Tesla’s 2022 woes included missing its delivery target

From a certain vantage point, 2022 was Tesla’s best year yet.

The electric-vehicle pioneer said on Monday that it delivered 1.31 million vehicles in 2022, 40% more than it delivered the year prior. In the fourth quarter of 2022, Tesla produced and delivered more vehicles than at any point in the company’s history.

But from Wall Street’s point of view, Tesla is in trouble. The company failed to meet its own initial 2022 delivery target of over 1.4 million vehicles. It’s facing weakened demand, thanks to inflation, policy changes affecting EV tax credits, and increased competition from lower-cost rivals. Plus, its chief executive has been caught up in a public and messy acquisition of Twitter, even going so far as to temporarily install Tesla engineers at the social media platform’s San Francisco headquarters.

As a result of this turmoil—some of it self-inflicted—Tesla shares had their worst-ever year. The stock dropped by over 65% in 2022.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who lost his status as the world’s richest person in December, says that he sees no reason for panic. “Long-term fundamentals are extremely strong. Short-term market madness is unpredictable,” he tweeted on Friday in response to a Tesla owners’ fan account.

Still, Musk tried to eke out as many sales as possible in 2022’s final days. In an internal email sent to employees last week, he implored them to “volunteer to help deliver [vehicles to customers] if at all possible” before midnight on December 31, according to CNBC.

Meanwhile, some Tesla stakeholders have been calling out the company’s board of directors for their role in Musk’s seemingly distracted behavior. “Time for a shake-up,” investor Ross Gerber tweeted last month. Other investors have reduced their Tesla price targets by as much as $100.

In Tesla’s early years, its models were the only electric vehicles on the road. Now, U.S. drivers have more than 50 models to choose from, including pickup trucks, which Tesla does not yet offer.