On the morning of April 24, Tesla Weibo announced that Model 3 and Model Y have opened a limited-time "0 yuan season", and you can enjoy "0 down payment" and preferential interest rates for existing cars with a designated version of Model 3, and you can enjoy "0 down payment" or "0 interest for a limited time" when you order a designated version of Model Y.
On the same day, the all-new Model 3 high-performance version officially landed on Tesla's official website in China, with a starting price of 335,900 yuan, and is expected to be delivered in the third quarter.
Net profit fell 55% in the first quarter
In the early morning of the 24th, Tesla released its first-quarter earnings report and held a conference call.
According to the financial report, Tesla's operating income in the first quarter was US$21.3 billion, down 9% year-on-year and 15.4% quarter-on-quarter, net profit (GAAP) was US$1.129 billion, down 55%, "halved" year-on-year, total gross profit was US$3.696 billion, down 18% from US$4.511 billion in the same period last year, and total gross profit margin was 17.4%, down 1.9 percentage points from 19.3% in the same period last year.
Source: Tesla's earnings report
Regarding the decline in first-quarter results, Tesla said that it was mainly due to the decline in vehicle deliveries, partly due to the renewal of the Model 3 production line at the Fremont plant and the production disruption at the Berlin plant.
According to the financial report, Tesla produced 433,000 vehicles and delivered 387,000 vehicles in the first quarter. Production and delivery figures declined both sequentially and year-on-year. Production in the first quarter was down 12.5% quarter-on-quarter and nearly 2% year-on-year, while deliveries were down 20% quarter-on-quarter and 8.5% year-on-year.
In terms of autonomous driving, Tesla said that in order to further improve its end-to-end training capabilities, it will continue to increase the amount of core AI basic training in the coming months, and the amount of AI training computing increased by more than 130% in the first quarter.
The non-automotive business is becoming a growing part of Tesla's earnings. Tesla said that with the continuous development of the ultra-large commercial energy storage battery Megapack and the growing fleet, the profit of the non-automotive business is expected to continue to grow. In the first quarter, the deployment of energy storage increased to 4.1GWh consecutively. Revenue and gross profit for power generation and storage also reached record highs in the first quarter. Revenue increased 7% year-over-year and gross profit increased 140% year-over-year due to increased Megapack deployments.
In addition, the financial report also mentioned that Tesla's Shanghai energy storage gigafactory is scheduled to start construction in May 2024 and complete mass production in the first quarter of 2025.
Tesla said in its earnings report that the company is currently in the middle of two major growth waves: the first growth wave starts with the global expansion of the Model 3/Y platform, and the next growth wave will be triggered by autonomous advancements and new product launches. In 2024, vehicle sales growth is likely to be significantly slower than in 2023, with efforts to launch next-generation vehicles and other products. By 2024, the energy storage deployment and revenue growth rate of the energy generation and storage business will outpace that of the automotive business.
Accelerating production of "lower-priced models"
Tesla's earnings report shows that the company recently carried out a cost-cutting campaign (10% layoffs) to improve operational efficiency, and will continue to focus on reducing costs across the company in the future, including reducing the cost of sales per vehicle. Tesla continues to focus on profitable growth, including leveraging existing factories and production lines to launch new, more affordable products. Tesla's chief financial officer said on the earnings call that the layoffs have been fully completed.
In addition, Tesla CEO Elon Musk also released a number of "good news" on the conference call. For example, production of lower-priced models will begin in early 2025, if not later this year. Tesla's robotaxi, a self-driving taxaxi, will launch on August 8.
Musk revealed that the company is committed to developing self-driving car technology, and the cumulative investment in the field of autonomous driving this year will exceed $10 billion. In addition, Musk also said that he expects to sell the humanoid robot Optimus Humanoid Robot by the end of 2025.