Tesla delivered close to one million vehicles in 2021

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

Tesla delivered a record 936,172 vehicles in 2021, as outlined in a report from Tesla, representing an 87 percent increase over the 499,550 vehicle deliveries Tesla made in 2020.

The company managed to deliver 308,600 cars in the last quarter of 2021 alone, up from 241,300 deliveries in the third quarter. Of those deliveries, 11,750 were for the Model S and X, while 296,850 were for the Model 3 and Y. Both the Model 3 and Y also made up the majority of deliveries throughout the entire year at 936,172 shipments, compared to the 24,964 Model S and X deliveries.

Tesla previously stated that it plans on increasing its deliveries by about 50 percent every year, and although it didn’t hit one million shipments, it has still surpassed its annual growth goal. In November, an internal memo revealed that Tesla CEO Elon Musk told his employees to stop rushing to make deliveries by the end of the quarter and to instead focus on cutting costs, noting that he expected a wave of vehicles from Tesla’s factories in California and China to reach customers in December.

The ongoing chip shortage has caused a number of car manufacturers to pump their brakes, Tesla included. Last year, Tesla rewrote its own software to help mitigate the impact of the shortage, and also had to briefly shut down production at its California plant in February. Some customers even reported that USB ports were missing in their vehicles, potentially because of the shortage.

Despite all this, Tesla’s value exceeded $1 trillion in October after rental car company Hertz added 100,000 Teslas to its fleet. The company even had its most profitable quarter ever in the third quarter of 2021, but that may change, considering that earnings for the final quarter of 2021 have not yet been released.