Tesla Cybertruck production in April 2024
Tesla has told workers who produce the Cybertruck not to report to work for the next three days, in another sign of demand problems for the vehicle that has already generated millions of pre-orders.
The news was reported by Business Insider, which obtained an email telling Cybertruck production workers at Tesla's Austin, Texas factory that they “don't have to report to work” on “Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week (Dec. 3-5). ).” Workers will still be paid for the shifts they have scheduled.
Tesla did not comment on why the shutdown occurred, but Business Insider said four employees told it their plans were inconsistent last month.
Since it's a critical time for Tesla's deliveries, especially its flagship model, timing is suspect.
Currently, Tesla is one of the few EV manufacturers that has sold fewer cars so far this year than in 2023. Despite what you may have heard, EV sales are set to peak in 2024 — but Tesla was down in the first half of this year. .
The company had an excellent third quarter due to increased sales in China, but it is still down compared to last year.
Because of this, Tesla has started pulling out more stops this quarter to close the year strong. It offered bigger incentives for Tesla referral codes, lowered the lease price of the Model Y, and added more flexibility to its leasing program.
And, especially for today's topic, just today lowered the Cybertruck lease price – and this is less than a month since the company started leasing Cybertrucks at all.
Another sign that Tesla isn't seeing as much demand as expected for a hybrid car.
After its first launch in 2019, the Cybertruck managed to make more than 250k pre-orders in less than a week, later reaching a potential peak of 2 million according to crowdsourced data.
But when the truck hit the road, things didn't go as planned. The car came out late and over budget, also missing some of the features that were originally promised. The first available “Foundation Series” models started at $100k – a far cry from the promised $40k entry level. It's now available for a base price of $79k – but the promised future $61k RWD model has just been removed from Tesla's website.
Despite all that, it's still the best-selling electric car in the US and the third best-selling EV with the highest transaction price, which brings a good chunk of change to the company.
However, the demand seems to be much lower than expected in the sky of the car. That ~ ~ million 2 car backlog seems to have decreased around October of this year, when Tesla started allowing orders without reservations. During that time, Tesla had sold somewhere around 30,000 Cybertrucks.
This could be the explanation for the closure of the plant. Companies will often stop production lines for several days or weeks if production is moving faster than delivery, so that there is not as much inventory weighing on the balance sheet.
It is possible that there are other reasons – the development of the line or some kind of changes related to the recall of the latest Cybertruck inverter – but in the past, the end of the quarter would be a better time, and in the last, one can think of changes. it would have been done closer to where the problem was found (and probably wouldn't shut down the entire line for three days).
And if there is be other reasons, that's usually the kind of thing a company sends its PR team to discuss, so as not to distract investors with fears of reduced demand. Since Tesla has not made a statement suggesting so, Occam's razor suggests that production may exceed demand, and rest is to help balance the two.
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