Tesla Q3 2020 earnings report: Is profitability the new norm?
Tesla also made battery leaps, there's Full Self-Driving news and more.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Well, it's Tesla earnings report time once again, and in news that's becoming less of a surprise, Tesla was profitable again for Q3 of 2020. This marks the fifth consecutive quarter of profitability for the EV maker, and with record amounts of customer deliveries as well as production capacity expansions for its biggest-selling model (the Model 3 , for those of you playing at home), that kind of makes sense.
Q3 was also significant for the Big T in other ways. During its recent Battery Day presentation, the company announced its plans to upend the industry-standard means of producing battery cells by going to its bigger, tabless 4380 cells. Musk also surprised the world by announcing the Full Self-Driving beta release on Oct. 20, though what precisely that changes has been left ambiguous.
Tesla also dropped the price on the Model S to a cringe-inducing $69,420 to compete with the Lucid Air, despite that car not actually being available to purchase yet. Tesla's forthcoming Cybertruck got its next big helping of competition from General Motors in the form of the new electric GMC Hummer. We expect some kind of Cybertruck-related announcement from Musk during the earnings call in response to this.
The Gigafactories in the US and Shanghai are trucking along, while the factory in Germany is presently scheduled to come online in 2021. Tesla says that the facility, which lies just outside Berlin, will be getting equipment delivered soon, which is in line with the Tesla model of construction -- fast, fast, fast. The upgrades in facility production capacity finally got Tesla to its goal of being able to produce 500,000 cars per year.
Keep your eyes glued to Roadshow for further coverage from the earnings call itself.
