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Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting and investor event are coming on March 1.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Tesla
needs a lower-priced car. And the sooner the better.
The electric-vehicle pioneer’s 2023 investor event is coming up on March 1. It’s a chance for investors to hear from CEO Elon Musk about the company’s strategy and future. This year, as EV competition ramps up, one issue looms larger than others.
“The most important issue for
Tesla
going into its analyst day is the
status of its next-gen, lower-cost vehicle platform,” wrote Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi in a Wednesday report. He says Tesla needs the lower-price EV to meet investors’ lofty growth expectations. “Our research has indicated that EV models that have generally struggled to increase volume beyond the third or fourth year of introduction.”
All of Tesla’s vehicles, except the Model Y, are more than four years old, and they qualify as higher-end cars. Today, a Model S starts at about $95,000, and Model X starts at about $110,000. A Model 3 starts at about $43,000, while a Model Y starts at about $55,000.
Tesla started producing the expensive Models S and X in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Tesla needed to start out with expensive, luxury cars because batteries cost a lot back then. Sales for the S and X peaked in 2018 at 116,076 units combined. Sales of those two models came in at 66,705 in 2022.
The Models 3 and Y—Tesla’s first mass-market vehicles—started shipping in 2017 and 2020, respectively. Total sales of both vehicles hit 1,247,146 in 2022, up 37% compared with…
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