Tesla has suggested that their growth in sales could slow this year, after announcing lower revenues than originally anticipated by analysts.
The company generated $25.2 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter of 2023, slightly lower than the $25.9 billion estimated by Wall Street analysts. At the start of a new year, Tesla ordinarily announces ambitious sales goals for the year ahead but it did not do so during its recent earnings call, noting that the growth in sales this year will likely be slower than in 2023 when they jumped 38% to 1.81 million units.
Analysts expect Tesla to sell 2.19 million vehicles in 2024 which would represent a 21% increase from 2023 but whether or not that figure will be reached remains to be seen.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of news to come from the firm’s earnings call relates to its next-generation model, colloquially known as the Tesla Model 2. Elon Musk has previously said the marque plans to sell the new model for around $25,000 and has now revealed it will be produced at the firm’s Texas plant, an upcoming factory in Mexico, and probably a third location outside of North America, Bloomberg reports.
“We are focused on bringing the next-generation platform to market as quickly as we can, with the plan to start production at Gigafactory Texas,” Tesla said. “This platform will revolutionize how vehicles are manufactured.”
Musk added that this new model should hit the production line in the second half of 2025 but acknowledged it will have a “challenging production ramp.”
Read: Tesla “Redwood” Reportedly Coming In 2025, Is It The $25k Baby EV?
“Once it’s going, it will be head and shoulders above any other manufacturing technology that exists anywhere in the world,” he added. “It’s next level.”
One of the reasons why Tesla isn’t anticipating a significant jump in sales this year is because it has already significantly cut prices and likely cannot reduce them much further. Musk has claimed repeatedly in the past that Tesla would be able to grow sales by 50% year-over-year but this is appearing increasingly unlikely to happen.
“Tesla is signaling that the days of 50% or even 30% to 40% growth year-over-year is not going to happen in 2024,” Morningstar Research analyst Seth Goldstein added. “At a certain point, you can’t cut prices anymore.”
