Tesla (TSLA) announces it produced its 3 millionth electric car

Tesla has announced that it has recently produced its 3 millionth electric car since its inception back in 2004 (though production only started in 2008).

During Tesla’s annual shareholder’s meeting today, CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla produced its 3 millionth vehicle over “the last few weeks.”

The CEO added:

10 years ago, we had made less than 3,000 cars, now here we stand, 10 years later, having made 3 million cars.

Just last month, Tesla announced that Fremont factory had produced its 2 millionth electric car. The other million vehicles came from Gigafactory Shanghai, Berlin and Texas, which are all still ramping up production.

Musk noted that Tesla’s fleet size growth is so smooth that when you chart it, it looks like one of those business plan charts made to impress potential investors:

Looking forward, Musk wondered about where Tesla will be in another 10 years:

What about the next 10 years? I’ll be surprised if it’s not over 100 million in 10 years.

Tesla has famously set a goal to be able to produce 20 million electric vehicles per year by 2030. At the meeting, Musk said that he believes Tesla will need about 12 Gigafactories in order to achieve that goal. The automaker is already operating four Gigafactories, though it is still ramping up production at all those locations.

Considering it takes a few years for Tesla to build a new factory and ramp up to volume production, the automaker is going to need to start adding new factories fast in the coming years.

At the meeting today, Musk said that Tesla is likely to announce the next Gigafactory location later this year.

Tesla aims to exit 2022 with an annualized production rate of two million vehicles per year. Many more factories are expected to be announced soon in order to grow that number by an order of magnitude within eight years.