Hey everybody Rob Bauer here and today we've got some news for Tesla on Giga Berlin expansion plans and a few other updates but the most interesting news I think today relating to GM quite a few updates for them that we'll take a look at.
Alright looking at the stock Tesla up 2.1% today closing at 216.52 cents nice to see that and pretty easy to know performance of the NASDAQ which was up about 9.10% on the day today.
Alright we'll start off with a couple of Tesla's stories so first off that Giga Berlin expansion plan that I mentioned RBB24 today reporting on the expansion plan hearings that have been happening over in Germany. So according to comments from Tesla representatives at this expansion plan hearing which has to do with public raising objections to potential factory expansion plans like we have seen so many times during the course of Giga Berlin. So during this Tesla representatives said that they do want to begin expanding Giga Berlin in the first half of 2024. They do say though that in the first half of 2024 the existing factory hall translated here but the existing factory would be the first one to be updated and then the company also wants to build a water recycling plans. They also say that plans for a second production facility and battery recycling plan though that might be battery production plans would be coming later. So although it does talk about expansion plans in the first half of 2024 which I think would be exciting those don't really jive with comments that we heard from Elon on the Q3 earnings call recently. So I'm not putting a whole lot of faith in this or I'm not putting my expectations too high for these expansion plans right now. Whatever they end up being just because of those comments. And again I think with anything that's regulatory Tesla is best served to probably put their best case scenario out there in terms of what they may want to do. So if they feel like there's any possibility of growing volume production or making factory updates in the first half of the year they would want to at least have the option to do so. So they would want to present that to regulators to make sure that that is something that could be done.
So again we'll see we don't have a whole lot of other information on this unfortunately but kind of interestingly at this at this hearing there are generally for Tesla events like this there's going to be a pretty full auditorium or pretty full room. In this case it's pretty empty I think there were only about 20 people that showed up apparently it was boycotted for some reason. I'm not sure if that really serves the boycotted is best intention in terms of raising their objections to possible expansion plans but apparently boycotted due to some information that was not disclosed or had been blacked out in some of the expansion documents seems to be the reason for that but nevertheless probably made things quite a bit smoother for the decision makers here. So I don't think we've heard any result of this but the consensus or the you know the rumors going around seem to be that there won't be any major objections just because Tesla is I think well answered some of the questions in terms of water usage and things like that that we've talked about before.
So we'll keep an eye out for more updates on that but that is the news for today on Berlin and then we've got a bit of an update on software here so green the only on X had shared some interesting information about 2023.38 software update covered here by not a Tesla app so this is not these features are not things that are publicly facing right now but as we often see from green sometimes he gets a little bit more insight into things Tesla's working on below the surface.
So a few things we can see here supercharger congestion fees adding some fees for users charging beyond 80% when stations are busy I think that's a reasonable thing to do. On road detection communication we're going to come back to that dynamic alternate route suggestions so basically if there is you know a significant delay on your route Tesla could suggest a better route which would be a nice feature to add to have auto dial auto dial for emergency services and then coming back to this on road detection.
So this would be somewhat similar to ways functionality I'm sure there would be some some differences here but basically it would let Tesla and Tesla's cameras in Tesla vehicles basically report obstacles or hazards that they come across and then that could be fitted into the map data for other vehicles that are on a similar route. So hopefully this is something you know Tesla kind of does this already with traffic of course with the navigation I think that's a premium connectivity feature at the moment but if Tesla can evolve this over time Tesla's obviously got the best set of sensors to add this type of functionality and make it as robust as possible and I think in many ways potential to make it a lot better part in the pun then ways. which should be exciting as Tesla works on it over time.
So I would keep my expectations a little bit low initially but exciting to see that Tesla has some interest in that area and further developing interest in that area and further developing that sort of functionality. So we'll keep an eye out for that and then of course today because it is Tuesday we do have updated China insured vehicle numbers so for the week of October 16th through the 22nd so the third week here in the fourth quarter Tesla registered or 8100 Tesla vehicles were insured in China for the week.
So as we can see comparing the past third weeks of the quarter Tesla still trailing a little bit from where they would normally be at this point but two major factors influencing this of course the very low performance in the first week with golden week probably still some recovery from that and then of course the highland transition which we've started to see those deliveries happen in Europe but no reports yet at least to my knowledge in China so until those happen we're going to see these numbers a little bit lower than what we might have seen during normal weeks as this is just going to be driven by Model Y.
Alright and then just quick updates on the Cybertruck as we tend to get most days more Cybertruck sightings but a very interesting one here I think this was originally anonymously posted on Facebook but shared on X here by drive Tesla Canada as you can see from this video probably the biggest collection of Cybertrucks that we've seen outside of drone footage ever I'm not sure exactly what the count is here but looks like maybe close to 10 something in that ballpark kind of all sitting together in a parking lot which is fun and very interesting to see and then we get a couple of look at the couple of looks at the photos here as well so hopefully not too far off from seeing Tesla's delivery lots being filled like this many times over but we'll continue to look out for more updates on the Cybertruck as we get them
and then also anonymously posted on Facebook a person that claims to have a very low reservation number for the Cybertruck claims that they received a call from Tesla asking if they want to move forward with purchase they said that the pricing that was shared for the tri-motor version was $98,990 and then FSD was locked in at $7,000 as it was at the time of the order which Tesla said at that time that they would honor so including that obviously would put it over a hundred thousand with FSD but excluding that just below a hundred thousand for the tri-motor and we have no way of knowing if this is accurate someone could just easily make something like this up they also say that they posted this anonymously because they don't know if Tesla wants this information shared or not that makes me a little bit skeptical of this because presumably Tesla would be pretty clear about whether they want that shared or not and if they're calling reservation holders and having these types of conversations and not making that very very clear then it would seem that we would probably have seen something that was not anonymous by now just with people getting excited to share those types of things so I'm a little bit skeptical but of course this sparked a lot of conversation about what this pricing is probably though best just for us to wait until the delivery date or something that does a little bit more confirmable nevertheless obviously a point of discussion today
Alright, getting into the updates on GM, kind of a tougher rough day for GM today. A few things that we're going to be looking at here. The first is an order of suspension for cruise vehicles in San Francisco. So, this came out mid to late morning today and GM was unaware of this until it was announced. They say that they learned of this from the announcement initially. To me, that didn't seem like the best, you know, sort of process. Seems like there's maybe some vindictiveness or something there with the DMV not really giving cruise a heads up that the suspension was coming. Probably would facilitate a better relationship to have some awareness about some of those things. But they kind of issue the suspense and suspension. Cruise forced to immediately halt their service indefinitely for the time being. We've got no date on when they can resume.
So, you know, my initial reaction was maybe this isn't the best. It's, it seems to have been related to that cruise accident which obviously any accident is unfortunate. This one particularly so. We had to mention it briefly. There was a pedestrian that got hit by another vehicle, then got hit by the cruise vehicle. And the cruise vehicle, although it did break during that collision with the pedestrian, apparently then continued to pull over to the side of the road and fortunately trapped the pedestrian under the vehicle. So we had talked about that briefly.
This suspension, if we look at the details, does relate specifically to this. And looking at the order of suspension, what seems to actually have been the case is that the DMV here is reacting to information that they claim was either withheld or omitted from cruise. So, with that context, it makes it much more I think reasonable that we're seeing this and much less red flag waving in terms of how this might impact other autonomous vehicles and their deployment in the future. When we get into a situation where maybe we're getting overregulated or something like that, it's potentially concerning for, you know, Tesla's plans for other autonomous vehicle plans in general, for vehicle safety in general if this isn't warranted. But because this does seem to come down to an omission that, you know, is a pretty significant distinction.
So, they say that footage of the subsequent movement of the AV to perform a pull over maneuver was not shown to the department. Cruise did not disclose that any additional movement of the vehicle had occurred after the initial stop of the vehicle. The department only learned of the AV subsequent movement via discussion with another government agency. The department requested crews to provide a copy of the video with the additional footage, which was received, which was received by the department on October 13th.
So, the claim that they're making there, again, that crews showed them footage of this but it was just the initial collision and stop at the cruise vehicle, not the subsequent pulling over and kind of fortunately dragging the pedestrian during that. Period of time so that would seem to be a pretty significant you know omission in which case something like this would seem to be much more justified however crews in a statement as covered by vice here said that quote I can confirm that crews showed the full video to the DMV on October 3rd and played it multiple times and quote so it's a bit of a DMV said versus crews said situation.
I'm not sure what incentive the DMV would have to not be transparent or not be forthcoming about what was shown to them and that again seems to be really the driving force behind this decision is kind of the lack of trust because of this omission so it's an interesting situation.
I'm sure we'll continue to hear more about it but for now crews and suspended indefinitely. in San Francisco so we'll keep it out for that and then also from GM today they actually reported earnings this morning so we get a couple of updates both on sort of UAW related items and EV related items we'll start with the EV related items so with their EVs a number of updates here they essentially are slowing down their EV plans so they say that they say that they're taking immediate steps to enhance the profitability of their EV portfolio and adjust to slowing near term growth these.
steps include moderating the pace of our EV acceleration in 2024 and 2025 to maintain strong pricing so although they say here that they're adjusting to slowing near term growth the question was actually asked later on about demand for EVs and they said that it was really strong no issues there even though they're a relatively small producer of EVs relative to some some competitors they said that it was not due to to EV growth or EV demand specifically despite that kind of being a part of the initial.
announcement here so a little bit of a I don't know conflicting answer on that piece and the Confliction continues I think sorry excuse me when they say that our commitment to an all EV future is as strong as ever and we continue to plan to have annual EV capacity of one million units in North America as we exit 2024 now even though they are continuing to guide for that one million units of capacity for 2025 they have delayed the launch of the Chevy Equinox the silver Silverado EV and the GMC Sierra EV although they do say that each of those are only delayed by a few months and then in terms of their actual targets see if we can find that they say that their EV production targets including the 100,000 EV target that they had for the second half of 2023 and the cumulative 400,000 EVs from 2022 to the first half of 2024 have been impacted or in other words delayed by their decision that they're announcing here today so they say they also said that they are not providing new targets.
在这里宣布了一些有些矛盾的消息,矛盾继续。当他们说我们对全电动汽车未来的承诺一如既往强烈,并计划在2024年退出北美市场时,我想抱歉,他们对于这一点的回答有一些矛盾。尽管他们继续计划在2025年拥有一百万辆电动汽车的产能,但他们推迟了雪佛兰Equinox、Silverado EV和GMC Sierra EV的发布。尽管他们说这些车型的推迟时间只有几个月,但关于他们实际的目标,我们看看能否找到。他们表示,他们的电动汽车生产目标,包括他们在2023年下半年的10万辆电动汽车目标以及2022年到2024年上半年的累计40万辆电动汽车目标,已经受到或者换句话说,由于他们今天宣布的决定,目标已经受到了影响或者延迟了。他们还说他们没有提供新的目标。
But are moving to a more agile approach to continue to continually evaluate EV demand again and coming back to EV demand although they said that that was not a part of it and adjust production schedules to maximize profitability we purposely built flexibility into our manufacturing facilities and are uniquely positioned among our competitors to be able to flex our production between ICE and EVs so I thought this last part was particularly interesting obviously all the delays here probably not terribly surprising given what we have talked about over the last few weeks and we've seen sort of similar updates from Ford in terms of the way that they're talking about their EV business right and their aggressiveness relating to this but this last part particularly interesting because they say that they built this flexibility and like this is some just great competitive advantage that GM has thought of that no one else has thought of but obviously any legacy automaker that is producing ICE vehicles and EVs will love to have flexibility the problem with that is that there's opportunity cost of doing that likely relating to the cost to produce these EVs if you're less all in and you're designing in contingencies those things have cost and those costs are going to translate to the cost of the vehicles or the price of the vehicles or your margins one way or the other you can't just have flexibility without you know more flexibility than others without something being worse unless we just assume that GM somehow came up with a way to do this that no one else was able to do so although they're trying to spin this positively and talk about how they have this flexibility and they're just slowing these things down so that they can sort of build off of a better stronger fundamental base as they do ramp up production again I think that is mostly just spinning the announcement here that they're significantly.
More hesitant and although maybe they're seeing their own demand according to them for EVs being a little bit or being okay in the market they're probably looking at Tesla and the thing that things that Tesla is doing and just feeling less aggressive than they were you know two years ago or whatever the last few years as we've been hearing all these EV targets so interesting I'm not surprised by this but as as we continue to travel through this period of time those that are not willing to go all in are kind of you know going to set themselves back relative to competition that is willing to do those things which of course Tesla would be among so a number of interesting updates there on EVs
and then hopping back to crews just here for a second and looking at some of the financials that were shared in the earnings release that we were just looking at that was from the conference call
然后快速回过头来看一下刚刚我们看到的会议通话中公布的一些财务数据,这些数据是关于财报公布的。
crews revenue for this quarter was rounded out to 0.0 billion dollars so that means they're doing. less than 50 million dollars per quarter in revenue their earnings before interest in tax adjusted was negative 700 million dollars they used about half a billion dollars in cash
cash is declined in the crew's business line from 3.2 billion dollars last year to 1.7 billion dollars even the year to date numbers they're only doing somewhere around 100 million dollars so far in the first three quarters lost about 2 billion uses about 1.4 billion dollars in cash
and they also set in the conference call that the expenses were 700 million dollars and they expect that to continue at a similar run rate moving forward as they balance expanding operations with further efficiencies so although they've made progress in terms of the the driving domain and the size of the fleet and actually being able to accept revenue for rides really not seeing any of that come through yet still burning a lot of money still guiding to burn a lot of money and of course this is before the announcement this morning which followed GM's earnings about the suspension and San Francisco though with the revenue run rate that they're at it's not really too meaningful in terms of the cash that they are burning so just very important things to keep in mind obviously these are very different strategies that are being pursued between businesses like Cruz and Waymo and Antesla where Tesla is pursuing the much more cash flow positive option relative to these other companies so important to keep those things in mind
and then finally they give an update on the impact of the UAW strike and they actually got a new thing impacting that right after this conference call as well so again rough day for GM but they say that in Q3 the UAW strike had a roughly 200 million dollar EBIT impact and in Q4 so far they estimate that they've lost about 600 million dollars in EBIT from from the strikes they say that moving forward they estimate the impact to be approximately 200 million dollars per week and because of the impact that they're seeing here they've chosen to withdraw their full their full year 2023 guidance that they had previously been heading towards the top half of that range on so obviously pretty impactful and continues to the impact continues to grow by the week
and again right after this conference call UAW opportunistically taking the taking the chance to announce a strike of 5,000 members at GM's Arlington assembly plant which is their largest plant and according to the UAW their biggest money maker so presumably they're most profitable this produces the Chevy Tahoe Chevy suburban GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade so prediction from yesterday that GM would be soon to follow with their most profitable plant after we had seen Ford and then Stellantis as we had talked about yesterday now GM joining that group unsurprising to me so again I think UAW kind of had this this whole plan kind of mapped out and they're just inflicting pain point by pain point and trying to subsequently get better and better better offers I don't even think they've let members vote on any of the offers that they've received yet so that I think also supports that this is just a pre-planned sort of tactic to kind of inflict as much pain as possible in a way that allows them to maintain their budget as long as possible in terms of their their strike fund as well
so interesting you know we'll see we'll see how automakers react Stellantis after the announcement yesterday by the UAW issued a statement saying that they are outraged that the UAW has chosen to expand their strike against Lantis talking about their offers talking about how they haven't received a counter offer not once so they're obviously becoming quite frustrated with with this as well so we'll see very interesting period of time right now both for EVs and just in general with the UAW strike but that'll wrap it up for today so as always thank you for listening make sure you're subscribed and signed up for notifications you can also find me on x at tesla podcast and we'll see you tomorrow for the Wednesday October 25th episode of tesla daily thank you