Tesla Surpassed Expectations in the First Quarter
Tesla once again demonstrated its capabilities. Last week, the company reported first-quarter earnings for 2022. To cut a long story, it surpassed expectations. Still, let’s learn more about its results.
Revenue from its electric vehicles reached $16.86 billion in the first quarter, up 87% from the same period last year. Notably, automotive gross margins jumped to a record 32.9% with Tesla reporting a gross profit of $5.54 billion in its main segment. Besides, regulatory credits accounted for $679 million of automotive revenue for the quarter.
Tesla and investors
Early this month, the company reported vehicle deliveries of 310,048 for the first quarter of the year, the closest approximation of sales disclosed by Tesla. Its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles comprised 95% of deliveries in the first quarter that ended on March 31.
Tesla’s CFO Zachary Kirkhorn and CEO Elon Musk are confident that it can grow at least 50% over 2021 numbers. They also noted that Tesla has lost about a month of “build volume” in Shanghai due to Covid-related lockdowns.
In spite of this slowdown, Elon Musk said, “It seems likely that we’ll be able to produce one and a half cars this year”. He cautioned that customers ordering now are facing a long waitlist, some of their orders won’t arrive until 2023.
The world’s wealthiest person also acknowledged that autonomous driving advances were taking longer than anticipated.
He declined to give details on a “futuristic” robotaxi that he said Tesla was now working on in early April.
In its energy segment, the company’s solar deployments fell by nearly half to 48 MW in the first quarter of 2022 versus the same time last year. Tesla deployed 846 MWh of lithium ion-based battery energy storage systems, up 90% from the same time last year, but down from the previous quarter.
