Currently producing only the most powerful and luxurious version of the Tesla Model 3, Tesla has been postponing successively the start of the assembly of the base version, which will have a price of 35 thousand dollars, or 30 thousand euros.
According to the brand's owner, the multimillionaire Elon Musk, the short profit margins that the version will initially offer could put the builder's financial viability into question and lead to bankruptcy.
The warning about the economic viability of the Model 3 base was made by Musk himself, who, through the social network Twitter and answering a question from a user named Ivaylo Ivanov, defended that, “it takes between three and six months, with a production of 5,000 cars a week, for which Tesla can then consider launching the $35,000 version.”
the german vision
However, a German company, which in the meantime managed to buy a Tesla Model 3 on the second-hand market, has now come to say that, after all, it may not be like that.
According to reports from WirtschaftsWoche magazine, which spoke with the German company in question, which dismantled the entire car in order to assess costs, the new access model for the Palo Alto brand will cost no more than $28,000 to produce (approximately 24 thousand euros) — 18 thousand dollars in materials and logistics, plus 10 thousand dollars in labor.
Given these numbers and according to an engineer from the same firm, the Model 3 may even come to make “a strong contribution to the profits” of the American company, but “ if Tesla effectively manages to produce the coveted 10,000 units per week”.
The same company also claims that the amount of cobalt needed for the model's batteries is significantly lower than that used by the Model 3's direct competitors, estimating it at only 2.8%, as Musk himself had already defended in a letter to investors.
Elon Musk agrees
Confronted, also on Twitter, with this conclusion by the German company and, in particular, with regard to the possibility that each unit of the Tesla Model 3 could present a production cost of around 28 thousand euros, after reaching a production of 10 thousand units per week — target only planned for 2019 —, Elon Musk left no doubt as to the agreement with the figures presented: “Completely in agreement!”, he wrote.
Even so, the conclusion now presented does not fail to call into question the ideas defended so far by the multimillionaire, who claimed that Tesla had to be able to guarantee profit margins of 25%. Something that, however, according to him, would only be possible by selling versions equipped with a larger battery pack (Long Range), and also the more powerful ones (Performance), and with the highest level of autonomous driving technology (AutoPilot) .
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