Perhaps
@The Accountant ,
@Artful Dodger or other authoritative people might comment in how soon subscription revenue and vehicle resale will become material:
We have discussed FSD quite a bit but I don't recall Premium Connectivity. The latter now does OTA updates, which were discontinued around 2018 or so IIRC. \Now it not only includes those but also prompts for upgrades within the app. For example, I just did 2021.31.10 for my new Plaid in the app from Brazil. That never has happened before. Perhaps I have missed the significance of that. When added features are happening more often with all the games, Netflix, Spotify Premium etc. the $9.99 per month is becoming compelling. It should be material soon.
Then there are certainly other OTA features on their way, now that ModelS is first, but not last, with very large infotainment and functional features.
In this environment I suspect the NA take rate for Premium connectivity might well exceed 50%. There should be margins close to 80% on that feature, so even, say, a half million subscriptions should yield ~$48 million for next year alone.
We also are beginning to have out-of-warranty parts and service revenue. Even with the onset of new non-Tesla options, the sales of service manuals, parts and service are now material, almost certainly, although they are not disclosed (nor are they disclosed by other OEM's). Further collision parts, and even Tesla collision repair, are now almost certainly material. At the moment I do not know how to estimate those revenues nor margins, but with some work we might make reasonable guesses.
Vehicle resale is now significant, but is about to become very large as lease returns and owner repeat sales with trades begin to grow rapidly, as they are now doing. Some typical US auto dealers used car margins are around 14% pre tax (sources not public data, so I used broad averages from several groups for which I have had data). Tesla current practices seem to imply at least similar margins. Of course the present used car very hot market will not last indefinitely. For that reason I used data from 2000/2005 rather than more recent data too establish likely margins.
These several categories will be joined soon by aftermarket modification sales. Elon recently suggested that aftermarket modification could offer enhancements Tesla would not have scale to justify at factory level. He did NOT imply that Tesla might offer such options in the Tesla store. However, he must be aware of the very attractive profits offers from others like this one:
shop.porscheusa.com
Almost all the Porsche stuff is built by others. Tesla already dabbles in that, but now they are approaching the options of software upgrades, wheels, tires and cosmetic modifications plus the really big items, retrofitted battery upgrades, motor, and inviter upgrades and more. They have dabbled in those with the very, very profitable Ludicrous upgrade for the P85D and battery upgrades for the original roadster. Of course the OTA acceleration boosts were effictely 100% gross margin, and were very popular because they also were a bargain.
It is time to beak down there categories and try to quantify them. Initially we'll probably struggle, but we are about to see the benefits of all these this quarter, rising very quickly thereafter. At one OEM the aggregate of all these equals more net income than does new vehicle sales. I cannot disclose my source because no OEM actually discloses all of these elements, choosing instead to aggregate them in undescriptive accounts. Anyone who's ever audited a major OEM will be well aware of all these elements.
