Editor's Note: In the face of continued supply chain challenges and factory shutdowns, Tesla's first quarter deliveries reached a new high.
Tesla discloses its first-quarter delivery report
On April 3, Tesla released its first quarter 2022 delivery report. According to the data, in the first quarter of 2022, Tesla's global delivery volume exceeded 310,000 vehicles, a year-on-year growth rate of more than 60%. Among them, model 3 and Model Y delivered 295,000 units, accounting for 95% of the total deliveries, and Model S and Model X models combined 14,700 units.
Specifically, from January to February, the export volume of Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory reached 40,500 units and 33,300 units, respectively, and in the domestic market, it handed over 59,800 units and 56,500 units respectively.
For Tesla's rapidly growing sales, relevant media reports said that some analysts believe that Tesla's sales data can achieve growth, due to Tesla's low car ownership costs and consumer optimism about electric vehicles in the past year.
In the past year, the global new energy vehicle market has ushered in rapid development, with new energy vehicles selling 6.5 million units in the whole year, an increase of 108% year-on-year. China, as the fastest growing new energy vehicle market, sold 2.988 million units last year, an increase of 169.1% year-on-year, and as Tesla's largest single market, the Chinese market contributed 51.7% of Tesla's sales in 2021.
The target is to deliver 1.4 million units by 2022
Not long ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at Tesla's 2021 annual report meeting that Tesla vehicle sales growth rate will reach more than 50% in 2022. Musk's statement means that Tesla expects to deliver more than 1.4 million vehicles this year.
Judging from the current sales structure of Tesla, the domestic market is still its center of gravity, but the European market is also growing rapidly.
On March 23, Tesla announced that the Berlin plant in Germany has officially started production to ensure the continuous growth of its sales in Europe; on April 7, Tesla's Texas plant in the United States will be officially put into operation, which will be used to produce model Y and electric pickup truck Cyberterruck as planned.
With the factory put into operation, tesla has met the demand for this year's delivery target in terms of design capacity. But in fact, according to third-party forecasts, Tesla's Berlin factory can produce 54,000 new cars in 2022, 280,000 by 2023, and 500,000 vehicles per year until 2025.
From the perspective of the growth rate in the first quarter, Tesla hopes to complete the target, but at the same time, from the perspective of actual production capacity and market environment, there are still unstable factors for Tesla to achieve the target.
There are still uncertainties in achieving the goals
Due to the impact of the epidemic, after March 28, Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory has entered a state of suspension. Tesla originally planned to stop production for four days, but due to the limitations of the epidemic, Tesla postponed the resumption of work on April 1. Previously, some media reported that Tesla's Shanghai factory was expected to postpone the resumption of work until April 4, but ultimately failed to resume work on time.
In response, Tesla did not elaborate on the reasons, nor did it disclose when it expects to resume production. As of now, Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory is still in a state of shutdown.
Regarding when the Shanghai factory can resume work, CRRC called Tesla's official customer service, but the other party did not reply positively, saying that it would respond to the problem after feedback, and a special person would make a reply.
As Tesla's most important production base, the data shows that the Shanghai Gigafactory will produce 470,000 vehicles in 2021, which is about 50% of Tesla's global production. It is understood that the Shanghai plant has a weekly production capacity of about 17,000 vehicles, and can produce an average of 2,500 new cars per day. According to this calculation, Tesla's current production capacity loss has exceeded 20,000 vehicles.
At the same time, Tesla is also facing pressure from rising raw material prices. From March 10 to March 17, Tesla "realized" three consecutive price increases in a week, completing the price increase of all domestic models. In contrast, the cost of car purchase for consumers has risen.
On March 10, the model 3 high-performance version and the Model Y long-lasting and high-performance version both increased by 10,000 yuan. On March 15, the Model 3 rear-wheel drive version, high-performance version and Model Y long-lasting and high-performance version increased in price, ranging from 14,000 to 20,000 yuan. On March 17, Tesla's official website in China showed that the price of the Model Y rear-wheel drive version was raised to 316,900 yuan, an increase of 15,060 yuan.
A few days ago, some industry media reported that compared with fuel vehicles, the subsidy concessions, lower energy replenishment and maintenance costs of new energy vehicles make new energy vehicles have a certain competitiveness in the consumer market, but the cost increase caused by the price increase of this round of new energy vehicles has affected the purchase enthusiasm of some consumers.