Tesla sets quarterly delivery record with 308K cars
Tesla Inc. is off to a strong start to the new year after the electric car maker smashed its quarterly record for deliveries in what one analyst called a “trophy-case” performance.
Tesla Inc. delivered 308,600 vehicles worldwide in the fourth quarter — a 71 percent increase from the quarter a year earlier — smashing the previous record for the electric car maker and setting a capstone on a year in which the company joined the exclusive $1 trillion market valuation club.
The company’s shares jumped 14 percent in New York, their biggest gain since March and best start to a year since Tesla went public more than a decade ago. The $144 billion in market value that Tesla added Monday is the equivalent of an entire Honeywell International Inc. or Starbucks Corp. It’s also more than the value of almost 90 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 Index.
Austin-based Tesla reported Sunday that it delivered 936,000 cars in 2021, an 87 percent increase from the year before, despite the computer chip shortage that has disrupted auto production around the world.
In the fourth quarter, the overwhelming share of the deliveries were of the Model 3 sedan and the Model Y hatchback. Wall Street analysts had been expecting deliveries of about 266,000 cars in the fourth quarter and about 855,000 for the year.
“The numbers are hard to poke holes in,” Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in an email. “While there are many competitors in the EV space, Tesla continues to dominate market share as evidenced again this quarter.”
Tesla increased sales despite a global shortage of computer chips, which serve as the brains for a variety of electronics, including engine controllers and touch screens. The shortage forced most automakers to idle some plants for weeks at a time and kept them from producing as many vehicles as they had planned.
In July, Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said his company was overcoming the shortage by switching to types of chips that were more readily available and writing new instructions, or firmware, to be embedded into the chip. Tesla can make such a switch because the components in its cars are designed to be controlled largely by software.
Tesla does not break out its deliveries by country. Much of its recent growth has been propelled by sales in Europe and China.
The jump in deliveries capped a momentous year in which Tesla’s stock price and profits soared. It has also worked to open factories in Texas, as well as Berlin, in hopes of sustaining its rapid growth.
In October, Tesla’s market value for the first time exceeded $1 trillion, making it more valuable than General Motors, Ford Motor, Toyota, Volkswagen, Stellantis, BMW and several other automakers combined.
“This is a trophy-case quarter for Tesla as the company blew away even bull-case expectations,” Ives said. He called it a “jaw-dropper performance” for the end of the year that gives “massive tailwinds” heading into 2022.
With shares at dizzying heights, Musk began selling large chunks of his stock, partly to cover taxes, after taking a poll among his followers on Twitter. Several times he said he was done selling but continued.
In total, Musk sold more than $16 billion worth of Tesla stock. The transactions involved the exercising of 22.8 million options awarded to Musk as part of his compensation and bonus packages.
Tesla has said it hopes deliveries will increase about 50 percent a year for the next several years and is counting on output from its Austin and Berlin factories to reach its goal. Both factories are expected to begin producing Model Y hatchbacks soon.
At the same time, Tesla’s product quality has remained uneven. On Thursday, the company told federal regulators that it planned to recall more than 475,000 cars for two separate defects that could affect safety — a misaligned latch on the front hood, which could allow the hood to open unexpectedly, and wiring to the rearview camera that can be damaged by opening and closing the trunk. A day later, vehicles in China were recalled as well.
In addition, the company and its Autopilot driver-assistance system have come under closer scrutiny by U.S. safety regulators. Teslas have been involved in a series of crashes with other vehicles, including some that resulted in fatalities, while the Autopilot system was engaged.
The company continues to promote its Autopilot system, which can take over some of the steering, braking and accelerating tasks from drivers, and a more advanced set of features, Full Self Driving, that it offers for $10,000 but has so far allowed only a select group of customers to test.
In August, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a formal investigation into how Autopilot recognizes objects on the road. It is specifically looking into 11 instances when Teslas crashed into emergency vehicles that had stopped on highways and had their lights flashing.
The agency is also looking at more than two dozen other crashes involving Teslas that were under Autopilot control. Eight of those crashes have resulted in a total of 10 deaths since the first occurred in 2016.