Tesla Wreaks Havoc Among Competitors With Yet Another Record Quarter and Price Cuts
The first quarter of 2023 starts with a new delivery and production record for Tesla. 440,808 vehicles were produced, and 422,875 delivered. That’s a 44 percent increase in vehicles produced and 36 percent increase in vehicles delivered compared to the same quarter last year.
Also, both figures love above the strongest quarter to date from October to December 2022. Now the production started in the test factories in Berlin-Grünheide and Austin have contributed to this. With this start to the year, Tesla is well on its way to cracking the two million mark this year, overtaking Mercedes-Benz and BMW. If Tesla can continue to ramp up production at this rate while taking advantage of further cost benefits from scaling and innovation, then the targeted production rate of 20 million vehicles by 2030 is well within reach. However, this will require one more vehicle model, which will have to be quite a bit below 30,000 euros. And this was already hinted at during the Tesla Investor Days: the NextGen Model. And Tesla will only start delivering another, equally eagerly awaited vehicle model in the summer: the Cybertruck.
But that’s just one success factor; the price discounts made possible by high profit margins also help Tesla achieve this goal.
Preisnachlässe
In mid-January, Tesla announced price reductions of up to 20 percent on all its models. What many interpreted at the time as sales problems at Tesla – not so in my interpretation, as I explained in the article – is now turning out to be problematic for the competition. Not only have other electric car manufacturers been forced to reduce their prices, which is costing the others dearly in view of the already low or non-existent profit margin, but there is also a real slaughter in the case of internal combustion vehicles.
In China, for example, where stricter emissions regulations will apply from the summer, used car dealers faced ruin. Their used car inventory was suddenly more expensive than new electric cars, and sales plummeted.
What is happening in China will also follow in other countries. Internal combustion vehicles are in danger of becoming worthless, while the world is increasingly turning to electric cars. Manufacturers without a solid electric car strategy and offering, such as Toyota or BMW, will disappear from the market.
This article was also published in German.
