After a profitable – and, ahem, remarkable – 2021, Tesla remains at the forefront of EV production in the United States as we enter the new year. With deliveries nearly 90% up on 2020 numbers, Tesla achieved “the highest quarterly operating margin of any volume OEMs” during that period, according to the company’s fourth-quarter numbers. released wednesday Not only did the company achieve $5.5 billion in net income despite a $6.5 billion outlay for new production facilities in Berlin and Austin, Texas, it also surpassed its own revenue targets by a billion dollars. dollars.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Tesla produced 930,000 electric vehicles (99% of which were Model Xs and Ys) and delivered 936,000 of them to customers worldwide. At the same time, the company expanded its proprietary Supercharger network by a third, now totaling 3,476 stations. The company also announced that it will likely be looking for new production locations throughout 2022, but is not yet ready to share its list of candidate locations.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk doubled down on his upbeat outlook for the company’s Full Self-Driving feature on Wednesday’s conference call. “Over time, we believe that Full Self-Driving will become the most important source of profitability for Tesla,” he said during the conference call, noting that Tesla has expanded its FSD beta program from a few thousand vehicles in the third quarter to nearly 60,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter. .
However, he also confirmed that the company will not be releasing any new vehicle models in 2022, including the Roadster, Cybertruck or the alleged “$25,000 car” the company is developing. “If we introduce new vehicles, our total vehicle production would decrease,” due to ongoing problems in the processor chip supply chain, Musk explained.
While these same problems also affect the rest of the auto industry, Tesla has maintained its production capabilities better than virtually any other automaker. The Fremont plant produced around 600,000 vehicles last year with plans to increase that number even after the Austin and Berlin plants come online later this year. Production at the Shanghai plant also continues to grow. According to Tesla, it managed to reduce the cost per unit of production of its vehicles to around $36,000 (and it did so in the third and fourth quarters of 2021).
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