Source: Future Autodaily Author: Editor| Wang Yan
Image source: Tesla
Tesla CEO Elon Musk boarded a private jet on time with his youngest son, X A-12, at Austin Airport, Texas, on March 21. After 10 hours, the group arrived in Berlin, Germany.
In order to witness today's Berlin factory, Musk waited 9 months longer than he initially expected. But compared to the several trips to Berlin in the past two years, this time was a rare time to feel relaxed. Before leaving, he excitedly announced on Twitter, "I am very happy that the first car produced at the Berlin factory will be delivered." ”
If nothing else, in a few hours, the delivery ceremony of Tesla's Berlin factory will be held as scheduled, and even German Chancellor Olaf Schulz will appear as its "platform". Musk will personally deliver the first Model Y produced at the Berlin factory to local users.
With the experience of putting the Shanghai Gigafactory into operation in less than a year, the construction of the Berlin plant has taken more than two years since the construction of the factory was announced in November 2019.
But the results are certainly worth waiting for. Prior to this, in addition to the domestic market, Tesla's Shanghai factory was also shouldering the task of supplying production capacity to the European market. The start of operation at the Berlin plant means that the pick-up cycle of the latter will be greatly shortened. The Shanghai plant will also have more capacity to invest in the Chinese market, greatly alleviating the current backlog of order delivery pressure.
The more far-reaching significance is that even if the local production has not been put into production before, Tesla has already won the first and second place in the German electric vehicle sales list in February. Now, with the Berlin factory officially put into operation, Tesla, which directly hit the hinterland of its opponents, will also begin a large-scale strangulation.
1/ Single-handedly challenge European car companies
In fact, Tesla has suffered from no production capacity in the European market for a long time.
For Chinese consumers, a domestic Model 3 may have a long pick-up cycle of more than 16 weeks. In contrast, the car purchase cycle of European users needs to be calculated in "years".
According to the U.S. Tesla owners online website, the current purchase of a Model 3 standard version model in Germany will not be available until May 2023. Even if some additional configurations may shorten the waiting time, it will not be until February 2023 at the earliest.
And this is already in the case of the Shanghai gigafactory tilting capacity as much as possible. According to the data released by the Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in January this year, Tesla's Shanghai factory produced a total of 59,845 vehicles and exported 40,499 vehicles, and only 19,346 vehicles were delivered in China.
With the Official Commissioning of the Berlin plant and the ramp-up of capacity, this imbalance between supply and demand will undoubtedly be improved.
According to the official production capacity plan, the current annual production capacity of this production line is planned to be 500,000 units. Next the plant will start production in 1 shift, with a second and third shift to be added in the coming months. By the end of this year, the goal is to reach the production of 5,000 Model Ys per week, which is comparable to the Shanghai plant.
The birth of Tesla's Berlin factory can be described as a series of twists and turns. Previously, in response to protests by local environmentalists against cutting down the forest land, Musk had to promise that for every tree cut down, three trees would be planted in the future to compensate. When the production schedule was stuck in the review process, he complained about the "bureaucracy" of the other side, and at the same time, he also made a surprise visit to Germany overnight to meet with local officials to solve the problem.
Tesla Berlin Factory Source: Tesla
Behind Musk's efforts is the anxiety of the latecomers and the ambition to conquer the heart of German automobile manufacturing.
Although it has won the world's largest new energy vehicle market, in Musk's eyes, this is obviously far from enough. To meet its long-emphasized ambition of producing millions of electric vehicles a year, Tesla desperately needs to go further in the lucrative European market.
The Berlin factory is more of a strategic point for Tesla than a bridgehead for entering the European market. However, the fact is that Europe, as the home of many established car companies, especially The German Volkswagen, with decades of brand accumulation, is more likely to form a leading edge in the local area.
The same is true of market changes. According to data from JATO Dynamics, a British automotive data research company, tesla model 3 did not have many competitors in the European market in 2019, and Tesla's market share of pure electric vehicles in Europe reached 31% that year. However, by 2021, Tesla's share of the European pure electric vehicle market has dropped to 13.9%.
In the same period, according to Volkswagen's financial report, in 2021, Volkswagen will occupy 25% of the Market share of the European electric vehicle market. This means that 1 in every 4 electric vehicles sold in the European market comes from Volkswagen.
At the same time, unlike Tesla's only two main models, Model 3 and Model Y, European car companies are more flexible in their local combat capabilities, including Renault Zoe, Volkswagen ID.3 and other small car sales have also surpassed the Model 3.
With the increase in the number of competitors, Tesla is also difficult to dominate. In 2019, there were 33 different pure electric vehicles on the European market, and after a year, this number became 57, and by 2021 it will increase to 74.
In order to further expand its advantages in Europe, Musk also intends to build the Berlin factory into the "world's largest power battery factory", and the annual output of the battery factory will exceed 250GWh. This means that after the localization of batteries and components, Tesla's local car manufacturing costs will further decline.
At present, Tesla's price in Europe is much higher than in the Chinese market. In Germany, for example, the Model 3 Performance model costs 61,900 euros (about 434,000 yuan), compared with 367,900 euros in China. Referring to the price reduction trend after domestic production, Tesla made in Germany will undoubtedly gradually reduce prices.
But before that, Tesla will take some time. In Musk's plan, Tesla's performance in the European market will eventually reach "similar levels as the United States." In 2021, Tesla delivered more than 300,000 units in both the United States and China, while the cumulative delivery in Europe was only 167,900 units in the whole year.
However, in the European market, Tesla's explosive models have been verified. In 2021, the Tesla Model 3 beat the Renault Zoe as an imported car to become the pure electric vehicle with the highest cumulative sales volume of the year.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives expects Tesla's annual production and sales to reach 2 million units in 2022. The Berlin Gigafactory is undoubtedly a key part of this.
2/ Cheap Tesla is not far away?
At present, Tesla has two vehicle factories in Fremont in the United States and Shanghai in China, plus the Berlin plant, and its cumulative annual production capacity will exceed 1.5 million units. At the end of November 2021, Tesla also invested an additional 1.2 billion yuan to expand the Shanghai Gigafactory and increase the production capacity of the Model 3, Model Y and related derivative models. Meanwhile, Tesla's fourth plant, the Austin plant, is also under construction.
However, with reference to Musk's KPI for himself, to reach the sales target of 20 million vehicles in 2030, in addition to continuously improving efficiency and reducing costs, thereby reducing the price to promote sales, Tesla also needs to match more production capacity.
In addition, from the perspective of product planning, at present, Tesla wants to compete with these traditional car giants, whether it is for the Chinese or European markets, it needs to launch cheaper models to occupy the market segment.
At present, Tesla's main models Model 3 and Model Y can not complete the full coverage of the mainstream price range, especially in the case of rising raw material prices, the cheapest Model 3 in the Chinese market has nearly 300,000 yuan, for users who pay attention to cost performance, the attractiveness is gradually declining.
The advantage of traditional car companies is that they can quickly launch new energy vehicles in various market segments. In the view of Ling Ran, an analyst in the automotive industry, although the sales of individual cars of these car companies are not as good as Tesla, the comprehensive market share may still be surpassed.
Bernstein analyst Tony Sacconaghi directly judged that Tesla's sales would not grow at a rate of more than 50% per year without launching a $25,000 car.
In fact, for the Berlin factory, increasing the localization rate is only the first step, and improving the local combat capability is the key to fighting a protracted war.
In November 2020, Musk revealed at the European Battery Conference that he plans to launch compact cars in Europe to open up the market.
Tesla China Recruitment Poster Source: Tesla
As early as Battery Day in September 2020, Musk said that developing affordable mass-market electric vehicles was "a dream that the company had at the beginning of its founding." Two months later, it revealed at the European Battery Conference that it plans to launch compact cars in Europe to open up the market.
Judging from Musk's various statements, the introduction of a cheaper Tesla is imperative, but it is only a matter of time. The commissioning of the Berlin factory gives Tesla the possibility of moving closer to cheaper models.
Compared with the two factories in the United States and China, Tesla has taken the lead in using a number of new technologies in the Berlin factory. Including the integrated die-casting machine, the 4680 battery cell, and the CTC structural battery pack technology and the new painting workshop, these new technologies are aimed at a common goal - cost reduction and efficiency.
Among them, the Model Y produced at the Berlin factory will use a 4680 battery cell, which is Tesla's third-generation cylindrical battery after 1865 and 2170. The larger the battery size means that the less material the battery housing, the lower the manufacturing cost, and the 4680 battery cell can reduce production costs by up to 56%.
CTC technology eliminates the Pack design and directly mounts the battery or module on the body, reducing the weight of the body by 10% and the cost per kWh battery by 7%.
If large-size batteries and battery package technology can be copied for other car companies, then integrated die-casting technology is Tesla's "secret technology".
The Model Y from Berlin features an integrated die-cast body in the front and rear, a design that significantly shortens the production cycle and also reduces the number of body parts by 370. In the berlin factory profile, the average time to produce a Model Y body took only 45 seconds.
Berlin factory body building workshop Source: Tesla
In Musk's view, the gigafactory is also a "product" of Tesla, manufacturing not only the whole vehicle and the parts of the car, but also the "machine that makes the machine". If it goes well, Tesla will then upgrade its Fremont plant in the United States and its Shanghai plant in China and use the same technology to build the car.
It is foreseeable that once a cheaper model is launched and the full coverage of the mainstream market of 100,000-400,000 is completed, Tesla may be more lonely.
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