What the new battery contract says about Tesla delivery numbers

[DaveT]

First off, I erroneously put dollar sign in front of 14,000, as Zzzz pointed out in another thread, the pricing is in euros.

I do not, however, see why you think that percentage is related to the price of the car, not the 40,000 that the journalist mentioned to be the price of the battery. Both the transcript, that is included below, and other information (detailed after the transcript) point to the fact that 30-35% meant to be applied to the cost of the battery mentinioned by the reporter, not cost of the car.

Transcript:
Q: Pricing in Germany starts up at 72,000 Euro, and that includes 40,000 for the battery, isn't it?
A: No, no. The battery is not 40,000 Euros, it is much less than that. I can't tell you what the exact number is, but it is much less than that. It's less than half , way less than half the cost. You know, may be more like 30% or 35%. I don't want to give an exact number because it is proprietary, but it is way less than the number you just said.

The other way to try to sort this out is to look at other hints that were provided during various interviews. For example JB Straubel was quoted in MIT technology Review article published in August of this year to say that battery pack costs 'less than a quarter (of car price) in most cases".

If your interpretation is correct, than the battery costs 21,600-25,200 Euros, or $29,800 to $34,7800 - way more that quarter of the cost that JB Straubel referred to.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news...ar-innovation/

I watched this video a few days ago and this is how I took his comments on battery cost. Interviewer says battery costs 40k Euro. Elon responds saying "It's less than half [the cost of the car], way less than half the cost [of the car]. Maybe more like 30% or 35% [of the cost of the car].

Elon saying 30% to 35% for the battery pack could mean 30-35% of the total retail price of the car (which as you point out would be overly expensive and much higher than Straubel's quote). He did seem uncomfortable answering the question and was hesitant to give out exact numbers, so he could be sharing extremely high estimates of the cost of the battery pack. Also, it could be possible he meant 30-35% of the total cost to manufacture the car (not the retail price) - ie., 85kwh car $80k retail - $20k (25% gross margin) = $60k x .30 (30% battery pack cost) = $18,000 (as Tesla scales some more and gets gross margins up to 30%, they should be able to get the battery pack cost down for the 85kwh car to under $15k/pack.)

I actually wouldn't argue against the $14k battery pack cost you mention (and mentioned by CO in the battery pack cost thread), but I just think using this particular interview to come up with that $14k price is a bit of a stretch.

 

[SebastianR]

I understood the interview the way you did.

I actually wouldn't argue against the $14k battery pack cost you mention (and mentioned by CO in the battery pack cost thread), but I just think using this particular interview to come up with that $14k price is a bit of a stretch.

I think that's a very fair way of saying it. 14k is really low. Then again, some people (Lars Thomsen) believe that mid-2014 we will have batteries for less than 120USD/kWh. I'm not quite sure if that is for the pack or the cells but either way, it is an estimate not too far off.

 

[hershey101]

Panasonic delivered 100M th cell in the month of June.

Panasonic will deliver 200M th cell in the month of December.

This suggests Tesla will roughly make 15K cars in q3 and q4. If q3 shows tesla shipping 6K cars, expect a huge jump in q4.

200M cells = ~28K cars produced. (Although I doubt this is exactly true, because as someone previously mentioned, cells are also used for other things than just Model S battery packs)..
There were 10,500 cars delivered the first half of this year, and maybe a couple of thousand last year, but not a lot... Around 2-3K maybe?? Is that correct?
That means ~14,500 for the rest of the year, or say 6K this quarter, and 8K next (assuming 500 cars in transit, showrooms etc)... But that is assuming all the batteries were used to produce Model S's and not for other things.. Can someone confirm/refute this assumption?

 

[pGo]

If you only look at the June delivery of 100M cells, that justifies # of battery packs made. 10.5K for the first half and ~3K for the last year. Thats 13.5K.

Even if you take 13K packs for 100M cells, q3 and 4 could have numbers like 6K & 7K. Plausible?

200M cells = ~28K cars produced. (Although I doubt this is exactly true, because as someone previously mentioned, cells are also used for other things than just Model S battery packs)..
There were 10,500 cars delivered the first half of this year, and maybe a couple of thousand last year, but not a lot... Around 2-3K maybe?? Is that correct?
That means ~14,500 for the rest of the year, or say 6K this quarter, and 8K next (assuming 500 cars in transit, showrooms etc)... But that is assuming all the batteries were used to produce Model S's and not for other things.. Can someone confirm/refute this assumption?

 

[pGo]

I was thinking about MB B class next year. Are the batteries for packs for B class also part of the 1.8B cells?

 

[Benz]

I was thinking about MB B class next year. Are the batteries for packs for B class also part of the 1.8B cells?

I would say: YES.