The wheels didn’t exactly fall off Tesla’s success wagon last year, but the combination of a sliding share price, a distracted boss, bad publicity from safety-related lawsuits and rivals that finally pulled their fingers out and started delivering EVs of their own, made some people wonder if Tesla’s golden period was on the wane.
And then you look at the financial numbers and compare them with the numbers for those rivals, and you can see that Tesla is still looking anything but a spent force. Let’s start with profit: As reported by The Street, Tesla made more money than Ford and GM. Not Ford or GM, but nearly as much as Ford and GM put together. Tesla recorded a $12.6 billion profit in 2022, compared with $9.9 billion for GM, and a $2 billion loss for the Blue Oval.
That’s a pretty crazy achievement for a company that’s not even active in some major sectors of the car market. It doesn’t sell combustion or hybrid cars, has no subcompact or midsize sedans or SUVs, and though the Cybertruck is still apparently happening, for now it doesn’t offer trucks, either.
And Tesla scored a bigger profit than GM or Ford while actually registering a far lower revenue figure. Tesla’s revenue for 2022 was $81.5 billion, while GM brought in $157 billion, and Ford, $158.1 billion. Which brings us onto another Tesla fiscal fact that’s arguably more amazing than it outranking Ford and GM for take-home pay. We’re talking about earnings per car.
Related: Ford Posts $2 Billion Loss, Looks To Cut Costs In ‘Pivotal’ 2023
A report from Nikkei Asia says that Tesla earned five times more per car than Toyota did last year. Between April and December Tesla earned an average of ¥1.26 million ($9,618) per car, while Toyota could only cream off ¥240,000 ($1,832) per car, Nikkei says.
Part of the blame for that has been attributed to a rise in the cost of materials, which has affected all automakers, but has hit Toyota particularly hard. The company’s costs are reported to have increased by ¥1.1 trillion ($8.36 billion) and it is shouldering much of the rises in energy costs that have hit its suppliers to keep chains going.