Whoa... the margins! Who doesn't like that?
Yes, and consider the potential technology transfer if they try some things first on a low volume product then use in mass market once they discover how to do that. Such practices are time-honored in technology-intensive products, 4680's/structural packs and many other things less obvious have potential to serve that function. Elon suggested that back in 2015 or so IIRC. I've been looking for the quotation but haven't found it yet.
I do recall from examining gross margins on several vehicle classes that the two rgualry leaders ahem been Ferrari and Porsche. Both have maintained that for a long time. The information on Rolls Royce, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini are not easily extracted but all of them must be very high gross margin, not least because each one uses many components commonly with their cheap models. One trivial example was illustrated in Road & Track a few years ago:
Re-inventing the seal.
www.roadandtrack.com
Tesla mostly does not discuss that very much but... just think of only battery cells, BMS and the list goes on. Just now Tesla has enough models and enough volume that such commonality becomes easier to do. For sure, gigapresses are hugely expensive but also hugely cost effective. It is not hard to imagine how many different parts can be eliminated in multiple vehicles by using the Gigapresses. Of course they're just learning how to do it.
The chances to have low volume models be technology leaders for Tesla is clear. Once they have Roadster, Semi, Model S and Model X together with several lower cost models they have enough volume, say 2 million annually, to make this a routine process. At that point refresh cycles will make all manner of parts much, much cheaper.
That ignores the gigantic scale for FSD, firmware, sensors, every chip type. Just imagine how much scale economy means when software can be used among most, if not all, models.
All that ends out increasing gross margins, capital efficiency and speeding the product development cycle, all together.
There is yet one more very obvious gigantic saving: factories. Tesla is proving that as they go from Fremont , Buffalo and Sparks to Shanghai, Berlin and Austin, the favorites have been becoming cheaper to build and less expensive to operate. Of course then there is shipping.
It really just began with Model S and Model X followed by Model 3 and Model Y. Both pairs share only 25-30% of parts, but all will migrate to a common cell form and so much else.
The mind boggles with what Tesla has already done, and they're just beginning.
