May 17, 2021, Brandenburg, Grünheide: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, stands at the construction site of the Tesla factory and salutes with his helmet.
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Tesla has produced more than three million cars, CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Sunday. Of that total, Tesla’s factory in Shanghai has produced one million cars, according to the tweet.
“Congratulations to Giga Shanghai for creating the millionth car! The total number of Teslas made is now over 3 million,” Musk tweeted.
Musk’s announcement comes after months of lockdowns and parts shortages in China that have threatened Tesla’s car production, and suggests Tesla’s Shanghai factory is producing a significant number of new vehicles after opening in 2018 and subsequent years of investment .
The overall vehicle achievement noted by Musk on Sunday comes as Tesla’s reported shipments, the closest proxy for sales, have risen in recent quarters. In July, Tesla said it delivered 254,695 vehicles in the second quarter, up 26.5% year over year.
But the milestone also underscores how small Tesla is compared to the auto giants. For example, Toyota delivered over 10 million cars in 2021 alone. Tesla said earlier this year that it plans to increase car deliveries by 50% annually.
In addition to its Shanghai plant, Tesla manufactures cars at factories in Fremont, California; Austin, Texas; and near Berlin in Germany. musk said in July that the Fremont factory, the company’s first, produced 2 million cars.
In June, Musk said he wanted to get the Shanghai plant “back in the saddle” and complained that Tesla’s factories in Berlin and Austin were “money furnaces” losing “billions of dollars” due to supply chain and manufacturing problems.
Tesla shares are down nearly 25% in 2022 as investors reevaluate fast-growing companies in the face of inflation and macroeconomic concerns. Musk sold more than 7 million shares of Tesla last week, worth about $6.88 billion, as he is simultaneously mired in litigation over his efforts to scuttle a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion.