes out stock's gains for the year

Charles Liang, chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer Inc., during the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. The trade show runs through June 7. 

Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Super Micro investors continued to rush the exits on Friday, pushing the stock down another 9% and bringing this week’s selloff to 44%, after the data center company lost its second auditor in less than two years.

The company’s shares fell as low as $26.23, wiping out all of the gains for 2024. Shares had peaked at $118.81 in March, at which point they were up more than fourfold for the year. Earlier that month, S&P Dow Jones added the stock to the S&P 500, and Wall Street was rallying around the company’s growth, driven by sales of servers packed with Nvidia’s artificial intelligence processors.

Super Micro’s spectacular collapse since March has wiped out roughly $55 billion in market cap and left the company at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq. On Wednesday, as the stock was in the midst of its second-worst day ever, Super Micro said it will provide a “business update” regarding its latest quarter on Tuesday, which is Election Day in the U.S.

The company’s recent challenges date back to August, when Super Micro said it would not file its annual report on time with the SEC. Noted short seller Hindenburg Research then disclosed a short position in the company and wrote in a report that it identified “fresh evidence of accounting manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal later reported that the Department of Justice was in the early stages of a probe into the company.

Super Micro disclosed on Wednesday that Ernst & Young had resigned as its accounting firm just 17 months after taking over from Deloitte & Touche. The auditor said it was “unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management.”

A Super Micro spokesperson told CNBC that the company “disagrees with E&Y’s decision to resign, and we are working diligently to select new auditors.” Super Micro does not expect matters raised by Ernst & Young to “result in any restatements of its quarterly financial results for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, or for prior fiscal years,” the representative said.

Analysts at Argus Research on Thursday downgraded the stock in the intermediate term to a hold, citing the Hindenburg note, reports of the Justice Department investigation and the departure of Super Micro’s accounting firm, which the analysts called a “serious matter.” Argus’ fears go beyond accounting irregularities, with the firm suggesting that the company may be doing business with problematic entities.

“The DoJ’s concerns, in our view, may be mainly about related-party transactions and about SMCI products ending up in the hands of sanctioned Russian companies,” the analysts wrote.

In September, the month after announcing its filing delay, Super Micro said it had received a notification from the Nasdaq indicating that its late status meant the company wasn’t in compliance with the exchange’s listing rules. Super Micro said the Nasdaq’s rules allowed the company 60 days to file its report or submit a plan to regain compliance. Based on that timeframe, the deadline would be mid-November.

Though Super Micro hasn’t filed financials with the SEC since May, the company said in an August earnings presentation that revenue more than doubled for a third straight quarter. Analysts expect that, for the fiscal first quarter ended September, revenue jumped more than 200% to $6.45 billion, according to LSEG. That’s up from $2.1 billion a year earlier and $1.9 billion in the same fiscal quarter of 2023.

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Apple to buy Pixelmator, the iPhone image editing app with AI features

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Apple to buy Pixelmator, the iPhone image editing app with AI features

Peopl walk outside Steve Jobs Theater at the Apple Park campus before Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event in Cupertino, California, on Sept. 9, 2024.

Nic Coury | AFP | Getty Images

Apple will buy Pixelmator, the creator of image editing apps for Apple’s iPhone and Mac platforms, Pixelmator announced Friday in a blog post.

Pixelmator, a Lithuanian company, was founded in 2007, and in recent years has been best known for Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro, which compete with Adobe Photoshop. It also makes Photomator, a photo editing app.

Apple has highlighted Pixelmator apps over the years in its keynote product launches. In 2018, Apple named Pixelmator Pro its Mac App of the year, citing the company’s enthusiastic embrace of Apple’s machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, such as removing distracting objects from photos or making automated color adjustments.

We’ve been inspired by Apple since day one, crafting our products with the same razor-sharp focus on design, ease of use, and performance,” Pixelmator said in its blog post.

Apple does not acquire as many large companies as its Silicon Valley rivals. It prefers to make smaller acquisitions of companies with products or people that it can use to create Apple features. Neither Pixelmator nor Apple provided a price for the transaction.

Pixelmator said in its blog post that there “will be no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time.”

Earlier this week, Apple released the first version of Apple Intelligence, a suite of features that includes photo editing abilities such as Clean Up, which can remove people or objects from photos using AI.

Apple has acquired other popular apps that received accolades at the company’s product launches and awards ceremonies.

In 2020, Apple bought Dark Sky, a weather app that eventually became integrated into Apple’s default weather app. In 2017, it bought Workflow, an automation and macro app that eventually became Shortcuts, the iPhone’s scripting app, as well as the groundwork for a more capable Siri assistant.

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