Tesla introduced in a press release that it might be internet hosting its 2023 Investor Day on March 1, 2023. The occasion can be stay streamed from the corporate’s Gigafactory Texas, and a few institutional and retail traders can be invited to attend in individual. All traders, the corporate says, will be capable to see Tesla’s “most superior manufacturing line in addition to talk about long run growth plans, era Three platform, capital allocation, and different topics with our management group.”
Let unpack what we learn about these main subjects forward of the March 1 Investor Day and make some educated guesses about Tesla’s upcoming advances.
Lengthy-Time period Enlargement Plans
Demand for Tesla all-electric autos continues to extend. Even with the corporate’s latest value cuts and commensurate revenue declines, Tesla can nonetheless enhance income and keep its gross revenue superiority over different manufacturers. That’s as a result of the corporate has the capability to fabricate more than a million vehicles yearly, along with power merchandise, battery cells, and different sustainable power merchandise.
Economies of scale and elevated battery provide are serving to Tesla to search out equilibrium between pricing and revenue. The result’s the corporate is ramping up manufacturing around the globe. It’s probably that new manufacturing facilities will open in North America and in Asia in 2023 and 2034.
Asia is an interesting manufacturing location for Tesla, with the corporate positioned effectively to seize speedy gross sales development on the world’s largest and quickest rising continent. Tesla gave the impression to be getting near signing a deal to construct a plant in Indonesia earlier this month, in response to sources acquainted with the matter in a report from Bloomberg. The news got here after Tesla negotiated with the nation for months, particularly discussing the Southeast Asian nation’s wealthy provide of nickel — an important mineral for constructing electrical automobile batteries.
China will turn out to be notably vital as each a manufacturing hub and gross sales income generator. Even with the backdrop of Covid shutdowns, Shanghai is Tesla’s largest and most efficient manufacturing unit, with interesting provide chain networks feeding into it. The corporate’s Q2 2022 replace exhibits the significance of the Shanghai Gigafactory and its function as the corporate’s essential export hub. Furthermore, Musk’s confidence in Shanghai is symbolized by the appointment of Zhu Xiaotong, additionally referred to as Tom Zhu, to supervise Tesla’s US meeting vegetation and gross sales operations in North America and Europe. Zhu was beforehand Tesla’s vp for Higher China.
Tesla’s footprint in California is made up of Megapack manufacturing and automobile castings in Lathrop, {hardware} and software program engineering in Palo Alto, automobile and battery manufacturing in Fremont, battery growth and testing in San Diego, and automobile design in Hawthorne. In 2012, the primary Mannequin S rolled off the meeting line at Tesla’s manufacturing unit in Fremont, California. The Fremont manufacturing unit has restricted room to increase, although, with the utmost potential to provide as much as 550,000 Mannequin 3/Mannequin Y a 12 months plus as much as 100,000 refreshed Mannequin S/Mannequin X a 12 months.
With Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin now producing EVs, the automaker is seeking to considerably enhance output and gross sales. Whereas it’s at present producing and promoting far fewer items than legacy automakers within the nation, Tesla is focused to develop to 500,000 in Berlin by 2024.
On January 24, Tesla announced will probably be investing over $3.6 billion extra to proceed rising Gigafactory Nevada, including 3,000 new group members and two new factories: a 100 GWh 4680 cell manufacturing unit (with capability to provide sufficient batteries for 1.5 million gentle obligation autos yearly) in addition to its first high-volume Semi manufacturing unit. The Semi is the corporate’s totally electrical mixture truck, with 500 miles of vary and power consumption of lower than 2 kWh per mile.
Right now, we’re saying $3.6B of latest funding in Giga Nevada.
– 4M sq ft of latest manufacturing footprint
– 3k further group members
– 2 new manufacturing services: a 100 GWh 4680 cell manufacturing unit & our first high-volume Semi manufacturing unitParticulars → https://t.co/4CBOIFLwAW pic.twitter.com/rqXzyE7eRK
— Tesla (@Tesla) January 24, 2023
Era Three Platform
Musk has claimed its next-generation automobile platform — the Era Three Platform — can be “the first focus of the automobile growth group” to any extent further.
Through the Q2 2022 investor name, Musk said, “It’s apparent you possibly can guess what we’re engaged on, which is that this next-generation automobile, which can be about half the price of the three/Y platform. It’ll be smaller, to be honest, however it can I believe swiftly turn out to be — swiftly exceed the product of all of our different autos mixed.” Thus, this can be a brand new platform, totally different from the one on which Mannequin Three and Mannequin Y are constructed. Musk additionally appears to confirm that this lower-cost Tesla may even be for robotaxi service.
When Tesla moved from the Mannequin S/X platform to the Mannequin 3/Y platform, the price of manufacturing fell sharply. The manufacturing transition opened up quite a few prospects for the corporate, making it accessible to numerous shoppers (like me), and subsequently introducing all-electric transportation to a complete new phase of society.
Anticipated Capital Allocation for Tesla in 2023
Varied communications from the Tesla group recommend that the corporate is engaged on:
- Fulfilling the 1.3 million Cybertruck reservations on file, harnessing the complete potential of manufacturing enhancements such because the Giga Press. Tesla has pioneered using these huge casting machines to make giant single items of auto underbodies, streamline manufacturing, and scale back the work of even robots. A number of 9,000-ton Giga Casting machines could also be wanted to realize this Cybertruck goal.
- A refreshed model of the Tesla Mannequin 3 — This would be the first time within the Mannequin 3’s nearly-6-year historical past that its design has been refreshed, and reports say Tesla is aiming to start manufacturing of the automobile in 2023. One focus of the redesign codenamed “Highland” is to cut back the variety of parts and complexity within the inside of the Mannequin Three w.hile specializing in options that Tesla consumers worth, together with the show.
- A robotaxi designed to be a shared automobile — Within the Q2 2022 name, Musk let slip that Tesla may have totally autonomous robotaxis with no steering wheels or brake pedals in service by 2024.
- A $25,000 Tesla — In 2021, Tom Zhu, then president of Tesla’s operation in China, spoke in an interview with Xinhua Internet, the Chinese language state media outlet, that Tesla China is creating a $25,000 automobile. A number of pundits jumped on the $25,000 Tesla bandwagon afterward, however, because it has but didn’t materialize, media retailers like Forbes are strolling again their predictions. (As an alternative, they’re leaning towards affordable electric car models from Asia which can be coming — quickly.)
- The brand new 4680 battery, which is lastly beginning to seem in quantity. The 4680 cells are 5.5 occasions the dimensions of the 2170 cells by quantity. Tesla wants about 4,400 of the 2170 cells to energy the Mannequin Y and there are 17,600 factors that have to be welded — 4 per cell — to create a pack that may be built-in into the automotive. Musk’s promised enhancements in battery price and efficiency are seen by investors as critical to Tesla’s quest to usher in an period the place it will possibly promote a $25,000 EV for a revenue.
- Autonomous driving at some degree in all autos — This has been an integral a part of Musk’s dreamscape for years. Final 12 months about this time, Musk stated that Full Self Driving is really complex. “They do not know how laborious FSD is. Solely path to success imo is hardcore real-world AI software program with devoted NN inference acceleration ASICs in automotive, multibillion greenback NN coaching supercluster and 10+ billion miles of auto information. Good luck.”
- The power storage line is kicking into gear and can turn out to be a major income earner for the corporate. Tesla is increasingly focusing on renewable energy as a whole, somewhat than simply electrical autos, providing a broad vary of photo voltaic and power storage merchandise for clear power functions.
