Elon Musk Tweets New Details About Tesla's Model Y Electric SUV (mashable.com)

"For anyone who thought that there was too much Tesla news this weekend, I've got some bad news for you," writes long-time Slashdot reader Rei, sharing new information gleaned from a series of tweets.

"Elon Musk just announced the unveiling of the Model Y SUV on March 14th at Tesla's LA Design Studio." A surprising number of details were revealed, including non-falcon doors, a similar appearance to the Model 3, and pricing about 10% more than a Model 3, with slightly lower range, due to the increased mass and cross section.

The unveiling will not include the Tesla pickup truck; that will be later this year. Model Y is to share 75% of its hardware with Model 3 to simplify the development process, with volume production targeted for late 2020, and initial production in early 2020. Musk also stated: "First public Tesla V3.0 Supercharger Station goes live Wed 8pm" (V3 is the much awaited new generation of higher power, cheaper to operate Superchargers).
"Personally, I'm most excited by the Tesla Truck," Musk posted on Twitter. "Maybe it will be too futuristic for most people, but I love it."

Comments

Re:Pickup Truck?

[Anonymous Coward]

An electric 4WD should use wheel motors and completely avoid the whole differential and drive shaft clearance issues.

Re: Pumper gotta pump

[michelcolman]

Yep, they're shipping 3-4000 cars to Europe per week right now, and those are all still the high margin long range version.

US demand was fully expected to go down to almost zero temporarily when the federal tax credit was cut in half. Many people ordered earlier in december rather than wait for january or february. 6000 cars in february is actually a lot better than I would have expected.

Meanwhile, I think it's clear that they delayed the short range model not because they couldn't make it, but simply because there was still so much demand for the more expensive version and they would be fools to throw that money away. Looks like that demand was stronger than they had expected, so they kept pushing the cheaper version back until finally, just now, they are reaching the point where demand for the expensive version is less than max production rate.

Re: Pumper gotta pump

[Rei]

The guidance for Q1 was previously "We're not sure if we can turn a profit in Q1". This was not a major revision. It's due to a lot of one-time charges - for example, severance costs, the start of international shipping (which leaves you with more inventory in transit), etc.

The base model cost $38k to produce in December. They've now trimmed 7% of the workforce (plus more when they close the lower-traffic stores and convert the others to galleries, which should roughly halve their SG&A - although that's not a GM issue), They've had another quarter of general margin improvements. Production rates are much faster, which means lower depreciation per vehicle. Raw material costs are down (check out battery grade cobalt oxide, nickel sulfate, and lithium carbonate price trends). Etc, etc. You don't have to take Musk's word in the reporter call (where he repeatedly used past tense when talking about achieving profitability on the $35k car), it's pretty obvious that they have a positive gross margin on it. The question is how high.

Of course, almost nobody will choose the base model, which is being backed up by anecdotal reports from the stores. Even someone who's on a really tight budget would be IMHO hard pressed to not splurge on at least the SR+ for $2k more, to get an extra 20 miles and partial-premium interior. The discounts on the higher-end versions appears to have seriously boosted them as well. There appears to be about a 30-40% take rate on the base autopilot (plus a small take rate on FSD), and that's pure margin. Paint colours are margin, wheel choices, interior options, etc. It's looking like an ASP somewhere around $45k.