Company Management
Elon Musk - CEO |
Karn Budhiraj - VP, Supply Chain |
Lars Moravy - VP, Vehicle Engineering |
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations |
Vaibhav Taneja - CFO |
Analysts
Colin Langan - Wells Fargo |
George Gianarikas - Canaccord |
Pierre Ferragu - New Street Research |
Rod Lache - Wolfe Research |
Will Stein - Truist |
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
Now let’s go to investor questions. The first investor question comes from Craig. How many Cybertruck deliveries do you anticipate for 2024?
Elon Musk - CEO
It’s difficult to make an accurate guess at this point. Going back to what I said earlier that the ramp is going to be extremely difficult. And like I said, there’s no way around that. if we just try to do some copycat vehicle design, of which there are literally 200 models that are slight variations on a theme in the combustion engine world, distinctions without a difference, then it’s really not that hard. But if you want to do something radical and innovative and something really special, like the Cybertruck, it is extremely difficult because there’s nothing to copy. You have to invent not just the car, but the way to make the car. So, the more uncharted the territory, the less predictable the outcome.
Now, I can say that, where will things end up? I think we’ll end up with roughly a 0.25 million Cybertrucks a year, I don’t think we’re going to reach that output rate next year. I think we’ll probably reach it sometime in 2025. That’s my best guess.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
The second question is, can you provide a progress update on the 4680 cell, particularly progress towards performance improvements and cost savings outlined on Battery Day?
Unidentified Company Representative
4680 cell production in Texas increased 40% quarter-over-quarter. Congrats to the Texas team for producing their 20 million cell off of line one. Texas is now our primary 4680 facility. We’re heavily focused on quality. Scrap is down 40% quarter-over-quarter. With the increased volume and yield improvements, cell costs consistently improved month-over-month within the quarter, although we have a lot more work to do to achieve our steady state goals. And that is our priority.
The Cybertruck sell with 10% higher energy than our Model Y cell started production on line two in Texas. This quarter we convert to building a 100% Cybertruck cells to simplify and focus the factory as we ramp all four lines in Phase 1 over the next three quarters. Phase 2 of the Texas 4680 facility is currently under construction. The additional four lines incorporate further capital efficiencies over Phase 1, and our target is for them to start producing in late 2024.
Lastly, in Kato, we’re retooling to enable large scale pallet runs of our next generation cell designs. Kato’s long-term goal is to be the launch pad for new cells, one generation ahead of our mass production facilities, enabling faster iteration and smoother ramp ups of new designs.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
The next question from institutional investors. Could you please provide an update on capacity expansion plans for company’s factories in Berlin and Austin, and the opening schedule of Gigafactory Mexico?
Unidentified Company Representative
Berlin and Austin factories, the current priority is actually maximize the output from our existing lines, by laser focus on efficiency improvement. As always, maintaining a high quality and the reducing per unit cost will be as critical as growing the production volume. For Mexico, we’re working on infrastructure and factory design in parallel with the engineering and development of the new production that we’ll be manufacturing there. That’s I can share there.
Elon Musk - CEO
In Mexico we’re laying the groundwork to begin construction and doing all the long lead items. But I think we want to just get a sense for what the global economy is like before we go full tilt on the Mexico factory. I’m worried about the high interest rate environment that we’re in. I just can’t emphasize this enough that the vast majority of people buying a car is about the monthly payment. And as interest rates rise, the proportion of that monthly payment that is interest increases naturally.
So, if interest rates remain high or if they go even higher, it’s that much harder for people to buy the car, they simply cannot afford it. And we are tracking, I believe at this point for Model Y to be the best selling car on earth, but not just in revenue, but in unit volume. If you compare that to the other vehicles that are number two and number three and whatnot, they cost much less than our car. So, we’re just hitting law of large numbers situations here.
I know people want to us advertising, we are advertising. I think there’s something to be gained on the advertising front. But informing people of a car that is great, but they cannot afford doesn’t really help. So that is really the thing that must be sought is to make the car affordable or the average person cannot buy it for any amount of money or they can’t afford it. So, this is big deal.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
The next question is, when do you expect Model 3 Highland to be available in the U.S.? I just wanted to address that unfortunately we don’t answer product related questions and timings on earnings calls. So let’s go to the next one. Current sell side consensus assumes that Tesla will deliver 2.3 million vehicles in 2024, representing 28% growth versus 2023 guidance. Is this growth rate achievable without any mass market launches in 2024? And when does Tesla expect to return to its 50% long-term CAGR?
Vaibhav Taneja - CFO
When we look at 2024, there are a lot of moving pieces. I just talked about what is happening in the macroeconomic environment. So, we’re focused on growing our volumes in a very cost efficient manner and are careful reviewing all our options, and we’ll be able to provide a much more meaningful update at our next earnings call.
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes. I mean, at the risk of stating the obvious, it is not possible to have a compound growth rate of 50% forever, or you will exceed the mass of the known universe. I think we will grow very rapidly, much faster than any other car company on earth by far.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
Next question is do you have an approximate time line in mind for the robotaxi driven or non-driven? What excites you most about how this project is progressing?
Elon Musk - CEO
Well, robotaxi is like necessarily non-driven. I’m very excited about our progress with autonomy, the end-to-end, nothing but nets self-driving software is amazing. It drives me all around Austin with no interventions. So, it’s clearly the right move and really pretty amazing. And obviously, that same software and approach will enable Optimus to do useful things and enable Optimus to learn how to do things simply by looking. So extremely exciting in the long term.
As I mentioned before, given that economic output is a number of people times productivity, if you no longer have a constraint on people, effectively, you’ve got a humanoid robot that can do as much as you’d like, your economy is wisely infinite or infinite for all intents and purposes. So, I don’t think anyone is going to do it better than Tesla, not by a long shot. Boston Dynamics is impressive, but their robot lacks a brain or like the Wizard of Oz, whatever. And then you also need to be able to design the humanoid robot in such a way that it can be mass manufactured. And then at some point, the robots will manufacture the robots.
Now obviously, we need to make sure that it’s a good place for humans in that future. We do not create some variance of the terminator outcome. So, we’re going to put a lot of effort into localized control of the humanoid robot. So basically, anyone will be able to shut it off locally, and like a software update, you can’t change that. It has to be hard-coded.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
The next question is, why was the price dropped on FSD if it is getting better and robotaxi is expected so soon?
Elon Musk - CEO
We just wanted to make it more affordable as more people try it. I think, over time, the price of FSD will increase proportionate to its value. So with regard the current price as a kind of a temporary low.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
The next question is again on FSD. Mercedes is accepting legal liability for when its Level 3 autonomous driving system drive pilot is active. Is Tesla planning to accept legal liability for FSD? And if so, when?
Elon Musk - CEO
Well, there’s a lot of people that assume we have legal liability judging by the lawsuits. We’re certainly not being let that off the hook on that front, whether we’d like to or wouldn’t like to do.
Unidentified Company Representative
I mean I think it’s important to remember for everyone that Mercedes’ system is limited to roads in Nevada and some certain cities in California, doesn’t work in the snow or the fog. It must have a lead car in plains, only 40 miles per hour. Our system is meant to be holistic and drive in any conditions, so we obviously have a much more capable approach. But with those kind of limitations, it’s really not very useful.
Elon Musk - CEO
No, I think some people understand the profundity of the Tesla AI system. It’s very, very few. It’s basically Baby AGI. It has to understand reality in order to drive.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
Thank you. The next question on Optimus. Will Optimus be working on Gigafactory lines next year? If so, how many would you guess will be deployed?
Elon Musk - CEO
I think at this point, we are not ready to discuss details of the Optimus program, but we will provide periodic updates online. So, as you can see, Optimus a year ago could barely walk and now it can do yoga. So, a few years from now, it can probably do ballet.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
Sounds good. And the last question from investors is Neural net path planning represents a significant advance in capability and safety for FSD. What steps is Tesla taking to make this technology available outside the U.S.?
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes. Our approach has been to try to get it -- like the more places we’re trying to make it work, the harder the problem is. So, the reason we don’t do it in all countries simultaneously is that it would take much longer to make it work anywhere at all. That’s why it’s currently just North America. And also for most parts of the world, you have to get approval before deploying things, whereas in the U.S., you can deploy things at risk or at least you take liability for what you’re deploying. Most countries require some sort of extensive approval program, we only want to go through that extensive approval program when we think it’s kind of ready for prime time in that country.
I apologize it’s not in those countries, but we keep plenty of ways to make it better. And it really needs to drive such that it exceeds the -- even unsupervised, significantly exceeds the probability of entry of a human or significantly better, a lower probability of entry than a human by far. I think we’re tracking to that point very quickly. Obviously, in the past, I’ve been overly optimistic about this. The reason I’ve been overly optimistic is that the progress tends to sort of look like a log curve, which is that you have kind of rapid initial improvements that if you were to extrapolate that rapid fairly linear rate of improvement, you get to self-driving quite quickly, but then the rate of improvement curves over logarithmically as such to asymptote. That’s not happened several times. I would characterize our progress in real world AI as a series of stacked log curve. I think that’s also true in other parts of AI, like LLMs and whatnot, a series of stacked log curves. Each log curve is higher than the last one. So if you keep stacking them, keep stacking logs, eventually get to FSD.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
Thank you. Let’s now go to analyst questions. The first question comes from Will Stein from Truist.
Will Stein - Truist- Analyst
We learned earlier on the call, it sounds like you don’t think the truck will ramp to significant volume until its third year of production. Should we have a similar anticipation for the ramp of the next-gen platform, or is there any reason that we should be maybe more optimistic or pessimistic about the ramp profile there?
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes. To be clear, it’s not really the third year of production. It’s kind of like the 18th month of production is roughly my guess. So, it’s just that it starts this year, spans next year and gets to 2025. So technically, there are three calendar years in there, but there’s actually only 18 months, not three years. I would be very disappointed and shocking if it took us three years. But 18 months from initial deliveries to reach volume and reach prosperity with an immense -- I can’t tell you how much the blood, sweat and tears level required to achieve that is just staggering. I have been through it many times. Then, here we go again.
Will Stein - Truist- Analyst
Similar path for the next-gen platform?
Unidentified Company Representative
I mean, there’s like unique complexity to Cybertruck.
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes. I mean we dug our own grave with Cybertruck. Generally, everybody digs a grave better than themselves. And so Cybertruck’s one of those special products that comes along only once in a long while. And special products that come along once in a long while are just incredibly difficult to bring to market, to reach volume, to be prosperous. It’s fundamental to the nature of the newness. So now the sort of high-volume, low-cost smaller vehicle is actually much more conventional.
Unidentified Company Representative
Yes. In terms of like the technologies we’re putting into it, we didn’t have to invent full hard stainless steel or have mega 9,000-ton castings or the largest hot stamping in the world or new [Technical Difficulty] are quite in the same way as the Cybertruck. I think it will be quite a fast ramp. As I was just saying, we’re doing everything possible to simplify that vehicle in order to achieve a units per minute level that is unheard of in the auto industry.
Unidentified Company Representative
I mean, the single location makes it easier to automate. It also makes it lower cost. Yes, that’s intrinsically lower cost.
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes. Let’s be clear, it will be cool, but it’s utilitarian. It’s not meant to be -- fill you with magic. It can get you from A to B. It will be still beautiful. But it’s utility.
Unidentified Company Representative
That’s not 14 inches of [indiscernible] suspension.
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes. So I mean, the Cybertruck has a lot of bells and whistles.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
All right. Thank you very much. Let’s go to Pierre Ferragu from New Street Research.
Pierre Ferragu - New Street Research- Analyst
I have first like a follow-up question on FSD and pricing and adoption. So, I agree with you that as FSD improves, we should see its value increasing. But I guess, like the ultimate values of FSD, which is to be able to handle like a robotaxi is not going to necessarily interest everybody, and you have a bit of a degraded version that would be like a chauffeur service where the car drives by itself, but you still have to be in the car and around. And then there is like the hands-on -- eyes-on version of the service. And I guess, there should be like much lower cost, lower feature kind of variance of the service that could have a very large penetration on your installed base and more expensive one that would remain at a lower penetration level. So, I’m just wondering if you’re taking that, like the simplest version of FSD available and are going to work from a technical perspective, probably before like the ultimate robotaxi version can work if ever. And so I’m wondering how you take that into account and how you’re thinking like the financial contribution of FSD over time and whether you could evolve your pricing along that kind of tiers to increase adoption.
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes. A fully autonomous vehicle, I think, sort of the economics of autonomous vehicle are truly astounding in a positive way. When you look at passenger vehicles today, they only get about 10 to 12 hours of usage per week. If you drive 1.5-hour a day on average, that’s roughly 10 hours a week out of 168 hours. And then there’s also you’re going to have parking and insurance. You got to take care of the car. It’s like there’s a lot of overhead.
It’s like the economics of the system are just insanely positive given that the car -- like all of the cars we’re making and have made for a while, we believe, are capable of full autonomy. If you’re able to say increase the utility of that car by a factor of 5, which only means that you’re -- it’s being used for maybe 50 hours a week out of 168, so you’re still assuming that less than 1/3 of the hours of the week is doing something useful. You’ve increased the value of that by 5, but it still costs the same, like you have something -- then we’re a hardware company with software margins.
Pierre Ferragu - New Street Research- Analyst
I have actually a follow-up on different topic for you that I have if that’s okay. It’s about like your gross margin in the quarter. Could you give us a sense of like in how the gross margin evolved sequentially, how much was the impact of idle cost? How much was like the sequential benefit, I imagine, of production ramping at Berlin and Austin? And then I saw like this massive jump in energy storage, very strong positive surprise. So, if you can give us the background on that and tell us how we should think about that gross margin going forward.
Vaibhav Taneja - CFO
Thanks for the question. So, in terms of -- you have few different aspects of your question. So if I just look at from Q3 perspective, obviously, factory idle time had an impact. It did impact by -- and I won’t give you the exact percentage, but it had a decent impact for the quarter. And when you look at the other pieces, which we are trying to do, we did see certain of our other factories ramping up pretty well, right? And they actually contributed pretty well to the margin for this quarter. In fact, one of the factories came pretty close to in terms of per unit cost to where we are for our other established factory, which is Fremont. So that was a positive in the quarter.
When it comes to energy margins, Megapack deployment was the key driver there. And that product has done well. I mean, on the cost curve also, we’ve been able to do a lot there. But I do want to caution that Megapack deployments are a bit lumpy. So yes, we had a great quarter this period. But depending upon where we are trying to deploy that product in different markets, you would see periods where there would be downward pressure on deployment because of us trying to get the product to that base way…
Unidentified Company Representative
Yes, product in transit. Yes.
Vaibhav Taneja - CFO
Yes.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
Thank you very much. Let’s go to Rod Lache from Wolfe Research.
Rod Lache - Wolfe Research- Analyst
Really nice to see the rate of vehicle cost improvement despite the downtime that you took. You’ve taken now about $2,000 out of the average vehicle costs over the past year. Can you give us maybe a sense of the rate of improvement that you see from the changes that you alluded to, the factory changes you alluded to? Is there a way maybe to convey the speed of improvement on your existing product from here? And then related to that, can you share the timing of your next-gen -- the lower-priced product that you talked about earlier this year?
Vaibhav Taneja - CFO
Yes. So just in terms of product margins, there are lots of puts and takes when you look at this. There are certain things which we control, and there are certain things which we don’t control. We expect that we’ll get some benefits from our cost reduction efforts, which are all underway. So on the other hand, we just finished our factory upgrades late in Q3. Some of these factories are still in the early ramp phase in Q4. We’re still not up to where we want those factories to be. So, they will impact in the near term.
Plus, like Elon mentioned, we’re going to be ramping Cybertruck, which is going to be another headwind, which we will be dealing with. On top of all that, there’s overall uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment, which even makes it harder to predict precisely as to where we land. But yes, it’s an evolving thing which we’re observing every day and reacting to it on a daily basis.
Unidentified Company Representative
I would just say that on the cost reduction efforts, we are unflagging in our pursuit of additional cost downs for 2024. We do have a good pipeline of them and work on both the engineering side and the factory operations side. And our intention is to like maintain or exceed the trend that you saw, trying as hard as we possibly can.
Rod Lache - Wolfe Research- Analyst
The timing of the next-gen product, can you share that?
Elon Musk - CEO
Not at this time.
Rod Lache - Wolfe Research- Analyst
Okay. And just as a follow-up, price is also a driver of demand, but that’s obviously not happening in a vacuum. I think you mentioned that at some point during this call that you’re also maybe hitting the law of large numbers on some of your products. Can you just share how you’re thinking about price elasticity just at this point in this macro environment? And any thoughts along those lines?
Elon Musk - CEO
I think that there’s very significant price elasticity. To be totally frank, if our car costs the same as a RAV4, nobody would buy a RAV4 or at least they’re very unlikely to. It’s worth noting that a lot of these incentives, like the tax credit and whatnot, they’re actually very difficult for the average person to access because most people do not have $10,000 or even $7,500, burning a hole in their bank account. A large number of people are living paycheck to paycheck, and with a lot of debt. They’ve got credit card debt, mortgage debt. So, that’s reality for most people. It’s sometimes difficult for people who are high income like someone who’s earning over $200,000 a year to understand what life is like for someone who is earning $50,000 or $60,000 or $70,000 a year, which is most people.
So like for a lot of people, like this tax credit just -- they can’t front $7,500 for 18 months or even 6 months to get -- for the tax credit, and they actually don’t, in some case, even have that $7,500 in taxes. So, it’s really just the best regard to people is how much money do they have to pay immediately and how much per month. I think you stop right there. And our car is still much more expensive than a RAV4 when you look at it that way.
Vaibhav Taneja - CFO
Now one other thing which I’ll add, when you look at car buying in general, we’re trying to get to the next set of EV adapters.
Elon Musk - CEO
Not an EV adapter. Just who wants a great car.
Honestly, I would say it’s like somewhat correlates with why doesn’t everyone work from home crowd. I mean this is like some real Marie Antoinette vibes from people who say why is there no work from home. Like what about all the people that have to come to the factory and fill the cars or that all people that have to go to the restaurant and make your food and deliver your food. It’s like what are you talking about, how detached from reality does the work from home crowd have to be? While they take advantage of all those who cannot work from home.
You have to say like why did I sleep in the factory so many times, because it mattered. I just can’t emphasize again how important cost is. It’s not an optional thing for most people, it is a necessary thing. We have to make our cars more affordable that people can buy it. And I keep harping on this interest thing, but I mean it just raises the cost of the car. I mean, we’re looking an internal analysis, which we think is more or less on track that when you look at the cost -- or the price reductions we’ve made in, say, the Model Y and you compare that to how much people’s monthly payment has risen due to interest rates, the price of the Model Y is almost unchanged.
Vaibhav Taneja - CFO
If you factor in the...
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes, which is what I’m trying to say. The thing that matters it’s how much money do they have to put down and do they literally have that in their bank account or their check balance and then what is the monthly payment. And it doesn’t matter how -- if that monthly payment is principal interest or whatever, it’s just a number, and that number has to not cause their bank account to go negative.
So going from near zero interest rates to kind of the current very high interest rates, the actual monthly payment is basically the same. It’s just a bunch more of it is going to interest. And there are some incremental challenges beyond that, which is the difficulty of getting credit at all has increased. And so, the number of people who simply cannot get credit, period, even if they’ve got a job and everything is solid, the banks are a little gun-shy on handing out credit given that a bunch of them kicked the bucket earlier this year.
Unidentified Company Representative
There’s also just fewer options, even if they planned out credit, there’s fewer banks to go there.
Elon Musk - CEO
Digital banks still exist. Well, if your bank does not exist, you have to establish a relationship with a new bank. And so a lot of regional banks are died, and I mean even Credit Suisse, that was a shocker. A 160-year-old-ish Swiss institution, it doesn’t exist anymore. And I think there’s still quite a few shoes to drop on the bad credit situation, commercial real estate obviously is in terrible shape. Credit card debt has been rising significantly, the credit card interest rates are usurious and over 20%, meaning like over time it becomes obviously extremely punishing because if somebody’s paying 20% interest on their credit cards, means they cannot pay them off. If you can’t pay them off and you’re still accruing interest of 20%, you’re at best headed to a bad place.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
Let’s go to next question from George from Canaccord.
George Gianarikas - Canaccord - Analyst
Just to focus on the cost per vehicle coming down in future quarters as you discussed in your written remarks. I’m curious as to what the levers of that could be. Is it more scale, more factory utilization? Is it material cost reductions? Are there things like gigacasting? Can you just kind of give us some data points to give us confidence if that’s going to come down over time. And if I can sneak one in, please, there are press reports -- and I know how perilous it is to believe some of these. But, they say that you’ve included radar as an option in some Model Ys in China. And I’m just here to ask if that’s true. And if so, why?
Elon Musk - CEO
We’ve not included radar. We have radar as -- a Tesla designed radar is an experiment in Model S and X. That’s it. We’ll see whether that experiment is worth it, but there are no plans to integrate radar into 3 and Y. Just as humans drive well, and in fact, an excellent human driver can drive with amazing safety simply with their eyes, the car will far exceed the average human safety just with vision, because, the car is looking at all directions all at once. We don’t have eyes at the back of our head. And the computer never gets tired and never gets distracted, get drunk, hopefully.
And so, radar is -- what really matters is how much does it affect the probability of an accident. And in order for the radar to be effective, you have to be able to do radar-only braking -- you have to do actions that are radar-only. Otherwise, you get this disambiguation problem between vision and radar. That’s why we actually turned off the radar in cars historically that we had shipped, all 3 and Y used to have radar, but we turned it off because the radar actually generated more noise than signal. Now the Tesla designed radar is a high-resolution radar that has some potential to be useful, but the jury is still very much out on whether that is in fact the case.
Unidentified Company Representative
On the cost question, I guess, from the vehicle side, like as Drew mentioned earlier, we are always trying to engineer our products to be cheaper to make and more efficient to make. That comes obviously on the engineering side as we come up with new innovations but as well on the supply chain side. With our partners, we work with them to automate some of their lines and move their bottlenecks and their high cost as well. On the logistics side, getting parts to the factory, it’s not like a one thing that -- you have to check cost everywhere and we do it ruthlessly at all times.
Unidentified Company Representative
Operations efficiency. All of the above.
Vaibhav Taneja - CFO
Yes. I would say there’s a whole laundry list of things, which we are chasing. We internally call it the cost attack, where we’re literally going line by line and saying how can we make it better. And it’s a grind.
Elon Musk - CEO
It’s a grind. It’s like Game of Thrones but pennies. I mean first approximation, if you’ve got a $40,000 car, and roughly 10,000 items in that car, that means each thing, on average, costs $4. So in order to get the cost down, say, by 10%, you have to get $0.40 out of each part on average. It is a game of pennies.
Unidentified Company Representative
We play it.
Elon Musk - CEO
Willingly, yes. We’ve done it many, many times. And even something as simple as like a sticker, like there’s too many stickers internally in the car that nobody ever sees. There’s something as simple as a QR code. You may think, well, putting a QR code on a part. Why don’t just put them on there, it’s like, well, are we actually going to use that QR code?
Unidentified Company Representative
That’s a penny.
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes, exactly. And then inevitably, sometimes the QR code doesn’t go on properly or you can’t read it properly, and it stops the line.
Unidentified Company Representative
More than a penny.
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes, absolutely. So chipping away, with -- I mean it is trying to -- it does feel like digging a tunnel with a spoon at times.
Unidentified Company Representative
Very much escaping prison.
Vaibhav Taneja - CFO
On top of it, like we said, we did some factory upgrades, so we expect volume to go up. That would also bring some savings from higher production. But then on the flip side, we’re going to be ramping a new product like Cybertruck, which we talked about. So, those are the real puts and takes what we are working for.
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes. But there’s not like some accidently some brick of gold that we go left in the car, unfortunately. We’re trying to be very rigorous about improving the quality and capability of the car because it’s like any fool can reduce the cost of a car by making it worse and just deleting functionality and capability and that’s how I call this sort of any fool -- like if you want to like lose weight and you’d say, well, I need to lose over 15 pounds right away, you could chop your arm off, but then you’re sitting with one arm. You’re still fat.
You actually have to eat less food and work out. That’s the actual way. It’s not super fun because food is delicious. And personally, I don’t love working out. I wish I did, but I don’t. Unless moving the mouse consists of working out, in which case, I love moving the mouse.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
All right. Let’s go to Colin Langan from Wells Fargo.
Colin Langan - Wells Fargo - Analyst
You said in the commentary that you’re not going full tilt on the plant in Mexico until there are signs that the economy is strong. Can you continue at a 50% CAGR without that plant? And where would that come from? And any color on what you mean sort of not going full tilt? Could that plant get delayed indefinitely, or what are you are kind of talking about?
Elon Musk - CEO
No, we’re definitely making the factory in Mexico. We feel very good about that. We put a lot of effort into looking at different locations, and we feel very good about that location, and we are going to build a factory there, and it’s going to be great. The question is really just one of timing. And there’s going to be a broken record on the interest front. It’s just the interest rates have to come down. If interest rates keep rising, you just fundamentally reduce affordability. It is just the same as increasing the price of the car. So I just don’t have visibility into it. If you can tell me what the interest rates are, I can tell you when we should build the factory. We’re going to build it. And I think we’ll start the initial phases of construction next year. But I am still somewhat scarred by 2009 when General Motors and Chrysler went bankrupt. While that’s now 14 years ago, that is seared into my mind with a branding iron because Tesla was just hanging on by a thread during that entire time and with -- we closed a financing round in 2008 at 6 p.m. December 24th, Christmas Eve. And if we had not closed that financing round, we would have bounced payroll two days after Christmas. So we actually closed that around the last hour, the last day that it was possible, stressful to say the least, and then barely made it through 2009. So, I don’t want to be going at top speed into uncertainty. A lot of wars going on in the world obviously as well, so -- and we have room here.
Unidentified Company Representative
Like in Giga Texas. You said we still have room in this building. It’s not full with Cybertruck and the line. There’s plenty of growth opportunities still to have inside the building where our team already is.
Elon Musk - CEO
We also have 2,000 acres here.
We’re actually only occupying a tiny corner of the land that we have. We could technically do all the scaling, research just here. So, personnel is our biggest challenge and the greater Austin area only has generously the greater Austin area only has 2 million people. So people are moving here and they’re willing to move here, but there is somewhat of a housing crisis. They got to live somewhere.
So I don’t know. I’m just curious. I’m not saying things will be bad. I’m just saying they might be. And I think like Tesla is an incredibly capable ship, but we need to make sure like as -- if the macroeconomic conditions are stormy, even if the best ship is still going to have tough times, the weaker ships will sink. We’re not going to sink. But even a great ship in a storm has challenges. Now that storm will apply to everyone, not just to us and not just to auto industry. It will apply to everyone. So apart from necessary sort of staples, like food and stuff. If interest rates start coming down, we will accelerate.
Elon Musk - CEO
If anybody’s got any guesses on this, I’d love to be less wrong. And I apologize if I’m perhaps more paranoid than I should be because that might also be the case because I have PTSD from 2009, big time. And in 2017 through 2019 were not a picnic either. That was very tough going. So the auto industry is also somewhat cyclic because people hesitate to buy a new car if there’s uncertainty in the economy. So it’s car companies do very well in good economic times, and they don’t do as well in tough economic times. So, whereas if somebody is selling bread, then I think that people still eat bread. Yes, we need bread. We need food all time. But new car, you don’t have to have...
Vaibhav Taneja - CFO
Especially if there are wars going on and then that impacts your sentiment.
Elon Musk - CEO
Yes. I mean people are reading about wars all over the world. Buying a new car tends to not be front of mind.
Martin Viecha - VP, Investor Relations
All right. Unfortunately, that’s all the time we have today. Thank you very much for all of your good questions, and we’ll see you again in three months.
(Tips:This transcript is converted by recording, we will do our best, but cannot fully guarantee the accuracy of the conversion, it is for reference only.)
公司管理
Elon Musk——首席執行官 |
Karn Budhiraj-供應鏈副總裁 |
Lars Moravy-車輛工程副總裁 |
Martin Viecha-投資者關係副總裁 |
Vaibhav Taneja-首席財務官 |
分析師
Colin Langan-富國銀行 |
George Gianarikas-Canacc |
Pierre Ferragu——新街研究 |
Rod Lache-沃爾夫研究 |
威爾·斯坦-Truist |
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
現在我們來回答投資者的問題。第一個投資者問題來自克雷格。你們預計2024年Cybertruck的交付量是多少?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
目前很難做出準確的預測。回到我之前說過的,坡道會非常困難。就像我說的,這是沒有辦法的事。如果我們只是試圖做一些山寨汽車的設計,而在內燃機領域,有200種車型都是主題上的細微變化,沒有什麼區別,那麼這其實並不難。但是,如果你想做一些激進的、創新的、真正特別的東西,比如Cybertruck,那就非常困難了,因爲沒有任何東西可以模仿。你不僅要發明汽車,還要發明製造汽車的方法。因此,越是未知的領域,結果就越難以預測。
現在,我可以說,事情最終會如何發展?我認爲,我們最終將每年生產大約25萬輛塞伯坦汽車,但我不認爲我們明年就能達到這個產量。我認爲我們可能會在2025年的某個時候達到。這是我的最佳猜測。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
第二個問題是,你們能否介紹一下4680電池的最新進展,特別是在電池日所概述的性能改進和成本節約方面的進展?
身份不明的公司代表
德克薩斯州的4680電池產量季度環比增長40%。祝賀德克薩斯團隊在一號線生產出2,000萬塊電池。德克薩斯現在是我們主要的4680工廠。我們非常注重質量。廢料季度環比下降40%。隨着產量的增加和良率的提高,電池片成本在本季度內逐月持續改善,但要實現穩定狀態目標,我們還有很多工作要做。這是我們的當務之急。
在德克薩斯州的二號生產線上,能量比Y型電池高10%的Cybertruck銷售開始投產。本季度,我們轉而建造100%的Cybertruck電池,以簡化和集中工廠,在接下來的三個季度裏,我們將在第一階段的所有四條生產線上進行量產。德克薩斯州4680工廠的二期工程目前正在建設中。與一期工程相比,新增的四條生產線進一步提高了資本效率,我們的目標是在2024年底開始生產。
最後,在加藤,我們正在重新裝備,以實現下一代電池設計的大規模托盤運行。加藤的長期目標是成爲新電池的發射臺,比我們的大規模生產設施領先一代,從而實現新設計的更快迭代和更順利的量產。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
下一個問題來自機構投資者。請介紹一下公司在柏林和奧斯汀工廠的最新產能擴張計劃,以及墨西哥 Gigafactory工廠的開業時間表。
身份不明的公司代表
柏林和奧斯汀工廠目前的首要任務是通過提高效率,最大限度地提高現有生產線的產量。一如既往,保持高質量和降低單位成本與提高產量同樣重要。在墨西哥,我們正在進行基礎設施建設和工廠設計,同時進行新產品的工程設計和開發。這是我可以分享的。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
在墨西哥,我們正在爲開工奠定基礎,並進行所有的長期準備工作。但我認爲,我們希望在全力以赴建設墨西哥工廠之前,先了解一下全球經濟的情況。我很擔心我們所處的高利率環境。我怎麼強調都不過分,絕大多數人買車都是爲了月供。隨着利率的上升,月供中利息所佔的比例自然會增加。
因此,如果利率居高不下或更高,人們就更難買車了,他們根本負擔不起。我相信,在這一點上,Model Y 將成爲全球最暢銷的汽車。如果與排名第二和第三的其他汽車相比,它們的價格比我們的汽車低得多。所以,我們在這裏只是碰到了大數法則的情況。
我知道人們希望我們做廣告,我們也在做廣告。我認爲在廣告方面還是有收穫的。但是,告訴人們一輛車很好,但他們買不起,並沒有什麼實際幫助。因此,必須設法讓人們買得起車,否則普通人花再多錢也買不起。所以,這是一件大事。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
下一個問題是,你們預計Model 3 Highland什麼時候能在美國上市?我只想說,很遺憾,我們不會在業績電話會議上回答與產品相關的問題和時間安排。那麼我們來談談下一個問題。目前賣方的共識是,特斯拉將在2024年交付230萬輛汽車,比2023年的指導目標增長28%。如果2024年沒有任何大規模市場投放,這個增長率能實現嗎?特斯拉預計何時才能恢復50%的長期年複合增長率?
Vaibhav Taneja - 首席財務官
當我們展望2024年時,會有很多變化。我剛才談到了宏觀經濟環境的變化。因此,我們專注於以非常具有成本效益的方式增加產量,並正在仔細審查我們的所有選擇,我們將在下一次業績電話會議上提供更有意義的最新信息。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的,我的意思是,冒着說得很明顯的風險,不可能永遠保持50%的複合增長率,否則你就會超過已知宇宙的質量。我認爲我們的發展速度會非常快,遠遠超過地球上任何一家汽車公司。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
下一個問題是,您對機器人出租車的驅動或非驅動有一個大致的時間安排嗎?這個項目的進展情況最讓你興奮的是什麼?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
嗯,robotaxi就像一定是非驅動的一樣。我對我們在自動駕駛方面取得的進展感到非常興奮,端到端,無網的自動駕駛軟件令人驚歎。它帶着我在奧斯汀到處跑,沒有任何干預。所以,這顯然是正確的選擇,而且真的非常了不起。顯然,同樣的軟件和方法將使 "擎天柱 "能夠做一些有用的事情,並使 "擎天柱 "能夠通過觀察來學習如何做事。因此,從長遠來看,這非常令人興奮。
正如我之前提到的,鑑於經濟產出是人的數量乘以生產率,如果你不再限制人的數量,那麼實際上,你已經擁有了一個人形機器人,它可以做你想做的任何事情,你的經濟明智地說是無限的,或者說是無限的。因此,我不認爲有人能比特斯拉做得更好,遠遠不夠。波士頓動力公司(Boston Dynamics)令人印象深刻,但他們的機器人缺乏大腦,或者像綠野仙蹤之類的。然後,你還需要能夠設計出可以大規模製造的人形機器人。到了一定時候,機器人就會製造機器人。
顯然,我們需要確保未來的人類生活在一個良好的環境中。我們不能製造出終結者的變種結果 因此,我們將在人形機器人的本地化控制方面投入大量精力。所以基本上,任何人都能在本地關閉它,就像軟件更新一樣,你無法改變它。它必須是硬編碼的。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
下一個問題是,既然FSD的情況越來越好,而且機器人出租車有望很快面世,爲什麼還要降價?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
我們只是想讓越來越多的人嘗試它,讓他們更能負擔得起。我認爲,隨着時間的推移,FSD的價格將與其價值成正比增長。因此,目前的價格只是暫時的低點。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
下一個問題還是關於FSD。梅賽德斯正在爲其三級自動駕駛系統的駕駛先導功能處於激活狀態承擔法律責任。特斯拉是否計劃承擔FSD的法律責任?如果是,什麼時候?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
從訴訟來看,很多人都認爲我們要承擔法律責任。不管我們願不願意,在這方面我們肯定不會置身事外。
身份不明的公司代表
我的意思是,我認爲大家一定要記住,梅賽德斯的系統僅限於內華達州和加利福尼亞州某些城市的道路,在雪地或霧中不起作用。在平原地區必須有一輛領頭車,時速只有40英里。而我們的系統可以在任何條件下全面行駛,所以我們的方法顯然更有能力。但有了這些限制,它的作用就真的不大了。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
不,我認爲有些人了解特斯拉人工智能系統的深刻內涵。它非常非常少。它基本上就是嬰兒級的 AGI。它必須了解現實才能駕駛。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
謝謝。下一個問題是關於Optimus的。Optimus明年會在Gigafactory生產線上工作嗎?如果是的話,你估計會部署多少條?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
我認爲,目前我們還不準備討論Optimus計劃的細節,但我們會定期在網上提供最新信息。所以,正如你所看到的,一年前擎天柱還能勉強走路,而現在它可以做瑜伽了。所以,幾年後,它可能還能跳芭蕾。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
聽起來不錯。投資者提出的最後一個問題是,神經網絡路徑規劃代表了FSD在能力和安全性方面的重大進步。特斯拉正在採取哪些措施在美國以外的地區推廣這項技術?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的。我們的方法一直是努力讓它發揮作用,就像我們努力讓它發揮作用的地方越多,問題就越難解決。因此,我們之所以不在所有國家同時開展這項工作,是因爲在任何地方開展這項工作都需要更長的時間。這就是爲什麼目前只在北美地區實施。此外,在世界上大部分地區,你必須在部署前獲得批准,而在美國,你可以冒着風險部署,或者至少你要爲你部署的東西承擔責任。大多數國家都需要某種廣泛的審批程序,而我們只有在我們認爲它已經準備好在該國投入使用時,才會通過這種廣泛的審批程序。
很抱歉,我們的產品在這些國家並不適用,但我們有很多方法可以讓它變得更好。它確實需要發展到這樣的程度:即使在無人監管的情況下,它也能大大超過人類進入的概率,或者更好一些,遠遠低於人類進入的概率。我認爲,我們正在快速追蹤到這一點。顯然,過去我對此過於樂觀。我過於樂觀的原因是,進展往往看起來像一條對數曲線,即你有一種快速的初始改進,如果你要推斷這種快速的相當線性的改進率,你會很快實現自動駕駛,但隨後改進率會像這樣以對數曲線漸近。這種情況並沒有發生過幾次。我會把我們在現實世界中的人工智能進步描述爲一系列堆疊的對數曲線。我認爲在人工智能的其他領域也是如此,比如LLM等,這是一系列堆疊的對數曲線。每一條對數曲線都高於上一條。因此,如果你不斷堆疊它們,不斷堆疊對數,最終就會達到FSD。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
謝謝。現在請分析師提問。第一個問題來自Truist的Will Stein。
Will Stein - Truist 分析師
我們在早些時候的電話會議上了解到,聽起來你們認爲卡車在生產的第三年才會大量投產。對於下一代平台的量產,我們是否也應該有類似的預期,或者說,我們是否有理由對其量產情況持更樂觀或更悲觀的態度?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的,說白了,這不是真正意義上的第三年生產。我的猜測大概是生產的第18個月。所以,它只是從今年開始,跨越明年,一直到2025年。因此,從技術上講,其中有三個日曆年,但實際上只有18個月,而不是三年。如果我們花了三年時間,我會非常失望和震驚。但是,從最初交付到實現批量生產和繁榮發展,18個月的時間所需的血汗和淚水是驚人的。我已經經歷過很多次了。然後,我們又來了。
Will Stein - Truist 分析師
下一代平台也是這樣嗎?
身份不明的公司代表
我的意思是,Cybertruck有其獨特的複雜性。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的,我是說我們在Cybertruck上是自掘墳墓。一般來說,每個人挖的墳墓都比自己挖的好。因此,Cybertruck是那種千載難逢的特殊產品。而這種千載難逢的特殊產品很難推向市場,很難實現批量生產,也很難取得成功。這是新產品的基本特性。所以,現在這種高產量、低成本的小型車實際上更符合常規。
身份不明的公司代表
是的,就像我們投入其中的技術一樣,我們不必發明全硬不鏽鋼,也不必擁有 9000 噸的大型鑄件或世界上最大的熱衝壓件或新的[技術難題],這些都與Cybertruck完全相同。我認爲這將是一個相當快的坡道。正如我剛才所說的,我們正在盡一切可能簡化這種車輛,以達到汽車行業聞所未聞的每分鐘生產一輛的水平。
身份不明的公司代表
我的意思是,單一的生產地點更容易實現自動化。同時也降低了成本。是的,這本質上就是降低成本。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的。讓我們把話說清楚,它會很酷,但它是功利性的。它不是爲了讓你充滿魔力。它可以把你從A地帶到B地。但它是實用的。
身份不明的公司代表
這不是14英寸的[難以辨認]懸掛。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的,所以我的意思是,Cybertruck有很多鐘聲和口哨聲。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
好的,非常感謝。非常感謝。下面有請新街研究公司的Pierre Ferragu。
Pierre Ferragu - 新街研究公司分析師
我想先跟進一個關於FSD、定價和採用率的問題。我同意你的觀點,隨着FSD的改進,我們應該看到它的價值在增加。但我想,FSD的終極價值,也就是能夠像機器人出租車一樣行駛,並不一定會引起每個人的興趣,而且你還有一個有點退化的版本,就像司機服務一樣,汽車會自動駕駛,但你仍然必須在車裏四處轉轉。還有一種是 "手把手 "的服務。我想,應該有成本更低、功能更少的不同服務,可以在你的安裝基礎上有很大的滲透率,而更昂貴的服務則會保持在較低的滲透率水平。所以,我只是想知道,你們是否會採用最簡單的可用FSD版本,並且從技術角度來看,可能會在終極機器人出租車版本之前投入使用。因此,我想知道你們是如何考慮到這一點的,以及你們是如何考慮隨着時間的推移,FSD的財務貢獻的,以及你們是否可以沿着這種層級來發展你們的定價,以提高採用率。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的。我認爲,完全自動駕駛汽車的經濟性確實令人震驚。看看現在的乘用車,每週的使用時間大約只有10到12個小時。如果你平均每天駕駛1.5小時,那麼在168小時中,每週大約使用10小時。此外,還要支付停車費和保險費。你還得保養汽車。這就像有很多開銷。
這就像系統的經濟性是非常積極的,因爲汽車--就像我們正在製造和已經制造了一段時間的所有汽車一樣,我們相信,是能夠完全自動駕駛的。如果你能把這輛車的效用提高5倍,這隻意味着你每週使用這輛車的時間是168小時中的50小時,所以你仍然假設每週只有不到1/3的時間是在做有用的事情。你把它的價值提高了5%,但它的成本還是一樣,就像你有一些東西 -- 那麼我們就是一家有軟件利潤的硬件公司。
Pierre Ferragu - 新街研究公司分析師
如果可以的話,我想跟進一個不同的話題。是關於你們本季度的毛利率。你能告訴我們毛利率是如何連續變化的,閒置成本的影響有多大?我想,柏林和奧斯汀的產量提升帶來了多少連續性收益?然後,我看到儲能業務的大幅增長,非常令人驚喜。所以,如果你能給我們介紹一下這方面的背景,並告訴我們應該如何看待未來的毛利率。
Vaibhav Taneja - 首席財務官
感謝您的提問。您的問題涉及幾個不同的方面。如果我從第三季度的角度來看,工廠閒置時間顯然會產生影響。我不會告訴你確切的百分比,但它對本季度產生了相當大的影響。而從其他方面來看,我們正在努力做到,我們確實看到其他一些工廠的產能提升得不錯,對嗎?實際上,這些工廠對本季度的利潤率貢獻很大。事實上,其中一家工廠的單位成本已接近我們在弗裏蒙特建立的另一家工廠的水平。因此,這也是本季度的一個積極因素。
說到能源利潤率,Megapack的部署是關鍵驅動因素。該產品表現良好。我的意思是,在成本曲線上,我們也做了很多工作。但我要提醒的是,Megapack的部署有點不穩定。所以,是的,我們在本季度取得了很好的成績。但是,根據我們在不同市場的產品部署情況,你會發現在一些時期,由於我們試圖將產品推廣到基礎市場,會出現部署壓力下降的情況......
身份不明的公司代表
是的,產品在運輸途中。是的。
Vaibhav Taneja - 首席財務官
是的。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
非常感謝。下面請沃爾夫研究公司的羅德-拉奇(Rod Lache)發言。
Rod Lache - 沃爾夫研究公司分析師
很高興看到在停工的情況下,車輛成本仍有改善。在過去的一年裏,平均車輛成本降低了約 2000 美元。你能不能告訴我們,從你提到的變化、工廠的變化中,你看到了多大的改善?是否有一種方法可以讓我們了解現有產品的改進速度?與此相關的是,你能否分享一下你今年早些時候談到的下一代--低價產品的上市時間?
Vaibhav Taneja - 首席財務官
是的,就產品利潤率而言,有很多風險。有些事情我們可以控制,有些事情我們無法控制。我們希望我們的成本削減工作能給我們帶來一些好處,這些工作都在進行中。另一方面,我們剛剛在第三季度末完成了工廠升級。其中一些工廠在第四季度仍處於早期投產階段。我們仍未達到我們希望這些工廠達到的水平。因此,它們將在短期內產生影響。
此外,就像埃隆提到的,我們將對Cybertruck進行擴產,這將是另一個不利因素,我們也將應對。除此之外,宏觀經濟環境也存在整體不確定性,這甚至讓我們更難準確預測未來的走向。沒錯,這是一個不斷變化的問題,我們每天都在觀察,每天都在應對。
身份不明的公司代表
我只想說,在降低成本方面,我們將繼續努力,爭取在2024年降低更多成本。我們在工程和工廠運營方面都有很好的計劃和工作。我們的目標是保持或超越你們看到的趨勢,盡最大努力。
Rod Lache - 沃爾夫研究公司分析師
下一代產品的時間安排,你能分享一下嗎?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
目前沒有。
Rod Lache - 沃爾夫研究公司分析師
好的。另外,價格也是需求的一個驅動因素,但這顯然不是憑空發生的。我想你在這次電話會議中提到過,你的一些產品可能也遇到了大數法則的問題。你能否分享一下,在目前的宏觀環境下,你是如何考慮價格彈性的?有什麼想法?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
我認爲價格彈性非常大。坦率地說,如果我們的汽車價格與RAV4相同,沒有人會購買RAV4,至少他們不太可能購買。值得注意的是,很多激勵措施,比如稅收減免什麼的,普通人實際上很難享受到,因爲大多數人的銀行賬戶裏沒有1萬美元,甚至沒有7500美元。很多人都是靠工資生活,而且負債累累。他們有信用卡債務、抵押貸款債務。所以,這就是大多數人的現實。對於年收入超過20萬美元的高收入者來說,有時很難理解年收入爲5萬美元、6萬美元或7萬美元的人的生活,而這正是大多數人的生活。
因此,對於很多人來說,這種稅收抵免只是--他們不可能在18個月甚至6個月的時間裏提前支付7500美元來獲得--稅收抵免,而實際上,在某些情況下,他們甚至沒有那7500美元的稅款。因此,對人們來說,最好的辦法就是立即支付多少錢,以及每月支付多少錢。我想你就到此爲止吧。從這個角度看,我們的車還是比RAV4貴得多。
Vaibhav Taneja - 首席財務官
現在我還想補充一點,當你從總體上看汽車購買時,我們正試圖吸引下一批電動汽車適配者。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
不是電動汽車適配者。只是想要一輛好車的人。
老實說,我覺得這和爲什麼大家都不在家工作有點相關。我的意思是,那些說 "爲什麼不能在家工作 "的人,好像真的有瑪麗-安託瓦內特的影子。比如那些要去工廠給汽車加油的人,或者那些要去餐館給你做飯送飯的人。你在說什麼呢?"在家工作 "一族到底有多脫離現實?他們利用那些不能在家工作的人。
你不得不說,爲什麼我在工廠裏睡了那麼多次,因爲這很重要。我再三強調成本的重要性。對大多數人來說,這不是一件可有可無的事情,而是一件必要的事情。我們必須讓人們買得起我們的汽車。我一直在強調利息問題,但我的意思是,利息只會增加汽車的成本。我的意思是,我們正在進行一項內部分析,我們認爲這項分析或多或少是正確的,當你看到我們在Model Y等車型上降低的成本或價格,並將其與人們因利率而增加的月供進行比較時,Model Y的價格幾乎沒有變化。
Vaibhav Taneja - 首席財務官
如果考慮到...
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的,這就是我想說的。重要的是,他們需要首付多少錢,他們的銀行賬戶或支票餘額中是否真的有這筆錢,然後月供是多少。月供是本金利息還是其他什麼,這並不重要,這只是一個數字,而這個數字必須不會導致他們的銀行賬戶出現負數。
因此,從接近零利率到目前的高利率,每月的實際付款額基本上是一樣的。只是多了一大筆利息。除此之外,還有一些額外的挑戰,那就是獲得信貸的難度增加了。因此,無法獲得信貸的人越來越多,即使他們有工作,一切都很穩定,但由於今年早些時候有許多銀行倒閉,銀行在發放貸款時也有點畏首畏尾。
身份不明的公司代表
選擇也少了,即使他們計劃發放貸款,可去的銀行也少了。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
數字銀行仍然存在。那麼,如果你的銀行不存在,你就必須與新的銀行建立關係。因此,很多地區性銀行都死了,我的意思是,即使是瑞士信貸銀行,也令人震驚。一家擁有160年曆史的瑞士銀行已經不復存在了。我認爲在不良信貸方面還有很多問題要解決 商業地產的狀況顯然很糟糕 信用卡債務一直在大幅上升,信用卡利率高得離譜,超過了20%,這意味着隨着時間的推移,這顯然會變得極具懲罰性,因爲如果有人的信用卡要支付20%的利息,就意味着他們無法償還。如果你無法還清,而你還在累積20%的利息,那麼你最多隻能走向一個糟糕的境地。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
下面請Canacc的喬治提問。
喬治吉亞納裏卡斯 - Canacc分析師
我只想關注一下您在書面發言中提到的未來幾個季度每輛車成本下降的問題。我很好奇降低成本的槓桿是什麼?是擴大規模、提高工廠利用率?是降低材料成本嗎?還有像千兆鑄造這樣的東西嗎?你能不能給我們提供一些數據,讓我們對隨着時間推移成本是否會下降有信心。請允許我插一句,有媒體報道--我知道相信這些報道有多危險。但是,他們說你們在中國的一些Y型車中加入了雷達選項。我想問這是否屬實?如果是,爲什麼?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
我們沒有配備雷達。我們有雷達,特斯拉設計的雷達是在Model S和 X上進行的實驗。我們會看看這個實驗是否值得,但目前還沒有計劃將雷達集成到3 和Y車型中。就像人類開車一樣,事實上,一名優秀的人類駕駛員只需用眼睛就能實現驚人的安全駕駛,而汽車僅憑視覺就能遠遠超過人類的平均安全水平,因爲汽車會同時觀察所有方向。我們的後腦勺沒有眼睛。電腦永遠不會疲勞,也不會分心或喝醉,但願如此。
因此,雷達的真正作用在於它對事故概率的影響有多大。爲了讓雷達發揮效用,你必須能夠做到只用雷達制動 -- 你必須採取只用雷達的行動。否則,就會在視覺和雷達之間產生歧義。這就是爲什麼我們關閉了歷史上已出廠汽車的雷達,所有3和Y型車都曾配備雷達,但我們關閉了它,因爲雷達產生的噪音實際上大於信號。現在,特斯拉設計的雷達是一種高分辨率雷達,具有一定的實用潛力,但是否真的如此,目前還沒有定論。
身份不明的公司代表
關於成本問題,我想,從車輛方面來說,就像德魯剛才提到的,我們一直在努力設計我們的產品,使其製造成本更低,製造效率更高。這不僅體現在工程設計方面,因爲我們有新的創新,而且也體現在供應鏈方面。我們與合作伙伴合作,使他們的一些生產線實現自動化,消除他們的瓶頸,降低他們的高成本。在物流方面,將零部件運送到工廠並不是一件簡單的事情,你必須檢查所有地方的成本,我們在任何時候都會嚴格把關。
身份不明的公司代表
運營效率。以上皆是。
Vaibhav Taneja - 首席財務官
是的,我想說的是,我們正在追逐的東西有一大堆。我們內部稱之爲 "成本攻堅戰",我們逐條逐項地研究如何才能做得更好。這是一項艱鉅的任務。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
這是一種磨練。這就像 "權力的遊戲",不過是幾分錢的遊戲。我是說第一近似值,如果你有一輛價值40,000美元的汽車,車上大約有10,000件物品,這意味着平均每件東西的成本是4美元。這是一個一分錢的遊戲。
不明身份的公司代表
我們在玩這個遊戲。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
願意,是的。我們已經玩過很多次了。即使是像貼紙這樣簡單的東西,比如車內有太多貼紙,但從來沒人看到過。還有像二維碼這樣簡單的東西。你可能會想,好吧,把二維碼貼在零件上。爲什麼不直接貼上去呢?我們真的會用到二維碼嗎?
身份不明的公司代表
那是一分錢。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的,沒錯。然後不可避免的是,有時候二維碼貼不上去,或者你無法正確讀取,就會導致線路中斷。
身份不明的公司代表
不止一分錢。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的,當然。所以,我的意思是,這就像是在用勺子挖隧道。
不明身份公司代表
非常像越獄。
Vaibhav Taneja - 首席財務官
除此之外,正如我們所說的,我們對工廠進行了一些升級,因此我們預計產量會上升。這也會從更高的產量中節省一些開支。但從另一個角度來看,我們也將逐步推出新產品,比如我們提到過的Cybertruck。因此,這些都是我們正在努力爭取的。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的,但不幸的是,我們並沒有意外地把金磚留在車裏。我們正努力嚴格地提高汽車的質量和性能,因爲任何傻瓜都可以通過降低汽車的成本,讓它變得更糟,只是刪除功能和性能,這就是我所說的傻瓜的做法,就像如果你想減肥,你會說,好吧,我需要馬上減掉15磅以上,你可以砍掉你的胳膊,但你只能用一隻胳膊坐着。你還是很胖。
實際上,你必須少吃東西,多鍛鍊。這才是真正的方法。這並不有趣,因爲食物很美味。就我個人而言,我不喜歡鍛鍊。我希望我喜歡,但我不喜歡。除非移動鼠標的過程就是健身,在這種情況下,我喜歡移動鼠標。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
好的。下面請富國銀行的科林-蘭根發言。
科林蘭根 - 富國銀行分析師
您在評論中說,在出現經濟強勁的跡象之前,您不會全力以赴在墨西哥建廠。如果沒有墨西哥工廠,你們能否繼續保持50%的年複合增長率?從何而來?你說的 "不全力以赴 "是什麼意思?該工廠會被無限期推遲嗎?
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
不,我們肯定會在墨西哥建廠。我們對此感覺很好。我們花了很多精力去考察不同的地點,我們對那個地點感覺很好,我們將在那裏建廠,而且一定會很棒。問題其實只是時機。在利息問題上,我們會打破記錄。只是利率必須下降。如果利率持續上升,就會從根本上降低可負擔性。這和提高汽車價格是一樣的。因此,我對此並不了解。如果你能告訴我利率是多少,我就能告訴你我們什麼時候應該建廠。我們會建的。我想我們會在明年開始初期建設。但我仍然對2009年通用汽車和克萊斯勒的破產記憶猶新。雖然那已經是14年前的事了,但我仍然記憶猶新,因爲在那段時間裏,特斯拉一直苟延殘喘,我們在2008年12月24日下午6點(聖誕節前夕)完成了一輪融資。如果我們沒有完成那輪融資,聖誕節後兩天我們就會跳票。因此,我們實際上是在最後一小時、最後一天才完成了融資,可以說壓力很大,然後勉強撐過了2009年。所以,我不想以最快的速度進入不確定狀態。顯然,世界上還有很多戰爭在進行,所以--我們這裏還有空間。
不明身份公司代表
就像在Giga Texas一樣。你說我們這棟樓還有空間Cybertruck和生產線還沒滿。我們的團隊在這棟大樓裏還有很多發展機會。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
我們在這裏還有2000英畝的土地。
實際上,我們只佔用了一小塊土地。從技術上講,我們可以在這裏完成所有的擴展和研究工作。因此,人員是我們最大的挑戰,而大奧斯汀地區只有200萬人口。所以人們搬來這裏,他們也願意搬來這裏,但這裏多少存在住房危機。他們總得找個地方住。
所以我不知道。我只是好奇。我不是說情況會很糟。我只是說可能會很糟糕 我認爲特斯拉是一艘非常能幹的船,但我們需要確保,如果宏觀經濟條件是暴風雨,即使是最好的船仍然會有困難的時候,較弱的船會沉沒。我們不會沉沒。但是,即使是風暴中的大船也會遇到挑戰。現在,這場風暴將適用於所有人,不僅僅是我們,也不僅僅是汽車行業。它將適用於所有人。因此,除了必要的主食,如食品和其他東西, 如果利率開始下降,我們就會加速。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
如果有人對此有任何猜測,我很希望不會錯。如果我可能比我應該的還要偏執,我道歉,因爲這也可能是因爲我有2009年的創傷後應激障礙,非常嚴重。而在2017年到2019年,也不是野餐。那段日子非常艱難。因此,汽車行業也有一定的週期性,因爲如果經濟存在不確定性,人們就會猶豫是否購買新車。因此,在經濟形勢好的時候,汽車公司的業績非常好,而在經濟形勢不好的時候,它們的業績就沒有那麼好了。因此,如果有人賣麪包,我認爲人們還是會吃麪包。是的,我們需要麪包。我們一直都需要食物。但新車,你不一定非得有......
Vaibhav Taneja - 首席財務官
特別是如果有戰爭發生,那就會影響你的情緒。
Elon Musk - 首席執行官
是的,我的意思是,人們正在閱讀世界各地的戰爭新聞。購買新車往往不會被放在心上。
Martin Viecha - 投資者關係副總裁
好吧。很遺憾,我們今天的時間到此爲止。非常感謝各位的提問,我們三個月後再見。
(提示:此筆錄是通過錄音轉換的,我們會盡力而爲,但不能完全保證轉換的準確性,僅供參考。)