Tesla just fell short of delivering 500 thousand electric cars in 2020
Tesla has announced that it has nearly met CEO Elon Musk’s goal of delivering 500,000 vehicles in 2020, delivering 499,550 vehicles to customers in a year, or 99.91% of the headline. However, everything is not so simple: the final result may differ by 0.5%, therefore, in the report, which will be presented at the end of January, the top may be taken.
In any case, this is a significant result for Tesla, especially given the serious impact of quarantine measures in the first half of the year. In January 2020, Tesla said it expects to significantly surpass its target of delivering 500,000 vehicles worldwide by the end of the year. However, reality has made its own adjustments: due to the coronavirus, the company had to close its factories in China and Fremont (California) for several weeks.
Elon Musk has argued for a year that Tesla can still achieve the goal, and the company has followed that path, including unveiling the Model Y SUV ahead of schedule in March. Tesla delivered 88,400 vehicles in the first quarter and 90,650 in the second. In October, the company announced that it delivered an additional 139,300 electric vehicles to customers (more than Wall Street’s 137,000 expectations). Also, the third quarter was the fifth profitable in a row. All this led to the fact that the value of the company’s shares rose sharply and made it the most expensive automaker on the planet.
Tesla nearly hit its 500,000 vehicle production target in a classic quarter-end leap. For example, even the company’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, has been spotted among the delivery vehicles. Mr Musk himself last week urged Tesla workers to do everything possible to achieve the goal. “This is an important milestone on the road to consolidating the company, ” he wrote. “ All the critics who said just two years ago that we would never get there called our goal of half a million electric cars in 2020“ impossible ”. Damn it, we’re on our way to that! “
Tesla said on Saturday that it produced 179,757 and delivered 180,570 vehicles in the fourth quarter, bringing the total number of electric cars produced and delivered to customers for 2020 to 509,747 and 499,550, respectively.
The production of half a million electric cars in a year by just one company is a really important milestone in moving the automotive industry into a future without internal combustion engines. However, once Elon Musk even said that Tesla would be able to deliver 1 million cars in 2020, although he then had to abandon this figure when the company faced problems in ramping up production of its first mass-produced electric car, Model 3.
“Very proud of the Tesla team for reaching this milestone! In the early days of Tesla, I thought that we (even with optimistic hands) have a 10% chance of survival at all, ” Elon Musk admitted on Twitter on Saturday. – On Tesla had 2/3 of all personal and professional suffering in my life combined. But it was worth it. “
