On October 24th Beijing time, Tesla released its third quarter report for 2024, which showed that it achieved a revenue of 25.182 billion US dollars in the third quarter, a year-on-year increase of 8%; Achieve a net profit of 2.167 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 17%, higher than market expectations.
When it comes to future development, Tesla mentioned in its financial report that the company currently has sufficient working capital for long-term capacity expansion plans and hopes for sustained growth in profits related to vehicles and hardware. Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicts that Tesla's car sales are expected to continue growing by 20% -30% next year.
Bicycle sales cost drops to historic low
Specifically, Tesla's revenue in the third quarter reached $25.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 8%; The quarterly non GAAP net profit was $2.5 billion. The operating cash flow for the third quarter was 6.3 billion US dollars, with cash and investments reaching 33.6 billion US dollars.
For the reasons of revenue and profit growth, Tesla stated that this is related to the increase in car delivery volume, energy production and storage, as well as growth in services and other aspects, and is also related to reducing vehicle costs, including reducing raw material costs, shipping costs, tariffs, and other one-time expenses.
The financial report shows that Tesla's cost of bike sales (COGS) has dropped to a historic low of approximately $35100.
Selling cars is still fundamental to Tesla. In the third quarter of 2024, Tesla delivered approximately 463000 electric vehicles worldwide, setting a new record for quarterly deliveries in 2024. In China, Model Y is the best-selling model of 2024.
The Tesla electric commercial vehicle Semi factory, which has previously received widespread attention, is under construction according to plan and is expected to be offline at the new factory by the end of 2025. In terms of electric vehicle accessories, Tesla produced its 100 millionth 4680 battery cell in the third quarter. In addition, more than 2800 supercharging piles were added in the third quarter, a year-on-year increase of 22%.
Empowering autonomous driving, FSD may become the future profit pillar
Autonomous driving has always been a key point that Musk must mention when boasting about Tesla. During the earnings call, he mentioned that Tesla is becoming the most competitive company in the field of autonomous driving.
On October 11th Beijing time, Tesla held a "We, Robots" demonstration event in Los Angeles, USA. Elon Musk entered the venue in a "three no" new species without a steering wheel, pedals, or charging port. Its gull wing door design is highly technological. This self driving taxi is named Cybercab and equipped with Tesla FSD (fully autonomous driving) function.
Musk has repeatedly mentioned that Tesla FSD will be 10 times safer than human driving. Over time, Tesla vehicles can generate significant profits through autonomous driving, and he hopes that Tesla can sell more cars at a lower profit margin, improve autonomous driving technology, and reap profits. It can be said that autonomous driving will become one of the most important parts of Tesla's profit landscape in the future, and FSD will bring more value to Tesla.
Specifically in the third quarter, Tesla released the FSD fully autonomous driving capability (Driver Supervision Edition) V12.5 version, which improved safety and comfort. Musk expects that the intervention interval mileage of the FSD V13 version will increase by more than 500 times compared to the V12 version.
The upgraded intelligent summoning function ASS allows the car to automatically drive towards the owner in the parking lot. Tesla has stated that users have used Smart Summon over one million times.
In addition, Tesla has pushed FSD fully autonomous driving capability (Driver Supervision Edition) to owners of Cyber off-road vehicles, including end-to-end neural networks for highway driving.
Energy storage becomes a profit growth point
Energy storage is a key area of Tesla's latest layout and also a profit growth point. Looking back at 2023, Tesla's energy storage deployment reached 14.7GWh, more than doubling from the previous year, and the profits of its power generation and energy storage business almost doubled in 2023.
In the third quarter of this year, Tesla's energy storage business continued to maintain high-speed growth, with installed capacity of energy storage products reaching 6.9 GWh, a year-on-year increase of up to 73%. The cumulative installed capacity in the first three quarters of this year soared to 20.4GWh.
In terms of profit, Tesla's energy storage business achieved a record breaking 30.5% gross profit margin in the third quarter, an increase of 596 basis points compared to the previous quarter.
Tesla is expanding its energy storage business globally. The weekly production capacity of the Raslop Energy Storage Gigafactory in California, USA has reached 200 units. The Shanghai Energy Storage Gigafactory invested in China is Tesla's first energy storage Gigafactory established outside the United States, and is expected to start production in the first quarter of 2025 to supply the Chinese and global markets.
Lin Zi, a journalist from Beike Finance at the New Beijing News