Elon Musk
Chief Executive Officer at Tesla
Thank you, Martin. So '22 -- just going through the '22 recap. It was a fantastic year for Tesla. It was our best year ever on every level. Team did an amazing job. It's an honor, of course, to work with such an incredibly talented group of people.
So in 2022, we delivered over 1.3 million cars and achieved a 17% operating margin, the highest among any volume carmaker, I think maybe among any carmaker. While doing so, we generated $12.5 billion in net income and $7.5 billion in free cash flow.
Importantly, the Tesla team achieved these records while -- despite the fact that 2022 was an incredibly challenging year due to forced shutdowns, very high interest rates and many delivery challenges. So, it's worth noting that all these records were in the face of massive difficulties. Credit to the team for achieving that.
The most common question we've been getting from investors is about demand. Thus far -- so I want to put that concern to rest. Thus far in January, we've seen the strongest orders year-to-date than ever in our history. We currently are seeing orders at almost twice the rate of production. So, I mean, it's hard to say whether that will continue twice the rate of production, but the orders are high. And we've actually raised the Model Y price a little bit in response to that.
So, we think demand will be good despite probably a contraction in the automotive market as a whole. So basically, price really matters. I think there's just a vast number of people that want to buy a Tesla car but can't afford it. And so, these price changes really make a difference for the average consumer. And sometimes for those -- for people who are well -- who have a lot of money, they sort of forget about how important affordability is. And it's always been our goal at Tesla to make cars that are affordable to as many people as possible, so I'm glad that we're able to do so. And yeah, so I think it's a good thing, all things considered. We're also making very good progress on cost control. And we're seeing the cost production in Berlin and Austin drop commensurate with the growth in production, as you'd expect, so yeah.
With respect to Autopilot, as of now, we deployed Full Self-Driving Beta for city streets to roughly 400,000 customers in North America. This is a huge milestone for autonomy as FSD Beta is the only way any consumer can actually test the latest AI-powered autonomy. And we're currently at about 100 million miles of FSD outside of highways. And our published data shows that improvement in safety statistics is very clear. So, we would not have released the FSD Beta if the safety statistics were not excellent.
Regarding batteries, production rate of 4680 cells reached 1,000 cars a week at the end of last year, and we're increasing capacity for 4680 cells by another 100 gigawatt-hours as announced at Giga Nevada yesterday. Our long-term goal is to get to well in excess of 1,000 gigawatt-hours of cells produced internally, and continue to use the self cell providers. So to be clear, we will continue to use other cell providers. Just that the demand for lithium ion batteries is quasi-infinite or -- and will be for quite some time. So, we feel we can scale a lot faster using both suppliers and internally produced cells.
And we've got an amazing plan for making the 4680 cell low cost and high energy density. So, energy storage also saw record growth, and that is continuing to accelerate. That's always worth remembering that the three pillars of a sustainable energy future are obviously electric vehicles, solar and wind, and the third key item is stationary storage to store the energy from solar and wind, because obviously, the sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't blow all the time. So you have those three things. You can convert all of earth to a fully sustainable situation, many times over, actually.
So, I would like to just make it clear that there is a path to a fully sustainable future for humanity, and we -- our goal at Tesla is to accelerate progress on that path as much as humanly possible. So yeah, so we were ramping up Megapack production. And we expect it to grow at a rate quite a bit faster than our vehicle output.
So, in conclusion, we are taking a view that we want to keep making and selling as many cars as we can. We believe we can keep pushing for strong volume growth while retaining the industry's best operating margins. As we mentioned many times before, we want to be the best manufacturer. But really, manufacturing technology will be our most important long-term strength.
So, and we'll talk more about our upcoming plans at the March 1 Investor Day. And lastly, I want to once again thank all of our employees for delivering another record-breaking year. Congratulations, guys.
