On July 27, 2021, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Tesla's Q2 earnings call that he will not necessarily attend all of Tesla's earnings meetings in the future, unless there is something important to announce. In other words, Q2 2021 could be Musk's last earnings call.
However, just a quarter later, Musk "reneged" on his word — he appeared again on Tesla's 2021 Q4 earnings call. This shows that Tesla has important things to announce, and once again proves that Tesla's current development is far from reassuring Musk, and also reflects Musk's reluctance to retreat behind the scenes and always have a personal personality that wants to be active in the center of the stage and the center of public vision.
So, what are the important things musk is going to announce, and through the 2021 Q4 financial report and the full-year financial report, what kind of surprises will Tesla bring to the public in 2022?
History-making 2021
All the important things Musk wants to announce have a premise, that Tesla is once again making history in 2021.
Although the public has become accustomed to Tesla's making history, when Tesla makes history again, people still feel incredible about it. This time, Tesla gave us a glimpse of the high potential of the electric car business.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Tesla's sales increased by 65% year-on-year to a record high of $17.7 billion. Net profit rose 7.6 times to $2.321 billion, the 10th consecutive quarter of Tesla's earnings. It is worth noting that in the Q4 quarter of 2021, the gross profit margin of Tesla's auto business has reached the 30% mark to 30.6%.
For the full year 2021, Tesla's sales increased by 71% year-on-year to $53.8 billion. Net profit rose 6.6 times to $5.519 billion, the second consecutive year of Tesla's profit. It is worth mentioning that in the second year of continuous profitability, the gross profit margin of Tesla's automobile business has been close to 30% to 29.3%, which can be described as defining the business of electric vehicles.
In the automotive industry, more than 20% of the gross profit margin of the vehicle business has been considered a remarkable level, and Tesla has now raised this threshold to 30%. If the business model of the software and services business runs through, tesla will refresh the ceiling of the car business profitability.
Apple, the world's most profitable company, has a gross margin of more than 40% in the past 12 months, with product gross margins exceeding 30% and service businesses nearly 70%. This points the way to the future of the electric vehicle industry, which is to vigorously explore business models beyond hardware products.
Tesla's ability to maintain a high level of profit at this stage is mainly due to the steady increase in delivery. In 2021, Tesla's car sales increased by 87% year-on-year to 936,222 units. This is an achievement in the face of supply chain crises such as chip shortages, which greatly exceeds the 50% growth expectations of the outside world. Tesla replaced the missing chips by rewriting software, which also made its response to the chip crisis much higher than the industry.
Tesla's overall financial indicators have allowed Musk to once again show the optimistic side of his personality, "Tesla's sales growth will be easier than last year by more than 50%," Musk told questioners on the earnings call. That means Tesla will deliver more than 1.4 million vehicles this year.
Musk's next answer sets a main tone for Tesla's 2022.
Everything makes way for sales
Although Tesla's response to chip shortages is higher than the industry's, Tesla is not a chipmaker after all, "we still expect to be limited by the shortage of chips and other components this year," Musk said on a conference call, adding that the chip shortage crisis may not ease until next year.
Therefore, in order to go all out to catch sales, Tesla will not have any new cars in 2022, "We will not launch new models this year." Musk told attendees, "If we're going to launch new cars, our total car production will be reduced." ”
Musk said the highly anticipated new cars such as Cyberruck, Semi and Roadster could only be in production next year. Even the lower-positioned electric car, which many expect to sell for $25,000, was announced by Musk that it is not currently in development. Musk has been promising to launch a lower-cost Tesla car, but now is clearly not the time, "Tesla's plate is big enough now, at some point we will." Musk said.
Musk just posted on his personal social platform that he was test-driving cyberruck's prototype and said it was fantastic. However, this electric pickup truck, which was originally scheduled to start production at the end of 2021, has once again announced a jump ticket. This has disappointed many fanatics with Tesla and allowed competitors to seize the market ahead of schedule.
Both Ford Motor and Rivian, known as Tesla's biggest competitor, are both ahead of Tesla in the electric pickup market. Rivian has already started delivering its R1T electric pickup, Ford will also start delivering its F-150 Lightning electric pickup this spring, and General Motors also unveiled the Silverado electric pickup at this year's CES show, announcing that it will start production in 2023.
Musk explained the reason for cyberruck's delay, saying that the launch of the new model will complicate Tesla's work in 2022, which will lead to fewer deliveries this year. Driven by the first principle, Musk set Tesla's main task in 2022 as sales first, and the variable Cybertruck was naturally abandoned.
Tesla Semi
The root cause of cybertruck electric pickups jumping tickets again may be that the production cost of this future car is not up to Musk's expectations, "how much people are willing to pay for the technology it contains is the main question," Musk said, "how do we make Cybertruck affordable (high production costs)?" At the 2019 launch, Cybertruck's initial pricing was $39,900.
Musk initially expected Cybertruck to complete its first delivery by the end of 2021, but was later delayed until the end of 2022 and is now being postponed to 2023.
But Musk has always been optimistic about the launch of the Cyberterck, hoping to produce more than 250,000 Cyberrcks a year, "but it will take time to achieve this goal because there are a lot of new technologies to be introduced." Musk stressed. Ford aims to produce 150,000 F-150 Lightning electric pickups by mid-2023.
Additional factories will also be added
Musk himself announced that Tesla would not launch any new models in 2022, which may disappoint many people to the extreme. With some consolation, Tesla's two new factories are finally about to start. Even more exciting is that Tesla is looking for a location for another brand new factory.
Musk confidently said that even the Shanghai Gigafactory and the Fremont Factory can easily complete Tesla's sales task in 2022. It is understood that the annualized production capacity of these two plants has reached 1.22 million vehicles, and the total production capacity of Fremont is expected to exceed 600,000 vehicles.
Even so, Tesla still hopes that the new factory can be put into production as soon as possible. The latest news shows that the Austin plant in Texas and the Berlin plant in Germany both started pre-production at the end of last year. Among them, the Austin plant will deliver the first Model Y equipped with 4680 batteries as planned this quarter, and the Model Y produced at the Berlin plant is expected to carry 2170 batteries.
The grand scene of four factories opening up at the same time is a wealthy man that Tesla has never played before.
With the launch of the new factory, Musk said that Tesla has set its sights on the next factory, "2022 will be the year we look at the factory location to see where it is most suitable." Musk said, "There may be an announcement of additional factories at the end of this year." ”
It is worth mentioning that China's Shanghai Gigafactory contributed more than half of Tesla's global production last year, including export sales of more than 160,000 vehicles and domestic sales of more than 320,000 vehicles. Given the unique production efficiency shown by China, it is also expected that the next gigafactory will settle in China.
The FSD has tested 60,000 vehicles
In addition to going all out to ensure production, Tesla has another important task in 2022 - to continuously improve the practicality of FSD self-driving technology.
Musk said Tesla's most important product this year and next year is not a car, but a humanoid robot with software and applications for self-driving cars in the production process.
At present, some people have spent $12,000 on the self-driving feature package known as "FSD", and they hope to experience the advanced technology developed by Tesla for the first time.
Tesla is also really interested in the cause of self-driving. In the past quarter, the software for a single pair of FSD betas has been updated seven times, and the number of vehicles that can experience the latest test software has increased from a few thousand in the third quarter to the current 60,000. That's the scale of drooling that makes other automakers and self-driving companies envious.
However, Tesla's self-driving technology has not yet gained universal credibility, which is related to the many accidents related to autopilot that have occurred. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating Tesla's autopilot system, which has caused multiple accidents by failing to identify emergency vehicles parked on the road.
Musk is confident in the safety of Tesla's self-driving technology. "I would be shocked if we can't achieve fully autonomous driving this year that's safer than humans," he said. In fact, on a conference call just a year ago, Musk also said things like "very confident that this year the reliability of self-driving cars exceeds that of humans."
The large-scale commercialization of self-driving technology occupies an important place in the Tesla business model depicted by Musk. "Self-driving taxis can make vehicles more practical by a factor of five, as owners can drop off their cars to work when they don't need them." Musk predicts that fully autonomous vehicles "will be Tesla's most important source of profitability."
As for the humanoid robot, Musk said Tesla engineers are working to launch a humanoid robot called "Optimus." In Musk's vision, the biggest role of these robots is to solve the problem of labor shortage in the current society - they can carry certain parts in factories.
Abandon plans to launch any new vehicles this year, thus ensuring that deliveries continue to grow steadily, and even in the face of safety investigations by state agencies, it continues to advance the commercialization of its self-driving technology without any lack of publicity. From one extreme to the other, Musk's first principles are vividly reflected in Tesla's operating style.