Tesla delivered a record 500,000 vehicles in 2020

Enlarge / The parking lot of Tesla's Shanghai factory was full of new cars in October 2020. (credit: Costfoto/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

Tesla smashed previous production and delivery records in the fourth quarter of 2020, shipping more than 180,000 vehicles to customers over the last three months. That's 30 percent higher than Tesla's Q3 deliveries, which itself was a record figure for the company.

For 2020 as a whole, Tesla delivered 499,550 vehicles to customers. This is 36 percent higher than the 367,500 vehicles Tesla delivered to customers in 2019.

Tesla didn't quite hit the company's self-imposed target of half a million deliveries for the year. But the miss is literally a rounding error, and Tesla's 2020 performance is still pretty impressive. The pandemic made 2020 an unusually challenging year for the auto industry. Tesla's Fremont factory-like those of most competitors in the US-was closed between late March and mid-May.

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