Although profits have fallen by forty percent, a cheaper Tesla is coming
Since the end of last year, after the successful mass production and delivery of the Cybertruck after four years of difficult birth, Tesla was finally able to take time out and do something else.
Their latest news is one after another, and the action has increased significantly.
Last week, the Cybertruck arrived in China and is about to travel for another tour. In the United States, the FSD V12 version, which is known as the most important upgrade for Tesla's autonomous driving, has also been pushed to some users.
Even the Model 2 (also called Model Q), an affordable model that has been rumored for so long, has new news.
Recently, Tesla released its financial report for the fourth quarter of last year. In the earnings call, Lao Ma took out his heart and answered all the questions that everyone was most concerned about.
Let's take a look at them one by one.
First of all, it was Tesla that achieved its sales target of 1.8 million units without any danger.
Last year, Tesla delivered 1.81 million vehicles, up 38 percent from the 1.31 million delivered the year before.
In particular, the sales of the model Y are explosive, and this car will sell more than 1.2 million units in 2023, which means that it can sell 100,000 units a month...
Previously, the position of the global sales champion has been occupied by Toyota oil vehicles for a long time, such as the best selling Corolla in 2022, with a total of 1.12 million units sold. Now, Tesla has broken that record with an electric car, and the key price is still twice that of the Corolla.
And the success of the Model Y is not only in China, but also in terms of sales abroad that are 1.6 times higher than in China, and from this point of view, electrification is also starting to accelerate abroad.
However, even if it sells so well, Tesla's speed of making money is getting slower and slower.
Last quarter, Tesla's profits plummeted 40%, and its gross margin fell to 17.6%, the lowest in two years.
You must know that Tesla is basically the car company with the highest profit margin in the world, and when his gross profit margin was high, it could reach 30%. Compared to that time, it has dropped a lot now.
Last year was also the first full-year decline in Tesla's profits in the last seven years.
Cars have sold more, but gross profit has become lower, needless to say, this is inseparable from Tesla's big price cuts.
In 2023, when it comes to the soaring car price war, Tesla will be the first to take the lead. And not only in China, it is crazy in the United States, France, Denmark and other places to reduce prices.
It can be said that there is no cheapest, only cheaper.
No, at the beginning of 2024, Tesla dropped another 1-20,000 in China, including the new version of the Model 3 that was just remodeled last year.
However, many people feel that their peers have already rolled up like this, and Tesla's strength is not enough, and there is still room for price reduction. Anyway, the colleague in our editorial department who is going to buy Tesla is ready to be a waiting party, because he thinks that Tesla will most likely drop again this year.
Aside from the old cars with reduced prices, the Cybertruck they just came out of was not going well.
Musk worked so hard that he even slept in the factory, just to solve the production hell of the Model 3.
Who would have thought that now the Cybertruck has plunged Tesla into production hell again, and Lao Ma directly said that he was about to sleep in the factory again.
Previously, Tesla's production capacity estimate for the Cybertruck was 125,000 units a year. But now they feel that this thing is too complicated to build, and the original indicators are not complete.
Some analysts have even given predictions that the Cybertruck will only be able to produce about 10,000 units in the first half of 2024.
It's so slow, it's true that there are a lot of new things in this car.
For example, its 4680 battery, large cylindrical and dry electrodes have not been done before, and the yield rate has not been improved in the past few years.
There was really no way out, so I had to make some compromises in the manufacturing process on the very first version.
According to a later report, in order to increase the production of 4680, Tesla intends to buy some cathode pole coils from Chinese battery factories and ship them to the United States as battery raw materials.
However, this approach is more of a helpless move, because as a raw material in battery production, the cathode electrode coil has high transportation requirements, and it cannot be stored separately for a long time, so it has to be transported by air.
Normally, the general battery manufacturers sell battery cells, and the cathode is originally a part of the battery cell, and it will not be sold separately. It's like when you go to a restaurant and ask for a piece of meat in the back kitchen, people can't do it.
So now Tesla is looking for second-tier battery factories to see if the business can do this, but it is difficult to say how to buy and how much to buy.
Now it seems that Tesla's more than 2 million Cybertruck orders will be several years away. Don't worry about the small partners who pay attention to this car in China, because of the pedestrian protection regulations, this car will not be able to enter the Chinese market for a while.
If you are interested, go to station b to see the "Bad Review Auto Department", we will go to the Cybertruck domestic tour exhibition this Saturday afternoon, and then give you a live broadcast to see the real face.
In addition to the above things that are a bit difficult to do, Tesla still has some good news worth talking about.
In 2023, Tesla's total installed energy storage capacity will reach 14.7 GWh, more than double that of 2022, and its profit will almost quadruple. And Musk estimates that the production capacity of this block will increase from 20 GWh to 40 GWh in 2024.
Lao Ma has said more than once that the revenue growth rate of the energy storage business will exceed that of the automotive business. Tesla's energy storage business has not entered China, but in the direction of energy storage, our domestic car companies have not fallen behind. As far as I know, BYD is actively deploying this area.
In addition, Tesla's new cars have also made progress.
On the next generation of electric vehicles, that is, the cheaper "Model 2", which everyone is very concerned about, Lao Ma has finally put the material out.
There have been various news about this car that has been exposed before, and it costs around $25,000, codenamed "Redwood" and so on.
This time, Musk didn't say anything specific, but he said: In 2024, he will concentrate on the launch of the next generation of low-cost models, with the goal of mass production in 2025.
The picture shows an imaginary picture of foreign media
He also has high expectations for this car, even saying that " I believe that Tesla's next wave of growth will be launched by the next generation of car platforms ".
One thing to say, from the perspective of grabbing the market, Tesla's car should have been launched a long time ago.
The Model 3/Y has already become the benchmark for compact cars, and if Tesla takes advantage of the trend immediately after the 3/Y, this series of killer features will not be a firm grip on everyone.
But it went to the Cybertruck, which was a thief, and then Musk bought Twitter to build his X platform.
As a result, the Cybertruck had a difficult birth, and X also dragged the old horse to death. Now I finally remember that I want to get a car that everyone can afford.
And judging from Tesla's financial report as a whole, although the data is not so beautiful, Tesla's position is still there.
Not to mention anything else, Tesla's R&D expenses for the whole year last year reached a record high, about 28.4 billion yuan, which is equivalent to the total R&D expenses of many new car-making forces.
However, everyone can also see that the current electric car market is more than when the Model 3/Y was first launched, and I don't know where it has gone. Domestic car companies are frantically launching new products in almost every market segment.
When the Model 2 comes out again, the competition in the market will only increase. Besides, our car companies are also going out, and last year China became the world's largest exporter, and the growth of electric cars going overseas has been fierce.
Even Musk praised Chinese car companies in the earnings conference, saying that if there were no tariffs and trade barriers, our gang would destroy most of the other car companies.
Looking at what people said, Brother Neck agreed very much. I'm afraid that Tesla's own car will be injured to some extent.
It's hard to say whether the Model 2 will be able to achieve the goals they set by then.