Tesla Confirms Model three Will Be Very first Mass Market Electrical Vehicle
Many milestones have been laid out for electrical vehicles and we have celebrated them all. Let’s hit 100,000 electrical vehicles sold, 500k, one million electrical vehicles. Market share is another dearest, as well as breakouts by manufacturer. Who has sold the most EVs? Who sold the most last year? Who will sell the most this year or next year?
Those are all joy for enthusiasts to witness as we witness electrified vehicles going through the bumps and starts of the innovation adoption lifecycle. We are still very much in the very early ‘innovators’ portion of the curve, but Model three switches things. Originally, enthusiasts hoped the Chevy Bolt would be the very first to crack the ice as the very first ‘affordable, long range electrical vehicle’ on the market, but sales to date have been disappointing.
Tesla’s Model three switches all of that. Tesla brought in an unprecedented 518,000 reservations for Model Trio, and even with 63,000 of those being cancelled, that is a game changer. Over 400,000 people have locked in a vote for electrified vehicles, and that’s significant because of one yam-sized fact – they don’t care that it’s electrified. They just want the best car available at the price. This was confirmed by Elon Musk who collective that 80% of the people who railed in the Model three would buy one as their private car. Of the remaining 20%, most said they would consider it.
With Model Trio, Tesla is on track to become the very first manufacturer to sell over 1,000,000 electrified vehicles. From just under 100,000 vehicles sold last year, Tesla is expected to produce more than 200,000 vehicles this year and more than dual that in 2018. It has created a vehicle that the masses are clamoring for. Not because it is electrical. Not because it is better for the environment, but because it is simply a better vehicle. With Model Trio, Tesla becomes the very first mainstream automotive company to get rid of the key. Drivers will be able to open the car, get in and drive with just a smartphone. In addition to simplifying the lives of owners, it makes Model three the ideal vehicle for an autonomous taxi fleet. A wave of the phone (or rather, having it in proximity of the vehicle) will be enough to confirm one’s identity, process payment, and permit entry.
Beyond niceties and future technologies, Tesla is actively working to build the technological bridge to that future. Elon confirmed in the earnings call yesterday that Tesla was on track to demonstrate a fully autonomous cross country road journey from Los Angeles to Fresh York by the end of two thousand seventeen or shortly thereafter.
In typical Tesla style, goals are set higher and sooner than is believable, and as such, are very commonly missed. Model three is Tesla’s very first earnest attempt to course correct, with production and deliveries happening exactly on time last week, however the inescapable ‘production hell’ that Elon talked about at Model three launch is an imposing barrier to hitting future Model three milestones on time, at cost.
Tesla collective that the company is hoping to exceed a Model three production rate of 1,500 per week by the end of Q3 two thousand seventeen (July-Aug-Sept), hit Five,000 per week in Q4 two thousand seventeen (Oct-Nov-Dec) and hit Ten,000 per week (520,000 per year!) by the end of 2018. When spinned together with around 100,000 Model S and X, Tesla will have a production capacity of 620,000 vehicles by the end of 2018. Compare that to less than 100,000 vehicles total in two thousand sixteen and you can see just how swift Tesla is attempting to ratchet up production.
It is effortless to say that Chevy or Nissan or even BMW might have plans to budge into electrified vehicles and will supplant Tesla’s dominance but that simply is not possible for one reason – batteries. Elon collective that the Tesla Gigafactory would have the same production capacity at startup as the rest of the world combined. Said another way, Tesla producing its electrical vehicles and energy products from Gigafactory will require as many batteries (of any type) as the rest of the companies in the entire world combined. Even if another automotive company had an electrical vehicle as compelling as Model three and was able to stir up the same request, there simply would not be enough batteries to produce them. On top of that, Tesla building batteries essentially in-house through its partnership with Panasonic at that scale gives it literally the best battery pricing in the world. That scales to a lesser degree as it adds more Gigafactories around the world.
Speaking of Gigafactories, Tesla reiterated on its earnings call that it would announce the specific locations of the next two to four Gigafactories by the end of the year. It also stated that they would be located near key markets, specifically highlighting China and Europe as key markets that would receive a Gigafactory. In discussing capital expenditures this year, Tesla noted that is already moving forward with identifying land to purchase, permitting and similar low expenditure, long lead time portions of the work meaning that it has likely already identified at least a duo of the locations.
Each incremental Gigafactory that Tesla starts work on represents another massive step it is taking ahead of the competition. As evidenced by the solar Gigafactory outside of Buffalo, Fresh York, not all of the Gigafactories will be solely focused on battery production like the Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, tho’ all signs point to a modular factory that will have production capacity for all of Tesla’s products in order to supply an entire region with its products. Battery cells, solar cells, solar panels, solar roof tiles, Powerwalls, Powerpacks, Battery packs, motors and rolling chassis are all on the radar for production at Gigafactories of the future, and that’s just what we know about today. They are going to be like miniature factories combining the
Ten,000 employees at the vehicle production factory in Fremont with the Ten,000 workers originally planned for the Gigafactory in Nevada plus or minus a few thousand for solar production and who-knows-what Tesla comes up with next.
To put a bow on things and bring it back around to Model Three, Tesla is not only the only company building an electrical vehicle with enough request to sell in the hundreds of thousands per year, it is the only company that had the foresight to build sufficient battery production capacity required to support that scale. That puts Tesla on a fully different level, and Model three is leading the charge.