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In the year of the Tiger...Elon Musk is set to dominate the electric vehicle (EV) marketplace in 2022. The Tesla CEO described his plans on the company's fourth-quarter earnings call.

Tesla will not be introducing any new models in 2022. This may disappoint its many fans. Because Tesla is a company known for constant innovation. 

Tesla delivered roughly 1 million electric cars in 2021. That means Tesla is leading production over its rivals. And the plan is to extend and widen that lead in 2022.

Tesla was founded by Elon Musk in 2003. The electric carmaker accounts for more than half of EVs sold in the U.S. And global sales reached a 14.5% market share in 2021.

Until 2018, the Chevrolet Volt had the most overall sales of any American-made EV. But when Tesla introduced the Model 3 it became the best-selling plug-in vehicle that year. And garnered nearly 50% of the market share in the US for the last 4 years.

Tesla CEO plans expansion

 Musk expects to double production over the next 11 months.

“I think it is worth noting that we -- and as the internet has observed, we've been making quite a few cars in Texas and Berlin, so -- in Austin and Berlin."

"So, in Texas, we're building the Model Ys with the structural battery pack and the 4680 cells, and we'll start delivering after final certification of the vehicle, which should be fairly soon."

"Capacity expansion will continue through maximizing output of each factory and building new factories and new locations in the future." 

Although we're not ready to announce any new locations on this call, we will get through 2022. Look at new locations. And probably be able to announce new locations toward the end of this year, I expect,” Musk added.

Tesla to focus on production increase

Even though Tesla already leads production over its rivals, it plans to take an even wider lead in 2022.

"We do expect significant growth in 2022 over 2021, you know, comfortably above 50% growth in 2022," he said.

Growing capacity despite the supply chain issues were brought up.

“The fundamental focus of Tesla this year is scaling output. So, both last year and this year, if we were to introduce new vehicles, our total vehicle output would decrease. This is a very important point that I think people do not -- a lot of people do not understand.”

“So last year, we spent a lot of engineering and management resources solving supply chain issues, rewriting code, changing our chips, reducing the number of chips we need, with chip drama central,” Musk emphasized.

“And there were not -- that was not the only supply chain issue, so -- just hundreds of things. And as a result, we were able to grow almost 90% while at least almost every other manufacturer contracted last year. So that's a good result. But if we had introduced, say, a new car last year, we would -- our total vehicle output would have been the same because of the constraints -- the chip constraints, particularly,” the Tesla CEO added.

Elon Musk may often make trolling comments and brag about his businesses. But he also fully understands all the issues at Tesla. And he wants to dominate the field.

So perhaps, 2022 won't be a year in which the company changes the world with a new model or feature. Instead, it will be one where Tesla focuses on building its lead over its rivals.

Building the Optimus humanoid robot

The Tesla CEO did promise one awesome innovation. But it's not a vehicle. He expects to get production ramped up using Optimus.

"I think actually the most important product development we're doing this year is actually the Optimus humanoid robot," he said. "This, I think, has the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time."

And Musk described how building a robot will help Tesla produce more cars.

"If you think about the economy, it is -- the foundation of the economy is labor," Musk explained.

"Capital equipment is distilled labor. So, what happens if you don't actually have a labor shortage? I'm not sure what an economy even means at that point. That's what Optimus is about, so very important."