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Tesla today announced its vehicle production and delivery figures for the third quarter, and The edge noted that Tesla’s competitors are not doing as well as Tesla this quarter. The article pointed out that in 2019, Tesla sold a total of 367,500 vehicles, and it just sold 241,300 in Q3 2021. Tesla’s exponential growth continues. Tesla also sold 102,000 more vehicles in this third quarter compared to the third quarter of last year. In addition, the article pointed out that Tesla had succeeded in the face of challenges that were hurting other automakers.
Major automakers, except Tesla, saw notable sales declines in the third quarter. General Motors sold more vehicles than Tesla this quarter, but its sales were down 33% (446,997 vehicles in Q3 2021 versus 665,192 vehicles in Q3 2020). Steve Carlisle, executive vice president and president of GM North America, said the impacts were caused by the semiconductor supply disruptions.
“The semiconductor supply disruptions that affected our wholesale and customer shipments in the third quarter are improving. As we look into the fourth quarter, a steady stream of vehicles held in factories will continue to be distributed to dealerships, we are restarting production in major crossover and car factories, and we look forward to an environment of more stable operation until the fall. “
This was somewhat expected given that GM had to shut down production at nearly all of its North American factories on Labor Day due to the chip shortage. Regarding this matter, Dan Flores, a spokesperson for GM, said United States today:
“All of the announcements we made today are related to the chip shortage, the only downed plant that is not related to this is Orion Assembly.” Orion Assembly makes GM’s Chevy Bolt electric vehicle, which was recently recalled due to fire hazards. Flores said GM is handling the situation “day to day”.
Edmunds said a few days ago that its forecast of just under 3.5 million new vehicles sold in the United States for the third quarter of 2021 reflected a 13% drop from the third quarter of 2020. And it also reflected a 22.7% drop from the second quarter of 2021. Edmonds Executive Director Jessica Caldwell said:
“Third quarter new vehicle sales were a direct reflection of the worsening chipset and inventory situation. Although consumer demand continues to be high, sales have continued to decline each month because there simply aren’t enough vehicles that buyers want.
“The entire US auto industry – including Asian automakers, who were doing a bit better than their domestic counterparts until recently – is in an incredibly volatile position right now and we are seeing inflated retail prices across the board. It becomes increasingly difficult to predict who will come out on top by the rest of the year, as every automaker is at the mercy of its suppliers and challenging logistics around the world.
The chip shortage, which hurt GM this quarter, is affecting the auto industry across the board. Yahoo! Finance said the industry is expected to lose $ 210 billion in revenue globally this year. The article noted that other automakers had similar issues. Ford has had to temporarily shut down its Kansas City plant, which makes F-150 pickup trucks, due to the chip shortage.
Tesla was able to avoid some of the problems GM and others faced by rewriting its vehicle software to support alternative chips. Elon Musk spoke about this during the second quarter 2021 earnings call. He explained that the global chip shortage was a serious situation and that Tesla’s growth rates would be determined by the slower part of its chain. supply, chips will dominate this role in 2021.
“The supply of chips is fundamentally the determining factor of our production.
“It’s hard for us to say how long this is going to last because we don’t have – it’s basically out of our control. Looks like it’s getting better, but it’s hard to predict. So in fact, even the achievement of production that we got was only due to a huge effort on the part of the people within Tesla. We were able to replace alternative chips and then write the firmware in a matter of weeks.
“It’s not just about swapping a chip. You must also rewrite the software. So it was an incredibly intense effort to plan new chips, write new firmware, integrate it into the vehicle, and test it in order to keep production going. And I also want to thank our suppliers who work with us.
“And there’s been a lot of calls at midnight, 1:00 a.m., just with vendors who – to solve a lot of the shortages. So thank you very much to our suppliers.
And thank you very much to our suppliers & logistics partners for coming despite great difficulties!
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 2, 2021
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