2021 Tesla Impact Report

2021 Tesla Impact Report

Autopilot Safety

In 2021, we recorded 0.22 crashes for every million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology (Autosteer and active safety features). For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology (no Autosteer and active safety features), we recorded 0.77 crashes for every million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there are 1.81 automobile crashes for every million miles driven.

Tesla Manufacturing Footprint

1. Building new, better designed and more efficient factories

Building a factory from the ground up with sustainability in mind can have a material impact on reducing energy use. For each component that requires less movement around the factory, and as we use fewer robots in the vehicle production process, energy consumption declines.

In our quest for constant improvement, we build each new factory to be better and more sustainable than the previous one. For example, at Gigafactory Texas, we chose highly efficient, insulated, low emissivity windows to reduce building heating and cooling demand. In addition, waste heat recovery from our compressors alone will offset over1 MW of natural gas consumption for process heating. While we have already completed substantial improvements at Gigafactory Shanghai, further improvements will continue at Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg and Gigafactory Texas.

3. Leveraging AI to make our factories more efficient

We are leveraging six years of sensor data from Gigafactory Nevada to train an artificial intelligence (AI) program to safely control 195 interconnected HVAC units, accounting for 6MW of total electrical load. In its first full year of operation, we have measured significant load reduction compared to baseline usage. For such comparison, we look at actual energy usage for the HVAC system for the two modes under the same conditions (operations in the factory, time of year, external temperature, etc.). AI control is expected to achieve significant energy savings for Tesla as it is scaled up to control a majority share of HVAC equipment at Gigafactory Nevada as well as HVAC equipment at other Gigafactories.

Matching Energy Demand & Supply

The beauty of selling commercial storage systems such as Megapack is that purchasing such a product is almost purely a mathematical decision for our commercial customers. If installing Megapack makes economic sense, there is no reason not to install one. A single Megapack has on average 3,000 kWh worth of battery storage capacity, and given its scalability, enables projects over 1,000,000 kWh. Tesla Energy continues to be dependent on the global supply chain, including cell supply. In 2021, in order to meet demand that is well in excess of supply for energy storage products, Tesla began building a new production facility capable of producing 40,000,000 kWh of energy storage per year.