Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) came close but missed out on boss Elon Musk’s half-a-million vehicle delivery target by just 450 cars last year, the company revealed over the weekend.
The electric vehicle manufacturer reported delivery of 499,550 vehicles for 2020, which was still some way ahead of the average forecast of roughly 482,000 from Wall Street analysts.
READ: What's 2021 got in store for Tesla - part I, part II and part III
Tesla, which saw its stock price rise around eightfold last year to value the company at US$669bn, generally says its delivery count numbers are “slightly conservative”, with final numbers potentially varying by around 0.5%.
In the final quarter of the year, the company produced 179,757 cars and shipped 180,570.
This included shipping 18,920 of its Model S and Model X cars.
So proud of the Tesla team for achieving this major milestone! At the start of Tesla, I thought we had (optimistically) a 10% chance of surviving at all. https://t.co/xCqTL5TGlE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 2, 2021
Fourth-quarter financials are due in late January, when Musk will give a delivery target for 2021.
For this year, analysts at Goldman Sachs recently predicted the Model Y SUV will unlock the door to higher profit margins, forecasting that deliveries this year could be 40% made up of this higher-margin model.
The company should also be able to deliver around 1mln vehicles by 2022 and 15mln by 2040, the analysts reckon.