Tesla Q2 2021 Vehicle Production and Deliveries | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Q2 2021 Vehicle Production and Deliveries

ir.tesla.com

35 pointsmarc__159 comments

                Vehicles   Vehicles
                Produced  Delivered

  Q2 2020 [a]     82,272     90,650    
  Q2 2021        206,421    201,250
  
  Annual change   +150.9%   +122.0%

Wow, Tesla more than doubled its vehicle business over the past year. The run rate is on track to surpass 1M vehicles/year before the end of 2021.

[a] Estimates from a year ago: https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-q2-2020-vehicle-pro...

I wonder when (or if?) we'll see scale result in lower pricing. The M3 was originally meant to be Tesla's "affordable" vehicle, but it currently costs $42K base ($39,990 + $1,200 dest. & doc) with no tax incentives at all.

That isn't affordable, that is lower end luxury. A plug-in Prius Prime starts at $29,215 (inc. dest. & doc) but has $4,502 in federal tax incentives.

Also, if I have $42K to spend on an electric vehicle why wouldn't I buy a Ford Lightning instead of a sedan? The Lightning isn't even more expensive in its class of vehicles (short-bed trucks), whereas the Tesla Model 3 is $15K more than its class (mid-size sedans).

Prius Prime is THE vehicle for people who care more about the environment than electric luxury, which Tesla serves.

Nissan Leaf tho

There are many PHEV out there with much better all-electric range. 25 miles is a pittance.

Some time after they can't generate 122.0% year-on-year growth without lowering prices?

Not while they're selling out every car they can manufacture at higher prices.

The Ford Lightning is going to be the best selling electric vehicle in America in 2025 (+/- 2 years) and beyond. The only way this doesn't happen is if Ford doesn't produce enough. If Ford can meet demand, by 2030, the Ford Lightning will be the best selling vehicle in America.

1. as far as I know, there are more pre-orders for the Cybertruck than for the Lightning

2. the bottleneck isn't the production of the vehicles but of the battery cells. Tesla has secured far more battery production than Ford and the Cybertruck needs less cells than Lightning for the same range.

3. the advantages of Tesla will continue to increase as Tesla expands their charging network. Unless I'm mistaken, Ford does not plan to compete and wait for others to build a network.

1. A quick google result shows about 10x. 1 million vs 100,000. Still, I think we'll see Tesla hit a ceiling at some point. I could be wrong. But for the most part, cars like the Model 3 and the Cybertruck existed in a near vacuum of desirable futuristic electric vehicles. Competition is starting to finally show up, and not everyone will choose Tesla. Plus, Tesla needs to produce - if they ramp quickly, I'd suspect maybe 100,000 Cybertrucks to sell each quarter. Ford also needs to ramp quickly, though. They've sold less than 20,000 Mach-e because they've only produced that many.

2. In the EV space, production is key. And batteries are central to EV production. No doubt about it.

3. Tesla has the best charger network (in the U.S. at least; I'm not fully versed.) The combined competitive networks are growing but they need to improve on quality, too. Still, I think this moat is shrinking, not growing.

Having used both, the non Tesla charger networks are almost unusable. UX is extremely important for people buying their first EV, it absolutely has to be plug and play. Sadly only Tesla has understood this.

They will lower prices when they start to have excess inventory, and right now they have the opposite problem. It's hard to get even a $45K entry level Tesla in most of the country without waiting months for delivery.

> Also, if I have $42K to spend on an electric vehicle why wouldn't I buy a Ford Lightning instead of a sedan

That's a weird question. The two vehicles are in completely different categories. What would an average city dweller/commuter/soccer mom do with a truck?

The biggest problem for Ford is that their target demographic for the F-150 is the exact opposite of the environmentally-conscious urban millennial who buys electric, and so marketing is going to be a massive hurdle.

> The two vehicles are in completely different categories.

And yet cost the same, thus my point.

> What would an average city dweller/commuter/soccer mom do with a truck?

It is a five-seater "crew cab"-style truck, so can perform the same basic functions as a sedan and more.

If you have $42K what are the arguments for the Model 3 over the Lightning? You just want a less functional/utilitarian vehicle that costs more after Ford's federal tax incentives?

The argument is that I want a sedan, not a pickup truck, as do a million other annual car buyers.

> as do a million other annual car buyers.

The car category that has seen year-on-year decline, with several manufacturers discontinuing completely, as consumers move to SUVs and trucks in droves. I'm not sure the data is on your side here.

If the Cybertruck and Lightning ship at around $40K let's see if the M3 can compete there. I highly doubt it based on historical US vehicle sales.

And... about a million trucks are sold every 4 months in the U.S.

https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2020-us-pickup-truck-sales-fig...

I think the Ford F-150 Lightning is an odd comparison to a Model 3. But you also get much more with the F-150 for the money.

Still, you can pay $20,000 and get a sedan that does most of what the Model 3 does (as far as basic transportation with seats.) The original comment stands - when will the Model 3 be price competitive with affordable, basic transportation?

> What would an average city dweller/commuter/soccer mom do with a truck?

Wait til you hear what the average city dweller/commuter/soccer mom drives in much of US/Canada...

Most of North America has no incentive to drive smaller vehicles besides the cost of purchase and the cost of fuel. Since electric vehicles remove the cost of fuel, that leaves only the cost of purchase ... which is the same if you get an entry level model 3 or the entry level f150 lightning. The only people that have an incentive to get a smaller vehicle is if you happen to live in one of a few urban centres where vehicle size matters (NYC, SF, Boston, a few others), you need a new vehicle and can't use car share.

> The biggest problem for Ford is that their target demographic for the F-150 is the exact opposite of the environmentally-conscious urban millennial who buys electric

I bet there will aftermarket noise and smoke generators for electric trucks.

One is for sale right now and one is for sale in the future is one major reason.

A few days ago I watched a video, link below, about the Gigapress that Tesla is using, and the expectation is that once that process is fully tuned it will cut production costs dramatically. IIRC, right now they are running the Gigapress at half it's ultimate speed as they work with the manufacturer to tune it.

The TL;DR: It is a giant casting press that allows them to make the chassis in 3 parts rather than 100+, which allows them to not have to weld or assemble all those parts using other robots.

As far as the pricing, I will say on the other side of the coin that $40K is that it doesn't take much to price a Kia up to $45K... Cars are EXPENSIVE now.

https://youtu.be/rsBbt3TxKGg

In context - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.#Timelin...

Looks like ~9% bump over last quarter, and double 2020 Q2.

Context is key.

Overall EV adoption is what I want to see growing.

https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/de/en/insights/2021/electric...

In Europe:

> BEV sales were up by 80% compared to Q1 2020, and PHEVs by 184%. The respective market shares were 6.7% and 7.4% respectively, compared to 3.8% and 2.6% in Q1 2020, and 1.2% and 0.8% in Q1 2019 - strong proof of continued, accelerating growth.

And USA:

> BEVs recorded a market share of 2.1% in January, an almost twofold increase from 1.1% in the equivalent month last year.

Another set of charts:

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/06/27/market-share-of-electri...

Also shows Tesla over time:

https://cleantechnica.com/ev-sales-charts-graphs-stats/

In Europe, only the Renault Zoe outsold the Tesla Model 3 in 2020. Globally, the Tesla Model 3 has a big lead.

once they'll start producing cars in Berlin, the price will become more competitive , they'll have a huge boost of sales.

It will be fascinating to see what the impact of the electric F150 and Tesla's increased battery production will be over the next few years. Does anyone know where Ford is sourcing their batteries from?

Bump of 9% without S and X sales (production lines halted due to the revamp).

In related news, Mach-E sales are up 27% in a single month (June vs May). That's 2,465 vehicles for the month of June. Still a long ways to go to catch Tesla, but they are accelerating quickly.

If I ever wanted a car that can burn at thousands of degrees that can't be put out by local fire department while having a button for a doorknob I would definitely buy a Tesla.

their factories will go in 2023 from investment phase into extraction. Also 2023 will be the first year to give them benefits from their own battery tech. 2023 will be still a year tesla can sell as much as they can produce batteries. Due to enormous demand for Cybertruck, Semi, lower prices in EU

Tesla has still not opened up their Supercharger network, they are the last major provider who has not done this.

Apparently the terms offered by Tesla is unacceptable, it is hard to see the EU keep on accepting this state of affairs.

It does look like this might change in September 2022 in Norway, which in my opinion is very late.

Source:

https://electrek.co/2021/06/24/tesla-confirms-plan-open-supe...

Germany also wants to open up the Supercharger network:

https://www.torquenews.com/13417/german-minister-wants-tesla...

Honestly, as an owner of tesla, I don't want network to be open, tesla has enough volume to keep their own charges loaded.

I paid my premium to be able to charge anywhere I want. I went to a camping destination 3h away from new york? No problem 20 minutes before camping, in the mountains, I have supercharger . Now, imagine some nissan leaf with slow charging capabilities will take my spot? Why Tesla should solve problems of companies who doesn't want to invest enough money? If you look at the price nissan leaf versus model 3 , they have $4-5k gap. That's a lot of money, but people understand that and vote with their wallets. You can see tesla model 3/Y on every traffic light, not Nissan leaf.

I call it fair competition :)

Why open up their chargers if other cars charge much slower than Teslas? You'd have Tesla owners queuing in for a quick charges while a slow charging EV is taking a loong time to charge the same energy.

Tesla should wait until the other cars are almost as fast to charge as Tesla to share their network. This has nothing to do with pricing but availability of chargers for customers who paid Tesla to access to this service.

Tesla could say that each car using one of their chargers can only charge for X minutes per megajoule of battery depletion.

They could choose X such that Tesla owners would get a full charge, which would mean that a car that charges half as quickly would only get half the recharge.

(There would have to also be some sort of limit on how many times you can charge per day, to stop people just travelling from charger to charger and Zeno's paradoxing their way to a full charge).

yep, now imagine summer super hot day, your A/C is burning, and some touristic destination charger is busy. Why on earth tesla owner should spent 1h on charging instead of 15 minutes? Especially premium model S/X owners? I don't understand why. It's sort of communism. Tesla spent billions in their infra. Tesla sells as much cars as possible. One of the reasons they are successful is their infra. There is no rational reason for Tesla to do so. It will increase competition for other networks in a negative way. If somewhere in the mountains there is a tesla charger and others can use it... Why global charging networks would build something there? Unless amount of non-tesla cars is several times higher. Also, considering Tesla plans and release of $25k in 2023 in 1-2 years existing infra would be extremely busy. We need a place for alternative networks, not suffocate competition with communism regulations and promoting Tesla network as the only option.

I didn't say that Tesla should do this, much less be forced to do it. If they did open up their charger network, they would have to make a profit from it some how.

For example, Tesla could set a higher price for charging cars made by other manufacturers, and the limits on how long they could charge for would act as another reminder to car owners of the benefits of a Tesla.

I think your logic of exclusivity works both ways, and suggests that other charging networks should forbid Teslas from charging on them, unless Tesla paid them a huge annual service charge. To some extent, a rising tide lifts all boats, so encouraging more people to buy electric cars provides more charging points for Tesla owners even if the company stop building superchargers.

The elektrek article is misleading. It is quite possible that Tesla will simply arrange that the station include third party chargers. Norway is not requiring Tesla to open the network to other brands; it is simply the case that local authorities who want to improve access to chargers will only provide financial incentives if this results in increased access for all users.

The drop in Model S/X sales is huge (17,650 2019 Q2 -> 2340 2021 Q2). I'm sure buyer are just preferring the newer model 3/Y, and the total sales have grown a lot. But the Fremont plant producing S/X really isn't producing much.

Edit: Turns out the shift is just a retooling

I guess most people were waiting for the Plaid

You’re saying basically 17k to 2k??

Its because they renewed the model and they can't produce anywhere close to that many of the new ones. The 2340 are basically all S, X is not being produced.

I will like not go up to peak, but it will be much higher then it is now.

Tesla actually halted production of the S/X for most of the first half of 2021 as they retool for the Plaid Model S/X.

Not particularly surprising given that Model S production was shut down for almost all of H1 to switch over to the refresh.

Model S production line was turned off for much of the quarter because of retooling and switching to the refreshed "Plaid" model.

They just couldn't produce enough due the the revamp and some missing parts. And the once they produced couldn't all be delivered in time before end of Q.*

The X production line was off for the full quarter, and the S has just restarted.

Try ordering an S/X and see the delivery ETA!

They stopped building the Model S&X for several months to cutover to refresh (Plaid et al). So that's 2340 cars sold in a 3 week period.

2021 is critical for Tesla. They still make all their profits from selling regulatory credits to other manufacturers. More they make cars, more they sell credits.

FCA / PSA Group, Fiat Chrysler, GM, Volkswagen are buying ZEV credits from Tesla, but there are so many fully electric cars coming to mass market in 2022 (like F-150) that the ZEV revenue for Tesla dries up fast.

Tesla's Regulatory Credit Revenue Will Rise Again In 2021 https://insideevs.com/news/482452/tesla-revenue-emissions-cr...

Tesla is selling electric car credits to Volkswagen in China https://electrek.co/2021/04/01/tesla-selling-electric-car-cr...

Every year we hear Tesla is going broke for the last ~10 years. Every year they survive. Regulatory credits are a legitimate revenue source as long as governments require legacy automakers buy them (who are profitable because they sell combustion vehicles without the externalities of burning fossil fuels captured in costs and prices). They’re growing units sold almost 100% year over year. Markets don’t care if one thinks regulatory credits are a handout (they’re not, they level the playing field against combustion vehicles). May they extract every bit they can to accelerate the electrification of transportation.

(no financial interest in TSLA besides being a customer)

Admittedly, not wanting them to go broke because you're a customer is an important financial interest, but I agree with the rest of your point.

To be frank, I couldn’t care less about our Tesla vehicles. I have kids, and climate change is coming. That is an existential concern, and why Tesla can’t yet go bust.

Only when a tipping point has been reached and combustion vehicles can no longer be built because manufacturing has retooled, supply chains have been reconfigured, and petroleum supply infra enters a death spiral can Tesla financially fail and the repercussions would be muted.

Fair point - I agree with all of that! :)

The big OEMs are aiming at 2035 to stop ICE production. So I think it is just a question of time by now.

Tesla has $20B in the bank. They aren't going broke any time soon.

I think you are projecting something negative to my comment. I was simply analyzing the situation. Billion in revenue/car is going away. Tesla should easily survive by diluting stocks.

If you think in numbers, it's clear that current valuation of Tesla is not coming from selling cars unless Tesla takes 40% of the car market in next 10-15 years.

You need to add Tesla is an energy company or something else into the mix.

When you can sell $5b in stock to the market any time you want and raise infinite capital, it's hard to go bankrupt

If you exclude non-recurring revenue like the regulatory credits, you should also exclude non-recurring expenses like Musk's stock grants. Especially given that the stock grants don't cost Tesla cash.

IOW, Tesla is profitable with or without the regulatory credits.

This line of thinking very likely has the causation backwards — Tesla is a complex-enough business that they can determine how much they're gonna make in regulatory credits, and then turn opex up or down accordingly, with profit being a downstream effect of that decision.

Your own article link is very positive on the future of regulatory credit sales

> Tesla is on a roll selling emissions credits to other automakers, and the end certainly isn't in sight.

> According to Credit Suisse analyst Dan Levy, regulatory credit revenue is poised to grow to $2 billion in 2021 compared to the $1.4 billion in 2020

> Levy believes the future will continue to look positive for Tesla, pointing to Europe's stricter emissions standards as one reason. While we don't know for sure how things might look in the US under the new Biden administration, just about everything points to huge support for electric cars.

Government requirements are continuing get more and more difficult and because Tesla is producing more cars, even if the price of regulatory credits drop they might get more money from it.

And what really matter is automotive unit margin and Tesla is doing well there even without regulatory revenue taken into account.

This is a bit of a trope with Tesla. "Roadster sales will be limited by market" -> they then do S. S sales ... they do Y and 3. Car sales... -> they do battery storage.

Let me posit another possibility. Biden admin brings back a $7,500 credit for all US mfg's of EV's.

Or someone sticks a major gas tax on things.

Or a carbon tax.

Etc etc -> there are things out there that might improve tesla sales (for me it would be adding Apple Carplay).

These complaints about tesla assume tesla is not smart / able to change what they do, but they are probably TO flexible, and will almost certainly change.

Profits are increasing much faster than ZEV credits. It's just icing on the cake.

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