Tesla commits to ramping up new car deliveries after delays

27 Apr 2021

Image: © Moose/Stock.adobe.com

The company added the caveat that global supply chain issues continue to hamper the automotive industry.

Tesla is promising to ramp up vehicle production and deliveries in the coming months but supply chain issues are still lingering.

Chief executive Elon Musk said that new editions of Tesla’s Model S sedans are expected to commence deliveries in May. The cars were delayed, having been originally due to ship out in February. Model X deliveries, meanwhile, will be coming in the third quarter.

Tesla said it aims to produce 2,000 of these cars a week as the months progress.

In its letter to shareholder, the company said it will be expanding manufacturing capacity at new and existing factories in Texas, Berlin and Shanghai, but acknowledged that challenges remain in supply chains.

Other carmakers have been rocked by global semiconductor shortages, which have plagued supply chains and manufacturing targets.

“We plan to grow our manufacturing capacity as quickly as possible. Over a multi-year horizon, we expect to achieve 50pc average annual growth in vehicle deliveries,” the company said.

“In some years we may grow faster, which we expect to be the case in 2021. The rate of growth will depend on our equipment capacity, operational efficiency and capacity and stability of the supply chain.”

Tesla delivered more than 184,000 vehicles in the first quarter of 2021, setting a new quarterly delivery record for the company.

Announcing its earnings for the first three months of the year, the carmaker booked revenues of $10.4bn with net income of $438m, another record for the company.

Tesla turned heads earlier this year when it purchased $1.5bn in bitcoin but Monday’s earnings release showed that the company sold off $272m of the cryptocurrency relatively quickly.

Musk went on to say during the company’s earnings call that US president Joe Biden’s green initiatives are expected to benefit the carmaker as more people make the move to electric vehicles.

There are still question marks over how Tesla’s vision for all-electric transport meshes with its investments in bitcoin, which is notoriously energy intensive. It has also begun accepting bitcoin as payment for its cars.

Jonathan Keane is a freelance business and technology journalist based in Dublin

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