Tesla Q3 2021 Vehicle Production and Deliveries | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Q3 2021 Vehicle Production and Deliveries

ir.tesla.com

91 pointsbald88 comments

Wow, didn't realize there was such a discrepancy between Model 3/Y volume and Model S/X volume. I expected it to be substantial but not a 25x difference.

Before the S/X refresh which started around December 24 2020[0], they had ~16k S/X in q3 and q4 2020[1]. Retooling for the refresh was supposedly going to last only a month, but it turned into them only producing Model S cars starting in June and X orders still have no delivery date[2].

0: https://insideevs.com/news/460036/tesla-shut-down-model-s-x-...

1: https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/1LRLZK_2020_Q4_Quarterly_...

2: https://twitter.com/DirtyTesla/status/1443543167098359813

I mean, a Model X with some options hits $110k quick. A fully kitted long range Y is about $65k. That latter number is a lot still, but way, way, way closer in the range of what an above average income earner can afford.

There is also the absurdity of spending $100k+ on an asset that depreciates so heavily. My spouse and I make enough money to afford this car without much thought, but there isn’t a chance in hell I’d light that much money on fire.

You could nearly double your range by buying two model Y’s it would give you around 600 miles — a much better price, and theoretically you could tow charge one and charge it, so it’s not out of the realm of possible.

To be fairrrr, only people that have range anxiety are those that listen to the oil and gas industry.

At that point maybe somebody could start selling a ginormous battery pack on wheels. Buying a second car just to increase range seems ridiculous.

More ridiculous than buying 1 car for double the price? I’m confused.

People pay twice the price for other reasons too. Performance and cost seldom have linear relation.

You can say that about anything. The point here is that buying a Model S/X for 100k instead of buying two Model Y cannot be defended by performance metrics alone.

> and theoretically you could tow charge one and charge it

Charge it... from where? There isn't a free energy source here...

The fact that you can charge an electric vehicle by towing it in gear is common knowledge among those with knowledge of how EVs work - you're basically just relying on regen to put juice back into the battery, using the motor as a generator.

You can, but it's not an infinite energy machine, the increased resistance to moving forwards is going to suck more energy out of the first vehicles battery than it is going to put into the second, your total range will be strictly less than if you didn't do that.

You have 0% energy added by having one Model x/S. How impractical it is, fine: but, the fact you might be able to do it in the future gives model y’s cars the better decision over one Model X/S

Are you suggesting that driving around with 2 cars, one towing the other, will double the range?

Moving 2 cars together takes almost double the power. The aerodynamic drag can decrease slightly — work on semi trucks in close convoy formation suggests maybe 10-20%.

No, you have double the range by having two cars for less than 100k. I’m saying at least at this point you at least have a chance at using batteries to recharge batteries.

It’s common knowledge that you can do this.

> you could tow charge one

This doesn't work out. The extra drain on the towing car more than makes up for the regen that the towed car gets.

They pulled the Model S Plaid Plus, so I'm sure some cancelled orders

For reference: they did 139k in Q3 2020 and 184k in Q1 2021. That's pretty nice growth, but still much less than any major car company.

Average price per vehicle is much higher than other brands. In terms of revenue in dollars, It seems they are on track to surpass Nissan next year, no?

Nissan is forecasting 9.75 trillion yen (88 billion usd) in net revenue for 2021.

Tesla had automotive revenues of 19 billion usd in the first two quarters of 2021.

You're cherry-picking data to make Tesla's numbers and potential look worse than they actually are.

The first two quarters are much slower for car sales; for example in 2020, Tesla shipped 178k units in Q1+Q2 and 319k units in Q3+Q4.

Tesla had sales of 31.5B in 2020, and have 73% growth between Q3 2020 and 2021, which indicates they could hit 50B in 2021, and could hit close to 90B in 2022 if they continue the same YoY growth. Nissan is stagnant. It's reasonable to assume that Tesla is on track to surpass Nissan next year (2022).

> You're cherry-picking data to make Tesla's numbers and potential look worse than they actually are.

This accusation is false.

These numbers do not include Giga Texas or Giga Berlin, both of which are nearing completion. Each of these factories are estimated to ramp to 500k vehicles/year in the first phase (going far higher in the years to follow). Giga Texas alone has around 8 million square feet of factory space, whereas GM has around 33.9 million square feet factory space, dedicated purely to ICE vehicle production, in its 10 US factories.

I expect that around 900k Teslas will be produced and sold in 2021. The new factories easily bring that up to something around 1.8m-2m in 2022.

At present, Toyota produces something on the order of 10m gasoline vehicles per year, and roughly zero EVs.

I'm not even a layman in this area but I think a lot of the vertical integration for Tesla is purely the result of them being on the flame front of growth in new technological domains. An automaker creating new ASICs and new batteries is atypical, but they are in a much better position to both understand the demand and absorb the risk. Early automakers were in the same position, but eventually the worst ideas were filtered out and industry was able to develop around each of these areas until they could compete favorably with internally developed products.

Musk's approach for both Tesla and SpaceX seem to be a very effective to effectively push into a new domain if you have the money and the guts to try. It will be interesting to watch how they evolve over time.

The argument about Tesla being to small to matter is dwindling fast. Elon has publicly stated a goal of a yearly production run rate of 20 million before 2030.

And let's not get into the profit margins which is way better than ICE :)

>And let's not get into the profit margins which is way better than ICE :)

Why is that?

If these projections are true, one fifth of Toyota by 2022 and still growing is an astonishing achievement.

Considering they are a new company on a manufacturing time scale, it's pretty impressive.

They're a new company but they're also not that new anymore if you consider that they've been an established player for years now.

What do you consider 'Established'? I'd consider it the first model 3 being sold so since 2017.

Established players rarely grow quarterly sales(in units) by 70% in one year on top of 40% growth previous year, with expected almost doubling next year.

There are car brands that were established in the 1800s.

I bet their drivetrains are a bit younger than that.

That's very impressive indeed and if they can keep growing like this few more years they will definitely have more revenue than any other car company and might be top 1 by cars produced in less than a decade.

I wonder how it will impact their data collection for self driving.

There's many people here who hate on Tesla, but when seeing YouTube videos of Tesla owners posting footage of self-driving I'm constantly amazed and perplexed how far they have come and how intelligent the car appears to be. There's obviously edge cases where it fails and will be hard to iron out, but it definitely doesn't seem impossible based on countless of videos I have seen. It's amazing and I don't understand how anyone can reject this as a major advance in technology and where humanity will eventually arrive.

But will they? All major car manufacturers bringing in more and more EVs each year and give another 2-5 years and it's all we are going to see. Now why on earth would I buy Tesla, if I could buy Audi or Merc instead?

You could have gotten a BlackBerry or Nokia phone as well but people moved on to Android and iPhone. Tesla is too far ahead.

VW expects 50% of cars sold to be electric by 2030, Ford expects 40% to be electric by 2030 and they say that they can't go much faster. Other's manufacturers forecasts are more dire. I'm afraid that it could be too little too late.

I think the roadmap to 2030 is fine: the infrastructure will take time to build and only the richest countries will be able to run majority of EVs on roads by then, unless they become super cheap. Even in the US, it will take ages for EVs to overtake CE because an average person can't afford EVs and will continue to drive their petrol cars for some years.

Batteries is the bottleneck for entirety of next decade. All other manufacturers make like 5k a quarter which means they are loosing money on them…

What other company has that percentage growth in sales?

GM only sold 470k this quarter in the US. Not sure what GM's global sales are, but Tesla is getting closer to being comparable.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2021/1...

Wiki says that they sold almost 7 million in 2020 globally. To get to top 10 it's required to sell something like 2 million units globally.

A few more years at that growth rate and they will pass BMW.

Isn’t this even more impressive with the current chip shortage affecting every other car manufacturer on the planet?

Other manufacturers also make a lot more cars.

The chip shortage is easily explained by this[0]. Tesla didn't pull shenanigans like other auto manufacturers, so they aren't nearly as affected.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931498

And they are more vertically integrated on semiconductor side than other auto manufacturers.

Not sure where I read this but Tesla seems to rely a lot more on software than specialized chips so they can swap them out for another one that's available, with lot less effort than other manufacturers.

For reference (because if you’re like me you have no scale for this), this is about 10% of what Toyota does, which is way closer than I’d expected.

Does anyone know of any analysis of Tesla’s quality control? This[0] thread on twitter was pretty interesting but I’d love something more encompassing

[0] https://twitter.com/snazzyq/status/1434936396096028674?s=21

This is a blowout quarter. They are well on their way to sell maximum cars this year in their history.

Doesn't their stock valuation count on basically every year being better than the last for a long time to come?

Yes, and as long as enough investors believe in that thesis, it'll stay where its at.

What's Uber's stock price and valuation after burning $30 billion dollars and still not turning a profit? (Uber picked in particular because I'm familiar with their financials)

Hasn't Tesla now been consistently posting profits?

Yes, but if their profits stayed consistent at current rates the stock price would be quite high compared to other companies. It's price-to-earnings ratio is 408, meaning it would take 408 years for it to buy all its outstanding stock just from earnings. By contrast Ford's is 16 and Alphabet's (Google's) is 29.

The 408 ratio is justified by the assumption that earnings will be a lot higher in coming decades.

Since you’re familiar with Uber’s financials, I have a question. Do you think they’ll be able to survive as a company once interest rates begin rising?

Not a financial advisor, not financial advice, this is merely a thought experiment.

Uber will survive as long as there are investors willing to believe they might be profitable, eventually. Once the consensus or shared belief turns, I believe they’ll face significant challenges raising capital in the market.

Stock prices are not always rational. I'm not sure why. But one of the contributing factor could be things like ETFs where stocks were bought to track a particular sector or index regardless of their financials. (I'm just guessing, I don't have a financial background)

Also Because Tesla is a meme stock? Not just a ha ha meme, but a meme similar to how Dawkins described.

I'd like a figure for the split of retail and organized money in Tesla.

But isn't there just a little bit of truth behind each meme?

I mean, all I'm saying is, that there's a reason Tesla is a meme stock.

Their stock valuation counts on them taking 60%+ of the global car market, and their cars being a computer network that generates new revenue from software improvements in perpetuity.

I have some doubt cars will be their primary source of revenue in the long run. They are also an energy company and soon to be insurance. I also don't think Tesla bot is a joke, Elon seems pretty serious about outdoing other companies for household robots (re: his comments at #codecon)

The other day I heard someone say that Rivian intends to deliver 40,000 vehicles next year, total. Musk runs his mouth on a lot of stuff, but it's pretty hard to knock his manufacturing when he's got a 20x lead on the competition. Hell, I was blown away by how quickly Starlink went from concept to reality, but figures like these really help put the scale into perspective. It's like capitalism down to a science, for better and worse.

Not to disagree,but for different perspective

1. How long has Tesla been manufacturing vs Rivian

2. How does Tesla compare to Toyota

I feel it's all apples and oranges both ways. They're all in different manufacturing maturity place

> They're all in different manufacturing maturity place

That's true, but the electric car race began with the Model 3 and is going to continue to outpace Rivian 50x next year if the volume expectation are correct [on both sides]. Rivian coming out with these cars is unlikely to capture much of the market anyways, given they're both over $65k. It's like Rivian's 10 years behind Tesla in maturity (besides their range figures), and their only saving grace might be the Amazon electric delivery vehicle contract.

Established players can't produce these numbers for their own EV's so you believe a startup will?

Do people remember how much shit Tesla went through?

I think Rivian will take the startup approach and pack as much density into their battery, even if it means sacrificing a large chunk of their margin. The r1t is supposed to have a weight of 8500 pounds[0], so I can see a 150-200kwh battery being packed in there on the Max pack to achieve that range.

0: https://insideevs.com/news/536753/rivian-r1t-gvwr-heavy-duty...

200kwh? that's a disaster then.

200Kwh * 40K = 8Gwh?!

that's unrealistic, battery production is the single most limiting factor for all EV's.

big batteries = low volumes

Yes, it's probably necessary if they wanna get near-400 miles on extended range. Even the F150E with extended range only has a 300 mile EPA with estimates of 170kwh[0], and the r1t doesn't look to be insanely more aerodynamic. It's indeed going to be a disaster, but Amazon wants a foot in the door regardless of how much it costs.

0: https://insideevs.com/news/508674/battery-capacity-ford-f150...

That's the gross vehicle weight rating, which is the max weight of the vehicle including cargo. The R1T has a curb weight of ~7,000lbs[0] with the 135kWh battery. That is still as much as a Dually F-350. The 180kWh option would be heavier still and start eating into the payload capacity.

[0]https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1133704_review-rivian-r...

Tesla was founded in 2003, Rivian in 2009. So Tesla took five years to start Roadster production, while Rivian has taken 12 years until first customer deliveries. Maybe Rivian will ramp faster. Sam Korus tracks the numbers and so far Tesla is ramping faster than Ford, making it the fastest ramping car manufacturer in American history. I wouldn't be surprised if some Chinese companies could go faster. It is much faster than what Toyota did. They are very methodical, which is why they have almost zero pure EV sales.

i happened to look up the latter question. Toyota does about 10M cars/year, so this is about 10% of toyota, which is way closer than i expected.

It's far far worse. Tesla is probably the only company in the world that produces\designs its own batteries, motors and electronics.

Most "competitors" are just buying batteries\electronics from a vendor and shoving it in.

Tesla partnered with Panasonic and created their own custom modules(2170), now they plan to do everything with the newly announced 4680(from raw materials to products).

They are truly unmatched.

Ah yes, most companies just buy batteries from Panasonic and shove them in their cars, but the galaxy brains at Tesla instead buy batteries from Panasonic and shove them into “custom modules” which is clearly materially different.

Wrong. Tesla has custom designs from form factor to chemistry.

Panasonic was crucial at the begining with their own designed\made 18650. their role is shrinking fast

Tesla's expertise when it comes to batteries is unmatched in the auto-motive industry, no doubt about that.

Tesla is not using Panasonic at all for their new batteries.

Get a grip, Tesla fan. Your shares are doing fine without the reality distortion. People who buy cells from Panasonic directly are getting the exact same chemistry and form factor with which Telsa cars are equipped. Quoting from Tesla's own 10-Q filing, emphasis added.

"""Under our arrangement with Panasonic, we plan to purchase the full output from their production equipment at negotiated prices … Currently, we rely on suppliers such as Panasonic for these cells."""

Seriously, there is no shame in it. They are good batteries! They are made by Panasonic using Panasonic chemistry on Panasonic equipment, though.

You don't have to believe me but I don't own a tesla nor do I own Tesla stocks.

Tesla do have their own custom chemistry and doping, it is written all over the internet you're willing to read that.

TEsla has several patents and their own research group: https://www.scribd.com/document/440951044/Tesla-battery-pate...

https://www.scribd.com/document/424878572/J-Electrochem-Soc-...

just to name a few. to me you seem like a Tesla skeptic, unwilling to acknowledge their success

The patent and the chemistry you are trying to link to — by the way, Scribd is a scam, here is a link to the PDF[1] — is university research funded in part by Tesla.

1: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/2.0341813jes/pdf

Undoubtedly good chemistry research but doesn't have anything to do with the batteries that are actually in cars you can actually buy.

You're still trying to defend your position... sad.

Claiming Tesla is the same as VW which basically buys batteries and shoves them into existing chassis\frames, is a joke.

Tesla produces most of the worlds batteries:

https://www.mining.com/muskmobiles-running-rivals-off-the-ro...

In their own factories, which automaker has this level of integration?

Tesla has the best battery longevity metrics according to thousands of tested cars: https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-dat...

Tesla is the only company with vast\robust charging network: https://hbr.org/2021/01/how-teslas-charging-stations-left-ot...

Tesla is the only company seriously investing in their own battery facilities. boots on the ground, working facilities.

Now tell me how Tesla is just like any other player in the EV space again?

Just to start, as of today Tesla is Panasonic's only automotive client. Panasonic talked recently about the need to get more auto clients for their cells but so far it's been just talk.

As to your dismissive "galaxy brains at Tesla": unlike Ford or GM or Toyota, Tesla does a lot of R&D in battery cells.

I know that because they are hiring tons of people for cell research and production: https://www.tesla.com/careers/search/?country=US&query=cell

I did similar searches in the past so I know that they've been hiring for cell research for years.

For contrast, despite GM claiming they make Ultium batteries, few months back I didn't find a single job post for cell engineering.

I also know that because Tesla has been sponsoring Canadian cell research lab led by Jeff Dahn.

This resulted in multiple patents awarded to Tesla.

Tesla also bought Grohman Engineering (which makes, among other things, robots that assemble battery packs), Maxwell (for their dry electrode technology) and a Canadian manufacturer of equipment for making battery cells.

Musk also talked how they work with every company that claims they have an improved cell technology and how they evaluate their cells.

There is no evidence that Ford or GM or Toyota made similar investments in batter cell and battery pack R&D and production.

Henry Ford created a factory "capable of taking in raw materials on one end and spitting out finished automobiles on the other". [0]

Not all automakers have done things that way though, and other automakers are able to complete with Ford. Vertical integration can sometimes be an asset, other times the "Not Invented Here" culture proves limiting. Tesla's had incredible success thus far, but we probably need a couple more decades to see if they maintain their first mover advantage or if other players end up being more agile and more successful.

0: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a23478147/ford-river-rouge...

Ford had years of domination, didn't it?

It is extremely hard to predict 15 years from now but the next five years?

There are no competitors(perhaps besides Chinese battery makers) everyone is still in early R&D\prototype phases.

Ford achieved the ore-to-assembly goal in 1927. General Motors become the highest volume automaker in the US starting in 1931. Ford's sold a ton of cars too though. My point is just that Ford did extreme vertical integration and were successful. But GM did things differently and that worked for them too.

Looks like some of this has been studied by Harvard Business School: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=45289

Anyhow, you tout Tesla's deep work in batteries, motors and electronics (and let's not forget glass, doors, seats and other areas where Tesla has decided not to out-source). I can see where another company might be the GM to Tesla's Ford - finding success buying some of the right bits and pieces rather than spending an insane amount of money (re-)inventing them for themselves.

I really really hope that we will have competition coming from VW, Toyota.

We need to advance the technology which is still not good enough for our global needs, but knowing where these two are.... I'm skeptical

Tesla has a lead now, but I wonder how long it'll hold up.

At some point electric drivetrains and batteries will be available in large quantities from suppliers just like gasoline motors and gearboxes are available now.

As soon as that is the case, there will be many dozens of different car models that compete with Tesla.

Teslas vertical integration is an advantage now, because they don't have to wait for suppliers to develop what they need. But once suppliers have caught up, I'm not sure if Teslas edge holds.

Yea seriously. Tesla is just a company with a lead but they are in a industry filled with tens of thousands more engineers who have suddenly become tasked with switching to EV design at a fast pace.

And yet forecasts say that only 50% of VW and BMW sales will come from EV by 2030 with tens of billions poured into conversion they say that it isn't possible to go any faster. And they are faster than other major players.

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