Hey everybody, Rob now we're here and today we are going to be talking about a report of some aggressive growth strategies from Tesla in Europe. We've also got new price changes from Tesla in the US and China, some news on Tesla Solar and a few other items as well.
Kind of a bumpy day for Tesla stock today but ultimately finishing down just below 1% to $160.31, while the NASDAQ was down 1.1%. Regional banks continue to raise concerns in the market a lot of those stocks down pretty significant going today, PEC West being halted throughout the day. Testability continues to be in question as we head into the FOMC meeting tomorrow. Right now, interest rate expectations are not much changed from earlier this week. CME Group's Fedwatch tool putting expectations at about 85% for a 25 basis point increase.
Alright, we'll start off here with Tesla's price changes we're actually talking about price increases this time around on the Model 3 and the Model Y. These happen both in China and in the United States. Looking at the price tracking table for the US, we can see that the Model 3 and Y both had $250 price increases across all trims.
好的,我们从特斯拉的价格调整开始,这次我们实际上讨论的是 Model 3 和 Model Y 的价格上涨。这种情况在中国和美国都有发生。从美国的价格跟踪表来看,我们可以看到 Model 3 和 Y 的所有款式都有250美元的价格上涨。
Pretty much the exact same scenario in China with the equivalent of a $290 increase on all 3 and Y versions there. So on the Q1 earning scale, we heard Tesla talk about how they are always evaluating orders in real time and using that to inform pricing decisions. Hopefully price increases means Tesla is more confident in the order rate going forward.
However, because this is just kind of a flat increase across all versions of the 3 and Y and happening in multiple regions, all at the same time, it seems a bit less likely that this would be an algorithm driven type of decision, which would probably yield a little bit more variability in the changes. We should also remember looking at the price change table again, that during the first quarter there were times where Tesla had minor increases in prices, those were on the Model Y, but then as we got an acute to you prices continued to trend down pretty significantly.
So I don't take these price increases as a bad sign for the business, I think it is a positive sign, but the point is that it only goes so far. Things can and will continue to change, seems like maybe Tesla is using this small price increase as a sign that hey, don't sit around waiting for the price cuts, don't cancel your orders because if you reorder, it's now a little bit higher for a price.
And then maybe it also adds a little bit of room for Tesla to play around with some incentives, maybe a year of free supercharging or something like that, which is what we saw a company the price increases on the Model S and Model X that we had recently. On the S and the X, those incentives were added at the same time, so maybe we don't see that, but it does feel a little bit similar. The last thing to point out on this is that it does look like at least in the US that Tesla is offering the inventory vehicles at a slightly discounted price in line with the old pricing, which now looks like a $250 discount for inventory vehicles.
So maybe Tesla using this to try to shift a little bit more of the order mix into inventory versus the custom design studio. Next up, there are some reports on Twitter that Tesla has started to offer up to 10 year financing on some vehicles, at least in Spain, it looks like Norway as well.
In Norway, the interest seems to be fixed for three years and then adjustable after that. So obviously helps lower the payments and maybe there's some argument for that type of financing with an electric vehicle over an internal combustion engine vehicle. But of course, you're going to end up paying more in interest over such a long period of time. Maybe that makes sense for some people that want to deploy that capital elsewhere and try to get a better return than the interest payment on the debt would be.
Generally, I'm a person that thinks there is often merit to things like that, but 10 years, that's a long time. I wouldn't really want that to be a lever that consumers or Tesla is relying heavily upon. Maybe a nice option for you, but hopefully not something that's driving a ton of business. Alright, next up, we've got a pretty interesting report from Tesla Meg.de.
They are reporting on a Tesla leadership video conference meeting, which apparently they were informed about. They say that according to their sources during the meeting, various slides were shown, including one that said, quote, this year, we kill the ice. So aggressive language there, but obviously just kind of a reframing of Tesla's really core mission, driving towards a sustainable energy future and putting some urgency on that.
Tesla Meg says, quote, according to information from the video conference, all of this should be accompanied by a hyper growth mindset among employees and further supported by additional initiatives. Among other things, there was talk of the goal of opening 30 new service centers in Europe every quarter this year about as many as there are in Germany at the moment. Also every three months, 1000 new supercharger columns are to be added. So this is what people kind of seem to be forgetting about or not caring as much about.
This hyper growth mindset, Tesla is not this late stage company that everyone should be really focused on earnings with. Yes, it's important. But as we've talked about, it's not what Tesla is optimizing for right now, nor should it be at this stage. So I'm glad to see this type of rhetoric where we can see very clearly what Tesla's focus is internally and that is on growth, which should not be a surprise again given Tesla's mission.
Lastly from this report, something that I think a lot of people might be excited to hear, quote, in addition, the company wants to get an awareness machine going again as stated on a slide on the hyper growth motif. Something like that would be up for interpretation and just as a reminder with all of these pieces of information, it's not necessarily clear who is saying this or how corporate led it may be.
But interesting nonetheless, and with this being the year that Gigaburlin is really hitting volume production, it's going to be an important one for Tesla in Europe. If we bring in some context that we talked about from the 10Q, just as a reminder, Tesla's performance outside of the US and China, which would be mostly Europe, saw revenue down 7% quarter over quarter, but also the largest regional increase at up 34% year over year. Another important update on Europe that we have, well covered here by Electro Timmy on Twitter, is what sounds like some progress on a possible timeline for new regulation on driver control assistance systems in Europe, which could allow Tesla to potentially deploy FSD beta in Europe sometime in 2024, perhaps as early as January.
Based on my understanding, I think this would also allow for some higher level functionality of autopilot or enhanced autopilot as well. This is still draft stage stuff, so we're not going to spend a ton of time on it, and obviously regardless of regulations, Tesla would still need to actually deploy FSD beta. But good to see what at least seems like a little bit of urgency around this regulation. Outside of Europe on Tuesdays, we would usually have new China-insured vehicle numbers. Unfortunately, this week I have not seen an update anywhere on those numbers.
As we talked about before, they were going to stop being published. We did end up seeing them last week, but I've yet to see any of those numbers pop up for this week if you do have them pass them along. And I'll keep an eye out, but looks like we may be seeing those a little bit more inconsistently at best. Next up, we've got an interesting article pertaining to Tesla Solar from mid-April, I think Diane Womble on Twitter surfacing this today.
The article is from GrowthSpotter and talks about a real estate development project near Orlando called Sunbridge, which is a 27,000 acre community, which will be requiring each house and the community to have at least 4.25 kilowatts of solar, and they are exclusively partnering with Tesla. There are already about 600 homes in this development, but it is intended to scale to north of 10,000, so it should easily be scaling to over 50 megawatts of solar for this project, and that would sort of be the baseline required amount.
Buyers will also have the option to add additional solar, Tesla Powerwalls, even a solar roof if they would like. It's always really exciting to see solar being integrated from the very earliest stages of a development project. It seems like a no-brainer at that stage, especially with current incentives, and in a state like Florida. So I'm glad to see that, and especially with the solar roof when that can be planned from the very beginning, should be a lot more cost effective, especially for installation if that is considered as a part of the design. With Tesla being the exclusive provider here, I'm sure that that has been considered.
Next we've got a quick update out of Washington State, the Puget Sound Business Journal, is reporting that Tesla has at least a 245,000 square foot building just north of Seattle. The report is that this will be used as a parts and assembly plant for Tesla, so maybe some sort of hybrid between service and parts warehousing, which I think in the last few months we've had quite a few reports of similar size buildings being leased from Tesla for similar purposes. Always good to see more of those.
Next, some interesting news from Drive Tesla Canada on Twitter. It looks like there have been three original Tesla roadsters that have been found abandoned in China with zero miles driven. So who kind of sad, but also kind of cool, these are going to be auctioned off. Obviously you might need some repairs, perhaps significant repairs, but it's a cool piece of history. These were found and who knows, maybe someone in the audience will eventually win one of those auctions.
Drive Tesla Canada在Twitter上发布了一些有趣的消息。似乎在中国发现了三辆零里程的原版特斯拉跑车被遗弃,这有点令人难过,但也很酷,它们将被拍卖。显然你可能需要一些修理,也许是重大的修理,但这是一件很酷的历史珍品。这些被发现了,谁知道,也许其中一个拍卖会的观众最终会赢得其中一个。
Alright, last couple of things updates from Ford. They did announce price changes on the Ford Mustang Mach E today. That was one of a number of announcements relating to the Mach E, all of which were tied to Ford's announcement that they have completed, plans upgrades to support the production ramp of the Mach E in the second half of this year. So they announced that they are reopening orders, there are some updated specs, and then we can see a table of the new pricing for the Mustang Mach E. So for the standard range vehicles, they've dropped prices anywhere from $3 to $4,000 and on the longer range vehicles pricing has come down by $1,000 to $4,000. Easy to paint this as a reaction to Model Y pricing, I'm sure that is playing a role, but also very important to note that Ford has also announced that these standard range vehicles have made the switch to LFP or lithium iron phosphate batteries. So with that and with production now, apparently ready to significantly ramp up, they should be seeing their costs come down alongside that.
Now with that being said, Ford did report earnings today and as we have previously talked about under their new financial reporting model, they do break out their electric vehicle segment called Model E. For the first quarter, they have reported a $700 million earnings before interest in tax loss on revenue of $700 million, so a negative 100% EBIT margin. So with the Mustang Mach E, then you can't really say, oh, they're passing on cost savings because they are so far away from profitable at this stage. So of course, we've already gone through this in great detail when Ford did their financial teaching or walk through on the new business reporting. So we're not going to go through all that again. I'll just link to that video in the description if you didn't catch it, but it obviously highlights the significant structural cost advantage that Tesla has. Now for that $700 million loss, that seems roughly in line with what Ford would have expected when they did that teaching, they gave guidance for a $3 billion loss in EBIT this year for Model E. So it is kind of a shocking number, but because we've already talked about it, not something really all that surprising at this point.
Outside of Model E or the EV segment, I haven't combed through their earnings all that closely, but it did seem like they came in in general ahead of expectations. Revenue was up 20% year over year for Ford's total business, obviously comping off against some chip constraints and things like that last year. From a sequential perspective, understanding that Q1 is a weaker quarter for the automotive industry, their revenue was down 6% quarter over quarter.
One last quick note then before we wrap up, Tesla scope is reporting that they've received two reports this morning that FSD beta version 11.4.2 has gone out internally to some employees. Sounds like 11.4.1 may not have been as broadly released internally. So hopefully this is a good sign that we're getting pretty close to seeing an 11.4 release beyond employees.
Alright, that is it for today then. As always, thank you for listening. Make sure you're subscribed and signed up for notifications. And also find me on Twitter at Tesla Podcast. And we'll see you tomorrow for the Wednesday May 3rd episode of Tesla Daily. Thank you.