Tesla (TSLA 2.40%) reported its fourth-quarter and full-year results on Wednesday, finishing the year with record vehicle deliveries and a second consecutive quarter of profitability. In addition, management said it expects to potentially report a tiny profit in its first quarter of 2019 and to be profitable throughout the rest of the year.
While some financial figures from the quarter, including the company's $718 million sequential increase in cash, its free cash flow of $910 million, and more were notable takeaways from the period, there were some other interesting tidbits to surface. In particular, executives used the update to provide investors insight into Tesla's future product plans.
Here's a look at what Tesla said about Model Y, Tesla Semi, and its planned pickup truck.
Tesla vehicles. Image source: Tesla.
Model Y
Model Y will likely begin initial production early next year, said Tesla CEO Elon Musk during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call. But investors shouldn't expect to see any meaningful volume until the end of the year.
Initial production of Model Y will be "very low volume, early next year," Musk said.
The CEO continued:
But then it always takes time to ramp up any production system, and it's difficult to predict the shape of that S-curve. So we feel confident in saying there will be production volume of Model Y by the end of next year.
Importantly, Tesla says it's designing Model Y to make manufacturing the vehicle more cost effective and less of a headache than previous new vehicle programs.
"Since Model Y will be built on the Model 3 platform and is designed to share about 75% of its components with Model 3," Tesla explained in its fourth-quarter letter to shareholders, "the cost of the Model Y production line should be substantially lower than the Model 3 line in Fremont, and the production ramp should also be faster."
Tesla Semi
Tesla's fully electric semi-truck is also scheduled to go into production next year. But Tesla's automotive lead Jerome Guillen wasn't as clear about when the company expects to reach volume production for the vehicle.
"[T]he first units will be ... for our own usage," Guillen said. "So, [it] depends how many trucks we'll use for our own usage to move the parts and the vehicles to different locations, and then we'll start delivering to outside customers."
A Tesla pickup truck
Finally, Tesla even briefly touched on its longer-term plans to launch a pickup truck.
"And then the Tesla pickup truck, we might be ready to unveil that this summer," Musk said. "It will be something quite unique, unlike anything else."
While Tesla hasn't been clear about when it hopes to begin producing its pickup truck, it's likely that the vehicle won't go into production any earlier than 2021 since the electric-car company will need resources for the production ramp of Model Y and Tesla Semi in 2020.
In the meantime, Tesla is focusing on steadily increasing Model 3 production throughout 2019. After a sharp production ramp for the vehicle in the second half of 2018, a further ramp-up in Model 3 production throughout the year is expected to help deliveries in 2019 come in 45% to 65% higher than they were in 2018, according to management.
Check out the latest Tesla earnings call transcript.
