Tesla Closes 2020 with a Record Q4 and 500,000 Vehicles Delivered
Freemont Outbound Delivery Lot - Image: Tesla
Tesla delivered 499,500 vehicles for the 2020 calendar year, and produced 509,737 vehicles. That’s almost 10x the production output from 2015. Many Wall Street analysts dismissed Tesla’s 500,000 unit goal for the year, as the onset of COVID-19 impacted the automaker’s production facilities around the globe, and negatively affected sales across the broader passenger car market.
Image: Tesla
Five years ago, the company’s CEO Elon Musk emphasised a plan to reach a delivery target of 500,000 vehicles per year by 2020. At the time, this number seemed overly ambitious, as production difficulties, cashflow troubles and quality concerns seemed to be the most interesting stories to the media.
After a string of profitable quarters, successful launch of the Model Y and massive capital expansion, 2020 culminated in Tesla’s listing on the S&P 500 index, and a massive push to increase production by year end.
Tesla produced 179,757 vehicles and delivered 180,570 vehicles in Q4, up 42 per cent and 36 per cent respectively on Q4 2019 numbers. In Q3 2020, Tesla produced 145,036 vehicles and delivered 139,300 vehicles.
Elon Musk took to Twitter to mention the thousands of employees who contribute to Tesla’s continued success:
Investors and the majority of analysts have been very bullish on Tesla at the end of 2020, and the stock has surged past $705 US per share as at market close on December 31. Despite this, The New York Times, amongst other media outlets still falls into the trap of labelling Tesla as an “upstart automaker [that] will probably face stiffer competition in 2021.”
While its true Tesla has ongoing customer service and quality issues to address, and a huge amount of work ahead to continue to scale to meet future production and delivery targets, it’s dangerous to not see Tesla for what it now is; an energy company with the best automotive software on the market, and likely the best electric vehicles available today.
We can expect the full Q4 and calendar year 2020 earnings to be reported in late January or early February.