I mean - sure? You obviously couldn’t have built the Model 3 in 2010, because battery tech hadn’t advanced enough?
But that doesn’t really affect the point I was making - that the reduction in Tesla’s construction cost from $84K per unit to ~$40K per unit is because they were making completely different cars in 2022 than in 2017. The Model 3 and Model Y cost less to produce because they’re different cars than the S and X.
You keep saying that it must be because Tesla’s using radically different manufacturing processes for the newer models - but I don’t see any reason to believe that’s true. Partially because everyone else seems to be able to do the same thing without radically different manufacturing processes - the 3-Series is half the price of the 7, the C-Class is half the price of the S, etc.
And mostly because that’s not what happened with Tesla. They were able to introduce the 3 at half the price of the S entirely by value-engineering a smaller, cheaper car. They didn’t have any brand-spanking new assembly plants. They made it at the same factory. Heck, they were partially making them in tents in the parking lots at Fremont.
Might the factories making the Model Y be more efficient than Fremont? Sure, maybe. But a huge part of the reduction in average cost of units sold is because Telsa shifted from only big expensive cars to almost entirely smaller versions.
If you like - you can see it how you want. But the costs of software development aren’t going to be included in the COGS of the cars. So a huge part of Tesla’s ginormous gross margins is because they have these incredibly expensive software packages that they are able to get people to buy as options. So if you want to look at those big gross margins as evidence of how efficient Tesla is at manufacturing, you have to take that into account. A big part of their gross margin has nothing to do with how good they are at putting the cars together, but how good they are at getting people to buy five-figure software options.