Tesla’s electric vehicle (EV) sales are plummeting, but its energy storage business is surging, with more than 4 GWh deployed in the first quarter of 2024 alone.
April 3, 2024 Marija Maisch
Tesla CEO Elon Musk
Image: Daniel Oberhaus, Flickr
Tesla‘s energy generation and storage business is booming, despite a dramatic slowdown in its electric vehicle (EV) sales.
The company has reported its highest energy storage quarterly figures on record this week, with a cumulative 4,053 MWh of energy storage capacity deployed in the first quarter of 2024.
It was the first time ever for Tesla to include its energy storage figures in a quarterly breakdown, which is usually reserved for vehicle production and deliveries.
These figures were disappointing. Tesla said it produced more than 433,000 vehicles and delivered approximately 387,000, which is around 20,000 fewer EVs than even the most pessimistic estimates.
It said the decline in volumes was partially due to the early phase of the production ramp-up of the updated Model 3 at its Fremont factory and factory shutdowns resulting from shipping diversions caused by the Red Sea conflict and an arson attack at Gigafactory Berlin.
However, the results came as no surprise. In its fourth-quarter 2023 investor filing, Tesla said that its vehicle volume growth rate would be notably lower in 2024, as it continues to work on the launch of a next-generation vehicle at Gigafactory Texas.
“In 2024, the growth rate of deployments and revenue in our Energy Storage business should outpace the Automotive business,” the company said.
It added that it expects continued growth on a 12-month basis going forward, while deployments will continue to be volatile on a sequential basis, impacted by logistics and the global distribution of projects.
“I predicted for many years that the storage business will grow much faster than the car business,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. “It is doing that.”
At the end of last year, Tesla’s energy storage deployments reached 14.7 GWh. Total installations for 2023 were more than double than in 2022, up by 125%. The division’s profit nearly quadrupled.
Tesla said it will provide further information in its full quarterly earnings report, which is set to be released on April 23.
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