Elon Musk Fails To Impress After Making No New Model Announcements At Tesla's 2023 Investor Day

Tesla CEO Elon Musk was expected to announce the Model Y revamp at the 2023 Investor Day, but the stock price dropped by 5% following what many believed to be a poor presentation that left commentators wondering when any new additions to Tesla's passenger car range would be formally announced.

According to Reuters, Tesla is working on a heavily revamped Tesla Model Y under the codename Juniper with a rumored target date for its market introduction of 2024.

"With the Model Y being not only being Tesla's top seller, but also the top-selling EV in the world, it's important to keep it fresh," AutoPacific president and chief analysts Ed Kim told Reuters. This latest development also matches up with a teaser we picked up during Tesla's California HQ announcement that it's establishing a new global engineering headquarters in California.

But enough about what wasn't announced, as there were plenty of other noteworthy announcements for us to dwell on.

As mentioned earlier, Elon Musk was expected to officially announce the significant update at Tesla's Investor Day event in Texas. Tesla usually makes important announcements at its famous investor day, and this year was no different. Musk announced that an all-new Gigafactory will be built in Mexico on the outskirts of Monterrey. For the geographically challenged, it's in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, bordering Texas.

"We will continue to expand production at all of our existing factories," said Musk. GigaMexico will not make the existing factories in California, Texas, Nevada, Germany, or China redundant. Instead, it will act in a supplemental role while building next-generation models. Since Mexico has a free-trade agreement with the USA, all cars assembled in Monterrey will qualify for Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.

As for new products, Musk only made hints and no concrete statements. The biggest of these hints was a new affordable model and a new platform that has the potential to underpin several new models.

Musk is sticking to his story that the Cybertruck will arrive later this year, but there is a slight discrepancy. Earlier reports suggested production would start in mid-2023, with mass production kicking off in late 2023. According to Musk's latest claims, volume production will only begin in 2024.

Tesla also showcased new manufacturing techniques aimed at reducing production costs. These reduced costs will spill over to customers. "The desire for people to own a Tesla is very high," said Musk. "The limiting factor is affordability." The American automaker has proved that it can cut prices at a moment's notice and push them back up again when demand increases. Further slashed costs should invigorate more consumers to consider moving to the brand.

Now that Tesla's Supercharger network is slowly being made available to other vehicles, one might argue that it lost a competitive advantage. But Tesla Electric, which is essentially the automaker's energy retailing arm, announced a new product that will hand that competitive advantage right back to the manufacturer.

Instead of relying on the services provided by regular electricity suppliers, Tesla Electric buys and sells electricity to provide volts via a Powerwall. By doing so, Tesla protects its customers against peak prices. The system is currently only available in Texas but will roll out nationwide eventually.

As an added bonus, a new subscription service is coming to Texas in July. For $30 per month, Tesla will give owners unlimited overnight charging. Given Tesla's impressive range across the board and the length of the average daily commute, owners are looking at a monthly recharging bill of just $30. That is spectacular news.

Still, shareholders were not impressed, probably due to the lack of new model news, which is what most people were expecting. Tesla shares fell by roughly 5%, with financial experts citing the lack of details and financial results as the key drivers of the drop.

Even so, Tesla remains the most valuable car manufacturer in the world, with a worth of $635 billion at the time of writing.