Good day, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Tesla Inc. Q4 2018 financial results and Q&A webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your touch-tone telephone. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would like to introduce your host for today's call, Mr. Martin Viecha, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Mr. Viecha, you may begin.
Thank you, Sherry. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Tesla's 4th quarter 2018 Q&A webcast. I'm joined today by Elon Musk, JB Straubel, Deepak Ahuja, and a number of other executives. Our Q4 results were announced at about 1:00 P.M. Pacific Time in the update letter we published at the same link as this webcast. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC. During the question and answer portion of today's call, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please press star one now if you would like to join the question queue.
Before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks. Elon?
Thanks, Martin. Last year was definitely the most challenging year in Tesla history, but also the most successful. Thanks to the incredible work of the Tesla team, Model 3 became the best-selling premium vehicle in the U.S. for 2018. In fact, when considering battery electric vehicles, Tesla achieved an 80% market share of U.S. sales in last year. I think this point is perhaps not well appreciated. All other electric vehicles combined were 20% of sales in the U.S. in last year. I think that's not bad. We also delivered almost as many vehicles last year as we did in all prior years combined, which is a tremendous achievement by the Tesla team.
If you track Tesla vehicle production year over year cumulative, sales and deliveries year over year, it is about the cleanest exponential I've ever seen. We've basically almost doubled our fleet in every year. You know, every year we make as many cars as we did in all prior years. This is a very unusual thing to see for, especially for a large, complex manufactured object. I think it may be the fastest that a complex manufactured object as, like a car, has grown in history, or at least I'm not aware of anything that is faster. Martin, are you too?
I'm not sure. I think Model T was a little bit slower, but I'm not 100% sure.
Okay. We expect that exponential to continue. With the deliveries this year being even if, even in the face of if there's a global recession, even if there's a global recession, we're expecting deliveries this year to be about 50% higher than last year. You know, there's, it could be a lot more than that, but even with tough economic times, to see 50% growth is pretty nutty. With Q4, we achieved GAAP profitability for the second quarter for the first time in company history, and we increased our cash on hand by more than $700 million even after paying debt, ending the year with a total of $3.7 billion in cash.
This means we have enough cash to settle our convertible bond that will mature in March. In addition, our operating margin remains strong at 5.7%. Operating margins in the fourth quarter are usually lower in the automotive industry, but this was not the case for Tesla. Like, 2019 is gonna be an amazing year for Tesla. As I mentioned, we're expecting to increase sales by 50%. Perhaps could be a lot more than 50%, but I think 50% is a very reasonable number. That's crazy growth for the automotive industry. I want to note that one of our major priorities this quarter is improving service operations.
Really from my standpoint, when I think about what my priorities are this quarter, it's improving service in North America. That's number one. We've got some very exciting initiatives we're gonna roll out with that with regard to that. We've got to get cars to China and Europe and make sure that we have good logistics for the whole delivery process from factory gate to the customer. That's obviously pretty far from California to get to Europe and China and then get the car to customers. We're working every aspect of that logistics chain. I think it's gonna be good. You know, I would say at this point I'm optimistic about being profitable in Q1.
Not by a lot, but I'm optimistic about being profitable in Q1. For all quarters going forward. Let's see. We've opened 27 new store and service locations, bringing out our total locations worldwide to 378, and we increased our mobile service fleet to 411 vehicles. Mobile service fleet is something we can scale up very rapidly, because we don't need bricks and mortar. We can get more vehicles, hire people, and deploy rapidly. It also actually results in higher customer satisfaction because we can actually send one of our service vans to your work or home and fix the car, without you having to bring it into a service center or do any paperwork or anything like that. It's really seamless, invisible.
The customers love it. We're also increasing the functionality of the Tesla app for service, so that instead of having to make an appointment, because you have to call and make an appointment, you can straight up, you can just open your Tesla app. Let's say you wanna make a service appointment, it lists the top 10 most frequently requested service items, and you can, with a couple taps, you've made your service appointment. We're gonna make it easier for the car to be picked up and dropped off as well. If you want, if you prefer not to come into the service center at all, you can just request that the car be picked up and delivered.
That's already been rolled out, had a big improvement in customer satisfaction. That rolled out two or three weeks ago. The next thing we wanna add is if a car detects something wrong, like a flat tire, or a drive unit failure, that before the car has even come to a halt, there is a tow truck and a service loaner on the way. The car has already notified Tesla emergency services and a service loaner, a tow truck are on their way before your car has even come to a stop. This will be immense in improving customer happiness. Literally it'll just call it and you'll have to tap the center screen to cancel it.
You can cancel it if you want, but it's like automatically gonna happen unless you press cancel. We're also improving parts distribution. I think we made a strategic error in the past about not having service parts located at our service centers. We had them in parts distribution warehouses, which basically meant it was impossible to have a fast turnaround on servicing a car, because the car would come in, then the parts would be requested. They come to the service center. This would basically, even for a very simple repair, could take days.
We're now, we're gonna move to stocking all common parts at the service centers, so that it's possible to, in principle, have, you know, get your car serviced in 20 minutes or 15 minutes even if it's a simple matter. I mean, it should be like Jiffy Lube, you know, like eight minutes or whatever, eight and a half. It should be like lightning fast. But that, in order to do that, we have to have the parts located at our service centers. It's gonna make sense for our service centers to do basic bodywork or essentially if all we need to do is re-replace a front or rear fascia, it makes sense to just pre-stock the front rear fascia in the common colors.
Unless you have an unusual color, we can literally replace your fascia in 15, 20 minutes. There's none of this like weeks at a body shop stuff. Let's see. In terms of new products, with Model Y, we've completed engineering of and design of Model Y. The tooling is going out for production Model Y. Three quarters of the Model Y is common with the Model 3, it's a much lower CapEx per vehicle than the Model 3. The risk is also quite low. This is in contrast to Model S versus Model X, where the theory was Model X, it's like I would consider Model X to be like the sort of like the Fabergé egg of cars.
It's an incredible vehicle. Probably one, though probably nothing like it will ever be made again, and maybe it shouldn't. It is a work of art. It's a special work of art. The commonality with the Model S is limited. It was only about maybe 30% in common with the Model S. Model Y is, I think 76% or something like that in common with the Model 3. We're most likely gonna put Model Y production right next to, well in fact as part of our main Gigafactory in Nevada. It'll just be right there. Batteries and powertrains will come out and go straight into the vehicle.
That's also reduces our risk of execution and reduces the cost of having to transfer parts from California to Nevada. It's not a for sure thing, but it's quite likely, and that's our default plan. I would expect Model Y will probably be, the demand for Model Y will be maybe 50% higher than Model 3, could be even double. As I understand it, the midsize SUV segment is the, well worldwide is the most popular type of vehicle. We'll probably see higher volume of Y than 3. Then earlier this month, we started construction of Gigafactory Shanghai. By the end of this year, we expect to be producing Model 3s using a complete vehicle production line.
That's, you know, body paint, final assembly, general assembly, module production. It's moving extremely fast. I get like daily updates of progress of the Shanghai Gigafactory. This factory's gonna go up like lightning. We do feel quite confident at this point, at least for the factors that are in our control, that we can achieve volume production in Shanghai by the end of the year. That's, that should allow us to get to the 10,000 vehicles a week rate or very close to it by the end of the year. Yeah, I think that's it.
Okay, great. We're gonna take the first questions from our retail investors who have been submitting their questions on say.com. The first question that has been submitted has been about service, which I think you already spoke at length about. Let's go to the second question. The second question would be, how are you feeling about demand right now across the product line? Is 500 to 700 units, 700,000 units, at $42,000 ASP still a realistic annual target for Model 3, even considering Model Y, and its impact on demand? Do you continue to see S and X demand of 100,000 annually?
I mean, my best guess, this is just a guess. My best guess for demand of Model 3 worldwide in a strong economy, is something on the order of 700,000 or 800,000 units a year. That's my best guess for demand of Model 3 in a strong economy. If the economy goes into a recession, I think that could be something on the order of 40% less. I think even in a recession, worldwide demand is still on something on the order of 500,000 for Model 3. For S and X, you know, we did eliminate the 75 kW h version of S and X to provide more differentiation relative to 3 and then Y that's coming out.
I think we could see a slight decline in total vehicles, but I think the net cash flow from S and X is likely to be very similar. Probably no major change in net cash flow for S and X.
Okay. The next question from Alex is, can you please share an update on Full Self-Driving and Tesla Network development? When will customers start to see Full Self-Driving features? What's the best case timeline for Tesla Network to go live?
Sure. We already have Full Self-Driving capability on highways. From highway on-ramp to highway exit, including passing cars and going from one highway interchange to another, the Full Self-Driving capability is there. In a few weeks, we'll be pushing an update that will allow the option of removing stalk confirm in markets where regulators approve it, which I believe that will be the case in the U.S., for example. Over time, we think probably all regulators will approve it. We kept the stalk confirm there just to make sure that we took care of like any strange corner cases.
It's really quite sublime if you have stalk confirm off and like the car goes from highway on-ramp, passes slower cars, you know, takes an interchange and then takes the exit and then comes to a stop after the exit. It's really quite profound to have that experience. The next part of Full Self-Driving would really be to, traffic lights is hard. Stop streets are pretty easy, 'cause you can essentially geocode those, and it's easy to recognize stop signs. Traffic lights and intersections will be the next really tricky one.
Then navigating complex parking lots and like, so like if you're underground in a mall parking lot with a lot of traffic and pedestrians and it's on multiple levels, you know, that kind of thing is where things get tricky. With the release of enhanced or advanced summon, you'll see the first indications of the car being able to navigate complex parking lots. That's also coming out fairly soon, probably next month. In development mode, the car does all of the things that I just mentioned in development mode. It recognizes traffic lights and stop signs and you could basically has all the functionality in development mode.
It's really just a question of getting the reliability of recognizing traffic lights to several nines. You know, it's 98% good right now, but we need it to be like 99.999%. You know, really extremely reliable. I mean, in a nutshell, when do we think that the capability will be there for when will we think it's safe for Full Self-Driving? It's probably towards the end of this year. It's up to regulators to decide when they wanna approve that.
Okay. Let's go to the next question, which is, if and when will Tesla switch Model S and X to 2170 battery cells? What percentage range improvement do you expect?
We have no plans to switch S and X to 2170, and can't comment on future product developments.
Okay. Maybe we'll take the last question from retail investors, which was, where will Tesla Semi and Model Y be produced? Can you share a timeline on expected production ramp of these products?
As mentioned earlier, the Model Y, we think most likely will produce at Gigafactory. That's unless we encounter some obstacle, that's the default plan that we're proceeding towards. It's fast, low risk and relatively low CapEx. In terms of the, I mean, probably there's like in, you know, initial production of Model Y in very low volume early next year. It always takes time to ramp up any production system, and it's difficult to predict the shape of that S-curve. You know, we feel confident saying, like, well, there'll be volume production Model Y by the end of next year, but in between the beginning of next year with low volume, you know, it always starts off very low, and it grows exponentially.
From beginning of last year to end of next year, it's difficult to predict that ramp. That's our expectation for Y. For Semi, you know, we're I don't know if you wanna comment on that, Jérôme.
Wanna start next year as well.
Yeah.
The first units will be for our own usage.
Yeah.
Depends how many trucks we use for our own usage to move the parts and the vehicles, different location, and then we'll start delivering to outside customers.
Yeah. Sounds good. The Tesla pickup truck, we might be ready to unveil that this summer. It'll be something quite unique, not like anything else.
Okay. Fantastic. Operator, we can start taking questions from participants on the call.
Thank you. Our first question comes from Ryan Brinkman with J.P. Morgan.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. I've seen the letter, the amount that you have spent on land for Gigafactory Shanghai and the classification operating cash flows. Is there any guidance you can provide us in terms of how to think about CapEx for this facility going forward? Can you discuss the source of funds for the project? I think you've spoken in the past about the potential to raise debt locally in China. Is that still your thinking? What kind of terms might you be able to raise that capital? Thanks.
Yeah. Deepak here. You're right. The purchase of the land is a 50-year lease with the government of China, so it's not CapEx, but it's operating lease that shows up in cash flow from operations. However, the CapEx that we will invest is our equipment, and we fully own it, so that will show up as capital expenditures. The plan, as we have indicated in the letter, is still to get funding for majority of that capital spending from local China banks. We expect very attractive rates based on the dialogue we've had and there's a lot of interest, and we hope to finalize that and then share the details at that point.
Yeah, I mean, as a ballpark figure, you know, probably something on the order of $500,000 for CapEx to get to a 3,000 vehicle rate in Shanghai, ballpark figure. As Deepak was saying, we're being offered very competitive debt financing in China, really extremely compelling interest rates, and we do not expect that to be a capital drain on the company.
Yeah. These are the biggest banks in the world.
Yeah
For them, $500 million is not a large amount of money.
Yeah
in the scheme of things.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Gene Munster with Loup Ventures.
Just to be, you know, something like that's perhaps if you're in the automotive industry, you understand how significant this is, but maybe it's like not as obvious to everyone is Tesla has the first wholly owned a manufacturing facility in China for any automotive company.
That's right.
This is profound. We're very appreciative of the Chinese government allowing us to do this. I think it is symbolic of them wanting to open the market, and apply, you know, fair rules for everyone. I just say like a note of appreciation for the Chinese government in allowing us to do that. It's a very significant thing.
Good afternoon. The question I have is related to Waymo and the autonomous driving opportunity. Morgan Stanley recently valued Waymo at $175 billion.
Sorry.
Have that you don't have? Separately, what do they have that you don't have? Separately, how important is autonomy to the Tesla story longer term? Is this nice to have? Is it really about EVs and renewable energy, or is the autonomy kind of one of the foundational parts of the story longer term?
The fundamental goodness of Tesla that, you know, like, the why of Tesla, the relevance, what's the point of Tesla comes down to two things, acceleration of sustainable energy and autonomy. Acceleration of sustainable energy is absolutely fundamental 'cause this is an existential risk for humanity. Obviously that is by far and away the most important thing. Also very important is autonomy. This has the potential to save millions of lives, tens of millions of serious permanent injuries, and give people their time back so that they don't have to drive. They can, you know, if you're on the roads, you can spend time doing things that you enjoy instead of in terrible traffic. It's extremely important.
We feel confident about our technical strategy, I think we have an advantage that no one else has, which is that we have, at this point, something on the order of 300,000 vehicles on the roads with a 360 degree camera sensor suite, radar, ultrasonics, always connected, uploads, essentially video clips with the customer's permission, when there's an intervention. Effectively, we have a massive training fleet. Our miles of training that we have, if you added everyone else up combined, they're probably 5%, I'm being generous, of the miles that Tesla has. This difference is increasing.
A year from now, we'll probably, you know, if you go Certainly if you go 18 months from now, we'll probably have 1 million vehicles on the road with that are and every time the customers drive the car, they're training the systems to be better. I'm just not sure how anyone competes with that.
Thank you.
Okay. Do you have a follow-up question?
Our next question.
Sorry, Gene. Do you have a follow-up question? No follow-up question. let's go to the next participant.
Thank you. Our next question is from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer.
Yeah. Thanks so much. Can you talk a little bit about the geographic dispersion for the guidance for 2019, where you're expecting the Model 3s to sell through as well as the other models?
Well, I think we did actually. You know, yeah.
Yeah.
It's clear in our letter.
Correct. We indicated in Q1 we will start delivering Model 3s in Europe and China. We also shared a chart showing the potential market size for midsize premium sedans in North America, Europe and Asia, suggesting those markets could be even bigger. I think that gives a good sense of where we'll be, and we'll launch the right-hand drive version at some point to go to the other markets.
Yeah. It's maybe on the order of 350,000-500,000 Model 3s, something like that this year.
Okay.
Okay. Thanks, guys. Just in terms of the cost reduction roadmap and rework, you know, post-factory, can you talk a little bit about your expectation for reducing that in the next couple of quarters and what the order of magnitude is on that and in your model internally?
Jérôme, do you wanna answer that or-
Its Jérôme. Just Jérôme. Yeah. Well, our manufacturing keeps improving QoQ , actually week over week. We take fewer hours both at here in Fremont or at the Gigafactory to assemble the Model 3 and S and X as well. We track the quality very closely. We review that carefully with the engineers and the supply chain and the manufacturing teams. The quality in the field and the number of incidents is also improving week over week, every week. There are fewer and fewer need for cars to be in service, yeah. We'll keep going. There's no end in sight, and we'll try to make sure that the car never breaks down.
Yeah. I think there's, like, some confusion about rectification. You know, like essentially, like for, I mean, for the vast majority of Model 3s that come off the line, like all that happens is like some slight adjustment of door gaps and you know, panel gaps and that kind of thing, and that's all that's done.
Yeah.
There's not nothing more than that.
Okay, let's go to the next question, please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Colin Langan with UBS.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. Just to follow up on the comments around you said about 700,000-800,000 you think is the normal demand. I mean, any color on what price you're expecting that to be? 'Cause I think there's a lot of chatter that demand has already weakened of the Mid Range at least already in January. I don't know if that's true as well.
Yeah, I mean, it's important, like there are multiple factors at play here. First of all, there's a lot of seasonality to automotive purchases. Most people do not buy a new car in the middle of blizzard. January and February tend to be seasonally low and then picks up significantly around the late to mid-March timeframe. In the U.S., we also have a pull forward of demand from the tax credit. Yeah, there's those factors. I feel very confident about Model 3 demand. The customer happiness level with the car is incredible. I mean, I think probably the highest of any car in the world right now, I would think.
I can tell, you can tell, like, basically nobody wants to sell a car.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The target price point is, I think in the past you mentioned mid-$40,000. Is that where we're thinking, or that's still the-
I mean.
Long-term range?
This is really just a guess. It's not like a, you know, I have some huge crystal ball or something. At high volume, I would expect. This is totally a guess, I want to be clear. Probably an average of $42,000, probably at that volume level. I'm not certain.
Got it.
I get it.
Just as a follow-up, you commented that you expect China to be online by the end of the year. There's a lot of articles that the battery supplier, you're looking at different battery suppliers still. I mean, do you have a battery supplier? 'Cause it seems kinda close to when production is supposed to start.
Well, there's really three things. There's the cell, the module, and the pack. We'll be making the module and the pack, so it's really just a question of cell supply. You know, we can essentially use any high energy density 2170 chemistry. We expect it to be a combination of cells produced at our Gigafactory in Nevada, cells produced in Japan, and cells produced locally in China. We feel confident of sufficient supply to hit the 3,000 units a week.
Okay, let's go to the next question, please.
Our next question comes from Emmanuel Rosner with Deutsche Bank.
Hi, good evening, everybody. First I wanted to ask you about the short-range Model 3. What are your latest thoughts in terms of timing of introduction? I think at some point you had in mind to do it, you know, in the, maybe the first half of this year. Just to clarify, you know, when you sort of talking about the outlook for 2019, you know, the number of deliveries up 50%, then the margin target for Model 3 to get to 25%, does that assume that you're introducing a lower range, the short range Model 3 at some point during the year?
Well, we call it the standard range. It's maybe short by Tesla standards, but it's long range by other manufacturer standards. We expect to introduce the Standard Range Model 3, you know, sometime probably in the middle of this year is a rough guess. You know, we're working hard to improve our costs of production, our overhead costs, our fixed costs, just costs in general. I think the past year, while it was extremely difficult, has driven us to work to a high level of financial discipline. I think we're way smarter about how we spend money, and we're getting better with each passing week.
To be clear, you expect to reach at some point this year, or you're targeting at some point this year, 25% gross margins on Model 3, and that's, you know, despite introducing the lower end or I guess the Standard Range Model 3. Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay. I guess my follow-up would be on the demand side. You're talking about, you know, 50% increase this year. You said a few times that it could be higher than this. I think you just mentioned the previous question, 350,000 to 500,000, if I understood well. What is sort of like what drives the cautious outlook that's in your letter? It feels like it's just basically 4 x the fourth quarter run rate, which would imply sort of 50% for the full year, but not really a lot of growth versus what you just accomplished.
I guess, how do we think about the total demand for 2019, especially if you introduce this, the cheaper version?
Well, we need to bring the Shanghai factory online. I think that's the biggest variable for getting to, you know, 500,000 a year. Our car is just very expensive going into China. You know, we've got import duties, we've got transport costs, we've got higher cost of labor here. We've never been eligible for any of the EV tax credits. You know, a lot of people criticize Tesla for being, you know, sort of dependent on incentives. In fact, we are, for a company making EVs, we have the least access to incentives. It's pretty crazy because there's so many countries that have put price caps on the EV incentive, which differentially affect Tesla.
In China, which is the biggest market for EVs, we've never had any subsidies or tax incentives for vehicles. It's difficult. If once a car is made there, it is eligible for that. That sounds like that's gonna be reducing in China in the coming years. Really, bottom line is we need the Shanghai factory to achieve that 10,000 rate and have the cars be affordable. The demand for it's important to appreciate the demand for Model 3 is insanely high. The inhibitor is affordability. It's just like people literally don't have the money to buy the car. It's got nothing to do with desire. They just don't have enough money in their bank account.
If the car can be made more affordable, they will. The demand is extraordinary.
Okay, thank you. Let's go to the next question, please.
Our next question comes from Pierre Ferragu with New Street Research.
Hey. Thank you, thank you for taking my question. Deepak, I was wondering, as you look at 2019, we're all concerned about a potential recession. I was wondering how you think about it and what you would tell us about what we should expect, how we should expect Tesla to react to recession in 2019. How do you manage your volume ramp? How do you manage your pricing? How do you preserve cash? How do you manage your CapEx if things turn south in 2019? I'll have a follow-up on gross margin for Jérôme.
Yeah, it's a very broad question, which is not really just for me to answer. I think at our highest level, that the way we are trying to be prepared for any kind of contingency here is to just continue focusing on cost. The theme of our conversations here is how do we reduce costs all the time, and how do we run our business with a very high level of financial discipline? Elon alluded to that, and so did Jérôme, I think. If we do that, we believe that even in some of these scenarios of lower volumes and pricing and tight pricing, we do have a good chance and a good shot of being profitable and generate free cash flow. That's the best way to manage the business, be frugal.
Yeah, thanks.
Yeah, there's a risk of, I wanna be a broken record about this. It's cost, cost. 'Cause reducing our costs, by the way, while making nuanced improvements to Model 3, I wanna emphasize the product is getting better by slight degrees despite lower cost. You know, in hundreds of small ways that you actually wouldn't, most people wouldn't notice explicitly, but they would appreciate subconsciously. And getting those costs down, variable cost and fixed cost is what allows us to lower the price and be financially sustainable and achieve our mission of environmental sustainability. We have to be absolute zealots about this. There's no question.
The other aspect of this, Elon, which we've been doing extremely well, is capital efficiency. We have dramatically cut back on-
Yes.
CapEx, and we're spending it in a very efficient manner. We talk about it in the letter on Model 3 and Gigafactory Shanghai. We talk about it for Model Y. There's just so many learnings that we are incorporating, and we just want to repeat what we did with Model 3 and the kind of spending we had for the returns we got.
Absolutely. I mean, we're confident that our CapEx per unit of production for Shanghai factory and for Model Y will be less than half of what we-
Right
-did for Model 3. internally, we think it might be a quarter, but that's probably too good to believe. it's definitely less than half.
Yeah.
Great. Let's go to the next question, please.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from David Tamberrino with Goldman Sachs.
Great. Thanks for taking our questions tonight. First thing I wanna just understand is on what you're seeing from European orders and China orders so far. There's some numbers that get thrown around, but you guys are obviously taking a look at it. How are those, that order profile shaping up relative to what you saw in the U.S. with the launch of the Model 3?
I mean, it seems good. I mean, our issue actually with Europe and China is how do we get the cars made and on a boat at such that it reaches customers before end of quarter, and we don't have a massive number of cars on the water. That's our biggest challenge. It's not demand. It's how do we get the cars there fast enough.
Like, orders above the, I think I've seen like 20,000 order levels for Europe and single-digit thousands for China. It's better than that, Elon?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
We're not even really trying, I should point out. Like, it's, you know, we, our factory is like right now only making cars for China and Europe. That's all it's doing for perspective Model 3. Our whole focus is, okay, how do we get those cars made, get them on a ship as fast as possible, get the ship as fast as possible to Zeebrugge in Belgium, then get them to Drammen in Norway, and get those cars to customers as fast as possible to get them to China as fast as possible. China, we're also, you know, we don't know what's gonna happen with the trade negotiations, so it's very important to get those cars, especially to China, as soon as possible.
You know, we hope the trade negotiations go well, but it's not clear. We need to get them there while there's sort of de facto, sort of a truce on the tariff war. Demand gen is really not one of the things we're thinking about.
Okay. Just lastly on this demand thread, customer deposit came in again over $100 million. Is it possible to give us an update? I know you don't think it's really a relevant number, but I do and I'll explain why. On the reservation count, where, you know, you were at 450,000, you started delivering. I ask this because I think we're just all trying to understand how much incremental demand do you think there is based on what you see at that lower price point. If, you know, say, there's over half of those people that are still waiting for that $35,000 base model to come out, you know, that would be interesting. I think that's what you're seeing, but I just want to confirm that.
Sorry, do you want to add?
Yeah, I mean, I think reservations are not relevant for us. We are really focused on orders. We do have a large reservations backlog still, which tells us that a lot of customers are still waiting for those cars, but I don't think it's appropriate to share the reservations number.
A reservation's just like pre-orders. You know, it's like if you have, like, some video game come out and you know, there's like a pre-order number, but then that, like, stops being important once you start shipping the game or product. I said earlier, I think my guess is demand is somewhere on the order of in a strong economy is on the order of 700,000 or 800,000 units a year from Model 3. Even in a recession, it's probably on the order of half a million.
Okay, let's go to the next question, please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniel Ives with Wedbush Securities.
Yeah, thanks for taking my question. My question's around Europe. You know, obviously with deliveries coming on board in the first quarter, you know, maybe what surprised you in terms of, you know, demand looks strong, but in terms of what you're seeing out of the region, is it, you know, stronger than you expected in certain countries? What do you think is driving that? Maybe you can just talk about the opportunities and challenges in Europe, especially from a delivery logistics perspective. Thanks.
Like I said, we're thinking about demand almost zero right now. It's really getting the part there in time and not having a ton of cars on the water at end of quarter. For China, getting cars there before there's a potential tariff rise in tariffs. That's really, you know, really occupying our mind. That, cost reduction and then improving service in North America. Yeah.
Right. Just, maybe a quick follow-up. Can you just talk about when we look at the Gigafactory build-out in China and obviously how important that is, maybe just fast-forward, let's say, 18, 24 months. I mean, how do you envision that as just a, you know, competitive advantage versus maybe some other automakers that will be trying to go in your tracks? Thanks.
I think it'll be quite a significant advantage. I really view it as quite fundamental to the future of Tesla. I expect to make several trips to China this year. I'm working very closely with the team building the factory. I literally get daily updates. It's a super big deal. We're only just talking about phase I here. Phase I is about 10% of what we think the Gigafactory will ultimately be. It's a major, major deal. We're getting a lot of support from the Shanghai government, which we're very, very appreciative of, and the national government.
Okay, let's go to the next question, please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Toni Sacconaghi with Bernstein.
Yes, thank you. You've talked repeatedly about the need to drive down costs, which in turn drives the elasticity of demand for cars. I'm wondering if you can talk about how much of the price differential between, you know, the $50,000 Model 3 and the $35,000 Model 3, is structural, meaning that powertrain costs for EVs are just structurally higher than they are for internal combustion engine cars and where you think that difference is today and when that is no longer a factor. Is, you know, or maybe said another way, is the bigger driver in getting to lower costs and lower and more affordability on the Model 3, is it really around the powertrain and getting that at parity?
Is it everything else about, you know, Tesla not being as efficient as other manufacturers that is, you know, causing the higher price right now? I have a follow-up, please.
It's both.
Yes, both.
-the vehicle and both the powertrain. You know.
Both.
Yeah, I split my time half and half between the Gigafactory and here, and there's opportunities in both. Yeah.
I think the bigger point is that, yeah, there's cost reduction opportunities out, but the bigger point is it's not that our cost is higher than a gas-powered internal combustion engine.
I think what Toni meant is with the battery pack, as in battery pack as well as the powertrain together.
Yeah
-are more expensive than an engine.
That's true.
Yeah.
This is true.
How, how big do you think that delta is today? When, you know, do you think of it as being kinda $10,000 , $11 ,000 for that pack plus powertrain for an electric vehicle and maybe five or six for an internal combustion engine car? Is that sort of the order of magnitude? Where do you see those getting much more aligned, just sort of given the laws of where you think cell and pack costs are going?
Well, the thing that's important to bear in mind is that the cost of electricity is quite a bit less than the cost of gasoline, especially in Europe or in California or China. Basically, almost everywhere except say the middle of the U.S. The cost of gasoline is very expensive and electricity is far cheaper. That factors into the cost of ownership pretty significantly, and it's, you know, typically on the order of $50-$100 a month, depending upon how much somebody drives. That's a very important thing to consider for an electric car versus a gasoline car.
The, you know, that said, in terms of the initial cost of acquisition, I think it's probably, you know the, you know, this is just off the top of my head, not a calculated number. Probably on the order of $7,000, but trending towards $4,000 or $5,000.
Okay.
Just off the top of my head.
Okay. As you think about 2019, you talked about sort of scenarios for demand and how you plan to, you know, roll out the intermediate range and then ultimately the standard range. What if you do have to make a trade-off on volume or profitability during the course of the year, meaning to get the volume you need or you think you can deliver, you have to go to lower margins or vice versa, where's the trade-off? Are units produced most important to you? Or is delivering the 25% gross margin more important?
If you have a chance to deliver 450 or 500,000 cars, but there'll be more standard editions and gross margins will end the year at 20%, are you willing to make that trade-off?
You know, my guess is it ends up being sort of about the, you know, it's six of one, half dozen of the other, where, you know, if there's a given amount of free cash flow, you sort of either decide to achieve that with a smaller production or a smaller volume of cars or at a higher margin or large volume cars at a smaller margin. I think we're are towards the second. We'd rather make more cars at a lower margin. I think it's more or less a flat trade.
Okay. Let's go to the next question, please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Maynard Um with Macquarie.
Hi, thank you. Can you just update us on where battery costs are now and where you anticipate they'll be by year-end? I'm just trying to gauge how much of a factor this is to lowering cost and sustaining profitability.
This is a highly proprietary number. We cannot give it out.
Okay.
I'd like, you know, I'd like to tell you, but no.
Okay.
We do think we have the best cost in the world. We're, you know, to the best of my knowledge, our costs are better than anyone else right now, and they are improving.
Okay. Maybe talk about your expectations with the Panasonic Toyota JV and how it might impact you, which is something that you were made aware of.
I talked directly with Kazuhiro Tsuga about this, the head of Panasonic, and he has assured me that this will have no impact on Tesla.
Okay, thank you very much. Let's go to the next question, please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Galves with Wolfe Research.
Hey, guys. Thanks a lot. Do you plan to offer a U.S. lease product for Model 3 in the U.S.? When can we expect it? Can you talk about what percentage of S and X have historically been leased in the U.S.?
Well, we've been reluctant to introduce the leasing on Model 3 because of its effect on GAAP financials. So it is worth noting that our demand to date is with zero leasing. Obviously, leasing is a way to improve demand. But it has, you know, it makes our financials look worse. We're like, you know, we're not wanting to introduce that right away. We'll introduce it sometime later this year, probably. I'm not sure what the percentage of lease is for S and X right now.
It's around 20%, low 20s.
Yeah.
It stayed stable, at that level for many, many quarters, it feels like the natural demand.
Yeah
Because we don't do subvention or artificially bump up.
Yeah, our, exactly. Our leases are legit. It's usually it's like small business tax write-off, you know, is important for the for leasing, so.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay, thanks. I have just, like, two quick housekeeping questions. One, is there a restructuring charge that you expect in the first quarter? How much is it, and is it included in your expectation of a small profit?
Yeah, it is included in that. It's difficult to say exactly what that is. No, it's at this point, it's, let's say, roughly around $40 million, but that number can vary slightly.
Okay, thanks. Just the last one is-
It Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah. The last one is, this change in your service parts structure to make things, you know, more distributed rather than in the parts warehouses, would that be like a meaningful working capital drag? Well, you know, what's the cash impact of that?
It's actually we've just been very silly about where we store our parts. It's actually gonna be no change in sort of working capital or not something you would even notice in the financials. It's just being smarter about sending parts directly to service centers. In fact, either directly from our factory here or from our suppliers, and just ship them direct to the service center. Right now, actually, our cost will.
Improve
Our cost will improve.
I think actually quite a lot. There's been actually the current system is quite boneheaded, actually, speaking self-referentially. Stopping doing the foolish things will massively improve our service costs, massively improve customer happiness around the world. It's just fundamentally better all around. I mean, there are some pretty like, we've been just, like, super dumb in some of the things we've done where, like, when I on one of the trips to China last year, I would always ask, "Okay, what, you know, what are we doing wrong?
What can we fix?" Our China team, who's great, by the way, is they're like, "Well, you know, do you think we could have spare parts that are made in China just sent directly to our China service centers?" Currently, there's a bunch of parts that are made in China then sent to a warehouse in New Jersey and then sent back to China. Literally what was happening. Super nuts stuff. It's gonna get way better. Yeah, way better.
Okay, let's go to the next question, please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Kallo with Baird.
Hey. Great, guys. I have one question that's got four parts to it. Happy New Year, Elon. The first part is, our street numbers at consensus, we've got everything wrong for six years or seven years to the public, and they're about $6 in earnings. Talk to us about that, if you can. Number two, Elon, could you talk to us about, you know, you talk about, I hear you cut some workforce at SpaceX and then there at Tesla. I feel like that you have a worry about global economy. Can you talk to us about how you feel about that with your guidance in the same order?
Can we talk about, maybe for the third thing, for JB, no one's ever gonna talk about stationary storage, but we had a whole page on that, which looked pretty good to me? What should we be focusing on that, and what can that add to the bottom line on top of that $6 this next year? Thank you.
Yeah. I mean, we can't really, Ben, talk about consensus and what that means. I think we have, maybe the better approach is we are providing certain guidance here, and you and the other analysts need to reflect that in your modeling, and that's the best indication from the company of our projections. In all fairness, that's the best way I can think of answering your question here.
Yeah. JB, is there any other thing?
I mean, I think, you know, the letter outlines the predicted growth in the battery storage business, the stationary storage business pretty clearly, and, you know, that should be included in the projections as well. I mean, we're excited about it.
Yeah
we can't say much more in much more detail.
I mean, our internal projections for stationary storage are closer to, you know, 3 gigawatt hours. You know, some of it's kind of lumpy and may not be completed this year. We would have done more in stationary storage last year, except we were cell-starved for vehicle production, we had to convert a bunch of stationary storage lines, battery lines to vehicle battery lines. Otherwise, we would have done quite a bit more in stationary storage. I expect that to grow, I mean, probably twice as fast as automotive for a long time.
We continue to set production records basically.
Yeah
every month.
Yeah.
It's growing.
The profitability of the storage business and the gross margin.
Solid
will continue to improve.
Yeah
as we keep ramping up production and scale.
It's gonna be a gigantic business down the road.
The last question was about economy, global economy.
Sure. I mean, I do think that, you know, the economy moves in cycles, and there's clearly a significant risk of a recession over the next 12-18 months. I, I'm confident that Tesla will remain at least slightly profitable, even with the, even if there is a significant recession. And be all the stronger for it when the recession ends. The, you know, we have to be relentless about costs in order to make affordable cars and not go bankrupt. That's, that's what our headcount reduction is about. Yeah, we have to It's, we have to be super hardcore about it. It's the only way to make affordable cars.
The, you know, on the SpaceX side, the cost reduction was for a different reason unrelated to, you know. SpaceX actually has two absolutely insane projects that would normally bankrupt a company, is Starship and Starlink. SpaceX has to be incredibly spartan with expenditures until those programs reach fruition.
Okay, great. I think that's all we have time for today. Thank you very much for your questions. Elon would like to have some closing remarks.
Yeah. So let's see. Well, I'll let you do make the announcement, but Deepak is gonna be retiring.
Again.
Yeah, from Tesla.
Yeah.
Deepak, I think You first started at Tesla about 11 years ago, right?
Been close to that, yes.
Yeah, almost 11 years. Thank you for your tremendous contribution to Tesla. Retirement will not be immediate, but Deepak will continue to be at Tesla for a few more months, and will continue to serve as a senior advisor to Tesla for probably years to come, hopefully. We thought long and hard about who the right person is to take over from Deepak, and that's Zach. Zach has been with Tesla now nine years?
Nine years.
Yeah. Zach did management and technology at Wharton undergrad, and then worked at Tesla, and then spent a couple of years at Harvard Business School, which I actually don't think was necessary, by the way.
You told me that when I came back.
Yeah, exactly. Zach's incredibly talented, has made a huge contribution to Tesla over the years, and also very well-known quantity to the whole team, has the respect of the whole team. Zach, I don't know if you'd like to say a few words?
Yeah, I will.
Okay. Do you want Deepak to say anything?
Yeah. Sure, sure.
Okay.
Thank you. First of all, Elon, thank you very much for the opportunity for me to be here and be here again a second time. I've learned a lot from you, and I've been always inspired by you. I've been also very inspired by the team at Tesla who are incredibly brilliant, very passionate and just amazingly perseverant. The best team I could imagine. Thank you everybody for that. There is no good time to make this change. We felt still this was a good time. It's a new chapter, a new year. Tesla's had two great quarters of profitability, cash flow. It's on a really solid foundation. I feel really good about Zach taking over as the CFO.
He's proven himself with his many years of experience and many tough challenges that he's worked on, and really excited to have Zach take on this role, and I'll be here to support him and make sure we are all successful as a company.
Yeah. Well, thank you, Deepak. Thank you, Elon. My name is Zach Kirkhorn. Just a brief background on myself. I joined Tesla just under nine years ago. We were a super small company with a lot of potential ahead of us, and I was attracted to the mission and the vision of the company.
Throughout that time, I've been deep in the operations of every major program of the company, from the Roadster to Model S and X, Model 3, scaling our energy business, and more things to come, which we've talked about on the call. I feel we're starting 2019 with a very strong financial foundation. We have enough cash to continue launching new programs and developing new technologies, and we're able to service upcoming debt obligations with our forecasted cash flows. My focus alongside the talented and amazingly passionate team at Tesla is to ensure we continue the terrific momentum on cost management and operational efficiency, which will enable more access to our products around the world, which is key to achieving the mission of the company.
On a personal note, Deepak, a huge thank you to you for your leadership, mentorship and support, and very much looking forward to discussing our progress on future earnings calls.
Great.
Great. Thank you very much. We'll speak to you in three months.
Thanks, guys.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may all disconnect and have a wonderful day.