Cheaper future version?

[Ehninger1212]

Early on Elon put a lot of emphasis on this being a truck for doing truck things.

I was curious if anyone on this forum would be wanting of a stripped down version? I know this is probably likely not to happen.. But when i start to think about ALL the tech they shoved into this thing I start to see a market for.. just a truck.

I don't need a powered frunk, I don't need a powered bed cover, I don't need rear seat screen and controls.. or rear heated seats.. heck I don't even care about front heated seats! I'm sure there are many more items which could be removed. Rear steer is cool and all.. but living in Texas.. i have no problem driving a full size truck around normally.

The durability and electrification is what drew me to the CyberTruck.. not all the tech.

I Basically want a farm truck for the apocalypse.

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[Kahpernicus]

And make it a two door!

 

[Ehninger1212]

And make it a two door!

I'd love a two door! or even clamshell on one side.. you know.. for my dog.

 

[JBee]

It won't make much of a difference.

The main costs are in the pack, drivetrain, cabin and body.

The thing that needs to realised here is that costs are relative to manufacturing costs AND resource costs. Typically, manufacturing costs are much more than resource costs, and manufacturing costs are the cost or making a factory, the various part manufacturing lines, the assembly lines.

These costs must be recouped through sales as well, and depending on how fast they want to recover them, provided the vehicle is still marketable, this will determine the vehicle sale price much more than the resource price, of the parts used per vehicle.

The point is that the cost of the vehicle is not simply the sum of it's parts, rather how each of these affect overall cost. For example the rear wheel steering uses a single motor from the front, and the front uses two of the same motors for redundancy.

So picking out features individually need not produce the desired result. You could for example delete the 48V system, but you'd end up with more expensive wiring. You could do the same for the structural pack, or casts etc.

So without knowing the cost of manufacturing, and implications for the product on a part by part level, it's really not a productive exercise to guess what could make it more affordable. You'd be better off designing one from scratch.

Although I like the design, I think the strict adherence to the low poly design made them compromise in parts that they would not have had to otherwise.

 

[davelloydbrown]

It won't make much of a difference.

The main costs are in the pack, drivetrain, cabin and body.

The thing that needs to realised here is that costs are relative to manufacturing costs AND resource costs. Typically, manufacturing costs are much more than resource costs, and manufacturing costs are the cost or making a factory, the various part manufacturing lines, the assembly lines.

These costs must be recouped through sales as well, and depending on how fast they want to recover them, provided the vehicle is still marketable, this will determine the vehicle sale price much more than the resource price, of the parts used per vehicle.

The point is that the cost of the vehicle is not simply the sum of it's parts, rather how each of these affect overall cost. For example the rear wheel steering uses a single motor from the front, and the front uses two of the same motors for redundancy.

So picking out features individually need not produce the desired result. You could for example delete the 48V system, but you'd end up with more expensive wiring. You could do the same for the structural pack, or casts etc.

So without knowing the cost of manufacturing, and implications for the product on a part by part level, it's really not a productive exercise to guess what could make it more affordable. You'd be better off designing one from scratch.

Although I like the design, I think the strict adherence to the low poly design made them compromise in parts that they would not have had to otherwise.

fixed costs vs. variable cost. After enough CT are produced then the fixed costs are paid off and you are just looking at the variable COG to make the truck which should come down with time and increased volume, so if you can wait the cost of the CT should come down if Elon is true to his word of increasing EV adoption.

 

[VR Driving]

eventually, at the current demand and supply, it is gonna take a while.

Ford has only produced 85k F150 Lightning to date, and they are already having a difficult time selling them at their current price. When Tesla can produce 250k annually, this truck can't be expensive. I'm hoping it will reach back to Model Y pricing by the end of 2025.

 

[ED_SFO]

From past models I know they will bake at least 30% gross profit margin into the truck at the beginning. Once they start pumping them out faster than demand, they will slowly start pulling back on profit margin to drive demand. I dont think a reduction will happen until 2025. They could just pump out 50k trucks a year if they wanted, and keep it a halo truck. The next gen is almost done and they could focus on volume production there.

 

[firsttruck]

From past models I know they will bake at least 30% gross profit margin into the truck at the beginning. Once they start pumping them out faster than demand, they will slowly start pulling back on profit margin to drive demand. I dont think a reduction will happen until 2025. They could just pump out 50k trucks a year if they wanted, and keep it a halo truck. The next gen is almost done and they could focus on volume production there.

Smart managers do NOT authorize purchase of TWO expensive IRDA Gigapress casting machine systems and foundry systems to make only 50K units per year.

You can't sell 250K units per year if price of most common model is $80K.

 

[VR Driving]

Smart managers do NOT authorize purchase of TWO expensive IRDA Gigapress casting machine systems and foundry systems to make only 50K units per year.

You can't sell 250K units per year if price of most common model is $80K.

That is against Tesla's mission, so it will not happen, their goal is to make as much as possible as fast as possible to replace all ICE cars on the planet.

 

[Crissa]

I don't need a powered frunk, I don't need a powered bed cover, I don't need rear seat screen and controls.. or rear heated seats.. heck I don't even care about front heated seats! I'm sure there are many more items which could be removed. Rear steer is cool and all.. but living in Texas.. i have no problem driving a full size truck around normally.

Something not mentioned but...

...In this day and time, many of these powered things are cheaper than the alternative.

A powered window or door doesn't have to extend into reach of the user, it doesn't have to deal with variable torque or pressure from human muscles, it doesn't need handles and it will apply just the right pressure on the latches each time.

When they were new technology, that wasn't the case. But it is now.

This is the same reason Tesla makes the vents controllable from the screen - they don't need to deal with the tolerances of humans tugging and pulling on them, just their narrow, mechanical lives lived in isolation from us primitive beasts.

The screen controls are, in the end, cheaper than having toggles and switches now. It's a single unit, instead of a collection of physical parts.

And heated/vented seats are, in the end, actually less complex than the dashboard vents!

All this is before you get to the cost of designing, stocking, and building variants that they they have to train their workers to build. You need something extremely more simple before you actually start saving money in something that's planned to have a quarter to a half million units per year.

-Crissa

 

[VR Driving]

Removing features doesn't always lead to cost savings, particularly if there are still higher-tier models that include these features. For instance, if Tesla removes heated seats from its lower-cost cars, it would have to manufacture a separate batch without the heating elements. This can be less cost-effective. If, for example, the higher-tier models with heated seats outsell the basic models by a ratio of 9:1, the basic models would only represent 10% of the total production. In the long run, this could make them more expensive to produce.

The logic behind feature removal is more effective when applied across the entire product line. A good example is the Ultra Sonic Sensors situation, where the feature was removed from all models and replaced through software. This kind of change can save about $150 per car. When multiplied by the annual production volume, the total savings can be substantial.

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