On January 2, Tesla released its 2021 sales results.
In the whole of 2021, Tesla delivered more than 936,000 vehicles worldwide, of which the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y models delivered more than 911,000 vehicles, becoming tesla's sales pillar, while the higher-positioned Model S/X delivered a total of 24,900 vehicles.
Automobiles are an industry that demands profit from scale. Tesla, whose gross profit margin of bicycles has already turned positive, continues to expand sales, and the benefits obtained from the vehicle manufacturing and sales link will become more and more impressive, which can also support Tesla to invest more resources in the research and development of the underlying core technology.
Tesla is close to one million units in scale, basically second only to the BBA of luxury brands in terms of overall scale, surpassing second-tier luxury brands such as Lexus, Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover and Cadillac. With a brand like Tesla as an example, the pace of luxury brands' comprehensive transformation of electric vehicles will be more determined.
Chip problems are difficult to solve in a short period of time
With the start of production at the Berlin and Texas plants in 2022, especially the start of deliveries of Cyberteruck, Tesla's New Year sales will most likely reach new highs. At present, the biggest uncertainty about Tesla's delivery will be the chip supply.
The lack of chips throughout the year of 2021 has led to a lot of decline in the delivery volume of major car companies around the world, including Tesla. Judging from the official reply, Tesla will break through the supply dilemma from the aspects of vertical integration of global supply chain capabilities and strengthening its own self-developed chip capabilities.
In fact, in order to truly solve the problem of insufficient chips, it is necessary to fundamentally reduce the demand for the increasing number of chips in smart electric vehicles.
With the increasing degree of intelligent networking of the whole vehicle, the demand for chips has also risen exponentially. The best way for Tesla to completely solve the problem is to work the electric architecture of the whole vehicle. Breaking the current status quo that each chip is in charge of a part of the function and there is more computing power redundancy, and instead giving full play to the potential of a high-computing chip and letting it be responsible for more functional areas, is the fundamental way to truly reduce the dependence on the number of chips.
Of course, this is a matter of the whole body, but considering that the tight balance of chip supply will continue for a long time in the future and Tesla's ability to develop its own chips, it is feasible to completely solve the problem of missing cores with a new electrical architecture.
Compared with the lack of cores, Tesla also has a weakness from Elon Musk's stubbornness.
Starting from xiaopeng P5, domestic smart electric vehicles have used lidar as an important part of automatic driving/driving assistance hardware, and the first model of Great Wall Sharon Zhixing is equipped with 4 lidars in one go. We are not saying that the more lidar is equipped, the better, but it is an indisputable fact that lidar can effectively make up for the lack of cameras.
In the future, at a time when the cost of lidar has fallen sharply and it is easier to meet the requirements of the vehicle level, it is not easy to say whether Tesla will still adhere to the pure visual recognition program or switch to the visual + lidar solution. However, in the short term, there is no lidar can get on the car, whether it will become an obstacle for consumers, especially domestic consumers, to buy Tesla, it is still difficult to draw conclusions.
Tesla's China business is more than just building cars
Tesla was able to deliver more than 930,000 units this year, thanks to the Shanghai factory. At present, the annual production capacity of Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory has exceeded 450,000 units, which not only meets the needs of the domestic market, but also becomes the main force for exporting to overseas markets.
Even if the Texas and Berlin plants are put into operation for a period of time to come, the Shanghai plant still occupies an important position in Tesla's global production map. Using Chinese factories to export to overseas markets is a win-win for Tesla and China.
On the one hand, the domestic automobile support is mature, and the domestically produced vehicle models have obvious advantages in cost and quality; on the other hand, Tesla continues to export to overseas markets, which has also brought many employment opportunities to China and generated a large amount of GDP and taxes. At present, the all-round competition between China and the United States in the economic and technological fields has become very obvious, and if Tesla continues to expand production capacity in Chinese factories, it will also have a lot of political significance for China.
In addition to the whole vehicle, Tesla continues to lay out the charging pile business in China.
In Tesla's Shanghai factory, it also has five semi-automated assembly lines and an annual output of 10,000 third-generation superchargers. As of December 17, 2021, Tesla's domestic charging network has covered more than 360 cities, building and opening more than 1,000 superchargering stations, more than 8,000 superchargering piles, with more than 700 destination charging stations, and more than 1,750 destination charging piles. With the localization of charging piles, the pace of continuous improvement of the energy replenishment network in China will be further accelerated.
Instead of a straight-ball duel, it's better to catch the "Tesla Express"
Whether it is The American Rivian, Lucid Air, or the domestic Wei Xiaoli, or the Extreme Kr, Salon Zhixing, Avita, many new brands have emerged in recent years. These brands, especially the two brands from the United States, have been repeatedly examined from the perspective of Tesla killers, and the models created by these new domestic brands have also been repeatedly compared with Tesla's models by the media and industry insiders.
The so-called two fists are difficult to defeat four hands, these brands in the early stage of planning and design, they refer to Tesla's relevant technical indicators, and choose the core point of which to carry out technical research, so it is not surprising to surpass Tesla in some parameters.
In fact, from Tesla's original intention, its goal has always been a traditional fuel vehicle. In the huge fuel vehicle market, with the help of carbon neutrality and carbon peaking, it is Tesla's original intention and intention to maximize the cake of electric vehicles. Judging from the current sales situation, Tesla's rapid approach to BB in terms of sales is a good example.
In the long run, emerging electric vehicle brands should join hands with Tesla, take advantage of the difficult turn of traditional car companies, and catch Tesla's rapid development of the train, which is the key to continuing to become bigger and stronger.
In 2022, with two plants in Berlin and Texas put into operation, especially the listing of Cyberteruck, Tesla's sales are expected to go to a higher level.
For Tesla, which has mastered the "three electrics" and the underlying core technology of automatic driving, although there is still a relatively large uncertainty to achieve the goal of 20 million vehicles by 2030, its current volume has reached the time of vertical integration of the supply chain. Through the vertical integration of the supply chain, Tesla has further reduced costs in core components and further improved on the basis of the existing gross profit margin of about 30%.
As long as Tesla does not toss itself, in 2022 we are optimistic about Tesla's sales to a new level.