Tesla vehicle number One Million is a red Model Y SUV. Expect millions more to follow.
Despite a roiling market that has seen its stock price take a roller coaster ride from $150 a share to $900-plus and back to around $600 a share (depending on what time it is), workers at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory have been plugging away at producing cars and notched a major milestone on Monday by rolling Tesla unit One Million off the line.
The red Model Y SUV got a moment of recognition from CEO Elon Musk on Twitter, where he shared a photo of the car and the factory team gathered around it. There was no immediate word on who will own the car, but suffice to say it likely has collector value above its price tag right out of the gate.
Just over a decade after it began serial production of vehicles, Tesla continues to be the market leader and indeed the market icon for electric vehicles, with EV sales and production numbers dwarfing all legacy automakers and only closely trailed by Chinese makers BAIC and BYD, who typically don’t sell vehicles into foreign markets. Only Nissan and GM are really in the fight so far among legacy automakers with the popular Leaf EV and the Chevy Bolt EV, but they are being far outpaced – so far – by Tesla. Tesla’s market cap is also far beyond any U.S. automaker and only trails Toyota worldwide.
After fighting through initial schedule delays and production SNAFUs with previous models, Tesla hit its stride in 2019 with the “economical” Model 3 and now its close cousin, the Model Y SUV, is on track to begin deliveries in the coming days, many months ahead of its anticipated fall 2020 deadline.
Tesla has said it hopes to produce half a million cars this year alone, putting it on track for another million cars – and trucks – by 2022. And while workers and robots piece together the company’s S,3,X and Y models at what seems like an ever-quicker pace, the count will likely accelerate once they are joined by the radical Tesla Cybertruck next year. At one point, Musk claimed the company had 250,000 preorders for the geometric-shaped vehicle, but that was months ago and some industry watchers claim the pre-order number could be as high as 500,000 at this point as the initial shock of the Cybertruck’s design wears off and the features, performance and novelty of the vehicle begin to percolate more interest.
The new Roadster halo supercar is also due for production, but at $200,000 or more per copy, it won’t be a high-volume vehicle and more of a statement with it’s claimed 1.9-second 0 – 60 time and 200+mph top speed.
With a new gigafactory up and running in China, another under construction in Germany and a huge lead in terms of tech, performance and production, it seems as though Tesla’s future is wide open. But legacy carmakers have Elon in their sights, with Ford debuting the all-electric Mach E Mustang and other carmakers preparing to roll out numerous EVs in the coming years. We’ll have to check back in and see where things stand when after the second million Tesla cars have been completed.
