A few years back, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has set a delivery target of 500,000 electric vehicles for his company and he boldly predicted that the goal will be realized in 2020. The year is coming to an end and analysts are saying the EV maker is about to beat market expectations.
Earlier estimates indicated that for Tesla to breach Musk's self-imposed mark, around 181,000 EVs must be delivered by the end of 2020. According to Daniel Ives of Wedbush, the automaker's delivery trajectory worldwide in the fourth quarter pointed to the total delivery of 190,000 units or more.
The projection exceeded the consensus forecast recently offered by market observers. Tesla is not expected to meet its target and the delivery figures for the December quarter will reach a high of 174,000 units, according to Barron's.
Ives, however, disagreed and explained Tesla will be boosted by the high demands in China, a location that the analyst described as the EV maker's "underlying strength."
He added that for the last quarter of 2020, Tesla will see a late surge of purchases in the United States and parts of Europe. This push will provide the leg for the company to get over the line in the last days of December.
Ives is confident that Tesla, now acknowledged as the world's most valuable automaker, is poised to write history for the automobile industry.
"This would enable Tesla to achieve its 500k delivery number for the year, which was not even on the map for the Street going back to the late spring/early summer timeframe," the analyst wrote in a research note.
Tesla's achievements and the influx of players wanting to secure a spot in the increasingly growing EV market segment will accelerate the ongoing expansion. By 2025, the sector is predicted to experience growth of 10% with big names such as Ford, GMC, and even Apple looking to compete with the market leader, that is Tesla, Ives said.
Electrek said Tesla is just 1,000 short of achieving its delivery target in North America. While the company has yet to confirm if Musk's ambitious goal will be achieved, the report added that the race to the set target has been practically won.
The Tesla boss boasted five years ago that his company will produce half-million EVs starting in 2020 and he is nearing that level. It might be that the automaker will be short by a few thousand units when the time to report comes but the numbers are incredible as they are.
And there is no stopping Musk. He is shooting for one million deliveries in 2021, his calculation perhaps buoyed by the assurance that Tesla's Gigafactories in Austin, Berlin, and Shanghai are all coming online next year.
