I wonder why their after hours stock price skyrocketed.
I was going to to ask the same thing. Up over two dollars in premarket trading.
It was because they announced they were speeding up their plans for their affordable next gen vehicle earlier than already announced, which was H2 2025
Now it's late 2024/H1 2025
They are ditching their next gen "unboxed" production method to do this however and leaving that for the robo taxi. The vehicles will be a hybrid if their next gen tech and existing tech. They claim the new models to be released will be built on the existing manufacturing lines, getting them to over 3mil vehicles a year.
These will be more akin to a gen 2.5.
Robo taxi will be gen 3
If their unboxed plans work with the taxi, they'll use it for other vehicles in the future.
Edit: they basically derisked the cheaper vehicles by foregoing the risky new production method that would make it cheaper in the long run, by figuring out how to use their existing lines, also making it cheaper. But in the grand scheme of things i imagine this hybrid way will have less margins than a successfully implemented new way.
Also, some of the price crash was from Reuters reporting they abandoned the cheaper vehicle in favor of robotaxi and there's been uncertainty for weeks now ok the topic, until now.
Thanks for the details! All I saw anywhere was the bad news, but this does sound like a good reason for optimism if you can trust this company.
if you can trust this company.
That's the key point. After all the other delays, they need to show they can do something on time now to gain some of that back.
It feels like this announcement was 100% to keep the shareholders happy with probably very little planning ahead of time.
I was thinking it's more like their contingency plan for if unboxed was a catastrophe.
If they can actually pull off the accelerated, shared manufacturing lines plan, it feels like it's too fast to be on a whim with no planning.
I do agree though it's probably to keep shareholders happy as the cheaper EV landscape unfolds and they were falling behind.
Boy is battin a thousand
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