Musk, the "master of saving money", saves a car company that will make the most money.
Author | Home scale from the planet Magnesia
This week, Tesla handed over a near-perfect 2022 Q1 financial report, and the performance indicators exceeded expectations across the board.
One statistic is particularly insane: The gross margin of bicycles has increased to 32.9%, which is more than double that of traditional American car companies such as GM, Ford and Stallantis, and far more than the new power peers such as Wei Xiaoli (about 20% floating).
Taking a domestic Model 3 after-drive version with an official website price of 279,900 yuan as an example, selling one can earn about 90,000 yuan.
For high gross margin, last year's crazy price increases were one thing, but Musk responded: "Our current vehicle prices are actually anticipating the growth of supplier and logistics costs." ”
Then in addition to removing the impact of uncontrollable costs, what remains is the controllable cost that Tesla can master, which is also in line with the cost reduction strategy that Musk has been implementing to the end.
Crazy money-saving guru
Last May, a new technology about the Model Y was repeatedly brushed in the automotive circle: Tesla produced the first Model Y giant casting at the Texas Gigafactory before the Model Y, equipped with new structural battery pack technology, began production.
The giant casting will be 70 parts into one die casting molding, Musk will be advertised as "a body engineering revolution", since then, the body integration die casting structural parts of the "black technology" quickly formed a boom in the automotive industry, domestic Xiaopeng, Weilai and other new car-making forces have followed, traditional car companies have also begun to have relevant layout.
According to the data, the technology has brought a 20% cost reduction to Model Y, and in Q1 2021, Tesla's average cost per vehicle has been less than $38,000, which means that the average cost of bicycles in the 2022 Q1 financial report will reduce costs again while the battery, chip and other links remain unchanged.
Of course, in the past year, the price increase of batteries and automotive semiconductors is inevitable, but Tesla can still "cut" the cost from other aspects.
From the perspective of batteries, Musk believes that the current rate of decline in battery costs can not keep up with demand at all, so he has to make batteries himself.
From 2019 to 2021, Tesla successively acquired 4 battery-related companies, and then launched the innovative "big cylindrical" 4680 battery, the idea of which is simply summarized as: with a larger volume, simpler structure, to create a stronger battery.
Compared with the current mainstream second-generation 2170 cylindrical batteries, the number of batteries required for the 4680 battery pack is reduced, the proportion of metal shells is reduced, the number of structural parts and welding is also significantly reduced, and the cost is reduced (14% lower than that of 2170 batteries). At the same time, with Tesla CTC (Cell to Chasis, the battery cell is directly integrated into the vehicle chassis) technology, further save space, make the structure unitary, and thus reduce costs.
Musk introduced that the use of CTC with integrated die-casting of the car, can save more than 370 parts, body weight reduction of 10%, cost per kilowatt hour reduced by 7%. This can fully offset the cost increase caused by the increase in the price of upstream raw materials.
On the automotive semiconductor side, Tesla is also looking for ways to reduce the cost increase caused by chip price increases.
In order to reduce the R&D and production cost problems encountered in the intelligent upgrade, Tesla began to integrate the original isolated ECU (electronic controller) and ESP (body electronic stability system) with each other, and launched a domain controller, which fundamentally reduced the car's demand for chip quantity. For example, the number of ECUs on a Volkswagen Golf is 70, and if you switch to a domain controller, the number can be reduced to 3-5.
Figure | Tesla AP3.0
In the wave of core shortage in 2021, the MCU (microprocessor) necessary for ECU and ESP is the most affected, and its main suppliers Infineon, NXP and other giants have issued price increase notices, and this part of the price is also reflected in the price of the car, but Tesla is not affected by the lack of cores, but instead set sales records quarter by quarter.
In essence, Tesla's development of new controllers is more for intelligent considerations, but through the upgrading of vehicle electronic and electrical architecture (EEA) and the simplification of hardware configuration, it is actually very much in line with Tesla's idea of reducing costs.
In addition to the cost reduction measures mentioned above, Tesla has also made great efforts in the fields of battery recycling and waste utilization. Although it is a detail that outsiders "can't see", in the face of huge production capacity, it can still reduce a lot of costs.
The production capacity of the four major factories has been fully opened, and the efficiency increase has also been achieved
Looking at the essence through the phenomenon, almost all of Tesla's scientific and technological innovation in the early days was inseparable from the ultimate goal of cost reduction.
Of course, it must be mentioned here: before 2020, Tesla is in a loss stage of up to 10 years, and naturally prioritizes cost reduction.
It is worth mentioning that in Tesla's most difficult entrepreneurial stage, it is Musk who "cuts the door" to control the mass production cost of the first generation of Roadster, which has tesla behind.
As Tesla begins to enter the "not bad money" stage, we can also notice its efforts in efficiency, of which the Gigafactory is indispensable.
From the data point of view, the Fremont plant in California and the Shanghai plant currently have an annual production capacity of about 450,000 and 480,000 vehicles respectively, and the new Berlin plant and the Texas Austin plant have an annual production capacity of more than 500,000 vehicles.
In addition to the automakers, Tesla has also laid out a series of supply chain factories, including the Nevada factory and the New York plant that produce battery packs, charging piles and solar roofs, a series of parts factories supported by the gigafactory, and production lines in cooperation with other factories.
It is with the strong cooperation of these factories that Tesla has also reached the industry-leading position in vehicle delivery. According to the Q1 financial report data, Tesla's product inventory cycle is 3 days, 2021 Q4 is 4 days, 2021 Q3 is 6 days, that is to say, Tesla basically has no inventory, or even not enough to sell, and the global demand is strong.
In other words, under the guarantee of production capacity, Tesla can firmly control the price control. As long as Tesla is willing, the gross profit margin of the whole vehicle can basically be maintained at about 30%.
The negative impact of reducing costs
In the face of strong price control, Tesla is fully capable of not raising prices or even reducing prices in the face of rising costs and inflation, but Tesla has not done so.
Perhaps Musk believes that in the case of not worrying about selling, Tesla does not need to rely on low prices to grab the market, but to occupy the market through product and technical advantages, after all, under the investment of large research and development in the early stage, it is understandable to want to return.
So when the cost continues to rise and there is no way to raise the price, what should Tesla do?
On this year's domestic Model 3 and Model Y models, there are reports that Tesla's engineers have quietly reduced an ECU in the steering control unit, and the response given by engineers is that the electronic control unit that is "reduced" is a redundant component and will not affect the normal use of the vehicle.
In fact, the news of Tesla's "allocation reduction" is not new. For example, last year, some Tesla Model 3 and Model Y were found to have the USB interface and mobile phone wireless charging configuration reduced when delivered, and only the interface location was prepared for future replenishment, the Type-C interface could only be charged, and the data reading chip was removed. At the same time, Tesla also canceled the passenger waist support adjustment function, and the original waist support adjustment button place became a filler. At the time, Musk said the part was barely used and was not necessary in the event of a shortage of supplies.
In February, Tesla confirmed through its official website that the Model S and Model X, which will be produced from mid-February 2022, will no longer be equipped with radar, and all driver assistance systems will rely entirely on a camera system called "Tesla Vision" consisting of eight cameras.
In all of the above cases, although Tesla is not the only one who has reduced the allocation due to the lack of cores, this behavior of "both price increase and allocation reduction" still makes some consumers dissatisfied.
This approach actually returns to Tesla's original idea: spare no effort to reduce costs.
However, this practice of transferring costs to users still needs to take into account the problems of quality and quality control. In the case of Tesla's frequent "negative news", blindly reducing costs will cause negative effects.