Hey everybody Rob Bauer here and today we've got a pretty big update on the Project Highland Model 3. We've also got new leasing prices from Tesla, updates on Tesla APIs, employer rankings, and more. Quick look at the stock Tesla today down 1.6% closing at $258.87 while the NASDAQ was down 6-10% of a percent on the day.
We did get the CPI Consumer Price Index report this morning, came in a little bit higher than expected, not as high as the PPI over expectations, with headline data increasing 4-10% of a percent, month over month versus 3-10% expectations, core in line at 3-10% for both. The CME Group FedWatch tool largely unchanged today, showing just a very slight increase in expectations for increased rates, but nothing too significant, so we're now through the PPI and CPI reports before the FOMC meeting on November 1st.
Alright, I want to start off today with updated numbers from China. We finally got that production number for September, so of course we've already talked about worldwide production and deliveries, but we've been waiting for this number because this gives us insight on Tesla's production rate for Project Highland during the month of September. Remember, that was announced September 1st in China. The design studio was updated to all this good stuff. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to do all of that, and then still continue to produce the old Model 3, so presumably the entire production number we're looking at here is updated Highland Model 3s. So the number 4 September 18,104 Model 3s produced at Kigashang High. That's only about 3,000 units fewer than Tesla produced in August, and August has an extra day, so only down 15% despite this update. Year to date, the number is a little bit higher, about 25,000 was the average year to date prior to September, and we have seen Giga Shanghai's Model 3 production peak at just over 30,000 units previously. But given the significant changes on the Model 3 during this month, it's extremely encouraging to see the production already ramped up to this level. This is an average production rate throughout the entire month of 4,200 vehicles per week, and that's an average presuming there was some ramp during the month. Tesla probably exited the month at a much higher rate than that, perhaps above 5,000 per week already on volume production, as Tesla defines it for the Highland Model 3.
So this is good news on so many different fronts. It's great news obviously for just being able to sell these vehicles right now. They're pretty much on ships over to Europe, and we haven't seen the first deliveries quite yet. Tesla probably gonna wait for those to arrive and then start deliveries of these all at once. So great news for sales, great news for margin because the less downtime there is the quicker the Tesla can ramp production, the better the unit economics on each unit are going to be. So really good news for margins, especially because these are priced higher than the previous Model 3. So good news for revenue and margins there for Q4. And then just in terms of the update, the fact that this happened so quickly, that builds well for when Tesla makes similar updates to the Model Y. Now obviously we already saw some of those updates implemented for Model Y and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. But down the road, that means we should have a pretty smooth transition there as well. And then finally, when we think about this transition beyond Giga Shanghai, the minimal downtime builds well for updates like this at other factories, whether it's Fremont or for the Model Y, maybe Gigabrelin in Texas later on. Now of course, Giga Shanghai is kind of its own beast and they do things very, very quickly relative to what we have seen in other places. But the fact that they were able to do this with such minimal downtime, even if it does take longer elsewhere, suggests that it will still happen pretty quickly. I mean, if this took two or three months for them to transition, we'd really be dreading how long that would take the other factories. So although I would still expect some potentially significant production hits, it's much less of a concern than it otherwise may have been. So this is pretty big news, a lot of encouraging science here, a lot of things to be excited about from this number.
Rounding out the September production numbers for Giga Shanghai, Model Y came in at just below 48,000 vehicles. That was actually the lowest that we have seen since January. It's down from a relatively high 59,500 from August, so call it 11 and a half thousand units and a 19% decline. Both of those numbers actually larger declines than we saw on Model 3 production.
As I mentioned, we did see some updates made to the Model Y as well, but those were a little bit later. They were also less significant. So bigger drops for the Model Y would seem to suggest that it was more than just that impacting the number, though that probably had an influence as well. Seems like maybe some labor resources were redirected from Model Y to Model 3 during this transition. So that's definitely worth noting next to all the positives that we had just discussed with the Model 3, but I think still a tremendous result overall.
So total production, 66,093 vehicles, we talked about wholesale sales already of 74,000. So inventory was drawn down quote unquote by about 8,000 vehicles specific to Giga Shanghai during September. We already talked about the export and retail sales, but we do have that breakdown now. So no surprise only about 2000 Model 3s sold in September, presumably all of the old versions that left 41,400 or so for the Model Y. And then for exports, we see 18,745 exported Model 3. That's very close to that total production number. So most likely most of those are highland and then 11,800 Model Y.
If we hop back just really quickly to those Model Y sales specifically to China, that's about 116,000 for the quarter. And that is a new record for Model Y sales in China for one quarter. That was about 6% higher than Q2.
All right, moving on, but another quick highland update Tesla has debuted the updated Model 3 in Hong Kong. They'll have the vehicles on display for the next couple of weeks, as long as something that translates to Giga Factory Museum, which I think is just kind of a display of Tesla's manufacturing techniques at the Giga Factory. So potential customers can learn a little bit more about both those things.
All right, next, we've got a pretty significant lease pricing update from Tesla. They have announced that the Model 3 and the Model Y are now starting at $329 per month and $399 per month respectively for 36 month leases. This is about $100 reduction on that monthly price for each. So that's pretty significant and should be a very attractive leasing offer, especially for people that have high gas bills, not that an EV shouldn't have been attractive already, but even more attractive. And then of course with leasing, you have to pay attention to the other details. So in this case, a $4,500 down payment is required. And this price is for the 10,000 annual mileage limit. Tesla is now noting these leasing offers on the home page, as well as in the little tax credit bubble that existed on the order page previously.
And interestingly, for the Model 3, they've updated that tax credit language, which we have seen change now a couple of times, it now says the $7,500 tax credit expected to reduce to $37.50 on December 31st pending federal guidance. That note does stay the same regardless of which trim of the Model 3 you select. So it kind of implies that it would apply to all of them, but it doesn't go as far as explicitly stating that. So still a little bit uncertain. I think the expectation has been that that would apply to the lithium iron phosphate versions. But obviously, we have to see and it's not entirely clear right now. And then if we look at the same note for the Model Y, the language is different, no mention of the 3750 just says that all Model Y vehicles currently qualify for 7500 and a take delivery before your end to kind of guarantee that credit. So from that, it doesn't sound like Tesla's expecting a decrease for the Model Y. The recently eligible Model X uses similar language as the Model Y.
All right, next up Tesla is now published the documentation for their fleet API. We've talked about this on a couple of occasions recently. This will allow official third party API access previously that's been done unofficially. So we talked a little bit ago about some of the piloting that we had seen for this already. But that documentation is now there for review. I think initially this is going to focus on sort of fleet management type of things. But obviously could lay the groundwork for other things in the future. Kind of interestingly, not a Tesla app has noticed that right now Tesla is doing temporarily free APIs. And then it sounds like over time they'll have different payment options for different tiers based off of usage. So sounds like Tesla kind of turning that into its own business line, not something that's probably going to be huge, but something again that perhaps grows over time. And hopefully those fees will end up being pretty reasonable for developers as well as that will encourage more development. But we'll see.
All right, next up, we've got some very interesting ranking updates from Universal. We've talked before about their rankings many times Tesla and SpaceX usually falling at the top for engineers in the United States. We're looking now at global rankings. So that's an important distinction to keep in mind. But Universal now publishing the updated global employer rankings for 2023. And this is based on surveying a massive 172,000 students between October 2022 and May 2023. So despite all the noise of the last year, all the controversy of the last year, Tesla has moved up in these rankings. So they've appeared for the first time in the top 50 for business students ranking at number 38, Apple and Google taking the top slots there for engineering students Tesla is ranked at 16. Again, that's going to be lower than the US, but that's actually a significant improvement in the worldwide ranking Tesla at 26 last year, Google topping the list for engineering students. And then for IT students Tesla coming in at 19th, again, a pretty significant improvement from last year when Tesla was 28th. And again, Google taking that top slot. So that's really nice to see. Obviously Tesla's global footprint has grown pretty significantly during this period. So you would kind of expect improvement from that alone, but still nice to see and hopefully a trend that will continue. And I will be very curious to see the US ranking specifically. I'm not sure when those will come out, but we'll definitely keep an eye out for them relevant to this as well.
According to Reuters, Tesla has announced that they will be offering pay raises to workers at Gigabro Lynn with the specific details to be shared with employees in November. So the timing kind of interesting with the increased noise that we've referred from IG metal this week, maybe something that IG metal wanted to coincide with, or maybe that was to coincide with the UAW stuff in the US. Who knows, but Tesla did also note that they raised wages 6% last year. So I'm sure we'll hear a little bit more about that in November.
All right, next up today, we've got a report from CNBC. They're talking about a letter that was sent from a Tesla employee to the SEC in 2021. As a whistleblower complaint, CNBC frames it as though the SEC didn't really fully investigate this. They say that just one person looked at it and they never followed up. But I think if we look at some of the details that CNBC is reporting here about the complaint, that doesn't seem too surprising, at least from my perspective.
For example, one of the first things they outline here is accounting for repairs. So repairs can either be paid for by the customer covered under warranty or covered by the company under Goodwill. And it sounds like this quote unquote whistleblower was not happy with the amount of repairs that were being allocated to Goodwill, which then gets allocated to SG&A expenses rather than into warranty expenses, which you can then argue makes Tesla's warranty numbers look better. But obviously those costs are still being accounted for. It's just in a different bucket. So the allocation of those costs would be up for debate. The materiality of the allocation also offered a bait. But overall seems very minor and more of a matter of opinion than any searing indication of something being done wrong.
And then for some reason, CNBC notes that, meanwhile, quote unquote customer pay repairs are booked as revenue specifically under the services and others category. And they say here too, the repairs are not counted against warranty reserves. Like obviously, if the customer is paying for it, that means it's not in warranty. Either CNBC is confused on what's going on there or they're trying to confuse people and make it sound worse than it is. I'll set the odds at 50/50 on that one, I guess. So that's about where I stopped reading. As again, the overall news here is that a complaint was filed, the SEC looked at it, and nothing has come from it.
Alright, next we've got a couple of pieces of new data from Cox Automotive or KBB. First kind of interesting to look at average transaction price for new vehicles, KBB saying that that came down a little bit year over year to $47,899 for September for the average price of a new vehicle in the US. Now they also break that down by brand and they say that year over year Tesla is declined by about 25%, 24.7% to $50,931. So according to their data, that would put the average transaction price for a Tesla vehicle just 6% above the average price of any new vehicle in the US. And obviously the Model 3 and the Model Y both starting below that average right now. And this mix would include of course, the S and the X. So we've talked plenty about price cuts and advertising and profit margins, all this stuff. This is relevant to all that, we don't need to rehash it. But setting those things aside, it is still nice to see Tesla even be able to accomplish moving into that more affordable new vehicle category over time. So plenty to discuss about profit optimization. But that is something that Tesla's worked on for a long, long time.
All right, last few things here we talked yesterday about the escalation of the UAW strike at Ford. Ford has commented today saying that they are now at the limit for what their offer will be. They said they can continue to negotiate and move things around within that offer. But after the significant escalation from the UAW, at least for now publicly, which doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot, that's what they're saying. So UAW should be commenting again tomorrow, we'll keep an eye out for that.
We also recently talked about the Kia EV9. Kia today shared a little bit more details on range for that vehicle. So they've completed the EPA range testing. Those actually beat the estimates that they were targeting slightly. The lowest range version is going to have 230 miles of range and the highest up to 304 EPA estimated miles of range. So it looks like pretty decent results for them on the EV9.
And then finally, just a quick update on Starlink logistics company, Merisk has announced that they've reached an agreement with Starlink to outfit more than 330 of their shipping vessels with Starlink. So it's a pretty big deal that comes after they had been trialing Starlink on 30 of their ships. And interestingly, in the announcement, they noted that Starlink should be able to facilitate some cost saving measures for them by moving business critical applications into the cloud and by strengthening remote support and inspections of their vessels.
Alright, that'll wrap it up for today then. As always, thank you for listening. Make sure you subscribe to and sign up for notifications. Also find me on X at Tesla podcast and we'll see you tomorrow for the Friday, October 13 episode of Tesla Daily. Thank you.