Sometime ago, Elon Musk publicly stated that he’d be happy if Tesla were able to record a 50 percent increase in production every year. Tesla sales numbers for 2021 are out and the company has recorded deliveries of 936,172 units, an increase of 87 percent year-on-year. Tesla was also able to deliver 308,600 cars in the final quarter of 2021. These numbers easily outdid analyst expectations for the year.
With sales numbers now nudging a million units for the year, Tesla has proven that it can ramp up production unlike few other carmakers can. In a year beset with supply chain issues, even the largest carmakers in the world struggled with production bottlenecks and have returned numbers far below what they could deliver before the pandemic. Tesla, as Elon Musk has stated before, are on a path to achieving 20 million deliveries annually in the next nine years. However, it remains to be seen if Tesla can ramp up production as its volumes get closer and closer to the largest legacy carmakers in the world. The company’s $1 trillion valuation combined with plans to aggressively expand production with new factories in Germany and the United States seem to suggest that it might just be able to continue doing so. However, as legacy carmakers continue to invest heavily in EVs, its market share is expected to drop even as overall sales numbers might continue to rise.
While Tesla doesn’t breakdown numbers by car model, it does break it down in two categories – the affordable models, and the more expensive offerings. The Model 3 and Model Y continued to grow strongly and are now responsible for a whopping 97 percent of Tesla’s sales numbers. The Model S and Model X, on the other hand, are now relatively low volume products, together accounting for three percent. The company produces the Model 3 and Model Y at its Shanghai and California locations, while the Model S and Model X are produced only in California. The company doesn’t provide sales breakdowns by location.
