Elon Musk: “We dug our own grave with the Cybertruck” Swisscom launches a new TV box, a new streaming subscription and relies entirely on Google’s Android TV

Tesla encounters obstacles after a long record run. The electric car manufacturer led by tech billionaire Elon Musk missed market expectations with its figures for the past quarter, it was announced on Thursday. Musk then expressed concern about high interest rates discouraging people from buying cars.

Tesla counters this with price cuts, which reduces profitability. That’s why the company is trying to reduce costs ‘mercilessly’, says chief engineer Lars Moravy.

When is the Cybertruck coming?

After all, Tesla confirmed its delivery target of around 1.8 million electric cars this year. Musk also announced the first delivery of the Cybertruck electric pickup, which was delayed about two years, for the end of November. These will take place from the “Gigafactory” in Texas.

Tesla is expected to be able to build up to 250,000 cars per year by 2025, which will open up the electric car maker to the extremely popular vehicle category, especially in the US.

The Cybertruck was originally announced for 2019, but its production was postponed several times during the Covid pandemic. Tesla also missed its original 2021 pre-production target, US tech blog The Verge recalls.

Musk avoids questions

It remains to be seen whether the futuristically shaped pickup will be the expected success. After all, around 1 million reservations have already been made by interested parties.

Recently, rivals such as Ford and General Motors have successfully sold large, classic-looking pickup trucks with combustion engines and sometimes hybrid powertrains.

Musk complained that it took a long time to start production of the Cybertruck because the vehicle was so unusual and they had to figure out how to build it. “We dug our own grave with the Cybertruck,” he joked in a conference call with analysts.

However, Musk dodged many specific questions. He was asked whether Tesla would also accept liability if the vehicle were driven by the advanced version of the ‘Autopilot’ assistance system. Mercedes does this with its Level 3 assistance system, which takes control at low speeds on highways.

However, Musk limited himself to describing the Mercedes technology as not particularly useful, as Tesla had much greater ambitions. While Musk continues to talk about autonomous driving, the ‘autopilot’ remains just an assistance system where the person behind the wheel always bears responsibility and must be ready to intervene at any time.

Musk also dodged questions about when Tesla’s humanoid robot could work in the company’s factories and how development of his promised self-driving robot taxi is progressing. Musk said he was very happy with the pace.

When asked about expansion plans for Tesla’s factories in Grünheide near Berlin and Austin, Texas, Musk said the current priority is maximizing production on existing production lines.

Musk compared the difficult economic climate to a storm. Tesla is a robust ship. “We’re not sinking, but even a big ship has a hard time during a storm.” The share, which was still in the black before the conference call, ended trading after hours with a loss of more than four percent.

Last quarter, Tesla increased its revenue by nine percent year over year to $23.35 billion. On average, analysts had expected more than $24 billion.

Profits fell 44 percent to $1.85 billion. Deliveries fell last quarter, partly due to planned breaks to modernize factories. But these shutdowns had already been taken into account by the analysts.

Sources

(sda/dsc)