Time waits for no one.
Moutai is no longer drinking, the battery is not made, Tesla is not a "scumbag"?
The answer is no.
However, "for those who chase the wind, the days of being able to buy Bentley and listen to flower wine with a raise your hand are probably gone", but it is also true.
Recently, there really hasn't been much good news about the "upside", and even "Moutai", which has always been hard currency, has fallen to new heights. Loose bottles fell from about 2,700 yuan in early March to 2,280 yuan. In just three months, a bottle of Feitian Moutai, which was once hard to find, fell by more than 400 yuan.
Kweichow Moutai, which is regarded as the "king of stocks" in the secondary market and has always been stable, has fluctuated more than once since entering 2024, and even its market value has fallen below the "benchmark" of 2 trillion yuan. As a result, there were some scalpers who lost money in fried Moutai, and they had to ask, "Haven't those people reached the grade of drinking Moutai yet?" "As an aside, my colleague who loves to drink, Mr. Da, is estimated to be old, but the money may not allow it.
Of course, the price and stock price of Moutai have both fallen, and it has nothing to do with Musk. I don't know if Musk drinks Moutai or not, but he has also launched a wine on Tesla's official website without doing business, and the price of tequila is $250 a bottle, which is more expensive than Moutai.
The launch of this wine is still because of a self-deprecating meme played by Musk. In 2018, Tesla's life was difficult. Faced with losses and a falling stock price, Musk said on social media, "Musk passed out next to a Model 3 with Teslaquila bottles everywhere and tears on his face." ”
Later, before the tears on his face were wiped away, he launched a tequila on Tesla's official website, which was once hyped for $1,000 on eBay. What's more, some websites directly speculate empty wine bottles, reaching 9,500 yuan. Moutai has to say a word when he comes, and he is willing to bow down.
A few years ago, Tesla's stock, Bitcoin, and Moutai's stock were called "the most stable imagination space for investors". This is probably the most closely related place between Tesla and Moutai. When Musk visited China last year, he was praised by the media, "eat steamed buns, don't have bodyguards, and don't drink Moutai".
has said so much nonsense around and around, in fact, Tesla and Moutai have no direct relationship. It's just that I want to say that now even Moutai can't stand the price drop, and Tesla has lost the capital to be a "scumbag" since it laid off employees.
From a "scumbag" to being forced to "can't be a scumbag"
Once, Tesla had a title in the Chinese market, "scumbag". At that time, some car bloggers said that Tesla was too much like a "scumbag", charming, dangerous, and irresponsible, but it still attracted people to follow suit.
The root cause is that it is too easy to sell.
Tesla took the Model 3 to production in China, just like a catfish, leaping into the new energy outlet of the Chinese market, and sales have increased by leaps and bounds. Just like the AB side of a coin, the other side is a round of consumer rights protection. For example, "old car owners are not as good as dogs", such as "if you love me, you will spend money on me, but the interior and workmanship are extremely simple, and the profit margin is extremely high"...... and so on scumbag traits.
For example, in 2021, after the Model 3 was reduced four times a year, an owner who had just spent nearly 400,000 yuan to raise the long-range version of the Model Y went to defend his rights. Because, before the card was released, the price of the new version was reduced, "the price reduction is too ruthless".
Indeed, it's pretty scummy.
However, there was a saying at that time that became the consensus of many car owners, "Even if you hear a lot of negative information, you will still choose to buy Tesla." Even though Tesla is often associated with words such as "spontaneous combustion" and "interview", Tesla's attitude is basically "I will change, but I am not wrong".
To this day, Tesla's attitude is actually the same. It's just that the grand scene of "pilgrimage to Tesla" no longer exists.
According to the Federation of Passenger Cars, April this year was a turning point. Tesla sold 31,400 vehicles in China, down 21.4% year-on-year. From January to May this year, Tesla sold 219,100 vehicles in China, down 0.4% year-on-year, surpassed by BYD and Geely.
Since the beginning of this year, Tesla's stock price has fallen by more than 20%, and its market value has evaporated by more than $160 billion. In order to further improve efficiency and reduce costs, Musk announced in April that he would cut more than 10% of its workforce globally, marking Tesla's fifth large-scale layoff since 2017.
The operation was as fierce as a tiger, and Musk waved his hand and even laid off the supercharging team. Moreover, in the Chinese market, Tesla's layoff rate is much higher than 10%, and the layoff rate of charging, sales and marketing teams even reaches 40%~50%. After the layoffs, the number of office personnel in the Beijing office was reduced by nearly half, and the Shanghai office was reduced by almost a third.
That's the premise.
However, less than a month later, Musk laid off nearly 500 employees of the Supercharger and made a re-employment plan. Recently, Tesla also launched this plan in China, and it is expected to recall more than 100 people.
According to media interviews, re-employment has just begun, and some technical positions have accepted re-employment. But some have entered brands such as NIO and Ledao. If they agree to be recalled, the returning employee will need to return the "3" of the "N+3" redundancy compensation and the seniority will be recalculated.
The reason for rehiring is because of "lack of manpower". It's really a "scumbag", don't guess, you don't need to leave, you need to come.
However, in the final analysis, Tesla's vacillating decision is still because of the decline in sales. And, in the first quarter earnings conference, Musk promised to start production of new models, including cheaper electric vehicles, by 2025, but there was no movement.
"Cheaper" models mean lower costs, and in Tesla's plan, the 4680 cylindrical battery bears the heavy responsibility of "cost reduction". But progress has been slow.
As a result, Tesla, which has always regarded itself very highly, was forced to reluctantly start to embark on the road of "not being a scumbag for many years".
made a bold statement, but failed to sweep Liuhe
Although Tesla's sales are declining and the lace news is continuous, Musk is indeed stable enough and still "eats doughnuts every morning" to start the day.
However, the joy brought by the dopamine secretion of the doughnut does not hide Tesla's distress. Because the 4680 cylindrical battery, which is regarded by Tesla as the "optimal solution" for cost reduction and battery life, may have to be pressed the pause button.
On June 26, it was reported that Tesla was considering stopping production of 4680 batteries at its Giga Texas plant in Texas. The main reason is that the energy density and charging performance of the 4680 battery are not satisfactory, and the cost is higher.
If the cost reduction cannot achieve the desired effect by the end of the year, Tesla will abandon the production of 4680 batteries and purchase from external suppliers instead. At present, South Korean battery manufacturers LG and Samsung are actively preparing for the war, and it seems that they will mass-produce cylindrical batteries.
The industry regrets this news. The 4680 cylindrical battery was released by Tesla in 2020 and has been developed for 5 years.
Let's briefly popularize science, what is a 4680 cylindrical battery. It is to increase the size of the cylindrical battery from 21 mm in diameter and 70 mm in length to 46 mm in diameter and 80 mm in length, which is the origin of the name "4680" battery.
At the beginning of R&D, Musk believed that battery manufacturing was too inefficient and that Tesla could reinvent the battery manufacturing process. "The 4680 cylinder brings a new battery concept, and under the use of new materials and technologies such as electrodeless lugs and silicon carbon anode, the battery cell energy is increased by 5 times, the output power is increased by 6 times, and the cost is reduced by 14%."
In its heyday, Tesla made bold remarks and swept the field of power batteries.
4680 cylindrical battery, just like the integrated die-casting technology, the heart value lies in reducing costs. In addition, the emergence of 4680 will drive a comprehensive breakthrough in the fields of cathode materials, anode materials, packaging technology and structural parts. From the perspective of technological evolution, Tesla has explored the way for the entire industry. The 4680 battery unifies the size standard of large cylindrical power batteries.
However, according to Tesla's earnings conference, in the first quarter of this year, the production efficiency of 4680 batteries only increased by 18%-20% compared with the fourth quarter of last year. Spending a lot of money and doing small things is indeed not Musk's style.
The 4680 battery has proven to be difficult to manufacture and does not perform as well as the 2170 battery. Tesla's current 4680 batteries use a similar chemistry to the 2170 batteries and are not as expensive as the 2170 batteries in terms of energy density and charging performance.
At the same time, the process problem of making the single battery bigger has always existed, which has also affected the loading effect of the 4680 battery, which is one of the reasons for the disappointing financial report at the end of the first quarter.
Foreign media pointed out that the performance of Tesla's 4680 battery was not satisfactory. Using the first generation 4680 battery Model Y, owners complained about the long charging time, probably due to poor thermodynamic properties. Later, Tesla improved the design and used the second-generation 4680 battery on the cyber truck, and the charging speed is still the focus of the outside world.
However, behind the competition of cylindrical batteries is the battle for the technical route of lamination, winding and soft pack, which is the direction of struggle of many car companies, including Tesla.
Therefore, on the track opened up by Tesla, latecomers quickly followed.
Last year, Milan Nedelkovic, head of production at BMW Group, confidently stated that "Tesla needs to close the gap with us." CATL revealed that "the cycle life is more than 3 times that of domestic and foreign competitors, and the energy density is more than 10% higher than that of competitors", which means something.
After 5 years of exploration, the situation of sweeping Liuhe did not appear, the mass production of 4680 batteries faltered, there were more and more competitors, and Tesla's first-mover advantage gradually faded.
On April 30 this year, Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL, visited the hotel where Musk stayed in Beijing. Previously, he had revealed that CATL and Tesla would cooperate to develop power batteries with faster charging speeds. Will there be further cooperation on 4680 battery technology?
The possibilities, greatly.
Write at the end:
At this moment, Tesla has to face a reality.
The yield rate is less than 95%, and the 4680 cylindrical battery is still far from becoming Tesla's killer feature. At present, the pace of new car launches is slow, and the existing models have been remodeled and updated, and the market competitiveness has been gradually weakened.
At the same time, in the nearly 5 years of research and development of 4680 batteries, CATL and BYD have reduced the cost of batteries to 0.4 yuan/Wh. This means that Tesla, which is being caught up or even overtaken by the competition, will not be able to get more bargaining chips to reduce costs in a short period of time.
What's more dangerous is that before the 4680 battery matures, the chips may have been transferred to others. The delay in mass production has made Tesla miss the best opportunity for the power battery business to gain a foothold, which is why Tesla is ready to suspend its own production of 4680 batteries.
Because, time waits for no one.
If you wait any longer, Tesla will indeed lose its qualification to be a "scumbag".