Since 1927, the well-known American newsweek "Time" will select the "influential people" of the year at the end of each year, and at the end of the year, the annual celebrities will be introduced and evaluated in the biweekly magazine. Although Time has repeatedly declared that the title of "Person of the Year" does not represent some kind of honor, the public is proud of it.
This year's Time Person of Year unsurprisingly fell on Elon Musk, who also won the Ft.'s Person of the Year award.
Even earlier, Tesla was already celebrating that it had risen to the top of the global auto industry.
Sold well
Musk has long enjoyed using Twitter and its legion of fans to spark interest in Tesla, sometimes even to have an impact on the company's stock price, and his infamous "money is in place" tweet has caused outrage from regulators.
Recently, Musk's provocative Tweets reignited a social media war that ended with Tesla providing several strong numbers to refute people who were skeptical about Tesla and the entire electric car industry.
Tesla delivered 241391 vehicles worldwide in the third quarter of 2021, up 73 percent from the same period last year; revenue was $13.8 billion, net income was $1.62 billion, and the market capitalization reached $1 trillion, exceeding everyone's expectations.
In the U.S., Tesla's Model Y and Model 3 were named the most popular cars in October.
"It's been a great year for Tesla," said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of Edmunds, a well-known American car website, "although Tesla is now a mainstream car company, it is still outside the traditional car company." Tesla has been trying to maintain its cool image, and in fact it's doing well. ”
Tesla is on track to produce about 900,000 vehicles this year from its plants in Fremont, California, and Shanghai, chief financial officer Zach Kirkhorn said Tesla's gross margin for cars this quarter reached a record 31 percent. "We will grow as fast as possible, focusing on an annual growth rate of 50%."
Popular Musk
Along the way, although the outside world has a lot of criticism and dissatisfaction with Tesla and Musk, many traditional car practitioners in the industry are very welcoming to it, and they have inspired Tesla's success, so that they can push their companies to do more things.
Ford CEO Jim Farley is one of them, and musk congratulated him on Twitter after winning Time's Person of the Year and praised Tesla's ability to disrupt the industry.
"Elon once said: 'We always hope that Tesla will become a model for the automotive industry', and now that the task is complete, congratulations @ElonMusk." Farley wrote on Twitter last week.
A few days later, Musk replied with an appreciation from Jim: "Tongxi @jimfarley98. "
Musk wrote in response to an article about "Ford plans to increase production of its Mach-E crossover": "It is a very important competitor to the Model Y."
And Farley was named the 2022 MotorTrend Person of the Year last week for driving the development of cars led by the Mach-E and Bronco SUVs and achieving decent results.
In the traditional car companies, there is also a tesla fan who has to be mentioned, that is, Volkswagen CEO Dis. He even asked Musk to speak at a Volkswagen executive meeting in October, which lasted more than an hour.
But Dees has had some troubles lately.
"I'm often asked why I keep comparing us to Tesla. I understand that this is a headache for some people," Diess told workers last month, according to Bloomberg, "but my task with the entire management is to properly assess the competition, to prepare the team and make it future-proof." ”
In addition, another sign that Tesla is becoming more popular with mainstream car companies is that Hertz has ordered 100,000 Tesla cars for its rental fleet.
In an interview, Hertz's interim CEO Mark Fields expressed his opinion: "Making electric cars more widespread is a very important part of our corporate strategy, and Tesla is the only manufacturer that can mass-produce electric vehicles." ”
Improvements are still needed
Of course, in the past year, Musk and Tesla have not received all flowers and champagne, in fact, Tesla is receiving strict scrutiny from regulators and investors because of the frequent self-driving accidents that occurred during the year.
FSD, which is tesla's focus and is highly sought after by consumers, has become one of Tesla's biggest risks this year. While thousands of car owners wanted access to the full version of the auto-assisted driving system and each paid up to $10,000 (about 64,000 yuan) for the feature, Tesla only gave a small percentage of consumers a try based on computer-generated driving scores.
As early as August of this year, Musk claimed that the FSD 9.2 Beta version was not working well, but by October, he changed his tone: the ultimate value of FSD is huge.
"The day FSD is widely issued will be one of the largest asset value increases in history." He wrote on Twitter.
In November, NHTSA issued a statement saying Tesla was recalling the FSD systems of nearly twelve thousand cars because communication errors could lead to erroneous forward collision warnings or unnecessary triggering of automatic emergency braking systems.
This has led many Tesla owners to complain that their braking system is a "ghost".
In addition, Tesla has also faced complaints from car owners about poor manufacturing quality, uneven customer service, sudden price increases, and delays in interior selection. Whether in the European and American markets or the Chinese market, the common theme of Tesla buyers on social platforms is to complain about their vehicles or services.
While no product has really confronted Tesla so far, that could change as automakers finally take Tesla seriously and offer their own electric cars. After all, there are quite a few brand new competitors who are fighting for Tesla.
Edmunds, a well-known American car website, predicts that as traditional car companies gradually exert their strength, Tesla's electric vehicle market share may drop from 65% this year to 46%.
They argue that Tesla can use its halo to promote it before other brands launch equally eye-catching electric cars, which is undoubtedly a good thing, but it will also affect its market share. "
"At this point, Tesla's best way forward is to expand the electric vehicle market base and have more customers."