Is there only FSD left in Tesla？

This article comes from WeChat WeChat official account:Unfinished research (id: Weijin _ research), Author: unfinished research, title map from: vision china

First, Apple gave up electric cars, and then Tesla gave up Model 2. They have one thing in common, All in AI. Musk also announced a day that would make the China market feel special magic.On August 8th, we will officially release its Robotaxi.. Will this be the first time that a car without a steering wheel has appeared?

The market value of Tesla is equivalent to 1.5 Toyota or 6.5 BYD. It has always convinced the market that its high-end electric vehicles and brand premium, its innovative manufacturing technology can mass-produce family-oriented economical cars, and lead the electric vehicle industry to the end of Robotaxi. Musk has always believed that Tesla can lead in these three aspects and can lead at its own pace.

But,Its market value has dropped by one-third this year, which is the worst performance among the seven technology giants.It must be that some in the market no longer believe the story told by Musk.

From the time point of view, Apple gave up building a car, and Tesla decided to give up Model 2, both at the end of February. It was this month that BYD put forward the slogan of "electricity is lower than oil", and then launched a new model with a price below $10,000.

At the end of March, Tesla began to let its 1.7 million car owners in North America try FSD software for free for one month. This time, Musk said that FSD v12.3.3 is a driver supervision version.（Supervised）It is no longer a beta.（Beta）. Tesla upgraded the driving experience in the urban street environment through an end-to-end, fully visual model.

However, both technically and in terms of supervision,FSD is far from its literal meaning of "fully automatic driving", that is, driving at L4 and above.Although Tesla has more GPUs, Google’s Waymo and China’s competitors have ways to catch up with it.

Musk has a plan to mass-produce cheap models with an annual output of 20 million by 2030. He proposed to produce Model 2 in a super factory in Texas or Berlin, and even decided to build a bigger super factory in Mexico.

However, with the rapid growth of electric vehicles in China, Musk has gradually realized that,You can’t win by competing with your competitors in China on the price of cars.Tesla has been surpassed by BYD in terms of shipments and product diversity of new energy vehicles. By 2025, when it launches a $25,000 car, it will have no advantage in cost performance compared with the $10,000 car in China. American politicians also realize that 100% tariff may be needed to prevent China electric vehicles from entering the American market. That’s not enough. The White House and the Ministry of Commerce even began to look for reasons from the perspective of "security".

Tesla’s innovation in automobile manufacturing technology, such as Musk’s "non-traditional" production method, that is, using Lego bricks instead of assembling in an assembly line, can reduce the cost by 50%. But it can really be put into use, probably by the end of next year at the earliest. Some experts believe that the cost reduction may be only one third, andThere is great uncertainty about the actual production capacity of the new production line.

Tesla is adjusting its strategy. The destination of electric vehicles is intelligent driving. Since China has taken the lead in the field of electric vehicles, Tesla decided to change the car-Competing on the smart driving track.According to the biography of Musk, it will produce FSD cars on the same small car production platform and enter the Robotaxi mode.

Probably this is what Musk said about Reuters. "(again)The reason for lying. This media, which was cursed by Musk and was "dying", exclusively exposed the news that Tesla was giving up the production of Model2.

Does this mean that Musk gave up the goal of mass manufacturing cheap cars? This is its long-term vision since 2006: start with high-end cars, enter the field of mass production of cheap family cars, and then realize automatic driving.

Until January of this year, Musk told investors that he would produce cheap models in a factory in Texas in the second half of 2025. At present, Tesla’s cheapest model Model 3 costs $39,000, and the cheap Volkswagen is priced at $25,000, which is called Model 2. But China is introducing electric cars with a price of $10,000 or less. Obviously, even with a 100% tariff, it is difficult to stop the export of China cars to the United States.

Another reason is thatThe demand for electric vehicles in European and American markets is weakening.The growth in China is also slowing down. Since the beginning of 2022, Tesla’s capacity utilization rate has been in a downward trend, currently about 74%.

Trend of Tesla’s capacity utilization

Musk said that if Robotaxi cannot be realized, the value of Tesla will be zero. From 2024, this is not an exaggeration. If we only build electric cars, whether we use humanoid robots or non-traditional ways to build cars, these are not the threshold for China enterprises who are good at fast learning and rapid scale.

Musk must take three steps and two steps to launch an economical electric car.(Musk can still be called Model 2)Combined with FSD, it is possible to create truly different products.

This article comes from WeChat WeChat official account:Unfinished research (id: Weijin _ research), author: unfinished research