The global chip shortage is delaying car manufacturing more than most industries, with many motor companies having to delay new models by years. However, Tesla seems to be bucking the trend, still seeing massive sales growth despite not being able to source as many chips as they would like.
Read: Google scraps plans for Google Pay banking service
In the third quarter of 2021 Tesla has almost sold a quarter of a million cars (241,300 to be exact), which means it is getting very close to its target of selling 1 million cars in a year. It is more than 100,000 sales more than in the same period a year ago.
So how could Tesla increase sales when basically all other manufacturers are struggling to keep up with demand? According to recent reports, Tesla decided to act swiftly once the global chip manufacturing crisis became clear. While other manufacturers are still waiting for their chipsets going through the same manufacturing process, Tesla decided to source different silicon. It started including new innards in its masses of computers in its cars and even rewrote the software needed to run on the new hardware. It made a seamless transition, with almost no change being apparent to the end user.
Another reason for the rapid growth is due to the Model Y. It has only recently come online in China and the sales in Europe are only now ramping up. The parts needed to ramp up production for these new facilities and markets were sourced before the crisis began. It is expected that the Model Y will also be responsible for a lot of its growth in the near future, as well as the continued success of the Model 3. There are also rumours that Tesla are nearly ready to reveal their cheapest entry yet, with a mass market hatchback expected to cost around $25,000.
