Claims

Guidance · Their own work or organisation

“it might grow by like 200% or 300% or something, you know, as opposed to sort of 50% or something.”

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, on earnings call · 27 January 2022 · Tesla Q4 2021 Earnings Call Transcript (Motley Fool)

If able to respond to demand, Tesla's energy business might grow by about 200% to 300% in 2022 rather than about 50%.

Resolved false The record shows it did not happen or was not so.

Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.

What would count as true or false

Measure: growth in Tesla's energy business from 2021 to 2022. The main measure is energy storage deployments in GWh as reported by Tesla; energy generation and storage segment revenue is a check. The claim is rough and strongly hedged ('like 200% or 300% or something'), so it is not held to an exact figure. TRUE: the main measure grew by roughly 200–300% or more (about 180% or above). MOSTLY TRUE: growth of about 150–180%, well above the ~50% the claim contrasted it with but somewhat short of 200%. MIXED: growth of about 100–150%. MOSTLY FALSE: growth of about 70–100%. FALSE: growth below about 70%, close to or under the ~50% the claim set as the alternative. The conditional framing ('if able to respond to demand') does not rescue the claim. Judge the growth Tesla actually reported, even if Tesla says supply limits held it back.

Evidence

1. Tesla's energy storage arm caps 2022 with 'highest level' of deployments ever | TechCrunch TechCrunch · 25 January 2023

   “On Wednesday, the automaker said its home and utility-scale battery deployments reached 6.5 gigawatt hours (GWh) during its fiscal 2022, calling it “by far the highest level of deployments we have achieved.” That’s up from about 4 GWh in 2021.”

2. Tesla deployed nearly 4GWh of energy storage in 2021 Energy-Storage.news (PV Tech sister site) · 28 January 2022

   “However, yearly figures show that it made 3,992MWh of energy storage deployments in 2021, compared to 3,022MWh in 2020.”

3. 10-K U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (filed by Tesla, Inc.) Own record

   “| Revenues | | $ | 3,909 | | | $ | 2,789 |”

Reasoning

Tesla's energy storage deployments were 3,992 MWh in 2021 [E2] and 6.5 GWh in 2022 [E1], growth of roughly 63%. That is below the criteria's roughly 70% threshold for false, and close to the ~50% alternative the claim contrasted with 200–300%. The revenue excerpt in E3 does not say what segment or period it covers, so it was not used.

Cite this claim

Elon Musk, “If able to respond to demand, Tesla's energy business might grow by about 200% to 300% in 2022 rather than about 50%.” (said 27 January 2022). Verdict: resolved false. Reliability API, claim c_3d95cec81ea2, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_3d95cec81ea2