Tesla rolls out one-millionth electric car – and it’s a Model Y

The Driven

Californian car maker Tesla has rolled out its one millionth electric car, and it is a Model Y.

In 2018, Musk said at the company’s second-quarter earnings call that he expected the Californian carmaker would make its one-millionth car in 2020 – and he can now tick that off before the first quarter of 2020 has finished.

The milestone achievement was announced by CEO and co-founder Elon Musk via his favoured communication channel, Twitter on Tuesday.

“Congratulations Tesla team on making our 1,000,000th car!!” said the transport and energy entrepreneur, posting two images – one, a shiny red example of one of the EV maker’s “mass-market” electric crossover, and a second of the Fremont team surrounding said vehicle.

Let’s repeat that again – one million cars, all with zero tailpipe emissions.

While the current global mood (and Tesla stocks) thanks to coronavirus and plunging oil prices due to a Saudi/Russian stand off is to say the least, low, it would appear that Musk at least is keeping a positive attitude.

And rightly so. It has taken the EV maker eight years to reach the impressive milestone, along with a lot of sweat, determination and learning the hard way along the way.

In terms of output of legacy carmakers it may not seem like much – worldwide, almost 100 times that many vehicles are made in one year alone according to Statista.

It doesn’t even sound that impressive compared to US car giant Ford, which went from zero to one million cars in 12 years from its founding in 1903, with a tiny fraction of the demand for cars that there is today.

To read the full story on RenewEconomy’s electric vehicle dedicated sister site, The Driven, click here…