Tesla delivered 308,600 vehicles worldwide in the fourth quarter, smashing the previous record for the EV maker and setting a capstone on a year in which the company joined the exclusive $1 trillion market valuation club.
The better-than-expected results posted Sunday pushed Tesla’s total sales for the year to more than 936,000, up about 87 percent over 2020’s deliveries of just under half a million vehicles.
Thirteen analysts surveyed by Bloomberg on average had expected about 263,000 vehicles for the quarter, though some had revised their numbers upward in the final days of December.
“This is a trophy-case quarter for Tesla as the company blew away even bull-case expectations,” Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in an emailed statement. He called it a “jaw-dropper performance for Musk & Co. in the December quarter with massive tailwinds into 2022.”