Enlarge (credit: Getty / Aurich)

Tesla reported strong sales and revenues for the second quarter of 2023. The automaker built 479,700 electric vehicles during the period, delivering 466,140. Selling those cars brought in $21.3 billion in revenue, a 46 percent increase year over year. But the company’s once-fat margins are shrinking, and Tesla shares have fallen 5 percent in trading this morning.

Tesla’s total Q2 revenues also grew year over year by 47 percent to $24.9 billion. The largest increase was seen in Tesla’s solar panel and battery storage side of the business, which grew 74 percent, year over year, to $1.5 billion. Tesla actually deployed fewer GWh of storage for Q2 versus Q1 2023, although at 3.7 GWh, that’s still a 222 percent increase year over year. The company blamed high interest rates for a year-over-year decline in solar panel installations.

Services and revenues grew by 47 percent, year over year, to $2.2 billion. This budget line includes Tesla’s Supercharger network, and it’s possible that some of the growth here reflects payments from rival automakers like Ford, General Motors, Volvo, Rivian, and Polestar, each of which signed an agreement to adopt Tesla’s charging plug to gain access to the Supercharger network for their own customers.