Tesla, EV, BEV, Automotive

Tesla unveiled their “Master Plan 3” on Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at their investor day. By “investor,” they meant stakeholders in planet Earth. What was shared were not small ideas.

The Big Idea

The announcement tied out to Tesla’s mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. They delivered a viable plan to do this by 2050. This includes deploying 240tw of battery storage capacity and 30tw of renewable energy production. This would require a $10T investment and use less than .2% of the earth’s land surface for solar and wind energy generation. The level of investment would equate to 10% of the world’s GDP in 2022 or .5% per year over a 20 year deployment period.

A sustainable energy economy would only need about half the energy of our fossil fuel economy today, due to the inefficiencies of extracting, transporting, refining and converting fossil fuels into useful work; much of the energy is lost as waste heat. The projected investment in fossil fuels for the next 20 years at the rate of spend in 2022 is $14T, 40% more than Tesla’s plan.

It is a very hopeful message. The impact on the world would be enormous in terms of the climate, health and national security. That said, the immediate question is, how feasible is this? We hear of resource constraints for battery materials. Tesla’s plan is to use Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries for the bulk of automobiles and stationary storage. Both Iron and Lithium are abundant resources. The lithium supply chain bottleneck is in refining, something Tesla is planning to help solve with the commissioning later this year of their 50 GWh per year lithium hydroxide refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. 

EV vs ICE

Tesla’s plan is to scale to produce 20M cars per year by 2030. To put this in context, 66M cars were sold globally in 2022. To achieve this, they announced their next gen platform with an expected 50% reduction in cost per car. The long range Model Y currently sells for $54,990 in the US. A 50% reduction in cost with a similar percentage margin would yield a price of $27,495. The vehicle would qualify for the Inflation Reduction Act EV tax credit of $7,500 taking the net price to the consumer down to $19,995. Compare that to the average price paid for a car in the US of $48,681 and the 58% savings in initial purchase price is a game changer. A linear decrease in price results in an exponential increase in demand. The number one selling car (not truck or SUV) in the US is the Toyota Camry with a starting price of $27,315, which does not qualify for the Tax Credit. Tesla’s next gen car will undercut it by 26%. For legacy ICE OEMs, a rapid decline in their business due to a strong competitor offering a less than $20K car, would limit the cash available to invest in their transition to EVs.

From an ongoing cost perspective, Tesla announced a new offering for Tesla Energy customers in Texas that provides $30 a month unlimited vehicle charging at night. They are able to do this by using excess wind energy production during the evening. The average American drives 14,000 miles per year, and the cost of gas in Texas is $2.97, so using the Camry as an example, any Tesla would cost $365 a year in energy costs vs the Camry at $1,264. Beyond that, for the same cost of $365 per year, a Tesla could drive up to its maximum range per day (conservatively 250 miles for a Model 3) or about 91,000 miles. That would equate to a cost per mile of .4 cents making it a pretty good pick for an Uber driver.

Tesla vs Other EVs

Tesla announced that it is opening up its Supercharger network to other EVs. Charging remains one of the biggest concerns for people considering an EV purchase. Having access to Tesla’s charging network should be a huge boost for other EV makers. At the same time the cost reductions associated with the next generation platform will be a challenge given that most EV makers earn little or no profit from their cars.

How Can Tesla Do This?

To achieve this, Tesla announced a new gigafactory in Monterey, Mexico; they leverage extensive vertical integration; the design, engineering, manufacturing and automation functions all work together on one team; Tesla will design 100% of the electronic controllers in the car; they will move from a 12V to a 48V low voltage system, eliminating 75% of the copper required while also reducing power loss by 93%; a new drivetrain with zero rare earth metals will be used; and new manufacturing lines that allow for parallel and serial production will be used for greater productivity. The expected size of the overall manufacturing facility should shrink by 40%. This is on top of the innovations already in place to reduce costs, such as the development and use of the 4680 battery with a tabless design and a dry electrode manufacturing process, as well as the pioneering work using a Giga Press drastically reducing the number of parts and robots required to build the car. 

Get ready for some significant consolidation in the industry. At the start of the twentieth century there was an 80% consolidation in the auto industry (and 96% in the horse drawn carriage industry). The winners will be those that can rapidly move from prototype to volume production driving down the cost of performance.

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