U.S. premium electric vehicle maker Tesla announced Sunday that it has delivered nearly one million vehicles during 2021, almost twice as many as in 2020. It did better than expected despite supply challenges.
Tesla has delivered more than 936,000 cars, all models combined, in 2021, which represents a growth of 87.4% compared to the previous year. The manufacturer is thus doing much better than the objective announced last January, to increase its deliveries by an average of 50% per year for several years.
The group, which chose to move its headquarters from Palo Alto (California) to Austin (Texas), sold 911,208 units of its Models 3 and Y, and 24,964 vehicles of its luxury Models S and X (sold for $90,000 and $100,000 respectively).
In the fourth quarter alone, 308,600 cars were delivered, an increase of 0.9% compared to the same quarter last year. Earlier in the year, in the second quarter, Tesla had crossed the threshold of 200,000 cars delivered (201,250) for the first time.
Tesla has managed to ignore the global logistical problems that have penalized the entire automotive sector. Elon Musk had already indicated that he was able to get around a good part of the semiconductor shortage by using new chip designs and rewriting software accordingly.
In October, Tesla had been boosted by a mega-order of 100,000 electric vehicles from rental company Hertz, by the end of 2022. This announcement made the car manufacturer enter the very select club of companies worth more than 1000 billion dollars on the stock market.
However, the carmaker is in the crosshairs of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for its controversial “Autopilot” driver assistance system.
The automaker also agreed to update its software to prevent drivers from playing video games on the car’s system while driving, after an investigation was launched.
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