With the ongoing port shortages and rising shipping costs Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk called on employees Friday, via an internal email that was obtained by CNBC to find ways to cut down on the expense of shipping electric vehicles to customers, instead of hurrying orders out to reach the end-of-quarter sales targets.

In the past year, Tesla has struggled to bring new cars to its consumers across the U.S. in line with the dates they had originally stated. As CNBC previously reported, a few Tesla customers in the U.S. experienced delays in delivery that lasted for months which meant they had to pay extra for rental cars as well as ride-hailing apps, while being forced to re-apply for loans because of a delay in deadlines.

Tesla isn’t alone in making customers wait longer than they’d like for their brand new, completely electric vehicles. This week, for instance the company that is now public Rivian Automotive informed customers that had booked their R1S vehicle, which is a sport-utility vehicle, about delivery delays.

Yet, sales have risen this year with Tesla and Tesla seems to be unaffected by the unpredictable deliveries.

Deliveries of vehicles, which are closest to sales reported by Musk’s renewable and electric vehicles company estimated to be around 500,000 all in the year 2020. In in the beginning of the 2021 quarter Tesla already had reported sales from 627,350 units.

Since the beginning of 2021, Tesla hasn’t set a specific date for the 2021 delivery of vehicles. However, Tesla has repeated its loose guidelines for “50% average annual growth in vehicle deliveries” over an extended period of time, which was highlighted in its earnings call for the third quarter.

JL Warren Capital’s chief executive officer and head Of Research, Junheng Li, wrote in a letter to investors this week that she anticipates Tesla sales to increase at the very least in China during the quarter. “Soaring gas price benefits all new energy vehicle brands,” in China, she wrote.

A total of 1.3 million electric cars were sold across China in 2020 According to Canalys research. The company forecasted that the figure would rise to 1.9 million electric vehicle sales in China at the end of the year.

China remains the world’s biggest market for new vehicles and has strong support from the Chinese government to go electric.

(Adapted from AutoRecent.com)