Tesla CEO Elon Musk pioneered several technological innovations as the company presented its quarterly and annual results after the US stock market closed Wednesday night.
- The Model Y from Gigafactory Texas gets 4,680 new cells. European customers will have to make do with 2,170 cells for a longer period.
- Musk believes that people do not appreciate the importance of fully autonomous driving enough, and he believes that self-driving Teslas cars will be safer than human drivers during the year.
- Tesla will develop a heat pump for your home.
Tesla is now awaiting the latest approvals to begin serial production at its two newest plants in Texas and Berlin. Both will produce the Model Y.
On a conference call after the presentation, Musk confirmed that Tesla uses the much-talked-about 4,680 cells in the Texas Model Y chassis battery pack. The first cars are expected to be delivered to customers in the first quarter of this year.
In its quarterly presentation, Tesla also wrote that the first Model Y delivered from the Berlin factory will currently have 2,170 cells. In the end, the Berlin models will also have 4,680 cells, but Musk did not say when this would happen.
The start of serial production at the Berlin plant is long overdue. Musk in the past Twitter He will visit the factory in mid-February, but it is uncertain whether this is related to the start of series production.
wrong question
Musk has mentioned several times how important he thinks full self-driving functionality will be to Tesla. When an investor asked about rumors of work on Tesla’s cheap $25,000 model, Musk replied that they didn’t work with such a car, and that he thought that was the wrong question.
What really matters is when the car becomes self-driving. When that happens, Musk replied, I think the cost of transportation will come down by four or five.
It is believed that self-driving Tesla cars, also called automated taxis, will cost less than a bus ticket. He stresses that robot taxis will have a much higher usage rate than today’s cars and believes this may be the most profound modernization in history.
Highlight the same point in another answer: One analyst asked if it’s realistic for Tesla to keep its promise to increase car sales by 50 percent each year in the future (the equivalent of 3.2 million cars in 2024), given that it does. Not work with the above $25,000 vehicle. The analyst wondered if Model Y, Model 3 and Cypertruck would make up sales in 2024, or if something was missing in the calculation.
You don’t appreciate fully autonomous driving enough
– Based on the questions, it is clear that the weight of fully autonomous driving has not been fully appreciated. If a resource is using five times as much, you can divide the cost of that resource by five. So if you have a $50,000 car, you suddenly have a $10,000 car. Musk responded that if the cost of our cars never came down, we would continue to sell as many cars as possible.
Tesla is going a different way than many other car manufacturers to develop self-driving cars. In the US market, they have ditched the radar and bet only on a camera-based system. They don’t use Lidar either, unlike many other car manufacturers. At the same time, the US electric car maker has launched a beta version of its self-driving car program in the US. It will already be used in tens of thousands of cars.
Musk said at the meeting that he would be shocked if Tesla’s fully self-driving program wasn’t safer than human drivers this year.
heat pump for home
As is known, Tesla has developed heat pumps for Model 3 and Model Y. Many car owners have reported heat loss problems during low temperatures with these, but the American car manufacturer still has ambitions to develop heat pumps for the home.
“We’ve learned a lot about how to make powerful, reliable heat pumps that work in all conditions and would love to work with them (heat pumps for homes, magazines. Note),” said Andrew Baglino, Head of Driving and Energy Technology at Tesla.
Musk added that a compact product that combines electric vehicle charging, solar cells, energy storage, hot water and climate control in homes would be a compelling solution that does not exist today. They have been working to integrate solar cells and batteries into homes more closely, Baglino said, and that the next logical step is to integrate climate control, water and heating.
You have to act wisely and just act. It’s something we want to do, Musk said, but we don’t have time at this time.
So it does not appear that such a product will go on sale immediately.