Tesla CEO Elon Musk said a plant shutdown in China and severe supply chain pressure would further slow the electric carmaker’s rapid growth in the current quarter.
However, he stuck to his optimistic forecasts for full-year 2022 on Wednesday, claiming that a new purpose-built robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals would reach production in 2024 and become a “massive growth driver” for the company.
The comments came as Tesla revealed it had weathered the worst of the auto industry’s supply chain crisis to post first-quarter sales and profits that beat most Wall Street forecasts. The news sent the company’s shares up about 5 percent in after-market trading, erasing a loss of the same magnitude earlier in the day.
Tesla said an ongoing shortage of chips and restrictions due to Covid-19 restrictions had hit production, leaving long waiting lists for new cars, some stretching into next year.
Tesla’s Shanghai plant was shut down for a few days in March due to local regulations, and Musk said the automaker’s second-quarter production is likely to be “roughly the same” as last year as the plant is only now starting to operate again Production start period. That would be the second consecutive quarter of faltering production growth, after an 83 percent jump in vehicle volumes last year.
However, the Tesla boss predicted that a rapid acceleration of the new plants in Berlin and Austin would allow the company to overcome bottlenecks and produce “over 1.5 million cars this year”, a higher number than most analysts had expected .
Tesla has delayed production of new vehicles like its Cybertruck until next year in hopes that focusing on existing models would allow for faster scaling at new plants. Musk’s promise of a robotaxi by 2024 added to the glut of vehicles waiting to go into production, some of which are years behind schedule.
The timing will also depend on whether Tesla can overcome ongoing problems developing its self-driving software, though Musk has predicted it will finally make a breakthrough by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, Musk acknowledged that price hikes at Tesla risk looking “unreasonable” at a time when profits are hitting records. But he said long waiting lists meant many of the cars sold would face higher production costs. “That’s our best guess,” he said.
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Tesla’s revenue more than doubled year over year to $18.7 billion last quarter, or about $1 billion more than most analysts were forecasting, as volumes jumped year over year, which helped has to raise some prices to offset higher utility costs. Pro forma earnings of $3.22 more than tripled to beat estimates of $2.26.
Results were boosted by $679 million in regulatory loan sales, more than double the previous three months. Tesla receives loans from some governments to produce more zero-emission vehicles than required by local regulations and can sell them to other automakers that are underproducing. It has warned that loan sales will fluctuate sharply and eventually decline.
Even excluding the credit sales, Tesla managed to increase gross margin from its auto business — the best measure of the underlying auto business — to 30 percent for the first time, up from 29.3 percent in the most recent quarter last year.