Elon reveals Cybertruck details / production expectations on Q3 2023 call

[Crissa]

I remember another Radical new concept Vehicle. The Eclispe jet, founded by Microsoft guru. Friction stir welding was supposed to cut costs and be More efficient. They sold the first one in 2007 and went broke after 2 years after producing 262 units. Each unit was sold at a loss of 500k I believe. The CEO said “It’ll get better when we sell more”. No; if you sell it at a loss more sales means more losses.

Two things wrong with that.

1. Tooling is a static cost. It costs basically the same to make one as to make a million, when you tool up to sell a million.
2. Jets aren't a mass market item. The entire annual market for business jets is... 700.

Be prepared for first Cybertrucks. to sell for 100k plus.

If they do that, the demand will be so off the hook, the demand will have swum away.

-Crissa

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[CyberSleuth]

he questioned if he has been wasting his time and missing out on life solving problems that AI would have solved anyway.

I'd like to see this interview. Link?

 

[Gurule92]

Yup.

There is zero chance that the Cybertruck will cost more than the Ford Lightning.

However, I have said it before and I'll say it again: if the backlog is huge, Tesla will start increasing Cybertruck's prices. Meaning, Tesla may start with a low price but will jack it up to ensure that the backlog is manageable.

I suspect prices will be very close to what they announced back in 2019. But the prices will start creeping up as Tesla realizes the actual demand.

Let's see.

This is how they have to do it IMO.

They know demand is insane. But you can't start crazy. You have to build to crazy

 

[chalupacabre]

10-15% would be a wash on the CT DM rebate.

I bet profit below 10% is a loss in Elon's mind. They won't take a loss on more than the first 5000 units excluding capital tooling investment. I am doubling down on 10-15% relative price increase.

 

[Nolacyber]

Two things wrong with that.

1. Tooling is a static cost. It costs basically the same to make one as to make a million, when you tool up to sell a million.
2. Jets aren't a mass market item. The entire annual market for business jets is... 700.

If they do that, the demand will be so off the hook, the demand will have swum away.

-Crissa

Yes tooling is, more or less, fixed; that’s what I meant by amortizing development costs. Cost accountants take total development costs and divide it among projected units to be produced from those production lines.

The Eclipse story is perhaps more relevant than you think. Its manufacturing technology was revolutionary. (Think massive forged castings); and yes they also projected sales in the millions of units. They even started an air taxi business that would darken the sky with personal jets. But I reiterate; you have to produce a unit at a price that produces a profit.
I don’t think Tesla can get there with 2019 prices even adjusted for inflation.
But I guess we’ll know in six weeks or so.

 

[Diehard]

I'd like to see this interview. Link?

I will have to dig. will post back if I find it.

 

[Diehard]

I'd like to see this interview. Link?

 

[TyPope]

I don’t think those things will make a large enough dent in the costs of bringing the CT to market that they will move the needle. I see very few options, and some of those might have a higher price tag, not to offset anything, but to discourage people from ordering them and clogging up the production line. The more they are all the same, the faster they can build them. (To a point)

I believe you are right. I think that some aspects like the cost for larger range may be inflated to help offset the cost of the CT in general. They can do that without making it seem like the Base CT is going to be expensive. I'm saying this the hard way.

Instead of raising the price of ALL CTs by $10,000 to offset initial expense of building it to break even, Tesla MAY:
Raise the price of the "extended range" CT by $10,000 and then ONLY build that version while still showing the lower price "standard range" or "dual motor" version at the original price but NOT building them yet. Then, once they've made 200,000 of the more expensive CTLRs and costs are lower, they will then start making the CTSR. Then, they'll slowly lower the Top Tier price for the CTLR a bit at a time to bring it in line with what they originally showed.

This way, they can still claim "Starting at $39,990 (or whatever... I can't remember right now)" while not having to take the hit from production costs for a while. People will still sign up or wait on the lower cost CT because by then, everyone will see how awesome they are in person!

 

[CyberGus]

Tesla could make a fortune by having events every week and charging $3k for the plus-ones

 

[anionic1]

Its crazy how fickle stock holders can be. I am not necessarily an Elon fan but here we have a CEO that is just flat out honest and doesn't shower the investors with sparkles and rainbows. He is about to release a game changer in the auto industry and i am sure he is burnt out trying to accomplish this. Look at the losses these other companies have been taking for years. I think Ford and Rivian are neck and neck for losing around $30k per EV they sell. Tesla is the opposite of that and has a proven track record of delivering EVs.

And on FSD, at some point we are going to have to socially accept that improvements like this are for the common good and there are just some risks. Is it fair to sue a car company if you rear end a car because you weren't paying attention and cruise control didn't slow you down fast enough. No its not. FSD claims that the driver still needs to be involved at this point. The driver needs to be the primary responsible party and the FSD is a tool to greatly enhance human transport. Its just like when we all started to use Siri and Alexa 10 years ago. At first is would get half the requests wrong and now its probably more like 95% and it can be a game changer in many hands free situations. And it will continue to get better. It looks like the speech and AI communication systems will line up near perfectly with Tesla's neural net work spatial recognition and robotics offerings and we may see really great integration and really great human assistants be them robots or vehicles in the very near future and it would have been decades later if it wasn't for Elon.

 

[TyPope]

Yes tooling is, more or less, fixed; that’s what I meant by amortizing development costs. Cost accountants take total development costs and divide it among projected units to be produced from those production lines.

The Eclipse story is perhaps more relevant than you think. Its manufacturing technology was revolutionary. (Think massive forged castings); and yes they also projected sales in the millions of units. They even started an air taxi business that would darken the sky with personal jets. But I reiterate; you have to produce a unit at a price that produces a profit.
I don’t think Tesla can get there with 2019 prices even adjusted for inflation.
But I guess we’ll know in six weeks or so.

Model Y LR AWD cost $52,990 in 2020
Model Y LR AWD cost $48,490 in 2023

Model 3 LR AWD cost $43,000 in 2019
Model 3 LR AWD cost $45,990 in 2023

Tesla may surprise us.

 

[TyPope]

However, Chief Executive Elon Musk warned, "We dug our own grave with Cybertruck,"
What is the production cost $ killer?
What is the production bottle neck
Design
CT is design for only 1 Tesla NMC 4680
Any change in battery (Shenxing 4C) big big problems
Tesla would need total redesign
New cooling system
New charging hardware
New charging software
New structural change
CT is fully designed for 1 and only 1 battery and there is no production outside of Tesla
Tesla is not and never was a battery manufacturing company.
Now
Even is life saving Shenxing 4C doesn't pan out Tesla cant produce enough batteries in house to support a EV production line.

Tesla may not be a battery manufacturing company but they manufacture a lot of batteries...

To date, the team at Gigafactory Nevada has successfully produced: 7.3 billion battery cells (37 GWh+ annually) 1.5 million battery packs. 3.6 million drive units. -Jan 24, 2023
From https://www.tesla.com/blog/continuing-our-investment-nevada

 

[Bill837]

Have you heard of Megapacks and
and Autobidder, a piece of software? That's the business that makes Tesla energy an important part of the portfolio in ever increasing part I might add. https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/18/t...nking-but-energy-storage-is-making-up-for-it/

 

[cvalue13]

Tesla could make a fortune by having events every week and charging $3k for the plus-ones

OR, and bare with me here:

Tesla *could* take like, $100, from, like, 2M people, for say 4 years or so

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