The world hasn’t fully recovered from the aftermath of the pandemic and the automotive industry is no exception. Many sectors have been experiencing problems from chain supply issues and shortages of raw materials. Despite this, Tesla was able to curve out significant profits from its various businesses.
Elon Musk’s company reported that it earned a $3.3 billion profit in the first quarter of 2022 from $18.7 billion in revenue. That figure represents an 81 percent increase year over year, compared to $10.4 billion in revenue in Q1 2021. That’s over $1 billion a month or about $33 million a day in operating profit if you want to dissect it like that.
Tesla was able to pull off this great achievement in the middle of a lockdown in China which led to closing down its key Giga Shanghai plant and delayed deliveries.
To achieve the $3.3 billion, Tesla delivered 310,048 cars to customers. They also made $679 million from selling emissions credits to other car manufacturers a figure that is double compared to the last 3 months of 2021. Companies that have internal combustion engines buy emissions credits from the fully electric Tesla to offset their carbon production. Tesla also makes money from its energy branch that deals with solar panels.
During the same quarter, Tesla opened two new factories — one in Berlin on March 22nd and the second in Austin, Texas, on April 8th, both are already producing and delivering cars.
While announcing the quarterly results, Elon Musk admitted that it was a difficult few months but still promised 1.5 million deliveries this year – that’s nearly 600,000 vehicles more than last year which is significant considering they make 32.9 percent profits per car which is unheard of in the automotive industry.