Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Phoenix New Media Technology News Beijing time August 30 news, Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Elon Musk) is leading his young company onto a road of radical expansion that other auto company executives have never dreamed of, but the road is full of potholes and roadblocks that may bring the journey to a standstill or deviate from the right track.

Mr Musk has set a bold target for Tesla to sell 20 million electric vehicles by 2030, a top priority of the company's growth commitment to shareholders and its pledge to promote sustainable energy popularization. If achieved, Tesla would be twice the size of the most productive carmaker in history and about 20 per cent of the global car market.

However, according to the financial disclosure of Tesla by foreign media and the analysis of the global demand for electric vehicles and the production of electric vehicle batteries and battery minerals, this exponential growth means that Tesla's annual sales will reach 13 times the expected sales of 1.5 million vehicles this year by 2030, and will pay an unprecedented cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.

"I think this is the equivalent of the Manhattan Project in World War II," said Michael Tracy, a manufacturing expert at Agile, referring to the massive US effort to build an atomic bomb.

Huge cost in the process, Tesla needs to build seven or eight more "super factories", an average of one every 12 months or so, and grabs market share from each competitor. become a company the size of Volkswagen and Toyota combined. It also needs about 30 times the battery capacity to supply all its car factories.

The governments of Canada, Indonesia, India and other countries are already lobbying Tesla to build Tesla's next super factory in their country. Mr Musk has said the location of the new plant could be announced by the end of the year.

Tesla Shanghai Factory

At the same time, Tesla also needs to bear huge expenses. Over the next eight years, Tesla may need to spend $400 billion or more to build new car assembly and battery plants around the world, and another $200 billion or more to make or buy batteries, including the cost of raw materials. To produce 20 million cars a year, Tesla needs not only to expand his battery production capacity, but also battery partners and raw material suppliers to expand capacity.

"in the long run, we expect to produce 3000 gigawatt-hours or 3 terawatt-hour batteries a year. I think we are likely to achieve this goal by 2030, but I am very confident that it will be achieved by 2030." Musk told investors in July. At present, Tesla currently has a battery capacity of 100 gigawatt hours.

According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a research company that tracks the global electric vehicle battery industry, Tesla needs 2 million tonnes of lithium, 1.3 million tonnes of nickel, 200000 tonnes of cobalt and 3.5 million tonnes of graphite to support his expectations of producing 3 terawatt-hour batteries by 2030. This is four times as much lithium and nickel as the entire electric vehicle industry in 2022, twice as much as cobalt and seven times as much as graphite. Benchmark described Tesla's 2030 goal as "ambitious".

Fierce competition from Chinese competitors, meanwhile, competitors are launching more electric vehicles to compete with Tesla's popular Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV

In China, although sales of local start-ups Xiaopeng Motor, Ulay Motor and ideal car lag behind Tesla, they are growing rapidly.

Meanwhile, BYD is challenging Tesla around the world. BYD is currently the leader in China's electric car market, selling cheap electric cars and hybrid cars. In July this year, BYD pushed Tesla out of the throne of the global electric car. BYD delivered 641000 electric vehicles in the first half of this year, up 300% from a year earlier and surpassing Tesla's 564000, surpassing Tesla ahead of Volkswagen, Ford or General Motors. Moreover, BYD is actively expanding into overseas markets, setting up dealers in Australia and New Zealand, and recently announced plans to expand into several countries, including Germany, Israel and Thailand.

Tesla needs to produce twice as much as Toyota.

In North America, Ford and electric car startup Rivian Automotive have pre-empted Tesla to launch electric pickups in the market. Electric pickup truck is an important emerging field of North American automobile market.

Manufacturing expert Tracy is skeptical about Musk's ability to build a global manufacturing giant over the next eight years, because that means Tesla has almost twice as much capacity as Toyota, the world's largest carmaker by output.

"given that it took Toyota decades to build this production capacity, [if Tesla can do it], it will be an extraordinary achievement." He said.

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