Tesla’s Wow Moment In Q1 2022 Earnings Call

Tesla had a wow moment in its Q1 2022 earnings call that isn’t being talked about enough. In the first quarter of this year, Tesla’s revenue grew to over $18 billion, but this isn’t the wow moment that I’m going to quickly dive into. I mean, yes, this is incredible news for a company that many analysts for years condemned to failure, but what I want to talk about is something so rare and incredible that it’s almost impossible to achieve.

Tesla’s head of Investor Relations, Martin Viecha, highlighed this. In his tweet below, Viecha shared a graph from Tesla’s shareholder deck that reflected Tesla’s vehicle gross orders in the US around the time of the Super Bowl. If you look at the graph he provided closely, you can see Tesla sales skyrocketed between the 12th and 14th of February. Super Bowl Sunday was on February 13.

You may remember my article published in February that shared how both Tesla and Elon Musk received free advertising during the Super Bowl. Tesla doesn’t pay for advertising, and, naturally, didn’t partake in the Super Bowl ad tradition unlike some of its competitors — which actually took aim at both Tesla and Elon Musk.

Imagine spending millions of dollars just to highlight your competition. I was criticized for that article by several online and offline. I was told that I missed the point, was sharing misleading information, and that ads for Tesla’s competitors would catch the eyes of the American public more than Tesla itself would. Maybe that last part could be true someday — I don’t claim to predict the future. However, the data that Viecha shared is proof that I was correct and that the information wasn’t misleading as some believed it to be.

The wow moment here is that Tesla achieved what many companies try to achieve during Super Bowl weekend — without paying a dime. As Tesla’s Hiro Mizuno said on Twitter, this makes sense. This is because when well-known brands advertise about electric vehicles, it promotes Tesla, and once someone is convinced to buy an EV, they will often go for the leading brand. And that brand is Tesla. Mizono added that increasing consumers’ general confidence and interest in EVs is good for the planet, and I agree.