Tesla, or product marketing capabilities are not the world's first, perhaps the three electric technology is not the world's first.
But when it comes to making money, it recognizes the first, there is really no other dare to recognize the second, which even Volkswagen and Toyota can only look back on, because it... A car can earn a full 68,000, and it is no wonder that Tesla is also all self-operated, so as not to dilute the profits, right?
On April 21, Tesla announced its Q1 quarterly financial report, reporting that Tesla's total revenue in the first quarter reached $18.756 billion, compared with $10.389 billion from the previous year, an increase of 81% year-on-year! Even more exaggerated is the net profit attributable to common shareholders, which increased to $3.318 billion or 658% compared to the previous $438 million! Seeing this, these ordinary shareholders have to laugh and wake up even if they dream.
Some media also said that if it is calculated according to the 310,048 cars in the first quarter, Tesla can earn 68,000 yuan for every car sold! The gross profit margin of the bicycle is as high as 32.9%, crushing the traditional luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi, and twice that of mainstream brands such as Volkswagen and Toyota.
For comparison, Toyota's gross margin in the fourth quarter of 2021 was only 19.6%, Volkswagen's gross margin in the third quarter of 2021 was 15.67%, and Ford's was only 14.3%. A number of Chinese brand enterprises, the gross profit margin is even lower, basically below 10%, only Geely, Changan is relatively good, reaching 17.2% and 15.32% respectively.
But this is also its advantage as a "new force for car-making", using the new model, and the new forces on the mainland are actually not bad.
According to the company's annual report information, in terms of the gross profit margin performance of the whole year of 2021, the ideal car reached 20.60%, Weilai Automobile was 20.10%, and Xiaopeng, who was frantically expanding the product matrix, was 11.5%. This also proves that the "new car-making forces" are indeed more profitable than foreign brands, but they are slightly inferior to Tesla's downright reformed demons that have entered the fast lane.
Therefore, it seems that the most profitable car company is Tesla, and no one dares to call the second.
To say why Tesla is so profitable, "slamming the door" must account for most of the reasons. Tesla's door-cutting, but the industry is well known, first of all, platform production, although the public is also very good at this matter.
Tesla's current Model 3/Model Y models, based on the same platform, have 70-80% of the overlap of parts, equivalent to the same material, can make two different dishes, which shares the cost of research and development, manufacturing costs.
This point is quite critical, for the cost of the most important or have to have "economies of scale", parts and components general means that Tesla's parts demand is larger, but also can force suppliers to give more affordable prices. Hey, I (Tesla) am a big customer, what's wrong with taking some discounts?
"The main sales model is the same platform, which can save money", Volkswagen knows this well. Therefore, in the Volkswagen 2030 strategy in July last year, Volkswagen said that it would build an SSP platform, which is the continuation of today's MQB, MSB, MLB, MEB and PPE platforms, in other words, the electrified Volkswagen Group will really have only one platform in the future...
In the previous year, there were foreign media that Audi considered replacing the A4 with the MQB platform, rather than today's MLB platform, which can save more than $1 billion, although Audi later debunked the rumors, but it can also explain the benefits of the platform to the cost of production and research and development.
The second thing that can save money is direct operation, and the professor can responsibly say, "Those who say that the dealer model is irreplaceable are all people in this line!" ”
(According to the data of the Autohome complaint platform, the number of pre-sales and after-sales complaints reached 62.5%).
Consumers in the world have been suffering dealers for a long time, personnel and snakes are mixed, bad attitudes, smart names and random charges, outbound fees, testing fees, licensing fees, financial service consulting fees, "fees are fresh", these problems rank in the top three of the consumer complaint list for many years.
(You may wish to guess how many random charges there are in the above figure)
Therefore, Tesla's direct sales model for our consumers, one is a better attitude, because you may not have to dock with sales staff, a price to buy a car; the second is that there are no heavy charges, the most obvious is those "financial fees", "financial consulting fees", which have to save thousands.
For Tesla, hehehehe, the money that originally entered the dealer's pocket naturally returned to itself, there was no rebate; there was no need to press the warehouse to the dealer, and the order system production.
As for how profitable the dealer group is, that is another matter; the China Automobile Dealers Association released the "2021 Top 100 Chinese Auto Dealer Groups Ranking" last year, and the top three Guanghui Automobile, Zhongsheng Group and LSH have a total operating income of 157.281 billion yuan, 148.348 billion yuan and 95.121 billion yuan!
(Don't make money selling a car?) That's all a lie to you! ）
Perhaps the revenue does not make sense, after all, a car is sold for more than 100,000 yuan. Returning to the net profit, Guanghui Automobile, which ranked first, said in the 2022 Q1 financial report that the net profit for the quarter was 829 million yuan, with a net profit margin of 2.36%.
Don't think that they "don't make money", that's because car dealers invest hugely, and store rent, decoration costs, personnel salaries, etc. account for most of the cost. Therefore, the "no money" of car dealers comes from itself, which itself belongs to the industry with low yield, tesla self-operated model can save a lot of store rent, personnel costs, and save money!
Finally, Tesla's self-research advantages and manufacturing process advantages, not only fertilizer water does not flow to outsiders, but also manufacturing process self-internal roll.
Tesla electronic control, motor is basically self-developed and self-produced, in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology declaration model 3/ model Y indicates that the motor producer is Tesla (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. Instead of some companies using purchased motors and electronic controls, this part represents the purchase of Huawei electric drive of Xilis, the procurement of Wefty Motors Honda, etc.
(Today's Ningde era has gradually transformed into a solution provider)
In order to save money, Tesla has extended the "claw" to the power battery, to know that it was once popular "Ning Wang" (Ningde era), part of which relied on Tesla battery orders, so that the Ningde era was very moist. But... This is also profit, Tesla naturally wants to "centralize", return profits to itself,
On the conference call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the first models equipped with the homegrown 4680 battery were delivered. This year, the Texas plant and the Berlin plant will be able to produce models with 4680 batteries and 2170 batteries at the same time.
It is expected that by the end of the year, it will achieve a 4680 battery production capacity of 100 GWh per year, meeting the needs of 1.3 million vehicle models.
This battery also has the effect of improving production efficiency, we must not forget that in the production process, personnel and machinery are costly, and the more cars that can be off the line per unit of time, the lower the natural cost.
4680 battery saves a lot of time and process, if a Model Y model is equipped with a 2170 battery, it only needs 4416 batteries, but replace it with a larger 4680 battery, it only needs more than 800!
Tesla is also frantically cutting back the number of parts and reducing the number of processes. One-piece casting technology is used to integrate more than 70 parts around the rear of the Model Y into 2 parts. Spend more money to improve the production system, the result is actually to save money, which can make many car companies stunned, because many of the latter will also "reduce the allocation" and "steal light materials".
Although the self-operated model is adopted, consumers' liking for Tesla is not high, which stems from its "non-objective" approach to driving assistance accidents, both as an athlete and as a referee. There have been some accidents before, but the results have not been satisfactory, whether the responsibility lies with themselves or not. Of course... There are also some consumers who "throw the pot", but well... Tesla's attitude is also too tough and unpleasant.
This is also related to Tesla's "key", because it basically does not do marketing, allows the development of market public opinion, and ensures the "justice" of network voice to a certain extent. Instead, the legal department fights back against those who act unjustifiably and maliciously. Although this is reasonable, it just makes people feel a little condescending.
Just on April 22, the China Consumers Association released the "Annual Report on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests in China (2021)", which named tesla owners in Shanghai.
(Image from the Internet)
In addition, there are sky-high maintenance incidents circulating on the Internet in recent times, a Model Y because of the reverse car hit the wall, to replace this "advanced", "cost-saving" rear wall, the estimated cost is 200,000 yuan ... Good guys, feelings Musk saved money is stolen from the owner of the car.
The above always shows that Tesla's earning power is first-class, its strong money-making, not a certain part is prominent, but the result of multiple parts complementing each other, there is no "middleman", everything is "do it yourself", you can save it, step by step to reduce your own costs, in order to achieve low prices, so this is like a dimensionality reduction blow. But it is also certain that Tesla is not grounded enough.