Electric car maker Tesla’s profit fell 44 percent

San Francisco (Uttam Hindu News): Elon Musk-run Tesla’s profit fell 44 percent to $1.85 billion in the third quarter, compared with $3.3 billion in the year-ago period. The electric carmaker reported revenue of $23.4 billion during the third quarter of 2023, up from $21.4 billion in the same period last year. The company’s operating margin fell for the third consecutive quarter.

“Our cost of goods sold per vehicle decreased to $37,500 in the third quarter. While production costs at our new factories remained higher than our established factories, we implemented necessary upgrades in the third quarter to further reduce unit costs. “We believe an industry leader needs to be a cost leader,” Tesla said in its quarterly earnings call late Wednesday. Musk said the Cybertruck, which will be available for sale soon, “will take 18 months to become a significant cash flow contributor.”

“I want to emphasize that there will be tremendous challenges in reaching mass production with the Cybertruck and then making the Cybertruck cashflow positive,” Musk said. At Gigafactory Texas, Tesla has begun pilot production of the Cybertruck, which is on track for early deliveries this year. Tesla said it has commissioned one of the world’s largest supercomputers, with more than double the compute capacity as of Q2, to speed up its AI development.

“Our large installed base of vehicles continues to generate anonymized video and other data to develop our FSD capability features,” the company said. The company said it plans to scale up production as soon as possible in line with the 50 percent CAGR target. Tesla said, “Depending on a number of factors, some years we may grow faster and some we may grow slower. “For 2023, we expect to be ahead at a long-term 50 per cent CAGR with around 1.8 million vehicles for the year.”