Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been claiming for years that Tesla is experiencing exponential growth, and it’s happening. The American automaker announced on Saturday that it has produced its 5 millionth vehicle worldwide.
To put this in perspective, Tesla celebrated its 1 millionth vehicle just three and a half years ago, in March 2020. Just this March 1st, they reported having manufactured 4 million vehicles in total.
This week, we produced our 5 millionth car. Thanks to Tesla owners for their continued support!
– Tesla (@Tesla) September 16, 2023
Tesla surpassed the one million annual sales mark for electric vehicles in 2022, driven by production ramps in Germany and Texas. Its goal is between 1.8 and 2 million for 2023, with the help of these facilities.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts 14 million electric vehicle sales worldwide in 2023, a year-over-year improvement of 35%. If that’s the case, Tesla could account for one in seven electric vehicles sold globally.
No other automaker comes close to Tesla’s numbers based solely on electric vehicles. While many had predicted that VW would surpass Tesla in 2024, Tesla now has an even larger lead over the German automaker, and the Model Y remains the best-selling electric vehicle in its territory, outselling the VW ID.4 and ID.3 combined in Europe.
China’s BYD has been the closest competitor in this race to accelerate global electric vehicle production, but it comes with an asterisk. BYD claimed to have reached 5 million cumulative sales of “new energy vehicles” in August, a figure that includes plug-in hybrids, which BYD has pushed to South American markets, for example.
If the priority is to get people to plug in and drive electric vehicles locally, in sheer plug-in vehicle production, BYD remains ahead. It claimed it would produce more than 1.5 million plug-in vehicles in the first half of 2023 and be on track to produce 3 million just this year.
BYD has also gone big with electric trucks and buses, in addition to supplying its Blade battery to other companies, reportedly including Mercedes-Benz. And Tesla.
Few automakers can still boast the exponential growth of Tesla and BYD in electric vehicles. Nissan reported earlier this summer that it had surpassed one million global electric vehicle sales, a milestone that took 12 years to achieve.
But for Tesla, electric vehicle production wasn’t the only major milestone reported last month. In September, it reached 50,000 Superchargers worldwide. According to data from the DOE’s Alternative Fuels Data Center, about 21,000 of them are in the U.S. With recently signed agreements with a wide range of automakers for Supercharger access and the adoption of Tesla’s NACS charging port, growth is expected in the charging infrastructure aspect too.
