How Much Tesla FSD Sales Are Needed to Increase Margins by 1%

Tesla had 17.6% gross profit margins in Q4 2023 which was about $252 million per percent of gross margin.

Tesla has released FSD 12.3.3 Supervised to all North American Tesla owners. If they were buy or subscribe to Tesla FSD and we converted monthly subscriptions were equalized to a purchase (starting an average 5 year subscription) then 21,000 new FSD buys would be equal to 1% more margin. 21,000 would be 1.23% of the people trying the free trial.

If Tesla Q1 2024 had the same financial performance as Q4 2023, then 50,400 more FSD signups would get Tesla over 20% profit margin. If most of the new FSD signups were monthly subscriptions then the financial benefit would be spread out. It would take a full year of subscriptions to actually see 20% of the financial benefit in the accounting. Tesla would have to reveal the monthly subscriptions for stock analysts to understand the financials.

There are almost no Tesla owners in China that have bought FSD. There were lack of regulatory approvals and issues adapting the software for China. The all neural net version 12.X should be able to adapt quickly in China. Tesla has a fleet of about 1.5 million cars in China and there will be 2 million by the end of 2024. If Tesla could rapidly achieve 5% adoption in China this would be 75000-100000 sales.

2 thoughts on “How Much Tesla FSD Sales Are Needed to Increase Margins by 1%”

  1. I wonder…

    IF, in the future, a person injured in an auto collision while an occupant of a Tesla vehicle, could bring a suit against Tesla for disabling, or not enabling, the included safety feature of FSD capability — and collision avoidance.

    As in, a company disabling the safety feature of seat belts due to a lapsed subscription could be held responsible for injuries that otherwise would not have occurred.

    Such a law suit could lead to a regulatory decision to invalidate the road worthiness of Tesla’ s with “disabled safety features”.

    Some might park their ride, not willing to take the risk.

    Non-Tesla insures may demand the activation of FSD, or charge exorbitant fees.

    One way to mitigate the issue, and garner massive good vibes, is to keep FSD aware of current driving conditions, stepping in to avert “accidents”, but only to avoid collisions.

    People buy Audi’s, in part due to their status as a safe vehicle.

    Showing that even such a limited implementation of FSD would propel Tesla to the top of the, “Buy it because it’s safe” list, too.

  2. Profits are down because they had to lower the prices to compensate for the demand drop. Less demand, less sales. Total automotive revenues from q4 2023 are the same as in q4 2022. No big growth.

    Model 3 is 7 year old model with only minor refreshments. Y is 4 years old model. Good one, but are they thinking about next gen products to be interesting to customers? Next gen model 3 and Y?

    Sales won’t go up for such old cars. It is miracle anyone even buys model S and X, they are so old. They could make new model for more wealthy ones in 100k+ range, not just Roadster but I am not seeing nothing here, no Model S and X next generation replacements.

    Cybertruck could give them extra sales and turn the curve up a bit,… It is taking them long and no model 2 in sight.

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