Following a profitable-and, ahem, remarkable-2021, Tesla remains at the forefront of EV production in America as we enter the new year. Delivering nearly 90 percent of the 2020 numbers, Tesla achieved the “highest quarterly operating margin of all OEM volumes,” at the time, according to the company’s Q4 figures released Wednesday. reached $ 5.5 billion in net income despite $ 6.5 billion spending for new production facilities in Berlin and Austin, Texas, it also exceeded its own cool billion dollar revenue goals.
By 2021, Tesla will have made 930,000 electric vehicles (99 percent of which are Model 3s and Ys) and delivered 936,000 of them to customers around the world. At the same time, the company expanded its proprietary Supercharger network by a third, which now has a total of 3,476 stations. The company also announced that it will likely look at new production facility locations throughout 2022 but is not yet ready to share its list of candidate sites.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk doubled his bullish outlook for the company’s Full Self-Driving feature on the call on Wednesday. “Over time, we think Full Self-Driving will be the most important source of profitability for Tesla,” he said during the call, noting that Tesla has expanded its FSD beta program from several thousand vehicles in Q3. up to nearly 60,000 vehicles in Q4.
However, he also confirmed that the company will not release new vehicle models in 2022, including the Roadster, Cybertruck, or the rumored “$ 25,000 car” reportedly built by the company. “If we introduce new vehicles, our total vehicle output will decrease,” due to the ongoing processor chip supply problem, Musk explained.
Despite the same issues affecting the other automotive industry as well, Tesla maintains its production capabilities better than almost any other automaker. The Fremont factory produced approximately 600,000 vehicles last year with plans to increase that number even after the Austin and Berlin plants go online later this year. Production at the Shanghai plant also continues to rise. According to Tesla, it was able to lower the per unit cost of manufacturing its vehicles to approximately $ 36,000 (and did so in both Q3 and Q4, 2021).
Update 1/27/22 0:55 AM ET: The 2021 production and delivery figures in this article have been corrected.