I guess the silver lining in this P&D report is that the bar is being reset really low, so perhaps there is a chance to beat reduced expectations in the future.
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
EV’s are rapidly becoming another tribal litmus test. Give it another 6 months and this will be a significant factor in sales.
Things have been primed for this trend for a long time, and now it’s happening. Elon is not the main person making that happen, but he’s becoming an accessory to the crime.
Krugerrand
Meow
No. Tom Zhu from Shanghai is at GigaTexas.
For a Tesla owner to display first the car of another brand on is profil picture for me is not credible
I don't think most people will put their cars into the Robotaxi fleet either. I do however expect Tesla to put a LOT of cars into the Robotaxi fleet!
Gigapress
Trying to be less wrong
I completely disagree. On the contrary, Uber’s financials are the best indicator that robotaxis would be wildly profitable. At their current scale they are running approximately at break even profitability. Tesla Network should be able to provide a superior customer experience while also reducing costs by about 2 to 4x relative to the combined costs for Uber and the drivers.
Key numbers from Uber’s 10-K for 2023:
$138B gross booking revenue (not including driver tips)
of which $37B went to Uber
and $101B to the Drivers (again, not including tips)
9.4B trips$1B operating profit
$4.4B spent on sales and marketing (mostly promo discounts and incentives)
$3.2B spent on R&D (almost as much as Tesla’s $4.0B!)
I could not find any disclosure from Uber on their total payload miles, so I can only estimate average trip distance and average booking price per mile. However other sources estimate about $2-3/mile average. I think that’s pretty accurate. Right now in my local market (a suburb of Seattle) the app tells me a typical 7-mile trip is either $3/mile or $4/mile depending on whether I’m willing to wait longer for a car. This is normal for here but the Seattle area is probably pricier than the global average and it’s rush hour right now.
Estimates for net earnings for labor for drivers vary widely but $10/hr is on the low end of the range. This is after subtraction of all the expenses the driver pays for their vehicle. With approximately 40 mph average speed, this is around $0.25/mile for wages. Therefore, driver labor alone is probably at least 10% of the cost structure for Uber’s economic model, and more likely is closer to 20%. If Uber could keep that as revenue then, all else being equal, they’d have earned roughly $15-30B of profit last year. And they are still growing revenue fast.
But it doesn’t stop there. Many Uber drivers are bad at estimating their actual expenses, especially depreciation. Tesla vehicles have some of the lowest total cost of ownership on the market, and that gets better as the annual usage increases. Tesla’s robotaxi vehicle design in particular is designed to deliver the lowest cost of climate-controlled motor vehicle transport ever. The usage pattern will be more efficient than it is for private Tesla owners as well. Robotaxis will be driven gently, and the fleet average range per vehicle will likely be less than it is for current Teslas, because most of the vehicles will stay local and can drive themselves to charging spots during off-peak times. Gentle driving and reduced battery weight means the tires will last much longer. Also, frequent usage throughout the day means the energy cost of battery temperature conditioning and cabin air conditioning is less in proportion to total energy consumption. Additionally, safe driving and drastically lower collision rates should greatly improve insurance costs. The high usage rate also means the capital cost for the vehicle is less, because the interest / opportunity cost on the money sunk into the vehicle is amortized over greater amount of usage per unit of time. Overall, I think Tesla can reduce lifetime average per-mile vehicle expenses by about 50-70% compared to the average vehicle in the Uber fleet.
Tesla obviously is spending R&D vastly more effectively than Uber is. Uber burned 9% of their revenue on R&D with almost nothing to show for it.
Vertical integration would give Tesla further cost efficiency. They can use their own vehicles and their own servicing and charging infrastructure at cost. No profit margin going to someone else and almost zero transactions costs.
Tesla also should have superior economies of scale. With the ability to offer a better experience at lower prices, they can have greater fleet density. This means an higher ratio of payload miles to empty miles, less idle time, and more. Also the service and maintenance will be much more efficient at centralized, specialized facilities than it is for individual Uber drivers who are managing service and maintenance for a single vehicle.
If Tesla Network had provided those same 9.4 billion trips with robotaxis, they’d probably have earned at least $30 billion instead of $1B. 9.4B trips is a tiny portion of overall road transportation demand. This is why, if Tesla becomes the leading autonomous TaaS provider, they could scale to earning hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
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Just getting this out of the way now ahead of the earnings call... I miss Zach.
Not that he would have prevented this Q1, but I do think he was good at framing things and looking for opportunities to focus on the positive / promising. Elon is a wild card (always has been).
Not that he would have prevented this Q1, but I do think he was good at framing things and looking for opportunities to focus on the positive / promising. Elon is a wild card (always has been).
So between 70-100k segment, Tesla is at 100k/year and have been for awhile. The 40-60k segment Tesla have managed to hit a sustained 1.8M a year. Lets put trucks in a separate category. I think compared to their peers, this is an outperformance with so few car models.
So lets see if the 25k price segment can 10x the deliveries like their peers. I expect some sales taken away from the premium segment depending on what features they strip out of the 25k car segment (or add to the premium segment).
Anyways, all this demand hoopla is just noise because it's not like Tesla is underperforming their peers. Lexus is around 800k/year, BMW is at 2.2M, and Mercedes 2M (i expect these number to drop in the future as the current overperformance came from the backs of low inventory and pent up demand) . The competition has way more car models. So this is a short term problem and their peers have very little ways to monetize their cars after sale besides over charging people for parts.
Tesla just needs to keep the lights on using current revenue generation so much bigger revenue from the future can be realized. It's pretty simple.
So lets see if the 25k price segment can 10x the deliveries like their peers. I expect some sales taken away from the premium segment depending on what features they strip out of the 25k car segment (or add to the premium segment).
Anyways, all this demand hoopla is just noise because it's not like Tesla is underperforming their peers. Lexus is around 800k/year, BMW is at 2.2M, and Mercedes 2M (i expect these number to drop in the future as the current overperformance came from the backs of low inventory and pent up demand) . The competition has way more car models. So this is a short term problem and their peers have very little ways to monetize their cars after sale besides over charging people for parts.
Tesla just needs to keep the lights on using current revenue generation so much bigger revenue from the future can be realized. It's pretty simple.
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mtndrew1
Active Member
That was my first EV, a 1997 GM EV1.
Not sure how my being a passionate EV driver for nearly 30 years reduces my credibility but ok.
If you assume that there's a very limited number of companies with AVs then they can potentially have high margins by having prices lower than Uber.
But the more competition, the more margins my be squeezed.
That's why I think Tesla pursued low cost AV, and why I think in the end you'd have private cars with AV, privately-owned AV taxis, and company-owned AV taxis.
Likely yes, at current pricing and given constraints. T'is but a snapshot during this time of Max Q. Side note, market is also down bigly today.
Moving to fewer Factory shifts was a smart move to throttle back and control costs, maybe even free up tool time for more upgrades. Seems like they know what they're doing. Supply for Stationary has also increased... by 40%, is that right for YoY?
Eyes on the batteries people, I have a hunch that's the money no matter what they put them into. I don't have the numbers as handy as some of you do, but there should be a way to compare 1 kWh of car profit to 1 kWh of Stationary profit by factoring out battery costs? Some kind of apples to apples comparison to isolate the true battery value against profits, at this time.
We may need to see the Q1 financials to bring clarity to my point, we shall see.
And you're going to focus on one man who says things you don't like rather than owning one of the best EVs out there. And supporting the 100s of thousands of workers at Tesla making the magic happen? I think that's quite sad.
mtndrew1
Active Member
You stated this much more effectively than I did. This is exactly how I feel.You won't get a flame from me.I think that you are correct.
Regardless of each of our individual perspectives on Elon Musk's publicly prominent views and behaviours, I think that Tesla is paying a price for them: there is a significant segment of the population for whom the brand has become toxic because of those views and behaviours and who would specifically not consider buying a Tesla for that reason. And I don't think that this is nearly compensated for by persons who would specifically buy a Tesla in support of those publicly prominent views and behaviours. I think that if Musk had an neutral public persona, or simply did not cultivate a public persona in respect of his social/political outlook, Tesla would sell more cars. Naturally, he has every right to have his views and express them publicly and prominently. But the brand does pay a price, and I think it has become a significant one.
And I think that is too bad, because Tesla makes excellent vehicles. I strongly support the EV 'project' and in my view Tesla - and Musk personally - have been absolutely key in making it happen.
Europe won't be the only culprit. We'll be no doubt lower than Q123 (best quarter ever, with 94k) but US and China will disappoint too.
Doggydogworld
Active Member
His DJT holdings alone are worth $5 billion /s
47k increase, total inventory now 145k cars.
BYD Q1 is always way down from Q4. They grew sales 14% y/y, Tesla declined 8.5%.
Storage deployments grew 4% y/y.
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MartinAustin
Active Member
I'm willing to say zero. Employees buy stock thru an ESPP or are awarded actual stocks in a Stock Award program. There are no options.
Gigapress
Trying to be less wrong
I am suspending judgment on the delivery numbers until the report and call. Too many possible factors at play, and not enough information.
@nativewolf
exactly =>where<= are you going to get this rapidly diminishing resource, gas, 5-10 short years from now???
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