Tesla has built its 10 millionth electric vehicle, according to a social media post by the company early on Thursday. The milestone comes six years after the company built its one millionth vehicle.
Crossing the 10 million mark means Tesla is halfway to reaching one of the four core “product goals” that unlocks the full value of CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package, which shareholders approved last year. By 2035, Musk has to ensure the company builds 20 million vehicles, reaches 10 million active subscriptions for its “Full Self-Driving” software, delivers one million “bots,” and puts one million robotaxis on the road.
Despite a few years of intense growth on the backs of the Model 3 and Model Y, Tesla has not been able to sell 2 million vehicles in a single year. If it keeps up that pace, or slows further, it will take the company until at least the early 2030s to hit the 20 million mark.
Tesla has less competition in the United States now, though, as major automakers have pulled back from the electric vehicle market, and startups like Rivian and Lucid Motors have struggled to reach scale. Nevertheless, Tesla is still struggling in its home market. Its U.S. sales fell 13% year-over-year in the second quarter, and the company had to look to newer markets like Japan, Australia and Lithuania to court buyers.
Musk used to promise that Tesla would make 20 million cars per year by 2030, but he abandoned that idea a few years ago as the company’s sales slowed down. Still, of the four product goals, this is the one Tesla is closest to achieving.
Musk also has to increase the company’s profit (adjusted EBITDA) to $400 billion by 2035 in order to access the full share package. That looks challenging at the moment, too, as the company’s adjusted EBITDA currently hovers around $3.27 billion, and has been shrinking lately thanks to heavy discounts, the loss of saleable regulatory credits, as well as a dramatic increase in spending on new efforts like AI and robotics.
As for the competition, the only other company at the same level is China’s BYD, which recently crossed 17 million “new energy vehicles” built and sold, roughly half of which were hybrids.
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Sean O'Kane Sr. Reporter, Transportation
Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
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