Killer supercharged network, Māori conscience target 30%
On April 4, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla's goal for the supercharger pile business is to achieve a gross margin of 30% or a profit margin of 10% including all costs.
Tesla's automotive business gross margin was 27 percent in 2021, compared to 21 percent in 2020. Tesla delivered a record 310,048 vehicles in the first quarter.
In the face of increasing competition, Tesla has been expanding its supercharger business at an alarming rate. At the end of 2020, the company's supercharger pile number was about 23,277, a number that is growing at an annual rate of more than 30%, but lagging behind tesla vehicle delivery speed, which increased by 87% over the same period. Tesla plans to gradually open up its charging network to users of other brands of electric vehicles, which is expected to become a new source of revenue for the company.
Tesla currently operates more than 30,000 superchargers in more than 2,500 locations around the world, including more than 8,000 Tesla charging stations in the Chinese market.
Overcharge the network and accelerate the opening up to other brands
In March 2022, Transport Minister Trudy Harrison confirmed that Tesla would soon open up its supercharger network in the UK, and that it could be sooner, within weeks or months.
Currently, there are around 800 superchargers on the UK market. Sales of electric vehicles rose sharply in the UK last year, with 11.6% of new cars sold in the UK in 2021 being electric, and 12.5% of new cars sold in January this year.
For the past year, Tesla has been gradually opening up overcharge sites to electric cars made by other automakers. At first, Tesla only carried out pilot projects at 10 supercharging sites in the Netherlands; in January this year, Tesla announced that the pilot project would be expanded to more supercharging sites in Norway and France; and in February, Tesla once again included all overcharging sites in the Netherlands into the pilot project.
Accelerate China's supercharge network, hard just China power exchange mode
In February 2021, Tesla's Shanghai Supercharger Pile Factory was officially completed and put into operation, with an annual output of 10,000 Tesla's most advanced third-generation supercharger piles (V3 charging piles), all supplied to the Chinese market, and there is no export plan for the time being. Such an ambitious plan means that Tesla's supercharger network in the country will be greatly expanded.
For Tesla, the supercharge technology, especially the V3 supercharge technology, brings the charging experience has not been much different from the fuel car, charging 15 minutes can supplement the maximum 250 km of endurance, the future V4, V5 may achieve 10 minutes to supplement the 500 km of battery. From the perspective of charging power, Tesla's V3 design has a maximum charging power of 250kW, while Xiaopeng has only 180kW and Weilai has only 120kW.
Dr. Wang Jiajia, vice president of Zhongying Black Forest Investment Group and a well-known debt restructuring expert, said that the open charging network can allow more customers of other electric vehicle brands to feel the convenience brought by Tesla's supercharging technology, and undoubtedly be able to make a big advertisement for themselves. Even if Tesla has always said that its main competitor is fuel vehicles, if it can pass a better charging experience, Tesla will naturally not refuse other electric vehicle brand consumers to turn to their own doors.
Competing with supercharging is the power exchange technology promoted by Weilai and many other domestic car companies. Taking Weilai's power exchange technology as an example, the power exchange technology that takes 3 minutes to replace the battery is indeed more advantageous in time than Tesla's overcharge. However, one of the biggest burdens on the main engine factory is that the property rights of the battery are in the hands of the main engine factory, and the customer uses the battery in the mode of battery rental.
For car owners, this can make the owner significantly reduce the threshold for car purchase in the early stage, and also avoid various problems due to batteries in the later stage, resulting in a significant decline in the retention rate of second-hand cars of electric vehicles. Dr. Wang Jiajia said that promoting battery leasing or power replacement business has become a big killer for Chinese electric vehicle companies to promote the terminal sales of electric vehicles in the short term, but it has made Chinese electric vehicle companies fall into the heavy asset operation in the field of power batteries, which is afraid that it will become an unbearable burden for Chinese car companies in the future.