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Palo Alto / Grünheide (dpa) - The electric car manufacturer Tesla made its highest quarterly profit to date at the beginning of the year.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk's company earned $ 438 million in the first quarter, after just $ 16 million a year earlier.
Meanwhile, Tesla has no further clarity about when the authorities will give the green light to start production at the new plant in Grünheide near Berlin.
Because a schedule for a decision on the final approval of the factory is still pending.
“The first car will roll off the assembly line when the final approval is available and the plant has been completed,” emphasized Brandenburg's Economics Minister Jörg Steinbach (SPD) on Tuesday.
"When the approval process will be completed, no specific date can be given here today - because the principle of quality over speed clearly applies here."
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Tesla had applied for production to start in July 2021.
From industry circles it was said until a few weeks ago that the start was planned for July.
Tesla's annual report for the first quarter now states for the first time that the project is on track to begin production and deliveries “late in 2021”.
Tesla has so far built at its own risk - with preliminary permits.
The group had criticized the approval process a few weeks ago - and described it as “particularly irritating” that there is still no schedule for issuing a final approval.
The first European factory in Grünheide, which is designed for 500,000 vehicles per year, is an important pillar of Tesla's future strategy.
But things are currently also going well with the main plant in California and the factory in China.
Tesla made it into the black for the seventh quarter in a row after previous high losses.
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An important source of money, however, was once again trading in emissions certificates, which other car manufacturers need to improve their emissions balance and thus meet legal requirements in California or Europe, for example. In the first quarter, Tesla turned over $ 518 million. The balance sheet also benefited from an investment in cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which the company made headlines in February. Tesla had bought bitcoins for 1.5 billion dollars, then sold around 300 million and earned a good 100 million.
Sales rose 74 percent to $ 10.4 billion. Tesla delivered 184,877 e-cars in the first quarter - that is more than double the previous year and a new record in the history of the company, which was founded in 2003. Demand was particularly high in China, even if Tesla had trouble here recently. A woman protested at the Shanghai auto show that her car's brakes were defective. After Tesla rejected this, authorities accused the automaker of arrogance and the company apologized to Chinese customers.
Despite the criticism in the most important foreign market and increasing competition from established car manufacturers such as Volkswagen or General Motors, who are penetrating the electrical segment, Tesla confirmed its growth targets for the current year.
The company continues to expect global deliveries to increase by around 50 percent.
In 2020, Tesla brought over half a million e-cars to customers.
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In the conference call on the quarterly figures on Monday evening, a mysterious fatal accident with a Tesla in Texas came up.
The car crashed into a tree and burned out, and both occupants died.
The police found one of the men in the front passenger seat and one in the back seat - and based on initial findings, assumed that no one was behind the wheel at the time of the accident.
This sparked new debates about Tesla's precautions against misuse of the “Autopilot” driver assistance system.
However, Musk announced shortly thereafter that the "autopilot" had not been activated in the accident according to data available so far.
On Monday, the Tesla boss confirmed that reports that the system had been switched on were "completely wrong".
The journalists responsible should be ashamed.
Tesla manager Lars Moravy said that the steering wheel was “deformed”, which indicates that someone was behind the wheel.
Tesla is still waiting for the evaluation of data from a memory card in the vehicle.
Tesla has long been under pressure because of the term "autopilot".
Critics find the name to be an exaggeration that could lead to negligent use.
Tesla even calls the next evolutionary stage of the program “full self-driving” - although according to current criteria it remains just an assistance system.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210427-99-371026 / 3