Tesla End of Year Wrap Up
The electric vehicle market is booming, despite COVID-19 putting the brakes on the auto industry generally. Of course Tesla has become a darling of investors, with the company seeing a 50% share price increase since the announcement in early November that the automaker was entering the S&P 500. Not since Yahoo and the dot com boom in the late nineties have we seen such confidence in the future of a company.
Tesla isn’t one to slow down for the holiday season, and with a final production and deliveries push expected, Gigafactories across the world under construction, charging infrastructure and vehicle updates, we look at the news this week, and what we can expect to see in the new year.
Sales & Deliveries
North American and European sales of Model 3 and Y remain strong, and the company has apparently met (admittedly low) Model S and X targets for the year, and has halted production for these vehicles.
Tesla sales are strong in China, and this is the market that will help push Tesla to its 500,000 unit goal in 2020. Indeed, many analysts and commentators believe Tesla will surpass this target. With over 20,000 ‘made in China’ Model 3s sold in November, that demand looks set to continue through December, just as the Model 3 was recently awarded Number 1 electric vehicle in China by owners in a recent Net Promoter Score (NPS) index survey. Any concerns around battery availability have subsided, as Tesla’s Chinese production recently moved to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries from supplier CATL.
In Q4 2019, Tesla delivered 112,000 vehicles. Tesla has been ramping production in Q3 and Q4, and Rob Maurer of Tesla Daily has projected just over 24,000 units of Model 3 in production from Giga Shanghai in December. His other projections include:
53,000 Model Y units produced in Q4;
58,000 Model 3 units produced in Q4;
19,000 Model S and X units produced in Q4;
530,000 total units produced in 2020
Tesla needs 181,000 deliveries worldwide to achieve the 500,000 unit annual target. Watch Tesla Daily’s Q4 prediction video below:
Factories
As was expected, construction of Giga Texas is powering forward, with the skeleton and roof of the facility already under construction, and the first phase of the project due for completion in 2021.
Over in China, Tesla completed the Model 3 and Model Y production lines in record time, and new single-piece body castings have been spotted at the factory, suggesting Tesla’s new ‘Gigapress’ casting machines are now online.
Tesla certainly isn’t resting though, and it appears the company is continuing to expand the production facility east of the current footprint:
Meanwhile, over in Germany, Giga Berlin is also charging full steam ahead, with ‘Gigapress’ casting machines arriving at the factory, and external walls being erected, despite a number of hold ups due to permits, environmental concerns and missed payments. Again, Tesla is expected to commence operations on time if not earlier, with production tests due for July 2021, some 13 months after construction on the site began.
FSD pricing and updates
Tesla’s autonomous Full Self Driving package is set to become a cash cow for the company, with the billions in R&D dollars spent set to be recouped over the next few years. Previously available as a stand-alone option before or after delivery for a cost of $10,000, Tesla announced 2021 will bring a subscription pricing model for owners who wish to pay for the option in instalments.
Tesla has also just released its holiday 2020 update, as part of Firmware 2020.48.25. There are some notable changes mentioned in the release notes including:
“The driving visualization has been refreshed and now offers a larger visualization to allow drivers to view more details of the road surroundings. The next turn will now appear above the visualization if the navigation turn list is covered by another app.”
“Schedule departure can now precondition your battery and cabin even when your car is unplugged. To account for different utility rate plans, you can now set the time when your off-peak rates end to save on charging costs. To access, tap SCHEDULE from the climate control or charging panel when parked.”
“Supercharger pins on your touchscreen will now display the number of available stalls at charging sites. Quickly search for nearby amenities by tapping an amenity icon on the Supercharger popup display.”
Teslarati has a full rundown of software changes listed here
Superchargers
Can electric vehicles from brands other than Tesla now charge at Tesla Superchargers? Not quite. Marques Brownlee asked Elon Musk on Twitter “Why don't more electric car makers take up Tesla on their offer to use the Supercharging network? Incompatible tech? Hidden fees? Pride? There's gotta be a good reason.” to which Elon Musk replied: “They are, although it’s kind (sic) low-key. Tesla Superchargers are being made accessible to other electric cars.”
Naturally, the internet went crazy, though you won’t see Porsche Taycan owners at a Supercharger any time soon. Tesla is focused on rolling out Superchargers for its customers, installing the high-speed Tesla-only chargers in more locations, and updating more Supercharger sites from 150kW version 2 models to 250kW version 3 models. Construction of Tesla's Supercharger factory in China appears to be ramping up too, and has a 10,000 unit per year production goal.
S&P 500 Inclusion
The big news this week is the inclusion of Tesla into the S&P 500 club; a move that many have signalled since Tesla achieved four straight profitable quarters in July this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, shares have surged some 70% since the announcement of the company’s addition in November.
Tesla’s listing on the stock market benchmark represents the biggest company ever to join the S&P 500, and its USD$650 billion market capitalisation figure means Tesla is the sixth largest publicly listed company in the United States.
1990 to 2020: Largest Companies Added to the S&P 500
Elon Musk appeared extremely grateful on Twitter, Tweeting on December 22 “Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make Tesla successful. My heart goes out to you.”
Tesla is now the world’s most valuable automaker, with huge growth potential and some serious competitive advantages in the market place (more on that below).
The Street has just named Tesla as its ‘number one stock of the year’, with 12 of 16 panellists agreeing Tesla stood above Zoom Video, Moderna, Amazon and Netflix (numbers two to five respectively)
Image: The Street
What about Tesla Energy?
The growth of Tesla Energy is part of the reason many investors see so much future potential in the company; while solar and household battery growth has been slow over the last few years, Q3 and Q4 2020 were good quarters for the business, and Tesla energy looks to have generated around $1.85 billion in revenue for the 2020 calendar year.
According to The Motley Fool, During Q3 2020, Tesla shipped 759 megawatt-hours (MWh) worth of batteries, an 81% increase from Q2's 419MWh. That’s a higher rate of growth than Tesla’s automotive business, which saw shipments for Q3 at 139,593 units, a sequential increase of 54% over Q2's 90,650 units.
We can expect to see more grid-scale battery projects boosting the energy business in 2021; recently a number of large projects utilising Tesla Powerpack and Megapack technology have been completed, including Yorktown New York’s 490 MW Tesla battery, and an upgrade of an additional 50 MW added to the Hornsdale battery in South Australia. Construction commenced in October on the 182 MW (730MWh) Moss Landing battery in California, which consists of 256 Megapacks, and will be able to power every home in San Francisco for up to six hours according to Tesla.
Tesla Solar has been bubbling away for a few years now, and the company’s energy products have become on average 30% cheaper than the US average primarily due to their online business model. By reducing ‘soft costs’ or non-component costs of each system, customers are able to purchase customised packages that suit their homes, and can even pay off the installed system through a subscription program.
Many in the industry believe that Tesla Energy can generate revenue equal to that of the automotive side of the business, and that it’s just a question of scaling up production, and expanding subscription-based solar and battery systems outside the United States.
What else could possibly happen in 2020?
Well now that you mention it, according to Reuters, there’s a little something called ‘Project Titan’ that the Cupertino tech giant Apple is working on. It’s an electric vehicle that has been in the works since 2014, and part of the secret vehicle’s competitive advantage will apparently be a new battery design that could “radically” reduce the cost of batteries while maximising range.
Gene Munster from Loup Ventures doesn’t see Apple’s entry into personal mobility as a threat to Tesla’s market share; Munster stated that the firm believes traditional automakers are Apple’s target.
Loup Ventures predicts that electric vehicles will account for close to 30% of all auto sales by 2025, with one third of that market to be dominated by Tesla.
Elon Musk dropped quite the Tweet today, stating that during the company’s Model 3 design and engineering phase, he approached Apple to see if Tim Cook was interested in acquiring Tesla: “During the darkest days of the Model 3 program, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for 1/10 of our current value). He refused to take the meeting.”
How different the automotive and energy landscape could have been…
What’s in store for 2021
So what will next year bring? Like many investors (myself included), Tesla experts see exceptional growth for the company, based on strong demand for electric vehicles generally, and increasing market share in key markets such as China. Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives believes China’s demand dynamic in the EV market will disproportionally benefit Tesla, and that the Chinese market could account for over 40% of Tesla’s sales within eighteen months.
Gali from Hyperchange demonstrates that Tesla has already figured out how to build electric vehicles profitably, with a gross margin figure of 23 percent. He sees a lot more growth potential on a profit per car basis, as the company focuses on software, and begins to recoup costs associated with the research and development of the Full Self Driving software. Gali is projecting a gross profit amount of $2.5 billion for Q4 2020, $2.7 billion in cashflow, and he expects capital expenditure to increase to $4-$6 billion per year from 2021 as Tesla pours more money into factories.
Model Y sales and deliveries are expected to get off the ground early in 2021, and with the Cybertruck Gigafactory due for completion mid-year, 2021 could be the year that Tesla brings the first mass-market electric pickup truck to consumers.
Tesla also unveiled its new 4680 battery cells in September, and the new tabless cells are expected to offer exceptional thermal and electrical efficiency. These cells are expected to be at the core of Cybertruck and Semi performance and efficiency, and while Tesla has these cells currently deployed in prototypes, the company lacks a facility to manufacture them at scale.
One of Tesla’s main goals is terrawatt-hour (TWh), or one trillion watt hour scale battery production, and the company has a manufacturing goal of 3TWh by the year 2030. Elon Musk has also used Twitter to suggest Tesla may be able to manufacture 20 million vehicles a year by this date:
Clean Technica has an excellent article on Tesla’s future that delves deeper into the above, however any future light commercial vehicles from the company are notably absent. With Rivian, Arrival and other manufacturers seeing this segment as a growth market for EVs, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Tesla leveraging their expertise to manufacture delivery vehicles.
2020 has been a difficult year for the automotive industry, but I am cautiously optimistic that Tesla’s battery and vehicle roadmap will play out in their favour, and that we will continue to see the company scale and grow at a rapid rate. Say what you like about Elon Musk; Tesla is now much bigger than one man, and the company has driven the global automotive market rapidly towards electrification and zero emissions transportation.