The fulfillment of some promises may be postponed somewhat for Tesla boss Elon Musk. Autonomous driving, for example, or the market launch of new models. But the US electric car maker delivered on one point again last year: Tesla achieved the sales targets it had set for itself. The company wanted to deliver 1.8 million vehicles in 2023.
On Tuesday, Tesla reported the numbers for the fourth quarter and thus also the overall annual balance. In the end there were 1,808,581 electric cars. The US company produced around 36,000 more vehicles. This means that Tesla increased production by 35 percent and deliveries by 38 percent. How strongly this success was supported by price cuts that the car manufacturer implemented, especially in China, will only become clear in two weeks, when Tesla also presents its financial results.
Nevertheless, these figures show that despite more competition and a fairly manageable model range, Tesla’s vehicles still find many customers. The success is based almost exclusively on two cars, the Model 3 and the Model Y, of which the company alone sold more than 1.7 million vehicles. The larger, more expensive versions hardly play a role. It remains exciting to see whether this will change next year when the Cybertruck is produced on a larger scale.
But competition in the electric car market is growing – and it comes primarily from China. The Chinese car manufacturer BYD also reported a new record at the beginning of the week: the company sold 526,409 fully electric vehicles in the fourth quarter alone – more than Tesla. China’s best-selling car brand sold 340,178 electric and hybrid cars in December alone, including 190,754 fully electric vehicles. The record number was also supported by aggressive price reductions at the end of the year for the Chinese. In 2023 as a whole, the manufacturer sold almost three million cars – that’s as much as in the past five years combined. Last year’s rapid growth catapulted BYD into the top 10 global car sales figures for the first time.
And the Germans? There are still no figures for the fourth quarter from the largest car manufacturer, VW. By the end of September, the Wolfsburg-based company had sold 531,000 electric cars worldwide – just a little more than Tesla or BYD in a single quarter. BMW had 217,000 electric cars in the first three quarters, Mercedes 174,000.