Tesla has informed Cybertruck manufacturing staff to not report back to work for the following three days, in one other signal of demand points for the car that when touted tens of millions of preorders.
The information was reported by Enterprise Insider, who obtained an e-mail telling Cybertruck manufacturing staff at Tesla’s manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas that they “don’t have to report back to work” on “Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week (Dec. 3-5).” Employees will nonetheless be paid for his or her scheduled shifts.
Tesla didn’t give a remark as to why this shutdown is occurring, however Enterprise Insider stated 4 staff informed it that their schedules have been inconsistent for the final month.
Provided that it’s a vital time for Tesla deliveries, significantly of its flagship mannequin, the timing is suspect.
Presently, Tesla is one among few EV producers that has bought fewer vehicles to date this yr than it did in 2023. Regardless of what you’ll have heard, EV gross sales are up considerably in 2024 – however Tesla was down within the first half of this yr.
The corporate had a good third quarter largely attributable to rising China gross sales, however continues to be down in comparison with final yr.
Consequently, Tesla has began pulling out a number of stops this quarter to be able to shut out the yr with power. It has supplied bigger incentives for Tesla referral codes, lowered Mannequin Y lease pricing, and added extra flexibility to its leasing program.
And, most notably for at present’s topic, simply at present it lowered Cybertruck lease pricing – and this occurred lower than a month because the firm began leasing Cybertrucks in any respect.
It’s one other signal that Tesla isn’t seeing fairly as a lot demand as as soon as anticipated for the polarizing car.
After it was first unveiled in 2019, the Cybertruck managed to tally over 250k pre-orders in lower than per week, later reaching a peak of probably 2 million reservations in response to crowdsourced knowledge.
However when the truck hit the street, issues didn’t go precisely as deliberate. The car got here out late and over funds, additionally lacking a number of the specs that have been initially promised. The primary accessible “Basis Sequence” fashions began at $100k – a far cry from the promised entry-level $40k. It’s now accessible at a base worth of $79k – however a promised future $61k base RWD mannequin was lately eliminated that from Tesla’s web site.
Regardless of all that, it’s nonetheless the best-selling electrical pickup within the US and the third best-selling EV with a very excessive common transaction worth, bringing in a very good chunk of change for the corporate.
However nonetheless, demand appears a lot decrease than the sky-high expectations for the car. That ~2 million car backlog appears to have been depleted round October of this yr, when Tesla began permitting orders with no reservation. On the time, Tesla had bought someplace round 30,000 complete Cybertrucks.
This may very well be the reason for the plant shutdown. Firms will typically pause manufacturing strains for a couple of days or even weeks if manufacturing goes sooner than deliveries, in order to not have a number of stock weighing down a steadiness sheet.
It’s potential that there are different causes – a line improve or some type of adjustments associated to the current Cybertruck inverter recall – however for the previous, the tip of the quarter can be a greater time, and for the latter, one would assume the adjustments would have been made nearer to when the issue was discovered (and would possible not shut down the entire line for 3 days).
And if there have been different causes, that’s normally the type of factor an organization sends its PR staff out to debate, in order to not spook buyers with fears of waning demand. Since Tesla hasn’t made an announcement suggesting such, Occam’s razor means that manufacturing could also be outpacing demand, and the pause is to assist steadiness the 2.
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