Elon reveals Cybertruck details / production expectations on Q3 2023 call

[anionic1]

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

They could sell the first 50,000 for $100,000 and it would still be at a loss because the huge sunk cost of buying this land and building a huge factory. I was encouraged to hear Elon mention the losses. That is a reality of almost all new products and is a sobering fact for investors to accept. But it means we will probably see realistic pricing. You are definitely right in that if they set the starting price too high they will have a lot of bad publicity and lose a lot of the reservation holders just out of bad faith. The truth is that they could probably sell every one of the first 50,000 for $100k and then drop the price to a realistic number and they would still likely sell every vehicle that they can produce, which is limited to about 250k annually with their current gigapress capacity.

If they hit a sweet spot with pricing and durability, they will infiltrate the work truck and fleet markets and they will have huge success. If this stays in a pricey Rivian posh camping guys niche then it will be hard for them to break out. like the Model X and S. But i think Tesal wanted the X and S in that category previously and couldnt handle ramping those products too much. I dont see them building massive factories for the X and S like they are for the CT so clearly the CT is meant for a much much higher volume.

I think 2025 and 2026 will be the years of the CT. The reality of forced recession will have set in to manufacturers and the result of a slowing economy will drive material pricing down, wages will have stagnated so demand will be a little lower and the CT assembly line will be a well oiled machine cranking them out at close to 250k per year. I have an early reservation but I might wait depending on what the initial pricing is. I have been holding $65k in my mind.

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[anionic1]

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/

Just wait until we all realize we can run electricity in the city from house to house and bypass the power company and then we can literally share power with power walls and software. bye bye electrical companies. They want to just be grid operators only anyway.

 

[PilotPete]

As for price point and profitability. It’s essential that the Cybertruck be priced not to lose money out if the gate (of course development costs have to be amortized over expected life) but.
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.
Be prepared for first Cybertrucks. to sell for 100k plus.

Don't confuse total volume with production rate. If you build 1 a day, and you lose money, then building 1 a day for a year might not ever be profitable. But if you build 1 a day at a loss, and scale up to 750/day, you stand a very good chance of being profitable. That's the difference between the CT not being a "contributor to overall profitability" and Eclipse. One of the things that went wrong for Eclipse was their PRICING! They said ~$1M and were nowhere near that when it came time to deliver. All the interest dried up, and they never could create the volume and efficiencies that they needed. Efficiency of scale doesn't occur with onesie, twosie kind of rates.

What you are suggesting is that Tesla follows Eclipse. Don't deliver anywhere near the projected and advertised initial price, price it up there where the demand shrinks to nothing, and try to get profitable. Those GigaPresses need to be cranking out VOLUME to be cost effective. That floor space needs to be pumping out VOLUME to justify the CapEx for the line. Otherwise, it's just another S or X and those haven't ever contributed significantly to the bottom line.

 

[Bill837]

Just wait until we all realize we can run electricity in the city from house to house and bypass the power company and then we can literally share power with power walls and software. bye bye electrical companies. They want to just be grid operators only anyway.

Have you heard of VPP? Pilot programs in Australia, CA, and Texas look pretty good. But Power walks are not the huge profit center that MPs are.

 

[PilotPete]

Check back with me in 5 years. I believe enough in their future to have moved a not minuscule amount of money to purchase TSLA stock. I've spent days and days of time in research on where they are. To say that Dojo is nothing is to miss the entire point of its creation. And to ignore where the market is today and over the next 5 years. NVidia didn't go from a minor player making graphics cards to a major player in AI GPUs because that market is "nothing". There are those that continue to do things the same way, and get the same results. That ain't Tesla. And the energy side is far more than just Solar. Take a look at the power companies that are courting Tesla and are INVITING VPPs into their backyard. Boat anchor? Hardly. There is a huge difference between vertical markets, and split focus.

 

[Deleted member 17810]

Tesla's energy storage deployment is 90% year over year.

 

[Jedi2155]

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

GigaNevada is partly owned by Panasonic. While Tesla has built the packs, they do not make the cells.

 

[Crissa]

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.

...We actually know that millions of cars and trucks sell, tho. Tesla isn't trying to manufacture demand out of thin air.

??‍

... Tesla cant produce enough batteries in house to support a CT production line.

Uhh, they can, they plan to, and they will.

https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/150-200-k-cybertrucks-in-2024.9489/#post-185272

https://electrek.co/2023/10/11/tesl...hat Tesla's 4680,over 1,200 vehicles per week.

Tesla's energy storage deployment is 90% year over year.

And, more importantly, pays for itself. The VPP is very profitable compared to investment (it's AI); the megapacks are sold and installed at a profit; solar was a bit of a drag, but it still has been mostly net positive.

GigaNevada is partly owned by Panasonic. While Tesla has built the packs, they do not make the cells.

Panasonic is basically subcontractor. Tesla owns all the cells that come out of that factory. Panasonic doesn't own any of the Kato Rd facility or Giga Texas.

-Crissa

 

[Red61224]

maybe....but for me it is a showstopper because of all my grand plans for introducing the CT to my neighborhood will all have to come to crashing halt......hehehehehe

I agree and I will wait "just a little bit longer" for my range thank you, it's not negotiable.

 

[Diehard]

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

Side note: I was under impression that there were over 2M reservations. Elon just said over 1M reservations. I know 2 is more than one and technically both can be true but why would he under brag? is it closer to 1 or 2?

 

[Sirfun]

Side note: I was under impression that there were over 2M reservations. Elon just said over 1M reservations. I know 2 is more than one and technically both can be true but why would he under brag? is it closer to 1 or 2?

What I heard Elon say was that over 1 million "people" had reserved a Cybertruck. So maybe out of over 2 million reservations, there were 1 million independent "people".

 

[Diehard]

What I heard Elon say was that over 1 million "people" had reserved a Cybertruck. So maybe out of over 2 million reservations, there were 1 million independent "people".

I knew the damn monkeys and aliens would push me to the back of the line.

 

[Sirfun]

I knew the damn monkeys and aliens would push me to the back of the line.

Come on now, I personally reserved 2 under one name, and account. I think in the first million there were many mutiple reservations. Possibly, but not necessarily, monkeys and aliens.

 

[Diehard]

Come on now, I personally reserved 2 under one name, and account. I think in the first million there were many mutiple reservations. Possibly, but not necessarily, monkeys and aliens.

Are you going through with both if specs and price is good?

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