Elon Musk says Tesla may cut prices again in 'turbulent times' – BBC News

 let's continue with our business

coverage and we're looking at Tesla now

it's chief executive Elon Musk has

signaled he could cut the price of his

cars further as the market faces what he

calls turbulent times sending the

company's shares down sharply Tesla's

already cut the price of its Long Range

model y by a quarter this year amid

stiff competition with other car makers

the price war is taking its toll on

Tesla's profits margins which were down

in the three months to June to their

lowest in four years but it did sell a

record number of cars and says it's on

track for its Target of shipping 1.8

million Vehicles this year if you look

at the share price it's gone up by some

130 percent 37 since the start of this

year so that's a pretty decent

performance and with most of the gains

coming in the past few months so I asked

Chris Jones from the consultant's

Catalyst whether as far as strategy is

concerned has Elon Musk got it right

right

so far I'd say Yes

um you know he dropped prices

significantly a few months ago that

caused Panic amongst its competitors

um especially in China and other kind of

major markets and you know even a small

change in its price has had a very big

big effect on demand and we're seeing

that in the last couple of quarters

where it's consistently shipping over

400 000 new vehicles every quarter now

so it's um it's got the best selling car

in the world in the model y it's the

best-selling EV in the major markets and

as I said the best-selling car in the

world which is pretty amazing

do you think it still has the wow factor

when Tesla first came to Market it

really did it almost had a cult

following but now with so many really

good offerings from from the other big

car makers Around The World Isn't it

losing that

you're right it's been a few years now

since the model 3 launched that was over

seven years ago seven or eight years ago

even the model y was first delivered

over three years ago so it's been a

while since it launched a new vehicle a

new car cyber truck is coming in the US

but that's pretty niche in terms of you

know the overall Market but yeah there

is more than there's more competitors

out there now there are much better EVS

out there to to compare against the

Tesla but still it's delivering it's

able to be very efficient in its

production it's ramped its production

around the world with more facilities

and it puts pressure on the competitors

by the tops prices just quickly Elon

Musk has been promising for years full

autonomy that's one of his key goals he

said in this last earnings call that

he's going to spend more than a billion

dollars over the next year on his new AI

training Hardware again your thoughts on

that uh move on his part

yeah it's coming it's been it's been

slow progress really in the in the move

to full full autonomy we still have to

have hands on the wheel eyes on the road

when driving a Tesla so it's been a slow

process and I think they've under

delivered in that area over the year

over the years they've certainly

promised a lot more than they've been

able to deliver so far but every vehicle

on the road is learning every vehicle on

the road has sensors cameras and they're

learning from how people drive and

they're collecting data every mile

that's driven so they're making progress

but it has been slow over the years