Yeah, I wasn’t including all display monitors. LCD screens were being used in a wide variety of displays for many years before they gained widespread usage in televisions. As LCD’s improved - rising in quality and falling in costs - they eventually migrated into televisions as well.
When televisions shifted from CRT’s to LCD’s, it wasn’t revolutionary. Televisions were still televisions. They didn’t really start being used in materially different ways. They were lighter and cheaper, so they became more ubiquitous and could hang on walls. But for the most part, televisions are still televisions - a large screen that you use to display video content.
Following up briefly on this discussion, the ACEA has released their September update - and it is clear now that August was, in fact, an anomaly. While there were 165K BEV’s sold in August, that fell to 127K in September. Representing only an 14% increase, YoY.
Obviously, both the 118% growth rate in August or the 14% growth rate in September are unrepresentative of where the “real” growth rate is right now. They’re both an artifact of Germany eliminating one of its major subsidies for BEV’s, effective September 1 - which resulted in a huge pull-forward of September sales into August. Almost all of the EU monthly sequential decline was in German, where BEV sales fell from 86K to 32K.
HONG KONG—China is strengthening restrictions on exports of graphite, a key mineral needed for the production of electric-vehicle batteries and fuel cells, the latest move in an intensifying global tussle over the building blocks of critical technologies.
Citing national-security concerns, China’s Commerce Ministry said Friday that exports of several categories of natural and synthetic graphite materials would require permits under a system used to control trade in items with dual civilian and military uses starting Dec. 1.
The restrictions cover a small but valuable portion of the graphite industry that China dominates and that has uses in strategic markets ranging from energy storage to nuclear power
Well, the numbers for Q4 are out. Tesla’s annual deliveries were 1.81 million, not 1.86 million. Full year delivery growth over 2022 was 38%, and Q4 growth was 19% over the year-ago quarter, which makes >50% growth next year…unlikely?
From Tesla. Per their announcement, they delivered 1.81 million vehicles in 2023, for a 38% increase over the prior year (2022). They delivered 484.5K vehicles for Q4 2023, which represents a 19.5% increase over the 405.3K they delivered in Q4 2022.
I dunno. A 38% increase is pretty impressive to me given rising interest rates for most of the year and an EV demand environment that the OEMs declared was declining. As for growth over the next few years, keep in mind the following planned production expansions.
That’s a lot of new production capacity mostly designed for a vehicle that will likely be the most efficient to produce. I’m guessing the new $25K car is within a year of mass production with things kept quiet to avoid the Osborne effect.
Sure, maybe. But it’s not 50%. And rising interest rates were already happening when the post I replied to was made in September.
It will be interesting to see where Tesla guides FY 2024 production/deliveries in their earnings call. With Q4 YoY growth having fallen to less than 20%, it’s hard to see them guiding 2024 to anything like 2.7 million (50% growth from 2023), or even 2.5 million (40% growth from 2023).
The poster you replied to may not have been aware of Tesla revising forecasts due to planned factory shutdowns for renovations during the 3rd quarter. Note that Tesla met its revised forecasts with a record 4th quarter, suggesting its excuses for a mediocre 3rd quarter were probably legitimate.
Doesn’t really matter much to me as I plan to hold Tesla stock for the longer term, but I hope Musk is over optimistic as he often is. The drops when Tesla misses targets make for nice buying opportunities (I admit for selfish reasons being a bit disappointed it hit the 1.8M target, as 1.79M would have been just as good but might have dropped the stock to more attractive buying levels). Meanwhile, I think the western OEMs will be in steady decline for the next few years with China continuing to face protectionist hurdles to its imports. If so, then Tesla competition in Europe and the US is declining at just the time it is ramping up production with new facilities.
Sure. I don’t think anyone really doubted their “excuses” for Q3 - after all, the factories really did shut down for retooling and maintenance. But again, that record 4th quarter is only 19% higher than the Q4 a year ago. It’s not like we’re going back to near-zero interest rates any time soon, so Tesla’s going to face the same headwinds next year as this year.
Sure, but Tesla competition in China is going to continue to be brutal - and since that’s Tesla’s biggest market, that’s going to be an issue for them. And while Europe is somewhat protectionist against China, it’s not nearly as bad as the U.S. - which is why BYD and the other Chinese automakers have big expansion plans for that market. Since Tesla isn’t going to have a new vehicle to introduce to either China or Europe for 2024 (CT is a U.S. only product in the near term, and Model 2 doesn’t come to market until 2025 at the earliest), that’s going to weigh on their growth.
Yup, less than I expected, but still well over their 50% average growth per year target from 2020. I thought they would exceed their guidance by more, but a win is a win and I’ll take it.
Year
Deliveries
?50% growth
Delta
2020
499,647
–
–
2021
936,222
749,471
+25%
2022
1,313,851
1,124,206
+17%
2023
1,808,581
1,686,309
+7%
2024
??
2,529,464
??%
And the 1.8M deliveries is just as Tesla guided for the year from the beginning.
Tesla never revised their annual 1.8M forecast delivery number.
As to them continuing their 50% average growth winning streak into 2024, I’m optimistic that they can deliver over 2,529,464 vehicles. In their 2022 Annual Report they claimed >1.9M capacity and delivered nearly that many, so what they claim in the 2023 Annual Report should give us some idea of how likely they are to meet their growth target. They reported >2.45M capacity (including 125K Cybertruck pilot production) as of the 2023Q3 report.
Tesla has never said that they would grow 50% year over year every year. This is strictly something you (and a collection of similarly minded naysayers) made up. The history is that Tesla has since 2012 grown deliveries at 50% per year on average, and Tesla’s guidance is that that will continue from 2020 deliveries onward, at least until we’re getting close to the end of the decade.
You keep saying China is Tesla’s biggest market yet everything I have read it says North America is Tesla’s biggest market. Do you have something that backs that statement up?
You said they would continue their 50% growth into 2023, predicting that they would sell 1.86 vehicles this year. It’s not something I made up - I was replying to what you wrote:
Tesla obviously didn’t hit that delivery number - but there’s no reason to accuse people of making it up. That 2023 prediction came from you.
Well, we’ll see. Their growth rate has been falling for the last three years (87% in 2021, 40% in 2022, down to 38% in 2023). With higher interest rates and lower subsidies for the full year, plus facing fierce competition in their now-largest market of China, seems unlikely to me that they’ll get to 2.53 million next year. I suspect they won’t even guide to a number that high.
Not really. I think Tesla becoming the de facto charging standard in the US is a big deal and a major selling point. Not surprising that competition from the western OEMs is fading away. Interest rates are likely to decline from 2024. Headwinds still exist to be sure but not nearly so strong.
It has always been an issue, yet Tesla’s track record in China to date is pretty good. China is a very big market and with the continuing collapse of the western OEMs in China I suspect Tesla will continue to sell a ton of cars there.
You are thinking of the old auto industry that depended on dozens of models. The Model 3 Highland refresh is just beginning to enter the Chinese and European markets and seems to have accelerated sales of the Model 3. It will probably enter the US market in 2024. The Model Y Juniper refresh will also likely come in 2024 and will bump up sales of the Model Y particularly if it comes with a much improved battery as rumored.
I’m guessing something more like 2.2M deliveries as anticipation for the $25K car will Osborne sales later in the year. There will then be a big bump in production and deliveries in 2025 and 2026. That’s what my crystal ball says at any rate. I also think the Tesla stock price will jump next year because of the energy storage business that I believe will grow substantially in both revenue and margins. This will result in the revaluation of Tesla by the markets as being much more than just a car company.
Natural graphite is not very plentiful. Carbon forms strong bonds with oxygen in carbon monoxide and especially carbon dioxide i.e. it oxidises easily. Nevertheless natural deposits do exist, and artificial graphite can be made in large quantities .
No, I didn’t. I said a few months back that I thought they would deliver 1.86M vehicles this year. I also said that they would continue their 50% average annual growth (which would have been 1,686,309 vehicles in 2023).
That 1,861,258 number was going off a hypothetical “let’s start in 2019 and see what 50% growth from there would have been”, not 50% growth off of actual 2022 numbers anyway. That would have been 50% more than 1,313,851 or 1,970,777 vehicles.
I thought that was obvious, but apparently your grasp of hypotheticals isn’t as good as you think it is. Shouldn’t a lawyer be used to discussing hypotheticals and not confusing it with reality? Regardless, what’s persistently wrong here is your stubborn confusion that somehow 50% average growth per year is the same as growing by 50% every year. It isn’t. Stop pretending anybody other than you is agreeing with that nonsense.
Yes, the prediction that they would hit it came from me. But the number didn’t come from Tesla. The first thing I wrote today is that they didn’t hit my (really your) number. But they were way over their number, which is what matters.
Well, not sure it will result in any stock bump, but certainly Tesla’s energy business is growing by leaps and bounds. Margins are better than cars and the TAM is effectively infinite.
Exactly! At some point the market will recognize that grid-level solar+storage is a trillion dollar industry with Tesla a leading player. While batteries and solar panels are on their way to becoming commodities, Tesla has a huge advantage in software development, particularly with their investments in machine learning and the availability of Dojo and all that information from all their storage battery systems. Software is a very high margin business.
Tesla’s team of experienced machine learning engineers, optimization engineers and grid service experts have created a library of sophisticated algorithms that drive the complex optimal battery dispatch behavior for both Opticaster and Autobidder products.
Algorithms are based on numerous mathematical techniques including classical statistics, machine learning and numerical optimization. The library includes the functionality to perform: