As the market for EVs grows, Tesla hits a huge milestone.
Key details
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the electric-vehicle (EV) maker has now produced 3 million vehicles, with about one-third coming from its factory in Shanghai, China.
Musk took to Twitter this past weekend to make the announcement. The tweet read, “Congrats Giga Shanghai on making millionth car! Total Teslas made now over 3M.”
Musk mentioned the 3-million figure at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in early August, making the announcement not a big surprise.
Tesla basically reached 3 million out of two factories. One in Fremont, California, and the other in Shanghai. Tesla started shipping vehicles out of Shanghai around the start of 2020. It took that plant less than two years to hit 1 million units shipped. The Fremont plant took almost 10 years to ship the same amount, reports Barron’s.
The company has plans to add two new plants in Texas and Germany. Musk said Tesla should be producing cars at a rate of about 2 million a year by the end of 2022.
Why it’s news
Tesla has been the dominant producer of EVs, so the symbolic milestone signals that this technology is transforming the automobile market. What’s more, the U.S. reached a major EV tipping point this year, with 5% of new car sales having been EVs. A Bloomberg analysis of adoption rates around the world shows that this 5% threshold, up from 3% the year before, signals the start of a mass adoption for this transformative transportation technology.
Recent studies show that more than half of car buyers worldwide want an electric vehicle. The latest EY Mobility Consumer Index shows that 52% of people looking to buy a car want to buy an EV. This is the first time the number has exceeded 50%, representing a rise of 11 percentage points since last year.
“These findings truly mark a tipping point in the global car-buying market. For the first time since EY teams have been collecting this data, more than 50% of consumers across the globe indicate that they want an EV. The speed of this change has also been eye-opening, with a rise of 22 percentage points in just two years,” says EY’s Randy Miller.
