electric car manufacturers Tesla hosted its Investor Day 2023 presentation on Wednesday in Austin, Texas. CEO Elon Musk took the stage to share his “Master Plan 3” and discuss how Tesla plans to scale up in the face of increasing competition.
The presentation was long on vision and included a review of previous accomplishments, but lacked details on Tesla’s new products and services.
Near the beginning of his presentation, Musk said: or whatever. He said, “In fact, we can support a civilization much larger than the Earth, and a much larger human population than the eight billion people on Earth that we can actually sustainably support.”
Elon Musk speaks at Tesla’s 2023 Investor Day on March 1st.
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Musk initially took the stage with Drew Baglino, Senior Vice President of Powertrain and Energy Engineering at Tesla. They discussed the future of the company’s role in “powering the grid with renewable fuels” as it ramps up battery production for both Tesla’s electric vehicles and the company’s utility-scale energy storage systems.
Tesla’s goal is to produce 20 million electric cars a year by 2030, executives reiterated. The company reports that it delivered about 1.31 million vehicles for the full year in 2022.
In a Q&A session following the three-hour presentation, management asked how Tesla could increase its market share in China.
Elon Musk handed the question to Tom Zhu, who heads up global production and has run Tesla’s China and APAC businesses for years. “As long as we offer affordable and valuable products, we don’t have to worry about demand,” he said. “We try everything to reduce costs,” he added, adding, “We pass that value on to our customers.”
Musk added, “Demand is not greed, it’s affordability features.” “Even a small change in price can have a big impact on demand,” he said.
Zhu also announced that as of Wednesday, Tesla had produced a total of 4 million cars.
Tom Zhu speaking at Tesla Investor Day.
Provided by: Tesla
“It took 12 years to build the first million, and about 18 months to build the second million. The third million is 11 months. It took us less than seven months to build one.”
He said the company plans to build a new car and battery cell factory and produce more cars per year at the existing factory.
Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s charging leader, said in 2022 the company has delivered 9 terawatt hours across charging methods, including home charging, including 40,000 Superchargers. (For comparison, the US as a whole consumes about 4,000 terawatt-hours of electricity annually.) Tinucci also notes that about half of the company’s superchargers in the EU are open to other vehicles, and the company has 10 in the US. said it had just opened a supercharger for to non-Tesla.
Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s design leader, and Lars Moravi, vice president of vehicle engineering, took the stage to showcase the many manufacturing changes planned to improve the efficiency of Tesla’s vehicle production. But von Holzhausen said Tesla would not reveal its “next-generation” vehicle just yet.
Colin Campbell, the company’s vice president of powertrains, said Tesla’s next powertrain plant will be 50% smaller than its Austin, Texas plant, but will have the same capacity. He also said the company is working on a new kind of drive unit compatible with any type of battery cell, and a motor built entirely without rare earth metals.
Ahead of Investor Day 2023, at a press conference on Tuesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tesla had agreed to build a large factory in Monterrey, Mexico. He said Tesla has agreed to use reclaimed water and take other initiatives to address water shortages in the region.
Musk confirmed the factory plans on Wednesday and said production there would complement rather than replace production at other Tesla facilities.
Tesla’s stock has recovered from its 2022 slump and is up more than 60% in a year so far. However, the stock fell 1.43% on Wednesday before the event and 5% after hours.
Analysts at Mizuho Securities maintained their Buy rating on Tesla shares ahead of Investor Day, seeing Tesla as a leader in the growing market for fully electric vehicles. While we expect TSLA’s market share to remain strong, we believe that cheaper competing EVs coming to market will potentially dilute TSLA’s share of the U.S. EV market.” I’m here.
The cheapest Tesla currently available is the Model 3 sedan, which starts at around $43,000, they write. Mizuo said other automakers are now priced below that for his seven models.
Mr. Musk’s ambitious master plan part do was published in 2016 and has not been fully achieved. This included his four main objectives:
- “Creating a stunning solar roof with seamlessly integrated battery storage”
- “Expanding our electric vehicle product line to cover all major segments.”
- “Vehicle learning at scale to develop autonomous driving features that are 10x safer than manual.”
- “Let me make money when I’m not using my car”.
— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
