Despite a year fraught with controversy, particularly involving its founder and chief innovator Elon Musk, electric vehicle maker Tesla announced that it delivered a record total of 936,172 vehicles over the past year.
In a statement issued last January second, Tesla executives stated that it delivered 308,600 units, primarily of its Model Y hatchback and Model 3 sedan. The more expensive crossovers Model S and Model X, prices for which are pegged at around $100,000, accounted for a smaller portion of deliveries overall.
Meanwhile Q4 production at the Tesla plants in Fremont, CA and Shanghai, China hit a total of 305,840 units, pegging the year-end total at 930,422.
China: A Key Market
While Tesla has never broken down its sales by region, it has been obvious that its entry into Mainland China has been instrumental in speeding up its growth in terms of both deliveries to local customers and as a base of export operations heading into Europe and other parts of the world.
China is seen as the lynchpin for Tesla and this particular market is expected to make up 40% of its deliveries for 2022.
Equity analysts, including Deutsche Bank lead analyst for Autos and Auto Technology Emmanuel Rosner, noted that Tesla’s quarterly delivery tally has beaten their expectations for the fourth quarter. The tally was up by around 70% compared to the same time last year and considerably surpassed the projected total of 282,000 units.
Tesla’s full-year deliveries were also up by 87%.
A More Ambitious Goal
While Tesla fell short of its goal to deliver a million vehicles at the end of 2021, Elon Musk expressed optimism that his company can sell around 20 million EVs a year by the end of the current decade. This is seen as a highly ambitious goal, given that the world’s automotive giants, including Japan’s Toyota, South Korea’s Hyundai, and Germany’s Volkswagen, sell an average of only ten million units per year.
Despite Musk’s optimism, the company’s share value dropped by 1.3% to $1,056.78 on the last trading day of the year.
Nevertheless, it is expected that Tesla will see extensive growth in 2022, given how it is set to open new plants in Texas and Germany. The opening of these facilities is expected to boost its overall production capacity, enabling it to be in step with the increased consumer interest in electric vehicles.
