Musk "slashed" for young people, 190,000 Tesla is coming?
190,000 Tesla is coming?
Written by | Liu Xingzhi
Edit | Wang Jing
Shortly after Xiaomi officially announced the car, Lei Jun launched a vote on Xiaomi's car models and pricing on Weibo, and 80% of the 17,000 voters wanted Xiaomi's first smart car to be priced below 200,000.
This result is in line with the consistent impression of the company's products by "Mi Fen", and also represents the simple desire of young people for the first car in life: cheap, big bowl, with a bit of "geek" sense of technology.
However, more than two years have passed, Lei Jun has been secretive about the progress of car building, and the configuration and price of Xiaomi cars have always been holding the pipa, and the laurels of "young people's first car" may be taken away by Musk's Tesla.
Musk
According to 36Kr, Tesla's new Model 3 will begin centralized deliveries at the end of September. According to the news, the new Model 3 has made a lot of changes in the exterior and interior, including a new front face light group design, streaming mirrors, and center control screen shifting.
In addition, channel sources said that the new Model 3 may cancel all radars; The driver assistance hardware system may be HW3.5 rather than HW4.0; the integrated die-casting process on the exterior will carry over to the interior.
No matter how many of these changes are implemented in production models, the focus of the new Model 3 is obviously not "upgrades", but "cost reduction".
As of 2022, the production cost of Model 3 bicycles has been reduced by at least 30%, and as production costs decline and production capacity increases, Model 3 continues to reduce prices and seize a larger market share.
But Musk doesn't seem satisfied. Some media reported that Musk asked the cost of the new Model 3 to continue to be reduced by 14%. Cost compression brings new price reduction space, which is Tesla's strength to continue the price war, and it is also a bargaining chip to attract young people to buy cars.
On August 14, Tesla launched a limited-time insurance subsidy of 8,000 yuan for the domestic Model 3 car, and the price dropped to 223,900; at the same time, the starting price of Model Y also dropped from 313,900 to 299,900, falling into the 200,000 range. Since August, brands such as Extreme Krypton, Nezha, and NIO have also successively reduced their prices, with price reductions ranging from 8,000 yuan to 57,000 yuan.
If macroeconomic uncertainty remains and the "price war" between car companies continues, Musk may follow suit and cut the price of the new Model 3 to less than 200,000 yuan.
At that time, Tesla's brand effect, facelift, price reduction, triple temptation, Model 3 will become the first choice for more young people, and a number of competing products will usher in a new round of tragic price war.
More than six years on the market, consumers are clamouring, Tesla Model 3 facelift is finally coming.
In fact, since the end of last year, there has been continuous news about the Model 3 remodel, but with the experience of Cybertruck's repeated ticket skipping, the outside world does not have much hope for the Model 3 facelift.
Until the beginning of August this year, the news that "the current Tesla Model 3 will be discontinued on August 14" came out, even if Tesla refuted the news, but the modified Model 3 spy photos and configurations are still circulating on the Internet.
At present, although the revelation that the remodeled Model 3 will start delivery at the end of September has not been officially confirmed, there are already anxious consumers who have paid a deposit in advance. "The sales said that the order can catch up with the new model on the market now, and it is enough to delay the delivery." A consumer who has already paid a deposit said.
According to the current information, the facelifted Model 3 will be launched in September and October, and it is now scheduled to be stuck within the 60-day lock-in period to propose the new Model 3 at the current Model 3 price.
Of course, because the launch time of the modified Model 3 has not yet been officially announced, there is a certain uncertainty in this method, and many consumers choose to hold the currency and wait and see. "It doesn't matter if the price goes up a little, you have to wait for the new model." A user who is ready to buy a facelift Model 3 said.
This is also representative of the attitude of most consumers.
Since its release in 2016, more than 1.5 million Tesla Model 3 vehicles have been delivered, making it the most owned electric model on the market.
While other car companies have upgraded and iterated their models, Model 3 has chosen another "downgrade" road, by continuously cutting production costs and reducing prices, in order to reach more consumers.
In May 2019, the domestic Model 3 began pre-sale, with a pre-sale price of 328,000, pulling Tesla's entry price from nearly 400,000 to just over 300,000, in the same price range as BMW 3 Series and NIO ES6 models.
With the reduction of production costs and the increase of production capacity, the two mass models of Model 3/Y continue to reduce prices, and sales are also rising. In the second quarter of this year alone, Tesla delivered 447,000 Model 3/Y, a year-on-year increase of 87.35%.
But with higher sales and little change in appearance since more than six years on the market, consumers have developed aesthetic fatigue with the current Model 3. In first-tier cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen, Model 3 has become a "street car", in order to look different, many car owners pick up the car first thing is to film and modify.
Previously, an X (formerly twitter) blogger broke the news that the number of orders for the new Model 3 exceeded expectations, and although the manufacturing cost of the new car was further reduced, in order to clear the inventory and increase profits, the price of the new Model 3 may be higher than the cash when it is first launched.
Summing up the current information, the new Model 3 has not changed much from the current model. According to media reports, in addition to fine-tuning the appearance of the new Model 3 and increasing the degree of interior integration, the most important change is to upgrade the battery pack, the battery capacity of the rear-drive version will be increased from 60kWh to 66kWh, and the CLTC cruising range will be increased to 610 kilometers, while the high-performance version may use the lithium iron phosphate battery provided by CATL, and the capacity will be adjusted from the current 78.4kWh to 72kWh.
In the case of little change in all aspects of configuration and no rebirth of the model, the facelift may be able to support sales in the short term, but if you want to make a breakthrough in long-term sales, Musk still has to wave the "price butcher knife".
As early as the beginning of the Model 3 facelift design, Musk's intention to cut prices has been clearly revealed. In November 2022, Reuters reported that the focus of the Model 3 redesign is to further reduce the number of components and reduce the complexity of the interior. The use of integrated die casting and the removal of excess parts could reduce production costs by 14%, while production costs for the new Model 3 could be further depressed as capacity ramps up and sales grow.
Shrinking the cost of the new Model 3 to the extreme, Tesla is clearly stockpiling ammunition for a new round of price war. In fact, since the sharp price cut at the beginning of this year to start the price war, Musk has been releasing price reduction signals to the outside world.
At the beginning of January this year, Tesla cut prices sharply, Model 3 dropped by up to 36,000, Model Y dropped by up to 48,000, Xiaopeng and Qianjie followed up as soon as possible, and the price war officially began.
On July 6, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) pulled 16 car companies, including BYD and Tesla, to sign a letter of commitment, agreeing not to fight a price war, but because the non-price reduction clause violated the spirit of the Anti-Monopoly Law, the alliance was hastily dissolved after only two days. On the day before the dissolution of the alliance, Tesla, which did not speak of martial virtue, launched a policy of 3,500 yuan for friends to introduce a car purchase reward, which was a price reduction in disguise.
In August, some models of Extreme Krypton, Nezha, Great Wall, NIO and other brands have successively reduced prices and promotions, with the amount of activities ranging from 8,000 yuan to 57,000 yuan, and Tesla has also officially announced the price reduction again, and a new round of price chaos between car companies is about to begin.
Behind the ongoing price war is Tesla's growth anxiety.
In the second quarter of this year, Tesla's revenue was $24.927 billion, a year-on-year increase of 47%, and its net profit was $2.703 billion, a year-on-year increase of 20%.
Eye-catching growth was achieved largely at the expense of gross margin, which fell for three consecutive quarters and fell to 18.2% in the second quarter, the lowest level in three years.
But the markdown magic seems to be fading. In the second-quarter earnings call, Musk said that vehicle production will decline in the third quarter as Tesla will stop work in the summer to complete factory upgrades, but the delivery target of 1.8 million vehicles for the year remains unchanged.
In the first half of this year, Tesla delivered a total of 889,000 vehicles worldwide, and Tesla will bear greater delivery pressure in the fourth quarter due to the impact on production in the third quarter. The Cybertruck has not yet been officially delivered, and the new Model 3 is clearly the biggest reliance to meet the annual delivery target.
In the face of delivery pressure, Musk has two cards in his hands: new model and price reduction, if the new card works, Tesla can stabilize the gross margin while completing the delivery target; Once sales performance falls short of expectations, Musk is likely to quickly throw the price reduction card. "If the macroeconomic situation continues to be volatile to the downside, Tesla will have to cut prices further." Musk said at Tesla's second-quarter results meeting.
Combined with a series of cost-reduction measures to modify Model 3, as well as the price of the current Model of more than 300,000 yuan, the outside world speculates that the price of the modified Model 3 may drop to 200,000 or even lower in the future, and 190,000 to mention a Model 3 may not be a fantasy.
If the starting price of Model 3 falls into the range of 150,000 to 200,000, the first to suffer may be Japanese B-class cars such as Camry and Accord, and domestic manufacturers such as BYD and Xpeng will also be affected.
In addition, according to 36Kr, Tesla is forming a local operation team of about 20 people in China to promote the landing of the autonomous driving solution FSD (Full Self-Drive) in the Chinese market.
In the first half of this year, car companies such as Xpeng, Lili, and Zhiji began to deploy urban NOA (Navigate on Autopilot). This technology has become one of the important selling points of new domestic forces, and Xpeng's management has revealed that in Xpeng's G6 order, the intelligent driving high-end Max version accounts for 70%.
During the earnings call, Musk firmly believed that FSD will bring 5-10 times growth to Tesla's future valuation and will become the company's main source of future profits. Therefore, it is not ruled out that Tesla will take the "low-cost hardware + high-margin FSD" route.
If there is the blessing of FSD, the new Model 3 of about 200,000 will become a strong competitor for the title of "young people's first car", and at that time, the new domestic forces will also feel a new round of competitive pressure.
Resources:
"Tesla Model 3's Seven Years of Rage" HiEV
"Tesla's new Model 3 is expected to be mass-produced at the end of September, and Shanghai Battery Plant 1 will restart" 36Kr
"Mass production of Tesla's new version of Model 3, preliminary monthly production capacity of 10,000 units" China Economic Network
"Tesla's new Model 3 began to receive orders, store staff said that it would be listed in September and October at the earliest" First Finance and Economics
"Musk over trillions without entering" alphabet list