Tesla Q4 2023 Earnings Report [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Q4 2023 Earnings Report [pdf]

digitalassets.tesla.com

74 pointsmfiguiere85 comments

I'm surprised to see 38% YoY increase in Tesla deliveries (page 8) in the last 12 months, despite the high interest rates (thus expensive consumer finance) and the high price point of Tesla's current range.

By comparison, Honda sales increased 33%, GM 14.1%, Ford 7.1%, Toyota 6.6%, VW 6.7%, Stellantis down 1%

https://www.cbtnews.com/car-manufacturers-report-impressive-...

https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/press-releases/around...

When Tesla release its $25K car, and when interest rates drop, I suspect the march of Tesla on its rivals will continue apace.

You’re subject to the same interest rates no matter what vehicle you purchase. Base model 3 is not any more expensive than a typical new ICE vehicle especially with the federal credit, plus you save on gas and maintenance.

Base model 3 doesn't qualify for the tax credit. The only Model 3 you can buy with the credit is the much more expensive Performance edition.

Was that true in 2023? Don’t know just what my friend told me when he bought his model 3 a few months ago. He decided to pull the trigger on it because it was the same price as a brand new camry

Not true in 2023. In 2023 every version of the model 3 qualifies for the 7500 tax credit in the US

Sadly it is 2024 now. Very few vehicles qualify for the tax credit now. The ones that do qualify tend to be the high end models that are hard to keep under the price cap—you need to special order the no-options model and hope there aren’t too many dealer fees. Good news for Chevy is that the Bolt qualifies. Bad news is that they stopped making it and no other Chevy made the cut.

We're talking about the 2023 Q4 earnings report.

Seeing price comparisons like always make me feel like I'm living in a very different place. Here (in Canada), a base Camry currently starts at $36k (with the base hybrid starting at $38k) and a base Model 3 is $51k after the $5k federal tax credit.

> high price point

I don’t know if you’ve shopped for a new car recently but non Tesla cars aren’t exactly that cheap. The final price for Tesla comes to be a couple thousand over advertised, but if you buy a non Tesla, it usually goes to tens of thousands more. A monthly payment on a new Tesla is probably very close to the monthly for a regular car.

not sure why you were downvoted - I agree. teslas were very reasonable compared to other options when I looked

new - perhaps. pre-owned is another story. I bought top-of-the line 2020 etron prestige with 10k miles for $35k in november. new one is north of $90k

Everyone's dropping prices because of soft demand. In late December/early January, Tesla was discounting inventory long range Ys enough for them to be around $35k after the inventory discount and POS tax credit.

They're a little more now, but that could change near the end of the quarter.

between getting a new Tesla and 3-year off-the-lease like-new Audi etron I’d get Audi any day of the week and twice on Sunday

Maybe in the US, but if you live in less protectionist markets you'll find Chinese vehicles undercutting Tesla on drive away price.

For example my parents just bought an electric hatchback from GWM for ~27k USD, or ~21k USD after government rebates. Tesla doesn't even come close.

FWIW Tesla’s are much bigger than GWM, but not twice as big as price implies

Right, Tesla only sells bigger and more expensive vehicles and has nothing in the compact segments.

The services revenue graph on page 11 is impressive: from $-500M in 2019 and $200M in 2022 to almost $500M in 2023. The increasing base of existing Teslas means that revenue from parts is going to keep going up, and with superchargers opening up to non-Teslas, supercharging is going to be a license to print money for quite a few years.

Superchargers aren't profitable. That's why they were opened up. So it's basically gauging insurers on parts, making Teslas more expensive to insure.

The capital costs of setting up the infra are huge, but once they're in place they're reselling electricity at a 200%+ margin with virtually zero manpower required.

Can you please provide some links on that ?

The most optimistic forecast I've seen were at about 10B$ of revenue, not profit - which is peanuts.

It depends on how much maintenance is required, probably.

Electricity is commodity, no way you can sustain high ROI on it.

Fun fact - there is 0 mention of DOJO in this document !

Surprising, given the fact that they supposedly started the production ~6 months ago, and it was supposed to be 'top 5 in the world' by compute power, today.

Another fun fact, is that an MS stock analyst is attaching a 500bn $ valuation to this project and increased his price target from 250 to 400.

Elon just half stated, it's not really working yet (it's a high risk, high reward project).

We can move on to Optimus now, shall we ?

Yeah didn't sound like Dojo is really on the radar anymore. Adam Jonas is out of his mind his thesis was something about some SaaS product based on Dojo being as big a product as GCP or AWS

Yeah, and semi was only mentioned once. Tesla is a weird company. They have a lot of little side projects that seem to have potential, but only a few projects that get enough focus to really make it to market.

They've been able to get by with that so far, as the focus was in the right place (3/Y for example).

But their lack of focus on new vehicle models for the past couple of years seems to be really coming back to bite them now.

Their plan looks like muddled nonsense, tbh.

Yeah I don't understand this, they're a massive company now with over 100k employees. Surely they can focus on more than 2-3 projects at a time.

Unsurprisingly to anyone who understands how tough the auto industry is, Tesla's long term growth expectations were not realistic.

On the other hand having the best selling vehicle on the planet is a gargantuan achievement Tesla should be proud of.

Curious about its future beyond cars. Musk described Tesla like 15 startups under one company.

Tesla Energy generated a record $6B in revenue in 2023, up 54% YoY. So, that’s something to look at.

It might be the strongest growth prospect going forward. Other EVs using their chargers and commercial customers using their power solutions.

Tesla's end game is infrastructure, not cars.

Also, auto gross margins ex credits, came in at 17%. It marks the end of four consecutive quarters of margin decline, up from 16.3% in the Sep-23.

From the statement, "Total GAAP gross margin" is still declining on a quarterly basis, to 17.6%. Your statement is also true because regulatory credit revenue is also down QoQ.

Infinite growth is a fantasy. But Tesla certainly pushed a lethargic market to the future. An epic company at the whims of the quarterly analyst.

They sold cars to stoke demand for batteries [1] and prove the world could move to EVs. They used battery manufacturing to scale up to build and sell utility scale storage [2]. Nimble companies should always be prepared to pivot and maximize opportunities based on core competencies if they are to survive (Kodak and Xerox are examples of not doing this). If their EV business becomes second to legacy auto, but the org keeps expanding power controls and storage, is that a loss? They already forced every other automaker to go electric. The global energy market is somewhat larger than the light vehicle market, and batteries will be required to phase out every last fossil generator (not for energy arbitrage primarily, but for grid stability). The product is riding the global energy transition.

(early Tesla investor, no current exposure)

[1] https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/g...

[2] https://www.tesla.com/megafactory

Except Panasonic owns the cell-manufacturing portion of the Nevada Gigafactory. And Panasonic can sell those cells to anyone.

But they don’t, because Tesla’s demand is voracious and they are a proven partner. Supply chain relationships matter.

But Tesla has constantly sold these cells as "their cells", constantly misleading (almost lying) to the public like these are a significant moat or technology that's exclusive to Tesla.

Panasonic also has very tight relationships with Toyota, for example. There's nothing about the Panasonic/Tesla relationship that's really a "moat".

----------

If all your competitors need is just to establish a relationship with Panasonic to get their technology, that's a very different thing than like holding a patent or other "true moat".

You’re upset about words when all that matters is outcomes. Toyota ain’t building anything until they start rolling EVs off the line at scale. They’ve been talking about EVs longer than Tesla has been building them.

https://insideevs.com/news/694239/toyota-cuts-ev-sales-expec... (“Toyota Cuts EV Sales Expectations By 39 Percent As Its Profits Soar Thanks To Hybrids”)

If I had a Tesla share for every time someone said “but $legacy_automaker plans!” Talk is cheap, building is hard.

Toyota's battery consumption is pretty high all else considered, thanks to Prius, Rav4 Prime, etc. etc. etc. No pure EV, but plenty of opportunities to establish a relationship with Panasonic.

In any case, my point remains clear. There's no kg/watt-hr advantage that Tesla holds here. Panasonic is the owner of the chemistry. Its Panasonic that's key to this relationship.

And if not Panasonic, then CATL, the Chinese company Tesla has partnered with for Gigafactory Shanghai. In both cases, Tesla does NOT own the chemistry. That's a huge deal to anyone trying to pretend that "Tesla is an energy company" or other such claims.

----------

The energy companies are Panasonic and CATL in this relationship. These are the companies people should be focusing on.

Moving into Utility scale, the bulk of the manufacturing problem is once again, CATL (for pushing LiFePo4 chemistry), or Panasonic (for the other Li-ion chemistry Tesla uses).

EDIT: It does seem like LiFePo4 is the push for utility-scale, while the Panasonic one looks increasingly obsolete in comparison. But there are very high tariffs on CATL cells for USA's use at least. I do believe there are some non-Chinese LiFePo4 producers selling in the USA's market.

EDIT: But its _these_ issues that are currently plaguing the utility market today. I'm not really sure if Tesla is on top of its utility game. Or if the Panasonic relationship is even relevant (especially due to the current trend of LiFePo4 vs other Li-ion chemistries).

They're also building new factories to do just that, with a third US one on the way.

https://insideevs.com/news/670249/panasonic-third-ev-battery...

Cars are a much higher margin way to sell storage than selling it without the attached car. Or at least that has been the justification in the past for Tesla prioritizing shipping cars over more grid storage.

I don't think that's changed, as grid scale storage is a cut throat market. Maybe residential storage paired with solar will have higher margins, but the limit there is regulatory, and there's also ample competition in the solar market.

Which is to say, cars really seem to be Tesla's best bet and core driver of other value, IMHO.

Hmm. This is a bit of a silly comparison, but Tesla will sell a Megapack with 1.9MW, 3.9MWh for about $2M, “ready to install”.

Signature Solar has an 18kW, 61.44kWh battery plus inverter setup for about $22k. If you could buy 64 of these, you get just over 3.9MWh and 1.15MW for about $1.4M.

Tesla’s system presumably operates at a nicer 480V and is intended to scale larger, but the cost isn’t amazing if you pretend this is apples to apples.

Utilities and energy developers buy solutions, not parts. Megapack + Autobidder is turnkey. Also, cost sensitive buyers are not a great cohort to market to; market to folks with capital to spend and who understand the value prop. Let someone else chase garbage margins. Price is what you pay, value is what you get.

https://electrek.co/2023/09/15/tesla-autobidder-product-330-... ("Tesla’s little-known Autobidder product has already made over $330 million for energy investors")

> Also, cost sensitive buyers are not a great cohort to market to

…

> ("Tesla’s little-known Autobidder product has already made over $330 million for energy investors")

A lot of investors looking for returns would love to save 30-40%. I also wonder whether Autobidder, which is hosted on Tesla’s cloud, would actually be very exciting for grid operators who value reliability and things like black start.

Anyway, my real point is that I’m comparing apples to oranges, but Tesla’s value proposition in the energy sector doesn’t look unassailable to me. If I worked at a company like EG4, I would seriously consider trying to compete.

When real competition presents itself, the discussion will be material. Engineering culture is hard to cultivate, no utility is going to write an autobidder replacement. Utilities can barely do anything besides put RFPs out for generation, maintain their distribution networks, and operating their IT systems for billing and grid management. Some even fail at that (US PG&E).

This is like saying "all of these slow moving, conservative, entrenched, low paying organizations can compete with software companies if they just tried." And if horses could sing. Engas has terrible enterprise fundamentals to try to create an engineering culture ($$$) to obtain market leverage [1].

TLDR Culture and resources matter to innovate and deliver. The stars must align.

[1] https://www.gurufocus.com/stock/FRA:EG4/summary

I forgot to include the link to the system I was referring to:

https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-18kpv-hybrid-inverter-system-...

Amusingly, it’s from EG4, and they seem to be capable of innovation. But it’s not the same EG4 :)

CATL is bigger battery maker and CATL, BYD are better at it.

Yeah, their valuation being based on the assumption of infinite exponential growth was always going to smack into the cold hard reality of the S curve at some point. But Tesla could lose a massive amount of valuation and still be overpriced, especially compared to other large car companies like GM, Ford, Stellantis, BMW, and BYD.

The only thing saving Tesla from being absolutely clobbered in the market today, at least in the US, is the competitors doing some baffling and outright dumb things with their own EVs. Like Toyota announcing that they think EVs are a fad and aren't worth pursuing. Or GM ditching its only EV that actually sells for some vague promise of a car that is at least 2 years away.

I also think the lower numbers for last year are due to dumping tons of money into a truck platform that seems unlikely to be a good seller. I'm expecting that once you factor in all of the R&D costs the Cybertruck will be a net negative for Tesla with poor sales and low (for Tesla) margins.

They oversold the Cybertruck for how long it took and what it ended up being/costing. The market for it was maybe irrationally exuberant a few years ago, but a lot of that evaporated just from consumer ADHD and years of examples of new tech ideas with more options.

(Speaking of the ADHD customers, I guess I can get $100 back?)

Curious how much of the Cybertruck R&D will end up getting repurposed into an F-150 / Silverado competitor. Which is a rather large (and profitable) market.

Given that's the exact same playbook the company was founded on.

Build and advertise halo project. Use halo margins to build mass-market model at competitive scale. GOTO 10

Tesla is lucky in the US, but in several parts of the world BYD is beating them hard. BYD is selling the most units, and they are not even allowed to compete in the USA.

More Android phones sell than Apple, but I think most HN-ers would be hard-pressed to claim that Google is definitively the bigger, better, or more successful company overall.

Google doesn't make Android phones beyond the niche Pixels. If they did, there would be a solid argument that they'd be the most successful phone company, because they'd own 80% of the market share.

True in a way, but Google certainly benefits from having their OS on the majority of the world's smartphones.

A more apt comparison might be Microsoft, who has roughly the same market cap as Apple, while having their operating system be on so many more computers. They sell their OS, not give it away (like Android) so maybe more accurate?

But they don't have the quality, mindshare, or respect that most HN-ers give Apple, so in terms of success it doesn't appear to be just units shipped that matters most.

Having driven both a Tesla Model 3 and a BYD Atto 3 (their best seller outside China), the early Apple vs early Android comparison is apt. BYD gets the job done and thanks to low prices may beat Tesla on volume, but the overall experience is quite janky. Those who can afford it will get a Tesla, and that's why Tesla will continue to capture a lot more margin.

Tesla still is janky though?

The auto windshield wipers straight up don’t work.

Tesla isn't janky compared to a Chinese EV with no reliable charging infrastructure.

I'll take my Tesla wipers any day over spending half a day on my vacation trying to charge up the Atto 3. Bonus glitch: when I finally did find a compatible charger and got it charged up, the Atto refused to release the charging cable because it thought the cable was already disconnected and that took another 30 min of futzing about to sort out.

I think Toyota is right waiting, everyone but Tesla is really losing huge amounts of money chasing a market that does not exist yet.

The Corolla easily sold more units worldwide than any Tesla vehicle. https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a44600661/is-tes...

I don't have numbers handy, but I suspect the bestselling vehicle globally is also probably a moped, potentially the Honda supercub by its prior sales velocity...

What a bad take.

That "Corolla" is not a car/model but a whole category that combines many body types such as a sedan, a wagon, a hatchback and a crossover model (Corolla + Levin + Allion + Lingshang + Fenglanda + etc).

Tesla could create two nameplate: "Cyber" for pickups and "Model" for other vehicles (S+X+3+Y) and call it a day too.

That gross margin is coming down as competition ramps up. They have two more years before Toyota rolls out new batteries. That doesn’t even include Rivian’s cheaper competition model which they will reveal in March. They have no FSD. They have no AI. They have no “robots”. All vaporwares. Doesn’t help public opinion of Elon Musk and Tesla changed dramatically in the past 24 months. Progressives rather drive ICE than a Tesla.

> two more years before Toyota rolls out new batteries.

"Or the horse may learn to sing."

That is, of course, unless the horse, is the famous Mr. Ed.

> Rivian’s cheaper competition model which they will reveal in March

You'd be lucky to get a currently-available Rivian in 2025 if you ordered now, how many years until you realistically could take delivery of this new Rivian model?

Edit: I stand corrected on current availability, see below. Still think it will be years until you will get a new, cheaper model that hasn't been announced yet.

that's not true. R1S available in 1-2 weeks at the shop: https://rivian.com/configurations/list?MODEL=R1T

That simply isn't true. It's quick to get an R1S or R1T. My delivery advisor said a custom configuration in the Boise area could pop up in as little as a couple weeks.

AFAIK, none of the traditional automakers are producing EVs at any kind of scale even remotely close to Tesla. And Rivian isn't even in a consideration until they're actually profitable. If anything, I'd say BYD is more of a competition than either Toyota or Rivian and they're not even in the US market yet.

I wanted to check your statement: "none of the traditional automakers are producing EVs at any kind of scale"

It's really tough to find numbers of cars produced! I don't think they make those numbers public even. All the numbers I could find were units sold. Units sold should be a proxy of unit produced to some extent (so perhaps this is fair to look at).

It appears these are the numbers [1] for 2023 (as of 2023 Q3) for global sales of battery-electric vehicles:

    Tesla: 888,879 and 21.7% share (vs. 19%)
    BYD Group: 615,064 and 15% share (vs. 11%)
    Volkswagen Group: 311,359 and 7.6% share (vs. 7.3%)
    SAIC (incl. SAIC-GM-Wuling): 308,899 and 7.5% share (vs. 10.8%)
    Geely-Volvo: 236,847 and 5.8% share

Volkswagan I consider to be a traditional automaker. BYD was founded in 1995, I'm not sure if that is considered traditional yet. VW being at one third and BYD being at 80% is certainly a difference, but not a "any kind of scale" difference. VW and BYD are producing at scale.

> I'd say BYD is more of a competition than either Toyota or Rivian and they're not even in the US market yet.

Indeed, particularly in China and growingly in European markets. This other resource states that BYD (BEV) sales have surpassed Tesla in Q4 2023 [2]. The same resource has some interesting notes about planned production expansions

[1] https://insideevs.com/news/680475/world-top-ev-oem-sales-202...

[2] https://www.investors.com/news/tesla-vs-byd-2024-tsla-stock-...

I'm not sure where you got the numbers for the others, but Tesla's are easy to find: https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-vehicle-production-...

1.8M for 2023. Noone outside of China is particularly close.

Numbers are sales and should be found in the citation.

Do you have numbers for production of other companies? I'm probably most interest in VW.

It would be surprising to me if sales represented sales of old inventory, but that could be the case. I would more suppose that sales are for more recently produced inventory. Thus while 80% the sales of tesla does not mean 80% production, but seems like 50% is plausible. I would consider 50% of 1.8M to be producing at scale.

Eager to see what the numbers are. It would be wildly interesting if sales were somewhat close but production was not

Numbers:

- Q4 Gross Margins 17.6%, EST. 18.1%, down 6.12% YoY

- Q4 automotive margins 17.2% ahead of 16.3% Q3, bullish

- Q4 Adjusted EPS $0.71, EST. $0.73c, down 40% YoY

- Q4 FCF $2.06B, EST. $1.45B, up 45% YoY

- Q4 Rev. $25.2B, EST. $25.9B, up 3% YoY

- Solar deployed 41 Megawatts, not very exciting, really lagging competitors here.

- revenue from credits sold to other companies was $433M down from $550 Q3

- this should eventually go to zero over the next 10 years

- 1.2M Model Y's sold,

Notes:

- EV sales in general rose by about 50% last year in the US

- TSLA now under 50% of EV market in the US, still absurdly good, but falling

- TSLA note growth in 2024 "may be notably lower" than 2023, but refused to offer guidance

- energy storage doubled 2022, that's pretty awesome

- when will they stop manufacturing the S and X, they are pretty minimal compared to the Y & 3 now

Look for:

- next gen(cheap cross over) "leaked" this morning, is that due to bad numbers?

  - expected to deliver 100,000/week of these after ramp up
  
  - will this be built outside of hte US to save money?

- dojo computer talk ($1B is alot to put into this space)

- will they break out cyber truck, or hide those numbers, note, they dodged it and said it would take a long time to ramp up

- V12 FSD notes. What data will they release and will the shift to NN to manage handling instead of hard coded rules work out?

- what are they making from super charging?

Thoughts:

- broke down below $200, options call writers win,

- Solar disappointing again, when will they spin that out and focus?

> - will this be built outside of the US to save money?

I hope not since that would disqualify it for the tax credit.

I believe Mexico would still qualify due to the free trade agreement.

The Tesla factory in Mexico is still just a big empty field. No Teslas will come out of Mexico until mid 2025 at the earliest, and more realistically 2026.

May be a typo but I’m seeing 10,000 next gen vehicles per week, which is an order of magnitude less than you stated. Otherwise, thanks for the great summary!

Selling 50% more vehicles to end up with only 3% more revenue is pretty big.

I'd assume we see a other big changes in the coming year with either way stronger diversification or a huge dip in revenue when the discounts' effect disappears and car sales slow down ?

> when will they stop manufacturing the S and X, they are pretty minimal compared to the Y & 3 now

Only one reason named so far, but that was enough to let it persist for 4 years so we'll see. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c95Xi3F7zc

They've said that the next car will initially be built in Texas, but will later also be built at other plants, including Mexico.

I was dissappointed to learn tesla becoming bricks in colder weathers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YafUALsJvfU

They don't become bricks in cold weather. The reports were true, there were broken chargers, lots of stuck uber drivers, and lots of people stuck behind them too.

What it left out were the majority of drivers who started their day with fully charged cars that automatically defrosted, went about their business normally, and had zero issues.

The reports were true! But they were also not a representative sample of overall EV usage in the cold.

Fair argument but teslas breaking down in extreme weather was not in my bing card this year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com