Will Tesla become the world’s largest carmaker?
Tesla stunned the market yesterday announcing 308,600 deliveries in Q4 taking total deliveries in 2021 to 935,600 with a trajectory to hit 1.5-1.6mn deliveries this year. The delivery figures were way ahead of estimates and investors rewarded the carmaker by sending its shares up 14%, an inch from its all-time high.
Our chart on battery electric vehicles (BEV) show that Tesla is accelerating relative to the competition from already a leading market position which should make the industry nervous. Volkswagen is playing catch up, but there is a risk that the company’s Q4 figures will be distorted like Q4 2020 due to EU rules on emission related costs creating an incentive to overproduce and delivery before year-end (last year Volkswagen did that and many BEVs to their own subsidiaries). We will not know the full picture of the Volkswagen vs Tesla battle before Q1 ends.
The reason why we do not have figures for many of the big brands is that many of them are still not providing the necessary information on BEV sales. Ford has big plans but little to show yet, with some estimates putting BEV deliveries at 150,000 in 2022 which in that case would be a tenth of Tesla.