A big a part of Tesla’s development in gross revenue final quarter got here from a rise in income from servicing Tesla’s automobiles and promoting power by means of its Supercharger community – issues Elon Musk stated Tesla wouldn’t purpose to make income from.
Again in 2016, Elon Musk was quoted saying this at a Tesla occasion when defending the automaker’s technique to function its personal service facilities relatively than utilizing dealerships:
Our philosophy with respect to service is to not make a revenue from service. I feel that it’s horrible to make a revenue on service.
Musk typically criticized different automakers, particularly GM, for promoting “automobiles that then want service” at dealerships after which making lots of income promoting substitute components to clients by means of these dealerships.
The CEO is commonly quoted saying, “The very best service is not any service,” and Tesla goals to enhance service by growing the reliability of its automobiles, leading to much less want for service.
Actuality is kind of completely different. Tesla homeowners are sometimes experiencing lengthy wait occasions to get service appointments at Tesla and the way the automaker plans to handle this example was a high query throughout Tesla’s earnings name yesterday.
As for the Supercharger community, Musk additionally stated that it might “by no means grow to be a revenue heart” for Tesla.
The CEO all the time stated that the objective was of the charging community was to be a service for Tesla homeowners, and now non-Tesla homeowners, with the objective of revinesting income into rising the capability of the community.
Tesla’s actuality is altering
Over the past two quarters, Tesla’s income from “providers and others” have surged.
For the previous few years, Tesla’s providers and others have been solely marginally worthwhile, which was in keeping with Musk’s beforehand acknowledged technique on that entrance, however one thing has modified.
With Tesla’s Q3 2024 monetary outcomes, the automaker that “providers and others” gross income jumped to nearly $250 million – a 90% enhance year-over-year:
Tesla is likely one of the most opaque automakers relating to breaking down its financials. It bundles many issues into “providers and others, ” making it exhausting to know precisely what’s going on inside.
The majority of that accounting line has traditionally been automobile service and used automobile gross sales, however in Tesla’s newest monetary outcomes, which noticed an vital enhance in income for “providers and others”, the automaker confirmed that the surge was particularly on account of its Supercharger community and repair margins:
The Providers and Different enterprise achieved a document gross revenue in Q3, rising over 90% year-on-year. Sequential development in gross revenue was pushed principally by increased gross revenue technology from supercharging, service heart margin enchancment and better gross revenue technology from Elements Gross sales and Merchandise.
Now at $~250 million, it’s nonetheless a small a part of Tesla’s general gross income, nevertheless it does account for a big a part of the ~$800 million enhance in gross income in comparison with final yr.
Electrek’s Take
That is one thing that irritates me personally as a result of I’ve used these quotes from Elon about service to counter the hesitation of many potential Tesla patrons concerning the upkeep and repair of electrical automobiles.
Elon’s assertion reassured them, but when that was ever actually the plan, it actually isn’t anymore based mostly on the newest outcomes.
Tesla’s gross margins for service and promoting substitute components are surging, and Tesla is proudly saying it in its monetary outcomes.
Myself, I’ve two Tesla automobiles that want service proper now and Tesla is making an attempt to promote me very costly components.
As for Supercharger, costs are going up.
To be honest, Tesla earning money on the Supercharger community is kind of new and the corporate is simply beginning to promote extra charging to non-Tesla EVs. It’s very attainable that Tesla would possibly want to regulate to maintain the Supercharger simply marginally worthwhile.
It’s simply the truth that Tesla writes “sequential development in gross revenue was pushed principally by increased gross revenue technology from supercharging,” it’s not tremendous encouraging.
However within the meantime, some Supercharger stations are getting fairly costly. Hopefully, Tesla will get these costs into management
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