Elon Musk has relieved some of the pressure bearing down on his electric-car maker. Tesla has bounced back from a poor first quarter by posting record sales for the three months to the end of June. The company's drive back to growth is only half the journey, however.

The $40 billion outfit revealed late Tuesday that it had handed customers the keys to some 95,000 vehicles last quarter. That's 51 percent more than in the previous three months, a dismal performance that led to a $700 million loss for the period. The improvement should be a relief for investors on two fronts. First, it ought to quell fears that demand for the mass-market Model 3 has dropped. Also, on this performance Tesla's cash burn ought to be much reduced. That explains why the stock jumped 7 percent in after-hours trading.

But the numbers don't restore Tesla's status as a fast-growth company. An overall production of around 87,000 cars was barely higher than the previous record set in last year's fourth quarter. There's also the possibility that customers in the US rushed to buy Teslas before a federal tax credit halved to just under $2,000 at the end of June. A previous cut in the credit six months earlier contributed to the poor first-quarter showing.

The record-setting sales may not pull Tesla into the black in any case. Making money on the Model 3 was hard enough six months ago when the average price was just below $60,000, but Musk recently introduced cheaper variants which will drag down margins. Moreover, the company delivered fewer than 18,000 of the high-margin S and X vehicles last quarter. While better than the previous three months, it leaves the first-half total at just 60 percent of the 2017-18 run rate. It suggests that Tesla vehicles are susceptible to competition - Audi, Porsche and Jaguar now all have rival offerings on the roads.

Musk has been pushing Tesla to cut costs, but repairing poor-quality cars and shoddy after-sales service requires investment. Capital expenditure also needs a boost, with barely a tenth of the 2019 target of $2.5 billion spent in the first quarter. Getting production and sales cranking again is encouraging, but turning a profit remains tough.

The author is Antony Currie, a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The article was first published on Reuters Breakingviews. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn