According to the Business Insider website, in 2017, Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk faced the biggest test of the successful sale of Model 3. After enjoying various tax benefits and reductions, the Model 3 is priced at approximately US$30,000 (approximately RMB 207,000).
The Model 3 travels over 200 miles (322 kilometers) on a single charge. While Model 3 users need to pay for charging with a wide range of Tesla Supercharger charging stations, they are convenient for long-distance driving.
Tesla Model3 road test exposure
After selling a luxury car of $100,000 (approximately RMB 689,000) for several years and launching the Model X for the luxury off-road vehicle in 2015, Tesla will finally launch a model for the general public.
The Model 3 has a booking volume of nearly 400,000 units ($1,000 per vehicle, or RMB 6,891), which of course proves that the general public is still a fairly large market. This is an unprecedented number for a car booking.
But Model 3 and Tesla have encountered an important problem - a question that has not been fully discussed before: Is Tesla's production of Model 3 economically viable?
Structural changes in the marketAccording to Business Insider, the automotive industry is in the early stages of a major structural change, with cars moving from cars to off-road vehicles and pickup trucks. Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has said that this change is already underway.
Other industry leaders are not ready to give up the car, but they have not yet decided how to deal with small cars - cars with a price comparable to the Model 3. It is undeniable that it is more difficult to obtain considerable profits through a small car with a price of about 20,000 US dollars (about RMB 138,000). Therefore, by making the Model 3 price about 10,000 US dollars (about RMB 69,000), Tesla also has a certain profit margin.
However, it is still difficult to obtain rich interest rates through cars with a price of 35,000 US dollars (about RMB 241,000). Tesla's current products have the highest profit margins: luxury cars and off-road vehicles. In fact, Tesla has achieved a good gross margin from these models – 20%-30%.
With the production of a super battery factory in Nevada, battery costs will drop, Tesla will be able to maintain its current profit margins, and Model 3 will bring money to Tesla.
However, the introduction of Model 3 marks that Tesla is "opposite" with most other automakers. Although Tesla plans to develop a compact off-road vehicle called Model Y, the Model 3 is a regular four-door. Now, basically no automakers are trying to subvert the low-end market just as Japanese and Korean automakers have just entered the US market.
Tesla may be rightFrom Hyundai to General Motors, all automakers want to sell more high-margin luxury and quasi-luxury cars, as well as pickup trucks and large off-road vehicles. Smaller, cheaper cars have other purposes: to allow customers to recognize their brands earlier, and such vehicles are also a weapon against rising oil prices, meeting more stringent fuel economy and emission standards.
After Trump was elected president, he threatened to enact regulations to increase the difficulty for automakers to move small car production to markets with low labor costs outside the US, but the new consensus in the auto industry is to maintain extremely low profit margins. It makes sense to move manufacturing tasks to Mexico.
It is unreasonable to produce compact mass cars in the United States in the case of off-road vehicles.
Tesla firmly believes that it can reverse this trend by rethinking the way cars are manufactured to some extent. Tesla Chief Financial Officer Jason Wheeler's speech at a recent earnings analyst conference call helped the outside world understand the challenge.
Wheeler said, "From the perspective of future development, we believe that the continuous reduction of costs has an opportunity for profit margin growth. Our suppliers are excited about Model 3, which makes it possible for us to reduce costs. In addition, our production Efficiency is also increasing, and the hours of production of cars are moving in a positive direction, and we are committed to continually improving this indicator."
Some insiders tend to think that Tesla is correct. The gross profit margin of its current model is quite high, but don't imagine that there will be miraculous innovations that will allow Tesla to despise the economic laws of automobile production.
Repeat the same mistakes?According to Business Insider, it is worth pointing out that Tesla made the same mistake on Model 3 as the launch of the Model S – launching a car instead of a buggy on the market. When the Model S came out, people could forgive that Musk and his team did not find the trend of the return of off-road vehicles in the early 2010s. But Model 3 is different from Model S because it uses a flexible platform that can support a variety of models, from off-road vehicles to pickups to racing cars. The decision to launch a car is problematic (although nearly 400,000) A potential buyer does not think so).
But we must realize that Tesla is not an ordinary company. It is pointless to think that Tesla will follow the same rules as other companies, because Tesla has created a completely new market that is basically only its own. In 2016, Tesla produced more than 80,000 cars and sold them out.
The monopoly in the electric vehicle market does not mean that Tesla does not need to produce hundreds of thousands of cars in the next few years and maintain profit margins. Tesla faces the situation of backwaters: Model 3 must be listed.
If Model 3 has a very low profit margin or even a loss, it will have a big impact on Tesla.
Fortunately, Tesla also has Models S and X to rely on, and their profit margins are quite rich. Mask's vision is not to become a favorite car brand in Silicon Valley, but to replace gasoline-burning cars in large quantities, and to drive other car manufacturers to also produce electric cars to save the planet.
Tesla can't afford to lose. It has almost no possibility of losing, but the risks it faces are enormous.
Dongguan Rongmao technology Co.,ltd , https://www.szroomoo.com