Tesla (TSLA) delivers record of 180,000 cars in Q4, barely missing goal of 500,000 cars in 2020

Tesla released its delivery and production numbers for the fourth quarter of 2020 and the full year 2020. It managed to deliver a record number of over 180,000 vehicles but barely missed the goal of 500,000 vehicles delivered in the full year.

Tesla Q4 delivery and production

Over the last few weeks, we reported on Tesla trying to achieve what CEO Elon Musk referred to as the “historic milestone of 500,000 cars built and delivered” in 2020.

It’s a goal that the CEO had put in place five years ago.

In order to achieve it, Tesla needed to produce around 170,000 vehicles and deliver around 181,000 vehicles during the fourth quarter.

With the production ramp-up in Gigafactory Shanghai, it looked like Tesla would achieve the needed production, but we reported that Tesla was within a thousand deliveries of its goal in North America with just a day to go at the end of the quarter.

Today, Tesla released its production and delivery numbers for Q4 2020 and confirmed 179,757 vehicles produced and 180.570 vehicles delivered:

That’s a new record for the automaker — beating its previous record by about 40,000 vehicles.

Tesla full-Year 2020 production and deliveries

Tesla announced that they achieved “production and delivery of half a million vehicles” in 2020:

“In 2020, we produced and delivered half a million vehicles, in line with our most recent guidance. In addition, Model Y production in Shanghai has begun, with deliveries expected to begin shortly.”

Technically, they did fall short of the delivery goal by 450 vehicles, but it’s hard to blame them for declaring victory:

Electrek’s Take: Still a victory for Tesla

As we noted earlier this week, when Tesla was getting close to the milestone, it is a victory no matter what here.

On the production side, Tesla achieved a 24% increase quarter-to-quarter and 71% increase year-over-year. On the delivery side, Tesla achieved a 30% increase quarter-to-quarter and 61% increase year-over-year.

That’s simply incredible growth, especially for product as complex as an electric vehicle.

For the overall year 2020 versus 2019, Tesla grew deliveries by 36% despite the global pandemic. How many other automakers do you think can say that about their performance in 2020?

Now that this milestone is out of the way, I think it would be great for Tesla to focus on a more stable flow and delivery of vehicles in order to avoid those crazy end-of-quarter rushes, which should also help quality.