Electric vehicle giant Tesla officially disclosed in its 2024 Q1 Quarterly Update Deck that its Cybertruck production ramp has surpassed 1,000 in a week.
Tesla ramps up Cybertruck production
Tesla proudly announced its successful production of more than 1,000 Cybertruck electric pickups in a single week in April 2024.
“The Cybertruck ramp continued successfully at Gigafactory Texas, with a sequential cost improvement in Q1. We produced over 1,000 Cybertrucks in a single week in April.”
Tesla
It is indeed a remarkable feat, considering that Tesla expected the production ramp to be challenging due to the Cybertruck’s distinctive qualities. For instance, the stainless steel body requires the company to employ innovative technologies and processes to build it.
Tesla seems to be trying to regain its investors’ confidence with the new update on the Cybertruck production ramp.
“Cybertruck was at 1,000 a week just a couple of weeks ago. This happened in the first four to five months since we SOP (start of production) late last year. Of course, volume production is what matters. That’s what drives costs and so our costs are dropping…”
Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vehicle Engineering VP
Production start
In hindsight, Tesla kicked off the Cybertruck production in November 2023. However, the company omitted from sharing any update about its production since then.
Despite this, the recent Cybertruck recall unveiled that Tesla had already cranked out more than 3,800 units to date.
The latest Update Letter also formally confirmed the production headway of the electric pickup.
Cutting production costs
The Cybertruck production ramp-up is critical for Tesla to cut manufacturing costs through economy of scale. However, Tesla did forewarn that the program still faces numerous challenges due to the employment of new technologies and supplier constraints.
“…the ramp still faces like a lot of challenges with so many new technologies, some supplier limitations, etc., and continue to ramp this year, just focusing on cost efficiency and quality.”
Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vehicle Engineering VP
Fortunately, Tesla managed to exclude the 4680 battery cell issue from the list of expected difficulties. It announced that the new battery cell is well ahead of the Cybertruck ramp-up.
“4680 production increased about 18%, 20% over from Q4 – reaching greater than needed for Cybertruck, which is about 7-gigawatt hours per year as we posted on X.
We expect to stay ahead of the Cybertruck ramp with the cell production throughout Q2 as we ramp the third and fourth lines in Phase 1 while maintaining multiple weeks of cell inventory to make sure we’re ahead of the ramp. Because we’re ramping, COGS continues to drop rapidly week over week, driven by yield improvements throughout the lines and production volume increases.”
Lars Moravy, Tesla Vehicle Engineering VP
It must be noted that the 1,000 Cybertruck production milestone in a single week this month does not mean it can sustain this rate in the coming weeks. Nonetheless, the increased output will continuously help Tesla to cut production costs for the Cybertruck.
