Electric vehicles are a brand new field, involving brand new suppliers and brand new pricing systems. Therefore, whether they are really profitable, short-term profits and long-term profit levels depend on the company's mouth.
Two days ago, Tesla released its Q3 quarterly financial report, with operating profit of US$3.7 billion and net profit of US$3.3 billion. The gross profit margin of the automobile business reached 27.9%. Tesla is profitable in selling cars.
. Currently in Tesla's plan, this profitability provides it with stronger development momentum. In the conference call, Musk said that the new product will be priced lower than 3 and Y, and the size will be smaller, and the cost of building a car will be 50% of the existing cost.
Tesla replaced the S/X platform with the 3/Y platform, achieving a substantial leap in the road to car manufacturing, with sales quickly exceeding 1 million. The new product has gone from unattainable pricing to being available on tiptoe by working people, and cost control is required.
Although the current price of Model 3 is around 250,000, Tesla still feels the price is too high. The official has provided relevant car purchase policy subsidies for promotion, and is also studying a new platform architecture.
According to cost estimates, even the lowest-equipped Model 3 has a profit margin of around 30%, which means that Tesla can earn at least 60,000 yuan by selling a car alone.
For Musk, building cars is a chore, but he still needs to work hard to promote the car selling plan. Tesla's core competitiveness is not the product, but software. A set of FSD is priced at more than 60,000 yuan, and selling software is Tesla's biggest goal.
makes the price lower and lower, making more people afford Tesla, and then let them accept Tesla's software and buy it. This is the fundamental reason why Musk is crazy about selling cars.
So in terms of car manufacturing, Musk is constantly streamlining. He requires the shortest time and least materials to create a better product, and a huge change can be seen in Tesla's products.
For example, the length of the wiring harness is shortened from a few thousand meters of a fuel vehicle to a few hundred meters of a Model Y. At the same time, the white body can be made into two parts and directly spliced. The body battery is integrated and can also save the battery cover. All design directions are for saving process.
In production, Tesla saves money because of its bold design and advanced thinking. The original cost of building a car is very low, including labor, materials, electricity bills, robotic arm purchase quantity, etc., which greatly saves invisible costs.
Musk said that the cost of the next generation platform can be reduced by 50%, which does not mean that the car price is reduced by 50%, but rather that the cost in the production process continues to decrease. The efficiency of the production side is improved and expenditure is reduced. According to forecasts, the pricing of the next generation of Tesla models is very likely to be around 180,000.
Because there are many costs that cannot be reduced, such as battery costs, tires, glass and other hardware costs, the purchase price will not change. What Tesla can change is the expenditure on basic production and the continued saving of materials in battery design, and at the same time, it can also give up more profit margins.
can be seen that even if Tesla sells for 200,000, it is still profitable.
But profitability is very difficult for many new forces. Xiaopeng , NIO , Nezha, WM and other companies have very poor profitability. According to cost forecasts, most new forces have not yet come out of the fact that the more they sell, the more they lose.
On the one hand, new forces have invested too much in the early stage, and the costs of factories, channels, R&D, procurement, personnel, etc. are very difficult. Tesla has also experienced this rare development process. From 0 to 1, everyone will encounter development. New forces have experienced the difficulties encountered by Tesla ten years ago.
On the other hand, most new forces have a bit biased path. Consumers buy goods rather than services. A large number of new forces invest too much in services. After sales, service costs cannot be reduced and will increase exponentially. Moreover, it is impossible to effectively reduce costs and increase efficiency on the production side. New forces that pay too much attention to luxury have invested too much. The purpose of creating luxury gimmicks is to make themselves better in the high-end market, but luxury requires financial resources to build them.
The biggest problem of the new forces is not that the pricing is too high, but that while the pricing is too high, all the chips are shining out, the configuration is top, the battery life is top, and the size is top. It is difficult to overturn our products today on the road of future development.
For example, Xiaopeng G9, the size of more than 5 meters is already the ceiling of a passenger car. The materials and sense of technology have reached the peak. It is very difficult to improve the brand value. The cost of creating such a product is very high, and corporate bicycle profits are not high. If you want to compress costs and increase profits, you need to reduce costs and increase efficiency in core production.
What new forces are most not good at is cost reduction and efficiency improvement. In addition to the difficulty in ensuring quality, whether existing platforms and technologies are supported is also a question.
Judging from the current electric vehicle market structure, Tesla is still following the software sales plan. Selling more cars is equivalent to laying the foundation and laying a platform for software sales. Only with cars can there be a space for FSD and V3 to super-summation development. New forces have not gotten out of the quagmire of being unable to make healthy profits. The more they sell, the bigger the system, and stay on the basic car manufacturing surface and cannot transform to a higher level.
