Photo: Tesla
Tesla's growth story was not easy. The company and its CEO Elon Musk faced many challenges before Tesla got where it is today. In 2014, having delivered just under 60,000 vehicles, the company could now achieve a record 500,000 deliveries in 2020.
At the beginning of the journey, everyone called Tesla just a startup, striving for a dream. But despite naysayers, Musk in 2014 predicted that the company would be able to produce about 500,000 cars in 2020. In September 2014, in an interview with Fox Business, he said: “I feel confident that we will be able to achieve at least half a million cars a year by 2020.” A year later, in 2015, during a conference call with investors, Musk repeated his forecast once again: "I do remain confident about half a million cars in 2020, and maybe being able to exceed that."
Despite production hell, various challenges, and an army of analysts and short-sellers who daily have tried to assure investors that the company will at any moment go bankrupt, it seems that Tesla will achieve its goal.
2020 has been challenging due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The economies of all countries have been hit hard by its effects, and the auto industry is no exception. Tesla's two car factories were forced to shut down for a total of two months, further complicating achieving the production target set by Musk in 2014 to produce 500,000 vehicles.
Given the current situation, in order for this to become possible, Tesla must produce 170,000 vehicles in Q4 2020, which is 25,000 more than in the last quarter. This goal seems really difficult, but not impossible. Some analysts agree that the company will be able to achieve its goal, in large part thanks to Giga Shanghai.
Throughout the year, Tesla's Chinese factory has been ramping up production capacity at a high rate, which should have a huge impact on the final numbers. Musk has reached out to his employees several times in internal emails, saying that the goal seems achievable if the entire team makes every effort to achieve it.
Tesla 2020 Vehicle Production
The goal of producing 500,000 vehicles in 2020 seems quite achievable. Whether the company will be able to deliver such a number of cars depends on several factors, and the ideal organization of logistics plays a crucial role. Whether Tesla delivers 500,000 vehicles or not, the company has made a huge leap forward, achieving excellent performance in 2020. Despite the influence of COVID-19, Tesla remained the only profitable automaker, and its cars were extremely popular.
© 2020, Eva Fox. All rights reserved.
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Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter
About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
