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Uber to acquire Foodpanda's Taiwan unit from Delivery Hero for $950M in cash  | TechCrunch

May 14, 2024 3:29 PM0


Uber Technologies announced Tuesday that it will buy the Taiwan unit of Delivery Hero’s Foodpanda for $950 million in cash. The deal is part of Uber Eats’ strategy to expand in Asia, specifically by strengthening its position in Taiwan. On the other hand, it also underscores Delivery Hero’s ongoing retreat from that same market: the sale […]

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Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Uber promises member exclusives as Uber One passes $1B run-rate | TechCrunch

May 8, 2024 8:23 PM0


Uber plans to deliver more perks to Uber One members, like member-exclusive events, in a bid to gain more revenue through subscriptions. 

“You will see more member-exclusives coming up where members have exclusive access to events and experiences, which will kind of surprise and delight our members,” said Uber chief financial officer Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah Wednesday morning during Uber’s first-quarter earnings call. 

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Uber One’s membership fees are “in excess of $1 billion” run-rate. In other words, Uber is extrapolating its current subscription revenue to estimate $1 billion in annual revenue. This is the first time Uber has shared run-rate numbers on its subscription service, which was introduced in November 2021. 

Uber One costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 annually and offers perks like $0 delivery fee on eligible food and groceries, up to 10% off certain deliveries and pick up orders, better pricing on certain rides and more. 

Uber said it would share more information on these experiences in the future, but some members have received emails already about exclusive deals, like a party with rapper Post Malone at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.

The ride-hail giant wouldn’t be the first to offer events to members. Credit card companies like Chase, for example, give members in New York City access to a Sapphire Lounge at the South Street Seaport and VIP access to concerts at Pier 17 over the summer. 

Uber in 2022 launched a pilot feature to help customers book events and reservations at restaurants. It was a limited pilot, and Uber has not provided any updates, but it’s possible such features will be leveraged to provide Uber One members access to events.

The introduction of member events is an attempt to attract more subscribers, who tend to send more on the platform and use more of Uber’s products. 

“I’ll remind folks that members spend 3.4 times as much as non-members per month, so it is a great vehicle for us to drive adoption and drive, really, attachment with our various services, as well,” said Mahendra-Rajah. 

The CFO noted that members now generate 32% of mobility and delivery gross bookings, and over 45% of delivery gross bookings specifically. 

The increased delivery spend can be partially attributed to the use of Uber Cash. In 2023, Uber dropped the 5% discounts on rides it offered to Uber One members in favor of a cash-back scheme. Mahendra-Rajah said a quarter of all Uber Cash earned from rides in the U.S. is being redeemed on delivery. For Uber Business riders, that penetration is even higher, with 60% of the Uber Cash earned on rides being redeemed in delivery.

“We think that membership is a powerful lever in terms of general penetration into our marketplace and the frequency of growth that we’re seeing,” said Mahendra-Rajah.

Uber’s strategy for the past few years has been to actively cross-sell customers between its offerings – food delivery to grocery, grocery to alcohol, alcohol to mobility – in order to create in-app stickiness. The Uber One membership is an amalgamation of these efforts. 

To increase retention of Uber One, the company is also pushing its annual pass, which lets users have a cheaper monthly option if they sign on for the year. Mahendra-Rajah said the annual pass has resulted in retention increasing “nearly 200 basis points on a year-on-year basis in March.”

Instacart deal fueling growth in suburbs

Khosrowshahi said during Wednesday’s earnings call that the platform, specifically Uber Eats, is growing faster in the suburbs than in urban areas where Uber has higher penetration. 

“It’s about getting the basics right – building an audience and a brand, increasing selection, making sure we’ve got pricing right and making sure the quality of the service continues to be high,” said the CEO. 

He said Uber’s recent deal with Instacart, which allows Instacart customers to use the app to order from Uber Eats restaurants across the U.S., will help Uber grow in the suburbs. Khosrowshahi also noted that penetration with Domino’s and other merchants make Uber “well positioned to grow into the suburbs.”

In terms of other growth areas to watch out for more generally, Mahendra-Rajah pointed to new products like Uber for Business, Uber Health, UberX reserve and shared rides as areas that are growing 80% year-over-year. The CFO also said 20% of new customers are coming from these new products, as well.  

Uber records loss even as demand grows

Uber recorded a revenue of $10.1 billion and gross bookings of $37.7 billion in the first quarter, a year-over-year increase of 15% and 21%, respectively. Yet despite increased demand, the company posted a $654 million loss – a surprise to analysts who expected a profitable quarter  after Uber reported its first full-year profit in 2023. 

Uber attributed the loss to legal settlement payments and equity investments. 


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Nigeria's YC-backed Chowdeck hopes to scale food delivery, a notoriously tough market, with $2.5M funding | TechCrunch

April 30, 2024 1:42 PM0


Food is significant to Nigerians, with households spending nearly 60% of their income on it, the highest globally, according to official reports. This strong affinity for food, coupled with the rise of online shopping, sets the stage for Nigeria’s food delivery market to potentially reach $2 billion to $3 billion by 2032.

Despite the promising market size, there isn’t a clear leader yet. However, Lagos-based Chowdeck, backed by Y Combinator and armed with a $2.5 million in seed investment, aims to make its mark in a space that has burned heavyweights like Jumia and Bolt.

Founded by Femi Aluko, Olumide Ojo, and Lanre Yusuf, Chowdeck offers consumers the convenience of ordering food and having it delivered to their doorstep within an average of 30 minutes. CEO Aluko shared that the inspiration for launching the startup came from his experience of quick deliveries and exceptional customer service during a work trip to Dubai.

Aluko explained, “Ordering food in Nigeria would usually take one or two hours. But each time I ordered food during my three-month stay in Dubai, I consistently received it on time. If there were any delays, the restaurant would call me to apologize. It was impressive to see, and I wondered if we could replicate the same level of service in Nigeria.” In the first half of 2023 alone, Nigerians spent over ₦60 trillion on food and household items, per the country’s top agency for official statistics.

Aluko and his co-founders initially experimented with the concept by using a few bikes and partnering with two restaurants. After refining their approach, they officially launched the first version of the product in October 2021. Since then, the platform has experienced significant growth, with more than 3,000 riders joining and over 500,000 users (Aluko says over 100,000 are active on the platform).

Less competition, more growth

Chowdeck’s remarkable growth is evident, especially in a competitive market where, at its launch, major players like Jumia Food and Bolt Food already had a strong foothold with thousands of customers.

Additionally, given the industry’s reputation for thin profit margins and infrastructural challenges like traffic and poor roads causing delays in delivery times, the key question was how Chowdeck intended to navigate these obstacles and carve out its niche.

Later entrants in a market have the advantage of learning from the experiences of earlier players. Unlike its predecessors, Chowdeck recognized the importance of maintaining positive unit economics from the outset. While other food delivery platforms often relied on high discounts, Chowdeck opted for a different approach: optimizing its business model to ensure sustainability by minimizing discounts and only offering them on behalf of its partner restaurants when necessary.

“We took the time to figure out the right economics for our delivery business, which is why we’re not big on offering unrealistic discounts,” explained Aluko, a former principal engineer at Stripe subsidiary Paystack. “This approach kept us focused on selling and targeting the right customers rather than trying to capture everyone, which could’ve compromised our economics and marketing strategies.”

Jumia quit food delivery because of deep-pocketed ‘aggressive’ rivals, CEO says

By the end of 2023, Jumia Food and Bolt Food had exited the Nigerian market citing various business reasons, leaving Glovo as Chowdeck’s main competition. Both exits partly contributed to Chowdeck’s twofold user growth within the last six months.

Prioritizing convenience

Aluko stresses that Chowdeck’s appeal lies in its convenience. While not necessarily the most cost-effective option, he added that Chowdeck targets customers who prioritize time and are willing to pay for fast deliveries.

The startup’s delivery system relies on factors such as geotagging, offering diverse vehicle options from bicycles to motorbikes, and enforcing strict regulations on vendors and riders. (For example, vendors must accept orders within a five-minute window; failure to do so leads to order cancellation and decreased priority for the vendor.)

Similarly, Chowdeck employs automated processes to streamline customer-rider connections, utilizing in-house data for daily demand forecasting and required supply assessment. If, for instance, an average rider completes eight deliveries daily and the platform anticipates 10,000 deliveries, at least 1,250 riders need to be available for that day.

Chowdeck’s logistics setup not only benefits small food vendors and larger quick-service restaurants like Burger King and Chicken Republic but also extends to supermarkets such as ShopRite and pharmacies. The startup, operating across eight cities, has applied lessons from its flagship business to launch delivery services in supermarket/grocery and pharmacy verticals. In 2023, Chowdeck had more than 1,500 active vendors across the three verticals; additionally, it introduced a relay service for intra-city package movement in Lagos.

Glovo to double down African investment in the next 12 months — but will it stay put?

Rider earnings

Last year, the platform’s annual gross merchandise value (GMV) across these verticals stood at over ₦7 billion ($5.8 million). That October, it hit a milestone, crossing the ₦1 billion ($830,000) mark for the first time. By March 2024, it had doubled that figure, reaching ₦2.4 billion ($2 million). Lagos generates 80% of Chowdeck’s volumes, while the remaining 20% comes from other cities: Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Benin City, Ilorin, Abeokuta and Asaba.

Chowdeck, with a take rate of 24%, saw its revenues surge by 1,200% between 2022 and 2023, according to Aluko.

As a fast-growing business, Chowdeck intends to use the newly raised capital to improve its operational efficiency and extend its reach to more cities across Nigeria. Yet, the on-demand delivery service is also committed to leveraging the investment to better the experience for its customers, vendors, and particularly delivery riders, whose earnings currently exceed three to five times Nigeria’s monthly minimum wage, Aluko noted.

“After a few months of building Chowdeck, it was clear the level of impact we were going to have and teething problems we could solve at scale in the country, especially around earnings,” remarked Aluko. “For many people, including us, it was interesting to see our riders getting paid between ₦100,000-200,000 monthly ($83-$170) regularly and profitably.”

The seed round attracted investment from notable backers, including YC, Goodwater Capital, FounderX Ventures, HoaQ Fund, Levare Ventures, True Culture Funds and Haleakala Ventures. Founders such as Simon Borrero and Juan Pablo Ortega (of Rappi), Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi (of Paystack) also joined the investor list.

YC’s latest batch cuts African startup presence by more than half


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Getir pulls out of US, UK, Europe to focus on Turkey; 6,000+ jobs impacted | TechCrunch

April 29, 2024 7:07 PM0


True to its business concept, Turkey’s “instant delivery” juggernaut Getir rose quickly. Now, with the quick commerce industry in free fall, it is nosediving just as fast. On Monday, the company — once valued close to $12 billion — announced it would shut down its operations the U.S., the U.K. and Europe to focus solely on its home market of Turkey.

The move puts a bitter end to the company’s very aggressive expansion strategy that saw it raise billions of dollars to grow organically and also snap up a number of equally aggressive, yet struggling, competitors to position itself as the market leader. The closures look like they will impact at least 6,000 jobs across the closing markets, but — according to the company — just 7% of its revenues. Alongside the closures, the company said it would get a new injection of investment as a lifeline to extend its runway.

“This decision will allow Getir to focus its financial resources on Turkey,” said a statement from the company.

Getir is not the only one in this space raising money to stay afloat while also retreating from global plans. Earlier this month, reports surfaced that Flink, an erstwhile rival of Getir’s in Germany, is raising some $106 million, with around one-third of that secured so far. It comes as Flink, too, is consolidating its position. Coinciding with the fundraise leak, the company also apparently “liquidated” its operations in France.

More details, including financials, below.

Layoffs: To be clear, Getir has only officially announced cuts of 1,500 in the U.K. in the short announcement that it sent out to journalists: no details on jobs impacted elsewhere. However, reports were surfacing over the last few days that it had started to send out notices to 1,800 employees in Germany — HQ of Gorillas (which it acquired at the end of 2022). We’ve been told by a source close to the company that the number is closer to 1,100 (one figure may include contractors).

Meanwhile, when Getir acquired FreshDirect in the U.S. — only six months ago, in November 2023 — it picked up 2,300 employees. Add those different numbers together and you get around 6,000, although since Getir was already active in the U.S. prior to that acquisition, there may well be more impacted. A year ago, the company had as many as 32,000 people working for it.

Its pandemic window of opportunity: The move is a grim chapter for the startup that was founded in 2015 and saw big traction in Turkey before the pandemic — Getir means ‘bring’ in Turkish. That led to aggressive investment and expansion that peaked during Covid-19, when consumers were shopping less in person — in part to minimise infection, in part because shopping in person became really challenging due to supply issues, long lines to stagger entries and more.

Just as ride-hailing companies like Uber raised aggressively to finance aggressive growth and competitive fights across the globe, so too did Getir: between its first outside investment in 2017 and September 2023, it raised more than $2.3 billion from some 36 investors, including Sequoia, Tiger Global, Silver Lake, Mubadala, Goodwater, G Squared and A*.

It also made some aggressive acquisitions of competitors to increase its position in the market — but notably, it was consolidation intended not just a power move, but a way for other struggling, cash-strapped players in the market to step out of the brutal race.

In addition to FreshDirect and Gorillas, Getir picked up operations in Spain, Italy and the U.K. at bargain prices. It was also reportedly interested at one point in Zapp in the U.K. and Flink in Germany, so it definitely saw itself as a consolidator in the troubled market. It was a strategy also taken by Getir’s biggest global competitor, GoPuff. Today’s news leaves easier waters for GoPuff in the U.S. and the U.K.

Its Turkish window of opportunity: This is a grim chapter, but not a final one. Getir also announced that it would be raising fresh money to double down on its home market, a round led by Mubadala and G Squared.

Getir did not disclose who else was participating, nor how much it raised, nor whether this is equity or debt, so it’s hard to say what this means beyond giving the company some runway and a chance at focusing on one market that has worked.

We have reached out to some of its previous investors, Sequoia and Tiger Global, to see if they would comment on whether they are remaining investors in the company now, or whether they have cashed out.

Right now, the strategy for the bigger players in the instant grocery delivery market seems to be: accept that our international strategies were not great ideas, and focus on just our core markets for now.

The writing on the wall: Getir, like its peers in the instant delivery market, has been struggling for a while. In May 2023, it cut 14% of staff and cancelled large parts of its geographic expansion plans as it scrambled to right-size the business ahead of more fundraising. Just weeks after that, it pulled out of Spain, Italy and Portugal in July 2023. At the time, it was well understood that it shut operations because those markets were just not thriving, but Getir was indeed trying to close another round of funding, so cutting loss-making operations makes sense in that context.

Documents have been shared with TechCrunch that indicate that the company, for the calendar year 2023, the company made $3.3 billion, with the U.S. and Europe (including the U.K.) accounting for around $1 billion of that across the year. (It’s not clear from Getir’s statement what the 7% figure relates to. We are asking.) From the documents that we have seen, as of the end of last year, the company was not Ebitda positive in any of its geographies.

Big, bad news in the chaotic market for instant delivery services, but given the states of the venture market, the current economy, and consumer behavior these days — yes, people buy online, but they are also very much back outside, shopping like before — it is likely not the last.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Swiggy, the Indian food delivery giant, seeks $1.25 billion in IPO after receiving shareholder approval | TechCrunch

April 25, 2024 11:17 AM0


Swiggy plans to raise $1.25 billion in an initial public offering and has secured approval from its shareholders, the Indian food delivery and instant commerce startup disclosed in a filing to the local regulator.

The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which competes with publicly-listed Zomato and StepStone Group-backed Zepto, plans to raise $450 million through issuance of new shares and offer $800 million of shares from existing backers in the IPO, it wrote in a filing to Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

The Indian startup ecosystem has been eagerly anticipating Swiggy’s public debut, which is slated for later this year. Swiggy counts Prosus, Accel, SoftBank and Invesco among its backers. It was last valued at $10.7 billion in a funding round unveiled in early 2022. Some of its investors, including Invesco and Baron, have since publicly marked up the valuation of Swiggy to over $12 billion.

Swiggy had earlier intended to go public in 2023, TechCrunch previously reported, but deferred the plan due to not-so-favorable market conditions.

This is a developing story. More to follow.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Amazon launches a new grocery delivery subscription in the U.S | TechCrunch

April 23, 2024 4:01 PM0


Amazon said today that it has launched a new grocery delivery subscription for Prime Members and customers with an EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) in the U.S. across 3,500 cities and towns.

The company started testing grocery delivery in three locations last year, including Denver, Colorado; Sacramento, California; and Columbus, Ohio

The subscription costs $9.99 per month for Amazon Prime users and $4.99 per month for Amazon-registered EBT card holders.

The company said that with this subscription, users can avail of free delivery for grocery orders over $35 across Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market, and other local grocery and specialty retailers on the Amazon site. Users will get a 30-day free trial before paying up.

the story is developing…

 

 


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Lucid Motors ekes out a new delivery record as it searches for more EV buyers | TechCrunch

April 17, 2024 8:34 PM0


Lucid Motors delivered more EVs in the first quarter of 2024 than it has in any other quarter, though it set the record by a very slim margin.

The Saudi-backed, California-based electric vehicle company said Tuesday morning that it shipped 1,967 luxury sedans in the quarter. That’s just a few more than it shipped in the fourth quarter of 2022, when it set its previous record of 1,932 deliveries. The company said it built just 1,728 sedans in the first quarter, though, meaning it will need to boost production in the coming quarters if it intends to meet its modest guidance of making 9,000 EVs this year.

Lucid’s new delivery record comes as the company is struggling to find consistent demand for its pricey luxury sedan, the Air. The company is still months away from starting production on its upcoming Gravity SUV, so it is banking on discounts, increased marketing efforts and a more affordable trim of the Air to sustain things until it can ship that new model. In the meantime, it recently turned back to Saudi Arabia to raise another $1 billion to fund what is otherwise still a money-losing business.

Lucid is not alone in its struggles. Rivian also started 2024 on a somewhat flat foot, building and shipping roughly the same number of vehicles in the first quarter as it did in the final term of 2024. These companies are trying to establish themselves in a rapidly changing market, where Tesla has consistently slashed prices and large automakers have scaled back their most ambitious plans to release all-electric vehicles en masse.

While Lucid set a new high mark for itself in the first quarter, it did not say how many of the deliveries were of the most-affordable version of the Air sedan, which it started shipping late last year. The company also said last year that it began shipping the first vehicles to Saudi Arabia for final assembly — the first step in a plan to sell as many as 100,000 vehicles to its majority owner. But it has not specified how many Air sedans have made it to the Kingdom to date. The company will only have the ability to assemble, at most, 5,000 vehicles in Saudi Arabia until a full production plant comes online in a few years.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Inversion Space will test its space-based delivery tech in October | TechCrunch

April 17, 2024 7:55 PM0


Inversion Space is aptly named. The three-year-old startup’s primary concern is not getting things to space, but bringing them back — transforming the ultimate high ground into “a transportation layer for Earth.”

The company’s plan — ultra-fast, on-demand deliveries to anywhere on Earth — sounds like pie in the sky, but it’s the sort of moonshot goal that could transform terrestrial cargo transportation. The aim is to send up fleets of earth-orbiting vehicles that will be able to shoot back to Earth at Mach speeds, slow with specially-made parachutes, and deliver cargo in minutes.

Inversion has developed a pathfinder vehicle, called Ray, that’s a technical precursor to a larger platform that will debut in 2026. Ray will head to space this October, on SpaceX’s Transporter-12 ride share mission, paving the way for Inversion’s future plans on orbit (and back).

Ray is small — about twice the diameter of a standard frisbee — and will spend anywhere from one and five weeks in space, depending on factors like weather and how the orbit aligns with the landing site, Inversion CEO Justin Fiaschetti explained in a recent interview.

This first mission will have three phases: the initial on-orbit phase, where the spacecraft will power on, charge its batteries, and hopefully send telemetry to the ground. During the second phase, Ray will use its onboard propulsion system to slow down the vehicle so it starts losing altitude and reentering the atmosphere. The reentry capsule will separate from the satellite bus (both designed in-house), with the latter structure burning up.

The third and final phase will see Ray slow down using a supersonic drogue parachute, from a reentry speed of Mach 1.8 to Mach 0.2. The main parachute will then deploy, further slowing the capsule to a soft splashdown off the coast of California.

Impressively, the company has designed and built almost all of the Ray vehicle in-house, from the propulsion system to the structure to the parachutes. This last component is key: almost no space company designs parachutes themselves, and they’re incredibly challenging to engineer from the ground up. Inversion’s engineering team completed qualification testing of the deployment and parachute systems last year.

Fiaschetti said strong vertical integration has helped the company move so quickly.

“The purpose of our Ray vehicle is to develop technology for our next-gen vehicle. As such, we’ve built basically the entire vehicle in-house,” Fiaschetti said. “What we saw was that if we can build in-house now, do the hard thing first, that allows us to scale very quickly and meet our customer needs.”

The reentry vehicle is totally passive — meaning it doesn’t have active controls to navigate its reentry to Earth — but the company’s larger next-gen vehicle, called Arc, will have “football field-level” accuracy.

Inversion was founded by CEO Justin Fiaschetti and CTO Austin Briggs in 2021, but the two go back further: they met for the first time when they sat next to each other at a Boston University freshman matriculation ceremony. The pair eventually got jobs in southern California — Briggs, as a propulsion development engineer at ABL Space Systems, while Fiaschetti had brief engineering stints at Relativity and SpaceX — and they were actually roommates when they first floated the idea of developing technology to deliver cargo anywhere on Earth.

The company went through Y Combinator in the summer of 2021 (it was one of our favorites from the cohort) and closed its $10 million seed round in November that same year.

“We’ve been off to the races ever since,” Fiaschetti said. The company’s grown to 25 employees, who are based out of Torrance, California, where they have a 5,000-square-foot facility. The startup also owns five acres of land in the Mojave Desert, where it conducts engine testing. The scaling of the team and this first mission have been entirely financed by that round.

The startup sees promising markets in both government agencies and private companies; both segments could use Inversion’s reusable platform as an on-orbit testbed, or as a delivery vehicle to a private commercial space station. Inversion is aiming on pushing both reusability and duration-on-orbit “to the maximum” to bring down costs and also to support different mission profiles, Fiaschetti said.

Inversion aims to fly the next-gen vehicle, Arc, for the first time in 2026. While the two cofounders declined to provide more details on the spacecraft, the company’s website says it will be capable of carrying over 150 kilograms of cargo, to provide “proliferated” delivery in space.

“We are testing hardware consistently. We’re developing an infrastructure to be able to scale ourselves. Just as our decision to bring parachutes in house was a decision because the parachutes are so directly applicable to what we’re building, it’s making those kinds of key decisions that allows us to move move much faster than another reentry vehicle would take much longer to develop.”




Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Tesla ditches EV inventory discounts to 'streamline' sales and delivery | TechCrunch

April 17, 2024 2:37 AM0


Tesla has ended discounts on inventory across its entire electric vehicle lineup — even as sales for EVs have flagged — as part of a larger and vague plan by CEO Elon Musk to “streamline the whole Tesla sales and delivery system.”

“It has become complex and inefficient,” Musk wrote in a post on X, the social media company he owns, in response to another user’s comment.

Musk’s announcement on X comes a day after thousands of Tesla employees lost their jobs. The layoffs, which will affect more than 10% of staff or about 14,000 people, were caused by poor financial performance, one source told TechCrunch.

One of Tesla’s delivery workers who was cut this week and spoke to TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity said their location was “short staffed” but still lost multiple employees. Tesla appears to have also eliminated most job listings — save a handful of postings related to its Manufacturing Development Program — from its North America careers page, suggesting a hiring freeze.

Rohan Patel, formerly Tesla’s VP of Public Policy and Business Development, told TechCrunch he also left the company Monday because of “[b]ig overall changes” at the company. Patel was one of two high-profile executives to leave Tesla this week, alongside Drew Baglino, formerly Tesla’s SVP of Powertrain and Energy.

The decision to end discounts across its lineup in the United States, including the Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model X is a bit of a whiplash moment for Tesla. The company raised prices for most of 2022. The following year, Tesla started regularly dropping prices on all its vehicles with some models seeing their prices fall nearly 20%, a practice that has continued this year. In April, Tesla dropped the price of many long-range and performance Model Ys by $5,000 and real-wheel drive versions of more than $7,000.

It also follows last week’s announcement that Tesla would drop the monthly subscription cost of its Supervised Full Self-Driving software, Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system, to $99 per month, down from $199 per month.

While the price-cutting of 2023 may have helped Tesla sell a record 1.8 million vehicles, the automaker’s margins have shrunk. And in the first quarter of 2024, Tesla’s delivery numbers fell year-over-year. The automaker also built more cars than it shipped, a trend that has continued in seven of the last eight quarters, which might indicate an area where Tesla will renew its focus this year.

In January, Tesla did warn sales growth could be “notably lower” in 2024 compared to previous years as it prepares to launch a new vehicle platform — the $25,000 EV that appears to have been scrapped in favor of launching a robotaxi by August.

It’s not clear how removing discounts on Tesla vehicles fits into the automaker’s new strategy to streamline sales and delivery. Tesla could not be reached for comment.

Tesla has received a lot of credit for its direct-sales model, which circumvents the traditional dealer setup (and took many years and legal fights to accomplish). But beyond the initial purchase, Tesla has almost always been making changes to its sales and delivery strategy. The automaker has almost always made changes to its sales and delivery strategy.

In late 2018, Musk said that Tesla bought an undisclosed number of trucking companies in order to ship increasing numbers of Model 3 sedans. In early 2019, Musk abruptly announced that Tesla would close many of its retail stores and lay off workers “to achieve the savings required to provide [the Model 3] and be financially sustainable. Less than two months later, the company reversed course. More recently, Tesla announced in late 2022 that its typical end-of-quarter scramble to make and ship as many cars as possible was proving increasingly difficult. Tesla said it was going to smooth out that process — but more than a year later, it’s still dealing with these quarterly bottlenecks.




Software Development in Sri Lanka

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