New Technology World

• Tesla executive Martin Viecha spoke at an invitation-only Goldman Sachs tech conference on Monday.
• He emphasized the potential for lower manufacturing costs per vehicle.
• Tesla hopes to eventually bring cheaper vehicles to the streets in time for robo-taxi services.

Tesla executive Martin Viecha gives investors an overview of the company’s next five years, highlighting the most important trends and indicators, and what to expect in terms of cheaper electric vehicles, robo-taxis services, and other potential future products. explained what to expect.

As Tesla’s head of investor relations, Viecha spoke at the invitation-only Goldman Sachs tech conference in San Francisco on Monday. A person who attended the event shared details of his wide range of talks with his Insider.

Executives began by highlighting two big topics that will be important to Tesla and the EV industry over the next five years: battery supply and technology, and vehicle manufacturing costs.

He said the industry will eventually grow as fast as the battery supply. This will not only affect areas such as cell and battery pack manufacturing, but also battery design and the mining and refining of lithium, nickel and other raw materials.

“The Third Revolution in Automobile Manufacturing”

Viecha stressed that manufacturing cost per car is the most important metric to monitor over the next few years, as it will determine how many cars a company can make and how big it can get. said to be the final factor in

In 2017, it cost Tesla $84,000 to build one car. This is down to $36,000 per vehicle in recent quarters, the vice president said. Most of these savings were not due to lower battery costs. Instead, Tesla benefited from better vehicle designs to make manufacturing as easy as possible, as well as new factory designs.

Tesla’s first factory in Fremont, Calif., near Silicon Valley, isn’t the best place to build a car, Viecha added, pointing out that there are cheaper places like Shanghai and Berlin. . Tesla built two new factories at these locations, and another in Austin, Texas.

The company hopes to continue this trajectory and push the boundaries of electric vehicle production costs.

The Fremont factory accounts for about half of Tesla’s output. Viecha said that as the new facility produces more cars, it will help Tesla’s profitability because each vehicle he can build for less than $36,000.

In 120 years of the automobile industry, he argued, there have been only two major revolutions in manufacturing. One was the Ford Model T, the other he was Toyota’s cheap production approach in the 1970s.

“The EV architecture is so different from the internal combustion engine that it can bring about a third revolution in car manufacturing,” said Viecha.

Cheap Tesla EV?

When asked about Tesla’s potential to build cheaper EVs, Viecha said the company ultimately wants more affordable vehicles on the road. If the company wants to become a mass-produced automaker, it needs a broader portfolio, and Tesla needs to offer cheaper services before self-operated robo-taxi services come along, he explained. Did.

Demand for the Model 3 and Y was stronger than expected, he noted, reducing the need for new models soon.

“The Model Y will basically be the best-selling car in the world next year,” the executive added, noting that that includes rising costs and few leases from the Fremont plant. did.

“It’s an important sales vehicle that we haven’t touched on, but it could drive demand in other ways in the future,” said Viecha.

The Future of Tesla’s Fully Self-Driving Software

The conversation then turned to Tesla’s Fully Self-Driving (FSD) software service. About 100,000 people in urban areas in the United States use “supervised” FSDs, in which drivers and software can intervene, Viecha said. Based on the data Tesla is looking at, he predicted that the monitored FSD could be deployed in all Tesla vehicles in the US by the end of this year.

He noted that this was “supervised autonomy” and that drivers still had to exercise caution and risk losing access to services.

As Tesla gathers more data from its interventions, it will roll out software updates to address issues and improve the system. This iterative process will eventually allow Tesla to achieve full autonomy, he added.

“We deeply believe that mass collection of data and AI are the only way to solve generalized autonomy,” said Viecha. “That’s the way we are going.”

Executives described the Model X and Model S as the first generation of Tesla’s platform. Model 3 and Y are second generation. He explained that the robotaxi platform is in its third generation.