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2024 is a year of recognized reshuffle in the automotive industry, on the one hand, intelligent driving will break out in an all-round way, the intelligent battle of new energy vehicles will be more in-depth, and cars and brands without intelligence will face the situation of being eliminated. Tesla, as a new energy giant, does not seem to have made a particularly big move this year.
In the domestic auto market, the price war is in full swing, and car companies are busy cutting prices and volume configurations, and their product strength has been significantly improved compared with last year. The refreshed version of the Tesla Model 3 and the facelifted Model Y have relatively limited upgrade points, the price is higher than the old model, and there has not been much improvement in sales.
However, this situation is likely to be broken due to Tesla's 2024 Q1 earnings report. In addition, the Model 3 Performance was unveiled without warning. It is worth mentioning that after the release of the Q1 earnings report, Tesla's stock price ended its previous seven-day losing streak, and the U.S. stock rose by about 13% after hours, about 400 billion yuan.
Then again, the Model 3 Performance's product power has never been a concern, but the information revealed in the financial report has allowed Xiaotong to see more possibilities for Tesla than cars.
The strongest Model 3 on the surface is here, but that's about it
或许是小米SU7 Max太过耀眼,以至于特斯拉Model 3 Performance显得有些"透明"了。
The price of the new Tesla Model 3 high-performance version is $52,990 (about 383,900 yuan) on the official website in the United States, and the domestic price starts at 335,900 yuan. The new model is more adapted to the needs of the track, with a built-in third-generation track mode, a new adaptive damping system, a new aerodynamic package, an updated interior with a new design style and new sports seats.
Its parameters are not weak in a similarly priced high-performance pure electric sedan, accelerating to 100 km/h in 2.9 seconds, powertrain 510 hp, reaching a top speed of 262 km/h, EPA range of 476 km, and using Panasonic's 82 kWh battery pack. For comparison, the Xiaomi SU7 Max has 673 hp, a CLTC range of 800 km, and a top speed of 265 km/h.
Xiaotong also noticed that Tesla has engaged in some "special supply" methods, and the above data on the high-performance version of the Model 3 is for the Fremont production version. The high-performance version of the Model 3 produced by the Shanghai Gigafactory has reduced horsepower to 460 horsepower, and the official acceleration time of 100 km/h is 3.1 seconds, using LG's 79kWh battery pack, and the official CLTC range is 623 km. The other two versions are the same, perhaps because of the "cheap is cheap".
The domestic price is cheaper and put aside, and the "special supply" of Tesla's Model 3 high-performance version may have the risk of attracting doubts from the outside world.
Car companies have used their proud technology and tuning on high-performance models, racing sports packages and track modes to enhance the "inner connotation" of the brand and provide more choices for enthusiast players. The new Model 3 Performance is not remarkable on paper, and how well it performs depends on the official lap record.
But like Extreme Krypton 007 and Xiaomi SU7, the hot sales will never be the high-performance version, and the Tesla Model 3 is the same for high performance, at best, it is a product that increases brand influence and shows muscles, and it cannot make ripples in the entire Model 3 renewal series, and it is obviously unrealistic to use it as the key to sales.
Entry-level electric vehicles are still the "magic weapon for sales"
The new Model 3 Performance is followed by Tesla's 2024 Q1 earnings report.
The 2024 Q1 financial report reflects Tesla's recent pressure, with total revenue of $21.301 billion, down 9% year-on-year, gross profit of $3.696 billion, down 18% year-on-year, and gross margin of 17.4%. Roughly speaking, Tesla is a little further away from "the most profitable car company in the world".
Tesla's total revenue from its automotive business was $17.678 billion, down 13% year-on-year, and its net profit plummeted by 55%. In the first quarter of 2024, Tesla delivered 386,800 vehicles worldwide, including 369,800 Model 3 and Model Y, and 17,000 Model X and Model S, lower than the market forecast of 430,000 vehicles.
The good news is that Tesla's energy deployment hit a new record in Q1, with an added value of 4.1GWh, energy storage business revenue increased by 7% year-on-year, and gross profit margin increased by 140% year-on-year. The production of 4680 cells continues to grow, with an annual production capacity of about 7GWh, and it is expected that the battery production capacity in Q2 will be faster than the capacity growth rate of the Cybertruck.
Officials said that in 2024, the deployment and revenue growth rate of the energy storage business will exceed that of the automotive business, and there is a very good momentum from now on. However, since entering the second half of new energy vehicles in 2024, the price war everywhere has made it impossible for industry giants like Tesla to settle down, and they need to find a new way to break the situation.
Musk was calm during the call, believing that competitors were also down in sales, and that they were doing better in comparison.
It is an indisputable fact that the domestic new energy market is fierce, and even Tesla can no longer go sideways as before. On April 21, Tesla China announced a price cut for the whole system, with the starting price of Model 3 coming to 231,900 yuan, and the starting price of Model Y dropping to 249,900 yuan.
On the other hand, plug-in hybrid models have put a lot of pressure on Tesla. Due to the limitation of energy replenishment, the popularity of pure electric models has begun to slow down, and plug-in hybrid models without energy replenishment anxiety are still the first choice for mainstream families. Before there are subversive advances in battery technology and charging experience, there will still be great resistance to the penetration of pure electric vehicles, and Tesla cannot avoid it.
However, Musk remains optimistic about this, and announced that he will update the vehicle lineup in the coming weeks, including accelerating the introduction of more affordable models, and fulfilling his previous promise to start production in the second half of 2025. The final production target for the new model is to achieve a maximum annual production capacity of 3 million units, and to promote the popularization of electric vehicles on a larger scale. As for the price segment, the official did not disclose that Xiaotong believes that it is still the 150,000 yuan level previously analyzed by the outside world, and is very curious about what kind of product power Tesla can make at this price.
If, as the outside world says, Tesla abandons the development of low-cost models, then the competitive advantage of this car company will be a few points less.
In the face of the fierce encirclement of competitors, Tesla chose to sink the market and capture a market with a larger audience. With Tesla's brand influence, cheaper electric cars do sound appealing. However, the problem is that the domestic market of less than 200,000 yuan is also full of masters, Tesla has a huge charging system and a large brand influence, so it is not difficult to snatch a part of the cake.
It is foreseeable that this affordable model is Tesla's most promising growth point at present, but time waits for no one, and no one can predict what the car market will be like in 2025.
Betting on AI, Tesla's future is still promising
Tesla's free cash flow in Q1 was negative $2.5 billion, mainly due to the large amount of capital consumed by the construction of AI infrastructure. After Apple's "Titan" car plan collapsed, it shifted its focus to AI technology research and development. Musk attaches as much importance to AI as Apple, and in 2023, he founded xAI, an artificial intelligence startup, to increase AI research and development.
In Musk's view, autonomous driving is Tesla's killer feature to build a brand and attract investment, and he believes that the world's most valuable automaker will be "worthless" if it cannot achieve full self-driving. In addition to cars, Musk has always wanted to create a self-driving online car-hailing country, using low-cost electric vehicles + FSD to play a fully autonomous driving system to achieve the goal.
In addition to accelerating the development of entry-level models, Musk also said in the conference call that he is expected to show the Robotaxi product dedicated to the robot taxi in August this year, calling it "Cyber Cab", which may be used for the official naming of Tesla taxis. At the same time, Tesla also showed a preview of its own ride-hailing app in the financial report.
Tesla believes in the value potential of AI, and applies AI technology to the Optimus robot on a large scale, and at the same time develops a Robotaxi fleet, similar to the combination of AirBnB and UBer. In addition, the more advanced HW5 hardware platform is expected to appear in vehicles around the end of 2025 and has already been designed. Xiaotong speculates that the new platform will most likely appear on the entry model, which will be the first platform for Tesla to play full self-driving.
The latest FSD V12 version is currently the industry's first end-to-end autonomous driving system based entirely on neural networks, and "AI driving the car" is no longer an imaginary scenario. Musk revealed that even if the FSD is not modified, it can still perform well in the Chinese market, and the commercial use of FSD mainly depends on the regulators, and some delicate problems must be solved, such as doing targeted road training.
In the automotive industry, Tesla is currently under a lot of pressure, and the external product strength such as the intelligence and interior materials of the Model series is in urgent need of upgrades, and the new Model 3 Performance is likely to have no earth-shaking changes. Intelligent driving services are "unsuitable" and expensive, and the support rate in China is very limited, so we can only wait for FSD to bring some good news.
In this context, Tesla's All in AI layout is indeed very forward-looking, and the end-to-end large model technology based on neural networks leads the industry, and the development potential is not small, which is only a little localized for the domestic market. However, the domestic intelligent process is not weak, the industry began to emphasize that "there is a road can be opened", AI large models are on the car, cars become more user-friendly, Tesla is not absolutely leading, and the achievements of domestic manufacturers also have many merits.
Perhaps, the most valuable place in the whole body of Tesla cars in the future is the AI intelligent system.