Tesla company announced is touting its second profit year as a 'breakthrough'

Tesla's fourth-quarter winds brought in a record $ 2.3 billion of profit, the company announced.

It ended the company's second year in black, but significantly improved from a profit of $ 270 million in the fourth quarter last year. The company ended the year with a net income of $ 5.5 billion, compared to $ 721 million in 2020. Tesla made that profit of more than $ 17.7 billion, despite the fact that its average selling price continued to fall due to its increasing popularity of more affordable prices. Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV.

Tesla produced 305,840 vehicles in the fourth quarter, up 70 percent from a year earlier. For the full year, the company delivered 936,172 vehicles, an embarrassment of the promised one million vehicles, but still an 87 percent increase over the previous year.

"2021 was a revolutionary year for Tesla and for electric vehicles in general," CEO Elon Musk said in an earnings call. "As everyone did, we battled supply chain challenges throughout the year, and last year we were able to grow our volume by about 90 percent."

Tesla continues to increase the profitability of its vehicles. The company said the gross margin of its cars remained stable at 30 percent over the previous quarter. The number of regulatory liabilities sold in the quarter was slightly higher ($ 314 million this quarter, compared to $ 279 million in Q3) in the previous quarter.

In its earnings release, the carmaker warned that the production speed of its new Texas and German factories could be limited by supply chain issues and "local permits". Still, Tesla says it "is making progress in the industrialization of cyber tracks."

The company said it was nearing completion of its new Model Y, manufactured at its new Austin, Texas plant. After certification, Tesla said it expects to launch customer delivery of its new Texas-made Ys model. But companies such as the hotly anticipated Cybertruck, Semi truck, and the next-generation Roadster will have to wait until 2023 for other vehicles.

“If we introduce new vehicles, our total vehicle production will be reduced,” Musk said. "We will not be introducing new models this year. That would not make sense. ”

Cybertruck, which was first introduced in 2019, was initially expected to make its first distribution by the end of 2021. It was then pushed to the end of 2022 and now to 2023, according to Musk's characteristic vague ideas.

"Hopefully next year," he said. "It's very likely."

With its new factories coming to the internet, Musk said the company is already focusing on new locations. Musk added that an announcement on additional factories is likely to be made before the end of the year. “2022 is the year we look to factory locations to see what makes the most sense with some announcement by the end of this year,” he said.

Tesla also highlighted its controversial fully self-driving product as a "core area to focus on". FSD is a beta version of an advanced driver support system that controls some of the car's activities on local roads but still requires human monitoring. In contrast, automobiles are cars that can be operated on public roads without any human intervention or supervision.

However, the company says that FSD will be more profitable in the future thanks to "the higher usage of our vehicles". Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, said that once Tesla's cars were able to run on their own, the company would take advantage of that capability to "robotaxi fleet". The goal is to make it so that every Tesla customer's car owner can double it as an automatic vehicle that other people can greet while not using it.

The robotics service will be launched "this year," Musk predicted. (The company failed to meet the deadlines ahead of the launch of the service predicted by Musk.) Tesla said it released seven overseas software updates for FSD during the quarter, and that 60,000 vehicles are currently running with advanced driver support. The United States.

Although security regulators were concerned that Tesla was testing an incomplete version of its software on untrained customers, Musk was concerned about continuous improvements to the FSD over the years.

"There are some in-depth improvements to the FSD stock in the coming months," he said. "I would be shocked if I did not get full self-driving safer than people this year," he said. I would be shocked.