in all its stainless-steel glory, the automaker has confirmed its plans to start delivering the first batch of the massive pickup trucks to customers on November 30. We recently spottedBut don't expect high production volumes, low prices, or profits anytime soon, Tesla CEO Elon Musk told investors on a call to discuss the company's third-quarter earnings.
The Texas plant has the capacity to make 125,000 trucks a year, and Musk insists there are 1 million people who have reserved one, but those numbers don't mean Tesla will ramp things up quickly, as the truck is so difficult to make and get right,Making prototypes—which is what Tesla has been doing with the truck for years now—is easy, Musk says.
And making money on it, even though final pricing has not been announced, seems elusive at this point. It is"insanely difficult to make it at a price people can afford," Musk said, a challenge made worse by higher interest rates further pushing up vehicle prices. The truck was initially promised at a $40,000 starting price beforeEconomies of scale won't help bring down cost for a while.
In the third quarter, Tesla continued to increase its production numbers but sell the vehicles at smaller margins. The operating margin for the third quarter was down to 7.6 percent—which is in the realm of many legacy automakers—and a steep drop from a year ago when the company's margins were 17.2 percent. New profit also fell 44 percent to $1.9 million and revenue growth has slowed to its lowest level in more than three years.