Layoffs?? Check
Locations closing?? Check
Question: if you wanted to reduce product prices while maintaining profitability, how would YOU do it?
Gross margins are about part costs, labour costs, and depreciation costs relative to the purchase price. Depreciation costs are a function of throughput. Throughput is at a record high. Part costs have been going down. But for some reason you don't want them reducing labour too, despite being clearly able to maintain high throughput without it? We have people like Lutz going on TV all the time and ranting about how Tesla employs too many people at Fremont relative to how many vehicles they produce, but then they cut labour, that too means "
DOOOOOOM!!!!"?
Profitability is about gross margins times volume, minus unrelated costs like SG&A. You apparently don't want them reducing SG&A? Despite the fact that they can clearly move inventory
with the vast majority of their market being unable to buy most vehicles? They should maintain high SG&A (something that last year
shorts were complaining about how high it was) rather than just moving into more (still waiting) markets and putting up more variants into only-partially-open markets... why?
(
Among other demand levers, I should add)
Seriously, what would
your recommended strategy be to move into higher-volume/lower-cost price brackets if you don't want them cutting costs and decreasing overhead?
Seriously, get out of here with your "no demand" nonsense. Do you realize that you're talking with someone who's been waiting and waiting (and will be waiting for months more) just to be given an opportunity to buy
ANY variant? Have you
seen the volume that Norway is moving (in Norway, you can watch the stats in realtime)
just from the two most expensive, high-margin variants?
#DemandProblemMyArse
(Oh, and you're also talking to someone who's been waiting for months for their Ford pickup to be fixed because they keep doing this "wait for parts, start to fix it, find something else wrong, wait again" cycle, so don't give me this "Tesla is the only company that repairs can take a long time on" BS. That reminds me, I really should stop by the garage and pester them...)