Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
Author | The Way
Edited | Mumi
According to foreign media FutureCar, most car companies in the world produced poorly last year due to chip shortages, but Tesla sales were still as high as 936,000 vehicles.
But according to people familiar with the matter, Tesla only made a smooth transition on the surface, and actually reduced some parts, including spare steering components that support higher-order autopilot functions.
Tesla has produced reduced vehicles in China last year, including the Model 3 and Model Y, and most of them are sold in the Chinese market, and some are sold to other countries.
It is understood that this is not the first time tesla has reduced the allocation, and Musk has not responded directly.
First, although Tesla's sales reached the target last year, domestic cars turned to components and reduced allocation
CNBC has reported that when chip shortages continued last year, Tesla removed one of the two electronic control units in the Bogie of the Chinese-made Model 3 and Model Y cars to complete the vehicle final assembly and achieve sales targets for the fourth quarter and 2021.
However, Tesla did not disclose the change to customers who bought the vehicle, and the reduced models include the Chinese-made Model 3 and Model Y.
According to two employees, tens of thousands of reduced-grade vehicles have been sold to customers in China, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and other parts of Europe. The two, who did not have the right to speak on behalf of the company, asked for anonymous coverage of the incident.
▲Tesla car chip
Second, Tesla believes that the part is not important, but the analysis of insiders has a greater impact
Tesla believes that the removed part is a redundant backup, and the current L2 level self-driving function does not require the part, so it did not notify customers.
But it's unclear whether Tesla will make similar changes to vehicles made in the United States and imported from China.
However, internal employees still said that in addition to supporting Tesla's L3 level autopilot function, there are two main reasons.
First, because L3 autonomous driving requires steering with a dual electronic control unit system, the affected vehicles need to be fitted with this hardware in order to achieve fully autonomous driving functions.
Second, L2 self-driving cars, including Tesla, are also equipped with backup electrical systems to prevent single points of failure that could lead to system failure.
Tesla's idea, however, is that the component is primarily used in backup systems and may not cause security issues. For Tesla, which is facing a chip shortage, omitting the control unit can save Tesla money in the short term while solving the chip problem.
▲ Tesla car steering wheel
Third, the reduction of vehicles sold to China FSD is still raising prices in the cold
According to CNBC, most of the vehicles that were reduced were initially sold to Chinese customers, and Tesla employees also revealed that recently, tens of thousands of affected vehicles were sold to Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom and other European countries in addition to China.
Although the software can be upgraded via OTA, the vehicle's FSD system can be updated quickly. However, Chinese customers are not active in purchasing FSD software.
At the time of placing an order, only 1% of Tesla's Chinese customers had purchased advanced FSD software.
On Tesla China's official website, the software's features are advertised as "enhanced auto-assisted driving." Among them, model 3 installation of basic software needs to increase by 5027 US dollars (about 31975 yuan), and the installation of advanced version FSD software needs to increase 10055 US dollars (about 63957 yuan), but it is not yet available.
Tesla offers two ways to buy for U.S. users. Last month, Tesla advised U.S. customers to order its advanced FSD software and raised the price from $10,000 (about 63,600 yuan) to $12,000 (about 76,320 yuan) on Jan. 17.
In addition, customers can also subscribe to Tesla's FSD features by paying $199 (about 1266 yuan) per month.
▲ Tesla FSD software
Fourth, the new version of the FSD began to test, and the upgrading of the reduced vehicle needed to be reinstalled
Testers are currently testing the beta version of FSD, and the company can gradually improve the software through feedback data from vehicles loaded with the software before it is officially released.
While Tesla didn't accurately disclose in its quarterly earnings report how many customers paid for FSD subscriptions up front and the number of FSD subscriptions per quarter; however, according to people familiar with the matter, Tesla is now facing the problem that reduced vehicles cannot be upgraded to a more advanced version of FSD unless the components are re-added.
Tesla internal employees also revealed that if the company launches a more complex FSD automatic update, the vehicle is reduced And the owner wants to use the advanced system, he will need to reinstall the component at the Tesla service center.
But in the absence of dual-control steering, Tesla owners can still use the current version of L2 Autopilot, Autopilot and Full Autopilot.
Conclusion: Although Tesla's reduction has not affected sales, the automatic driving function has been affected
Although Tesla reduced its allocation, last year's sales were not affected, and even the best year ever, with a total of 936,000 units sold worldwide.
However, Tesla's internal employees have said that the shortage of steering components will cause L3-level autonomous vehicles to be unable to steer, software functions will not be able to use, these effects Tesla has not informed the owner, and autopilot is Tesla's best selling point.
With the release of the new FSD software, owners who have been reduced can only reassemble the steering components if they want to upgrade to use the new features.
In addition, even if the use of the current system version of the vehicle is not affected, the vehicle safety will be tested when the reduced Tesla has a steering component failure.