Tesla delivered a total of 936,172 electric cars last year, with 308,600 vehicles delivered in the fourth quarter. While the numbers are impressive, much growth also happened in the areas of supply chain management, battery deployment and energy management.
While the vehicle delivery data had been announced a few weeks ago, additional information about the financial and production growth followed today. With deliveries up by 87% during the last year, compared to 2020, Tesla managed to increase operating cash flow to $5 billion over 2021, with an increase of $1.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents in Q4 to a total of $17.6 billion.
Production costs also evened out to a more profitable $36,000 in both Q3 and Q4 2021, which was also largely due to the developments at the Shanghai gigafactory. The company hopes to build on this using more efficient battery cell formats. In terms of what Tesla invested in their factories across 2021, an investment of $6.5 billion was set to build out new factories and on other capital expenditures.
Fremont achieved record production numbers last year, with Tesla now speaking of growing to capacities of over 600,000 per year, while Austin’s gigafactory started producing the Model Y, however, deliveries will wait until after final certification. The Shanghai gigafactory is now Tesla’s second most productive plant, with over 450,000 vehicles produced, compared to a total of 600,000 vehicles from California. Given the global market position, however, Tesla writes that “Gigafactory Shanghai continues to be our main export hub”.
In Berlin, Tesla is still in the process of sorting out the manufacturing permit, but has decided on what batteries will first be used in production: “These first vehicles will be built using 2170 cells.” At the last word, production is to begin here in March.
In terms of energy management, Tesla has been steadily building up energy storage capacities, with deployments increased by 32% YoY in 2021, “mainly driven by strong Megapack deployments”. Solar energy system deployments stood at 345 MW in 2021 (68% YoY increase), with solar roof deployments nearly tripling compared to the year before. Tesla has also been working on improving supercharger capacities in North America.
Tesla’s goals remain similar to previous years: growth is on the menu: “Over a multi-year horizon, we expect to achieve 50% average annual growth in vehicle deliveries. The rate of growth will depend on our equipment capacity, operational efficiency and the capacity and stability of the supply chain.” Their own factories running below capacity due to supply chain issues is expected to continue through 2022, as the chip shortage continues. Perhaps in response to this, Tesla is also looking to broaden their product portfolio into software: “While we continue to execute on innovations to reduce the cost of manufacturing and operations, over time, we expect our hardware-related profits to be accompanied with an acceleration of software-related profits.”
Keyword: Tesla takes stock of 2021