Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Elon Musk's Tesla 2025 q3 investor relations
Transcript
- 0:01Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
- 0:04Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
- 0:07the critical crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The
- 0:11Boring Company and Neurolink. I'm your host, Will Walden.
- 0:15Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Tesla's third quarter
- 0:182025 Q&A webcast. My name is Travis Axelrod, Head
- 0:23of Investor Relations, and I'm joined today by Elon Musk,
- 0:26Vaibhav Taneja and a number of other executives.
- 0:29Our Q3 results were announced at about 3:00 PM Central Time in
- 0:33the update deck, we published at the same link as this webcast.
- 0:37During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and
- 0:40make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our
- 0:43predictions and expectations as of today.
- 0:45Actual events or results could differ materially due to a
- 0:48number of risks and uncertainties, including those
- 0:53mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC.
- 0:56We urge shareholders to read our definitive proxy statement,
- 0:58which contains important information about the matters we
- 1:01voted on at the 2025 Annual Meeting.
- 1:05During the question and answer portion of today's call, please
- 1:07limit yourself to one question and one follow up.
- 1:10Please use the raise hand button to join the question queue.
- 1:14Before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks.
- 1:17Elon. Thank you.
- 1:22We're we're at a critical inflection point for Tesla and
- 1:27our strategy going forward as we bring AI into the real world.
- 1:30I think it's important to emphasize that Tesla really is
- 1:34the leader in real world AI. No one can do what we can do
- 1:39with real world AII. Have pretty good insight into AI
- 1:45in general I think. That Tesla has the.
- 1:47Highest intelligence density of any AI out there in the car and
- 1:51that is only going to get better.
- 1:54And really just the beginning of scaling at a, at a quite
- 1:57massively full self driving and robo taxi and fundamentally
- 2:02changing the nature of transport.
- 2:03I think people just don't don't quite appreciate the degree to
- 2:06which this will take off where the the it's honestly, it's
- 2:12going to be like a shockwave. So it's it's because because the
- 2:23cars are all out there, they're. You know, we have millions of
- 2:26cars out there that with a software update become full self
- 2:33driving cars. And, and you know, we're making
- 2:38a couple million a year. And, and in fact, with the
- 2:43advent of with, with what we see now as as a clarity on achieving
- 2:49full self driving, unsupervised full self driving, I should say
- 2:54I feel confident in expanding Tesla's production.
- 2:58So that is that is our intent to expand as quickly as we can our
- 3:04future production. So I was, I was resident to do
- 3:08that until we had clarity on, on achieving unsupervised full self
- 3:14driving. But at this point, I, I feel
- 3:17like we've got clarity and it, it makes sense to expand
- 3:22production as as fast as we reasonably can.
- 3:26We're also making huge make making impact, impact on the
- 3:33energy sector with, with battery storage.
- 3:38So with both Powerwall and especially with the Mega Pack,
- 3:43we are dramatically improving the ability to generate more
- 3:49energy from the grid. Let me sort of talk a little bit
- 3:52about that, which is if you, if you look at total US energy
- 3:58capability for example, there's roughly a terawatt of of
- 4:03continuous power available in the US, but the average usage
- 4:07over 24 hour cycle is only half a terawatt because of the.
- 4:11Big difference between day and night usage.
- 4:15If you buffer that buffer the energy with batteries, you can
- 4:18effectively double the energy output in the United States just
- 4:21with batteries building, no incremental power plants.
- 4:24And it's very. Difficult to build power plants,
- 4:26so they take a long time. There's a lot of permitting and
- 4:30it's not an industry that's used to moving fast.
- 4:32So we see the potential there for Tesla battery packs to
- 4:40greatly improve the, the energy output per year for any given
- 4:45grid, US or otherwise. We're also on the cusp of, of
- 4:53something really tremendous with optimists, which I think is
- 4:59likely to be or has potential to be the biggest product of all
- 5:02time. And it's it's a difficult
- 5:09project. And it's worth noting that it's
- 5:12not like it's it's just automatic.
- 5:15I'm unaware of any robot programmed by Ford or GM or, you
- 5:18know, and by US sort of car. Companies, people like I think
- 5:22maybe think of Tesla as as a car company.
- 5:24We mostly make cars and battery packs, but so it's not like it's
- 5:32not just like an obvious. Fall off a log thing to make
- 5:35Optimus, but but we do have the ingredients with of real world
- 5:40AI and exceptional electrical mechanical engineering
- 5:46capabilities and the ability to scale production, which I don't
- 5:51think anyone else has all of those ingredients.
- 5:57So yeah, with with version 14 of the of self driving.
- 6:06Which people you can see the reactions of of people online,
- 6:11they're quite amazed actually anyone in the US can get version
- 6:1614 if they just go and select I want the advanced software in
- 6:20their car. So if if you're listening right
- 6:23now and you'd like to try it out, just go in in settings and
- 6:28say I want the advanced software and you will get version 14.
- 6:35And yeah, so on the Mega Pack front, we've we unveiled Mega
- 6:41Block, Mega Pack 3. We also have exciting plans for
- 6:45Mega. Pack 4, Mega Pack 4 will
- 6:48incorporate a lot of the, a lot of what is normally in a
- 6:54substation and be able to output at probably 35 kilovolts
- 7:04directly. So this, this greatly improves
- 7:07our ability to deploy Megapack because it's not dependent on
- 7:11building a substation of 335 KV or Megapack 4.
- 7:15So that that'll be next. That's the that's the
- 7:19engineering priority for Megapack.
- 7:25And we look forward to unveiling Optimus V3, you know, probably
- 7:32in Q1. I think it'll be ready for to,
- 7:37to show off. And that that I think is going
- 7:41to be quite remarkable. If you, it won't even seem like
- 7:47a robot. It'll seem like a person in a
- 7:50robot suit, which is kind of how we started off with Optimus.
- 7:55But it it'll seem so real that you'll need to like poke it, I
- 8:00think to believe that it's actually a robot.
- 8:06And and obviously, like the the real world intelligence we've
- 8:09developed, we've developed for the car.
- 8:13Most of that transfers to Optimus.
- 8:16So it's a very good starting point.
- 8:19In conclusion, we're excited about the, you know, updated
- 8:23mission of Tesla, which is sustainable abundance.
- 8:27So going beyond sustainable energy to say.
- 8:31Sustainable abundance is the mission where we we believe with
- 8:39with optimist and self driving. That you can actually create a
- 8:47world where there is no poverty, where everyone has access to the
- 8:54finest medical care. Optimist will be an incredible
- 9:00surgeon, for example, and imagine if everyone had access
- 9:04to an incredible surgeon. So, so I, I think there's, you
- 9:12know, of course we need to make sure Optimus is safe and
- 9:14everything, but, but I, I do think we're headed for a world
- 9:18of sustainable abundance and that I'm excited to work with
- 9:21the Tesla team to make that happen.
- 9:27Great. Thank you very much.
- 9:28Elon Vebub also has some opening remarks.
- 9:31Thanks, Travis. Q3 was a special quarter at
- 9:35multiple levels. We set new records not just for
- 9:37deliveries and deployments, but also around a range of financial
- 9:42metrics from total revenues, energy, gross profit, energy
- 9:46margins to fresh free cash flow. This was the result of continued
- 9:51confidence of our customers in our products and the relentless
- 9:54efforts by the Tesla team. The strength and deliveries was
- 9:58attributed to strong performance across all regions.
- 10:02Greater China and APEC were up sequentially 33 and 29%
- 10:06respectively. North America was up 28%, while
- 10:10EMEA was up 25%. The base in deliveries was the
- 10:13function of continued excitement around the new Model Y We had
- 10:17previously talked about 2025 being the year of the Y and have
- 10:21since delivered on that promise with the new Model Y released in
- 10:25Q1. Followed by Model Y, long
- 10:28wheelbase and performance and more recently Standard Y in
- 10:32North America and EMEA. We're now operating a robotaxi
- 10:36in two markets, Austin and most Bay Area cities.
- 10:40We've already expanded our coverage area in Austin three
- 10:43times since the initial launch and are on pace to continue
- 10:47expanding further. Unlike our competitors, our
- 10:50robotaxi fleet blends in. The markets we operate in since
- 10:55they don't have extra sensor sets or peripherals which make
- 10:59them stick out. This is an under appreciated
- 11:02aspect of our current vehicle offerings which are all designed
- 11:06for autonomous driving. We feel that as experience, as
- 11:11people experience the supervised FSD at scale, the demand for our
- 11:16vehicles, like Elon said, would increase significantly on the
- 11:20FSD adoption front. We we've continued to see decent
- 11:24progress. However, note that total paid
- 11:27FSD customer base is still small, around 12% of our current
- 11:30fleet. We're.
- 11:32Moving or we're working with regulators in places like China
- 11:36and EMEA to obtain approval so that we can get FSD in those
- 11:40regions as well. Now covering a little bit on the
- 11:44financial side, automotive revenues increased 29%
- 11:48sequentially in line with the growth and deliveries.
- 11:51While regulatory credits declined sequentially, we
- 11:55entered into new contracts and continued delivery on previously
- 11:59entered contracts. Our automotive margins excluding
- 12:04credits increased marginally from 15% to 15.4, which was
- 12:08attributed to improvements in material cost and better fixed
- 12:12cost absorption due to higher volumes.
- 12:16The energy storage business continue to deliver with record
- 12:19deployments, gross profit and margins.
- 12:22As discussed before, this business has a bigger impact
- 12:25from tariffs as measured by percentage of COGS, since
- 12:29currently all sales procured are from China while we're still
- 12:33working on other alternatives. However, as the ramp of mega
- 12:39factory Shanghai is happening, this is helping us avoid
- 12:43tariffs. Because we are using this
- 12:45factory to supply the non-us demand, like Elon said, you know
- 12:50grid scale storage, the only way we can get to electricity
- 12:55fastest is by using storage. The other thing to keep in mind
- 13:00is we are seeing headwinds in this business given the increase
- 13:04in competition and tariffs, the total tariff impacts for Q3.
- 13:08For both businesses was in excess of 400 million generally
- 13:13split evenly between them. Services and other demonstrated
- 13:19a marked improvement sequentially.
- 13:20This was a function of improvements primarily in our
- 13:23insurance and service center businesses.
- 13:26Note that while small, our robotaxi costs are included
- 13:30within services and other along with our other businesses like
- 13:33paid supercharging, used car parts and merchandise sales
- 13:37etcetera. Our operating expenses increase
- 13:41sequentially, the largest increase included in
- 13:45restructuring and other related to certain actions undertaken to
- 13:48reduce cost and improve efficiency to convergence of our
- 13:52ARAI chip design efforts. Additionally, we incurred legal
- 13:58expenses related to proceedings in certain legal cases as well
- 14:02as incremental cost incurred in preparation for our shareholder
- 14:07meeting. Such costs are recorded within
- 14:10STNA. Further, our employee related
- 14:13spend is increasing especially in R&D as we have recently
- 14:16granted various performance based equity awards to employees
- 14:20working on AI initiatives and therefore such spend will
- 14:24continue to increase going forward.
- 14:27On other income, our other income decreased sequentially
- 14:31primarily from mark to market adjustments on BTC holdings,
- 14:34which was much smaller gain of 80 million in.
- 14:37Q3 versus 284,000,000 in Q2. With the rest of the movement
- 14:41attributable to FX movements in the quarter, our free cash flow
- 14:46for the quarter was approximately 4 billion, which
- 14:49was yet another record. Our total cash and investments
- 14:54at the end of the quarter were over 41 billion.
- 14:57On the CapEx front, while we are expecting to be around 9 billion
- 15:01for the current year, we're projecting the numbers to
- 15:04increase substantially in 2026 as you prepare the company for
- 15:08the next phase of growth in terms of not just our existing
- 15:11businesses, but our bets around AI initiatives including
- 15:15Optimus. In conclusion, note that
- 15:19bringing AI into real world is hard, but we have never shield
- 15:23away from doing what is hard. We are extremely excited about
- 15:27the future and are laying down the foundation, the benefits of
- 15:31which will be realized over years to come.
- 15:34I would like to end by thanking the Tesla team, our customers,
- 15:38our investors and supporters for the continued belief in us.
- 15:44Thank you very much, Vaibhav. Now let's go to
- 15:46investorquestionsfromsay.com. The first question is what are
- 15:51the latest robo taxi metrics? Fleet size, cumulative miles
- 15:55rides, completed intervention rates, and when will safety
- 15:58drivers be removed? What are the obstacles still
- 16:01preventing unsupervised FSD from being deployed to customer
- 16:04vehicles? I'll, I'll start.
- 16:07Off with that and then Shark can elaborate.
- 16:10But we we are expecting to have no safety drivers in at least
- 16:19large parts of Austin by the end of this year.
- 16:21So within a few months, we expect to have no safety drivers
- 16:25at all in at least in parts of Boston.
- 16:28We're obviously being very cautious about the deployment.
- 16:32So, so our goal is to be actually paranoid about
- 16:36deployment because obviously even one accident will be front
- 16:40page headline news worldwide. So I guess it's better for us to
- 16:45take a cautious approach here. But we do expect to have no, no
- 16:49safety drivers in the car in Austin within a few months.
- 16:55I think that's perhaps the most important data point.
- 16:58And then we, we do expect to be operating Robotaxi in I think
- 17:06about 8 to 10 metro areas by the end of the year.
- 17:11You know, it depends on various regulatory approvals and, but
- 17:17you, you can actually, I think most of our regulatory
- 17:19applications are online. You can kind of see them because
- 17:21they're they're public information.
- 17:24But we expect to be operating in Nevada and Florida and Arizona
- 17:30by the end of the year. Ashok Yeah.
- 17:34We we continue to operate our fleet in Austin without anyone
- 17:38in the driver's seat and we have covered more than a quarter
- 17:41million miles with that. And then in the Bay Area where
- 17:45we still have a person in the driver's seat.
- 17:47So the regulations we cross more than 1,000,000 miles.
- 17:51So and we continue to see that the fleet robotaxi fleet works
- 17:55really well. Customers are really happy and
- 17:59there's no notable issues on the customer side via customers have
- 18:03used FSE supervised for a total of 6 billion miles as of
- 18:08yesterday. So that's like a big milestone.
- 18:10And overall the safety continues to be very good.
- 18:14And as I mentioned, we are on on track to remove the person from
- 18:19inside the car all together starting with Austin.
- 18:25Great. The next question is what is the
- 18:29demand and backlog for Megapack, Powerwall, solar or energy
- 18:34storage systems? With the current AI boom, is
- 18:37Tesla playing to supply power to other hyperscalers?
- 18:42Thanks. Demand for Megapack and
- 18:44Powerwall continues to be really strong into next year.
- 18:47We received very strong positive customer feedback on our Mega
- 18:52Black Mega block product, which will begin shipping next year
- 18:55out of Houston. And we're seeing remarkable
- 18:58growth in in the demand for AI and data center applications as
- 19:01hyperscalers and utilities have seen the versatility of the
- 19:04Megapack product to increase reliability and receive and and
- 19:08relieve grid constraints. As Elon was talking about, we
- 19:12we've also seen a surge in residential solar demand in the
- 19:15US due to policy changes, which we expect to continue into the
- 19:18first half of 2026 as we introduced a new solar lease
- 19:21product. And we also began production of
- 19:24our Tesla residential solar panel in our Buffalo factory and
- 19:28we will be shipping that to customers starting Q1.
- 19:30The panel has industry leading aesthetics and shape performance
- 19:34and demonstrates our continued commitment to US manufacturing.
- 19:42Great. Thank you, Mike.
- 19:44Unfortunately, the next question is related to future products.
- 19:47This is not the appropriate venue to cover that, so we're
- 19:49going to have to skip it. The question after that is what
- 19:53are the present challenges in bringing Optimist to market
- 19:56considering app control, software engineering, hardware
- 20:00training, general mobility models, training task specific
- 20:03models, training voice models, implementing manufacturing and
- 20:07establishing supply chains. Yeah, I mean bringing office
- 20:15Optimist market is an incredibly difficult task.
- 20:17To be clear. It's not like some walk in the
- 20:19park at some point. I mean at this actually
- 20:22technically Optimist can walk in the park right now.
- 20:25And we do have Optimist robots that walk around our offices at
- 20:31our engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, CA basically 24 hours
- 20:36a day, seven days a week. So any visitors that come by you
- 20:39actually you can, you can stop to stop one of the Optimist
- 20:43robots and ask it to take you somewhere and it'll literally
- 20:46take you to that meeting room or that location in the building.
- 20:51So I don't want to downplay the difficulty of Optimist.
- 20:55It's, it's an incredibly difficult thing, especially it's
- 20:59difficult to create a, a hand that is as dexterous and capable
- 21:04as the human hand, which is an incredible, the human hand is an
- 21:07incredible thing that the more you study the human hand, the
- 21:11more incredible you realize the human hand is and, and why you
- 21:14need 5, you know, 4 fingers in the thumb.
- 21:17Why the why the fingers have certain degrees of freedom.
- 21:20You know why, why the, the various muscles are of different
- 21:25strengths. The fingers are of different
- 21:26lengths. And it turns out actually that
- 21:31all that, those are all there for a reason.
- 21:35And so making it, making it that the hand and, and forearm,
- 21:41because most of the, most of the actuators, just like the human
- 21:43hand, the muscles of that control your hand are actually
- 21:46primarily in your forearm. The optimist hand and forearm is
- 21:50an incredibly difficult engineering challenge.
- 21:54It's, I'd say it's more difficult than the rest of, from
- 21:57an electromechanical standpoint, the forearm and hand are, it's
- 22:00more difficult than the entire rest of the robot.
- 22:05So, but really in order to have a, a useful generalized robot,
- 22:10you, you do need this, you do need an incredible hand and, and
- 22:15then you need the real world AI and you need to be able to scale
- 22:20up that production to have it be relevant, because it's not
- 22:24relevant if it's just a few 100 robots.
- 22:28But so you need to be able to make Optimus robots at volumes
- 22:32comparable to vehicles, if not significantly higher.
- 22:38So if you're trying to make a million or something per year,
- 22:42I'm trying to make a million Optimus robots per year.
- 22:45That manufacturing challenge is immense considering that the
- 22:48supply chain doesn't exist. So with with cars, you've got an
- 22:52existing supply chain. With computers, you've got an
- 22:55existing supply chain. With, with a humanoid robot,
- 22:59there is no supply chain. So in order to, to manufacture
- 23:04that, Tesla actually has to be very vertically integrated and
- 23:09manufacture very deep into the supply chain, manufacture the
- 23:15parts internally because there just is no supply chain.
- 23:20So this is this is the kind of thing where I'm like, if I put
- 23:23myself in the position of a startup trying to make an
- 23:25humanoid robot, I'm like, I don't know how to do it without
- 23:29and an immense amount of manufacturing technology.
- 23:35So that's that's why I think like Tesla's in almost a unique,
- 23:39I think, I think unique position when you consider manufacturing
- 23:42technology, scaling real world AI and the and a truly dexterous
- 23:49hand. Those are the generally the
- 23:52things that are missing when you read about other robots that
- 23:56they just don't have those three things.
- 24:00So now I think we can achieve all those things, those those
- 24:04three things with an immense amount of work.
- 24:08And, and that, that is that is the game plan.
- 24:11So, you know, my, like my, you know, fundamental concern with
- 24:20regard to how much voting control I have in Tesla is if I
- 24:25go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted
- 24:28at some point in the future? That's my biggest concern.
- 24:32If I that's, that, that is the, that is really the only thing
- 24:34I'm trying to address with with this.
- 24:37So it's called compensation, but it's not like I'm going to go
- 24:40spend the money. It's just if we build this robot
- 24:44on me. Do I have at least?
- 24:48A strong influence over that robot on me.
- 24:51It's not control, but a strong influence.
- 24:54That's that's what it comes down to in a nutshell.
- 24:57Like I don't feel comfortable building that robot on me if I
- 24:59don't have at least a strong influence.
- 25:04Great. Thank you.
- 25:06We've already covered robotaxi expansion.
- 25:10Unfortunately, the question after that is another future
- 25:12product question. So we're going to have to skip
- 25:14that. The next one though is can you
- 25:16update us on the $16.5 billion Samsung chip deal?
- 25:20And Taylor, given the importance of semiconductors to autonomy
- 25:23and Tesla's AI driven future, what gives you confidence
- 25:26Samsung can fulfill AI 6 at Tesla's timelines and achieve
- 25:30relatively better yields and cost versus TSTSMC?
- 25:35OK, so I'm going to give quite a long answer to this question
- 25:39because I have to unpack this question and then and then
- 25:42answer the unpacked version. So first of all.
- 25:49I have nothing but great things to say about Samsung.
- 25:51They're an amazing company and Samsung is worth noting this
- 25:57manufacturer our AI4 computer and does a great job doing that.
- 26:03So now with the, the AI5 and here's I, I need to make a point
- 26:12of clarification relative to some comments I've made publicly
- 26:16before, which is we're actually going to focus both TSMC and
- 26:21Samsung initially on AI5. So the, the AI5 chip design by
- 26:28Tesla is I, I think it's an amazing design.
- 26:35I've spent almost every weekend for last last few months with
- 26:41the chip design team working on AI5 and I, I don't hand out
- 26:47praise easily, but I have to say that I think, I think the Tesla
- 26:52chip team is, is really designing an incredible chip
- 26:56here. This is by some metrics, the AI5
- 27:00chip will be 40 times better than the AI4 chip, not 40%,
- 27:07forty times because we, we, we have a detailed understanding of
- 27:13the entire software and hardware stack.
- 27:15So we're designing the hardware to address all of the pain
- 27:20points and software. So I don't think there's, there
- 27:23really isn't anyone that's doing this the entire stack all the
- 27:28way through real world, you know, calibrating against the
- 27:33real world where you've got cars and robots in real world that
- 27:36like we know what the chip needs to do and we know what, just as
- 27:40importantly, we know what the chip doesn't need to do.
- 27:46You know, to sort of give you some examples here with the AI
- 27:505:00, we, we deleted the the legacy GPU or the OR the
- 27:57traditional GPU, which is it, it's in AI 4, but AI 5 does not
- 28:03have, we just just deleted the legacy GPU because it basically
- 28:09is a GPU. So we also deleted the image
- 28:14signal processor. And there's, there's like a long
- 28:20list of actually of deletions that are very important.
- 28:25As a result of these deletions, we can actually fit AI5 in 1/2
- 28:31reticle and. With with with good margin for
- 28:37the traces from the memory to the the trip, the Tesla trip
- 28:43accelerators. The ARM, the ARM CPU course and
- 28:51and the PCI. Sort of the PCI blocks.
- 28:56So this, this is a beautiful chip.
- 29:04I've poured so much life energy into this.
- 29:06Chip personally and I'm I'm confident this will be this is
- 29:10going to be a winner next level. So it makes sense to have both
- 29:17Samsung and TSMC focus on AI5 and so like the technically the
- 29:25Samsung fab has slightly more advanced equipment than the
- 29:28TSMC. Fab, these will be.
- 29:30Both be made in in the US that in one TSMC in Arizona, Samsung
- 29:35in Texas and but but it's it it we're going to make.
- 29:43Starting off, just to be confident of having our, our,
- 29:47our goal, explicit goal is to have an oversupply of AI5 chips.
- 29:54Because if, if we, if we have too many AI5 chips for the cars
- 29:57and, and and robots, we can, we can always put them in the data
- 30:00center. So we already use AI4 for for
- 30:06training in our in our data center.
- 30:08So we use a combination of AI4 and NVIDIA hardware.
- 30:13So we're not about to replace NVIDIA to be clear, but but but
- 30:18we do use both in combination AI four and NVIDIA hardware and the
- 30:24AI5 excess production we can always put in in our data
- 30:28centers. NVIDIA keeps keeps improving
- 30:34that. The challenge that they have is
- 30:35that they've got to satisfy a large range, a lot of
- 30:38requirements from a lot of customers, but Tesla only has to
- 30:42satisfy requirements from one customer with Tesla that that
- 30:45makes the design job radically easier and means we we can
- 30:49delete a lot of complexity from the chip.
- 30:53Like I can't emphasize how important this is.
- 30:56So like when when you look at the various logic blocks in the
- 30:58chip, as you increase the number of logic blocks, you also
- 31:02increase the interconnections between the logic blocks.
- 31:05So you can think of it like there's just highways, like how
- 31:09many highways do you need to connect the various parts of the
- 31:12chip? And especially if you're not
- 31:14sure how much data is going to go between each, you know, logic
- 31:19block on the chip, then you, you kind of end up having giant
- 31:22highways going all over the place.
- 31:25It's a very, it like it becomes an almost impossibly difficult
- 31:29design problem. And Nvidia's done an amazing job
- 31:31of dealing with almost an impossibly difficult set of
- 31:33requirements. But in our case, we, we, we're
- 31:37going for radical simplicity. And the net effect is that I, I,
- 31:43I think AI 5 will be the best performance per Watt, maybe by a
- 31:50factor of two or three and the best performance per dollar for
- 31:54AI, maybe by a factor of 10. So you know, that's you know.
- 32:03We'll have to. The proof's in the pudding, so
- 32:05obviously we need to actually get this chip made and made it
- 32:08scale, but that's what it looks like.
- 32:15Great. Thank you, Elon, we've already
- 32:18covered unsupervised FSD. So the next question is, instead
- 32:22of trying to replace hardware 3 with hardware 4, why not give an
- 32:25equal incentive to trade in for a new vehicle?
- 32:29Yeah, not completely given on upon hardware three.
- 32:33However, over the last year we've offered the customers the
- 32:36option to transfer FSD to their new vehicle with which at times
- 32:41you've been running some promotions if if they got FSD,
- 32:45they can get better preferential rates.
- 32:48So we've been definitely taking care of this.
- 32:51But we do want to solve autonomy first and then we'll come back
- 32:54with a way to take care of these customers.
- 32:56These customers are very important.
- 32:58They were the early adapters. For what it's worth.
- 33:01My daily commuter is a hardware 3 car which I use FSD on a daily
- 33:05basis, so we will definitely take care of you guys.
- 33:12Great and thank you. Once the V14 release series is
- 33:17fully done, we are planning on working on AV14 Lite version for
- 33:22Hardware 3, probably expected in Q2 next year.
- 33:29Awesome. Thanks Ashok.
- 33:31Alrighty, our final question from say is how long until we
- 33:36see self driving Tesla semi trucks and could you see this
- 33:39technology replacing trains? Yeah.
- 33:42So I guess I'll start with that. In terms of the semi production
- 33:46plan and schedule, so the factory is is going on schedule.
- 33:49We've, you know, completed the building and are installing the
- 33:52equipment. Now we've got our fleet of
- 33:54validation trucks driving on the road.
- 33:58We'll have larger builds towards the end of this year and then
- 34:00our first online builds in the first part of next year ramping
- 34:03into you know the Q2 timing with real volume coming in the back
- 34:06half of the year. So that's going quite well and
- 34:09and that's the first step to obviously getting autonomous
- 34:12trucks on the road. In terms of trains, you know,
- 34:15they're really great for long point to point deliveries are
- 34:18super efficient, but you know, that last mile, the load unload
- 34:23can be better served for in shorter distances with
- 34:25autonomous semis. And that would be great.
- 34:28And so we do expect that to probably shift.
- 34:29And as we, you know, really, as Elon said, change the way
- 34:33transportation is considered. And so we're looking forward to
- 34:36that timeline. And Ashok, I know you can can
- 34:39take the the full self driving part.
- 34:41Currently, the team is super focused on solving for passenger
- 34:44vehicles autonomy. That said, the same technology
- 34:47will extend quite easily to the semi truck once we have a little
- 34:51bit of data from the semi trucks.
- 34:56Great. And now we will move over to
- 34:59analyst questions. The first question comes from
- 35:02Emmanuel at Wolf. Emmanuel, please go ahead and
- 35:05unmute yourself. Great.
- 35:10Thanks so much. Hi, everybody.
- 35:12So Ilan, you talked about expanding production of vehicles
- 35:18as fast as possible. Now that you have confidence in
- 35:21the unsupervised autonomy. How should we think about that
- 35:25in the context of your existing capacity of 3,000,000 units?
- 35:30Is that where you're hoping to get volume to?
- 35:33What sort of timeline are we talking about?
- 35:36And would this require, you know, some level of boosting or
- 35:42incentivizing demand? Like would this basically be
- 35:45prioritizing volume over near term profitability given the
- 35:49longer term opportunity? Well, our.
- 35:54Capacity isn't quite 3,000,000, but it, it, it will be 3,000,000
- 36:02at some point. You know, aspirationally, you
- 36:05know, it could be 3,000,000 within we could probably hit an
- 36:08annualized rate of 3,000,000 within 24 months, I think maybe
- 36:12less than 24 months. Bearing in mind like this,
- 36:16there's an entire like supply chain, like a vast supply chain
- 36:19that's got to also move in tandem with that.
- 36:23So I think we're going to, we're going to expand production as
- 36:28fast as, as, as, as we can and as fast as our suppliers can,
- 36:33can, can sort of keep up with it.
- 36:37And then we're going to think about where, where do we build
- 36:41incremental factories beyond that, Like the single biggest
- 36:47expansion in production will be the the Cyber Cab, which starts
- 36:49production in Q2 next year. That's, that's really a vehicle
- 36:54that's optimized for full autonomy, in fact does not have
- 36:58a steering wheel or pedals and is really an engineering
- 37:02optimization on minimizing cost per mile, if you like fully
- 37:05considered cost per mile of operation.
- 37:09So that's. You know, for the other, for
- 37:12the, for other vehicles, they're still, they still have a little
- 37:15bit of the horseless carriage thing going on where you know,
- 37:17obviously you've got if you're still, if you've got steering
- 37:19wheels and pedals and. And and you're designing a car
- 37:22that people might want to go, you know, very direct past
- 37:27acceleration and tight cornering, like high performance
- 37:30car, you know, cars. Then you're going to design a
- 37:33different car than one that is optimized for a comfortable
- 37:35ride, but doesn't expect to go, you know, past sort of 85 or 90
- 37:40miles an hour. And it's just aiming for a
- 37:43gentle ride the whole time. That's what cybercap is.
- 37:48So yeah, so so it's do I think we'll sacrifice margins?
- 37:56I don't think so. I think the demand will be
- 37:59pretty naughty. But like here's the here's the
- 38:02killer app. Really what it comes down to is
- 38:04can you text? Can you text while you're in the
- 38:06car? And if you tell someone yes that
- 38:09the car is now so good, you can you can you can be on your phone
- 38:16and text the entire time while you're in the car.
- 38:18It's anyone who can buy the car will buy the car and A and a
- 38:23story. So that's what everybody wants
- 38:29to do. In fact, not everyone wants to
- 38:31do they do do that. And that's why, in fact, the
- 38:33reason you've seen like there's been an uptick in accidents very
- 38:38much worldwide is because people are.
- 38:40Texting and driving. So Autopilot actually
- 38:44dramatically improves the safety here.
- 38:47Because if somebody's looking down at their phone, they're not
- 38:49driving very well. So that's, that's really the,
- 38:54the game changer. And you know, we, we do see like
- 39:01at this point, I feel, you know, essentially 100% confident.
- 39:06I say not essentially 100% confident that we can set that
- 39:10we can solve unsupervised full full self driving at a safety
- 39:14level much greater than human. So we've released 14.1.
- 39:22We've got a technology road map that's I think pretty amazing.
- 39:27We'll be adding reasoning to the car.
- 39:31Our world simulator for for reinforcement learning is is
- 39:37pretty incredible. Like our like our when you see
- 39:40it that the Tesla reality Simulator it's you can't tell
- 39:43the difference between the video that's generated by the Tesla
- 39:47reality simulator and the actual video looks exactly the same.
- 39:52So that allows us to have a very powerful reinforcement learning
- 39:58loop to further improve the Tesla AI, we're going to be
- 40:02increasing the parameter count by an order of magnitude that
- 40:07that's not in 14.1. There are also a number of other
- 40:11improvements to the AI just. That, that are that are quite
- 40:16radical. So it's this, this car will feel
- 40:23like it is a living creature. That's how good the the AI will
- 40:26get with the AI4 computer with this before AI5 and then and
- 40:31then AI5, like I said, is by some metrics 4040 times better.
- 40:35But let's just say safely it's a 10X improvement.
- 40:40So it might almost be too much intelligence for a car.
- 40:42I do wonder, like how much intelligence should you have in
- 40:44a car? It might get bored actually.
- 40:51And then one of the things I thought like, well, if we got
- 40:54all these cars that maybe are bored, well, while they're,
- 40:56while they're sort of, if they are bored, we, we could actually
- 41:00have a giant distributed inference fleet and say like,
- 41:03well, if they're not actively driving, let's just have a giant
- 41:06distributed inference fleet. You know, at some point if, if
- 41:11you've got like 10s of millions of cars in the fleet or maybe at
- 41:14some point 100 million cars in the fleet.
- 41:17And let's say they had at at that point, you know, like I
- 41:25don't know, a kilowatt of inference capability of, you
- 41:30know, high performance inference capability, that's 100 gigawatts
- 41:34of inference distributed with, with power and cooling taken
- 41:39with, with, with cooling and, and power conversion taken care
- 41:42of. So that seems like a pretty
- 41:49significant asset. Great.
- 41:54Thanks, Elon. The next question comes from
- 41:56Adam from Morgan Stanley. Adam, please feel free to unmute
- 42:00yourself. Adam, go ahead and ask your
- 42:08question. Seems like we might be having
- 42:14some audio issues with Adam, so we'll come back to you.
- 42:17The next question will then come from Dan from Barclays.
- 42:26Hi, good evening. Thank you for taking the
- 42:29question. Elon, I, I know that Tesla's
- 42:33really focused on with master plan for bringing AI into the
- 42:37physical world. And I think we've seen over the
- 42:39past, you know, this willingness for Tesla to engage and, and go
- 42:44into new markets, new Tams. So when you think about the
- 42:48growth prospects, how do we define the areas that are really
- 42:52within Tesla's core competency versus where do you draw the
- 42:56line for markets or AI applications that are outside of
- 43:02Tesla's core competency? Actually, I'm not sure what you
- 43:07mean by AI applications outside of Tesla's core competency.
- 43:12But and we, we kind of, we didn't have any of these core
- 43:17competencies when we started. You know, so it's like we had 0
- 43:22core competencies, total competency of 0 actually.
- 43:26So, I mean, you can think of Tesla as like, I don't know, a
- 43:29dozen start-ups in one company, you know, and, and I've
- 43:34initiated every one of those start-ups.
- 43:36So it's, it wouldn't used to make battery packs, so
- 43:41stationary battery packs, but now we're due make them for the
- 43:44home, make them for, you know, utility scale with power wall
- 43:47mega pack. We've created the Supercharger
- 43:52network globally. No one, no one else has created
- 43:55a global Supercharger network. In fact, that North American
- 43:58Supercharger network's so good at that, that basically that
- 44:02yeah, every other manufacturer in North America is converted to
- 44:04our standard and uses our the Tesla Supercharge network.
- 44:10But if it was so easy, why don't they just do it?
- 44:14And the chip design team started that from scratch.
- 44:20The Tesla AI software team was started from scratch.
- 44:24I literally just say, hey, we're going to start this thing I
- 44:27posted on Twitter now X and then, you know, join us if you'd
- 44:32like to build it. In fact, Ashok was, I believe,
- 44:36the first person I interviewed for the the Tesla autopilot
- 44:39team, which we now call the Tesla AI software team, which
- 44:42because it is the AI software team.
- 44:46So you know, it's core companies, competencies created
- 44:49while you wait and you know, Optimus at scale.
- 44:57It is the infinite money glitch. It's like this is a, it's
- 45:03difficult to express the magnitude of like if you've got
- 45:09something that like that, like if I.
- 45:14Optimist, I think probably achieve 5X to the productivity
- 45:16of a person per year because it can operate the 24/7.
- 45:22It doesn't even need to charge. It can operate it tethered.
- 45:24So it's plugged in the whole time and whatever.
- 45:32So it it that's that's why I call it like if, if you're true
- 45:34of sustainable abundance, we're working will be optional.
- 45:40You know, there's there's a limit to how much, how much AI
- 45:42can do in terms of enhancing the productivity of humans, but
- 45:47there is not really a limit to AI that is embodied.
- 45:53That's why I call it the infinite money glitch.
- 45:59I mean, one thing which I'll further add is I mean, people
- 46:02forget like our first iteration of Autopilot was 10 years back.
- 46:07So you know, Elon had started this way back in the day.
- 46:10We've got the tweets to prove it exactly.
- 46:13And then even even on the optimist side, right, as much as
- 46:17people think, OK, this is a new thing, I still remember, was it
- 46:204 plus years back? We were in a finance meeting
- 46:23with Elon and Elon said, hey, our car is a robot on wheels and
- 46:28that's where we started developing.
- 46:30In fact, most of the engineering team which is working on Optimus
- 46:34has come from the vehicle side. And that's why, you know, when
- 46:38we talk about manufacturing progress, we have the
- 46:41wherewithal because the same engineers who worked in the back
- 46:45in the day on drive units are working on actuators now.
- 46:49So that's where we can do if there's any company which can do
- 46:52it at scale, that is going to be us.
- 46:55But we we also have actually added a lot of new engineers as
- 46:58well to the team. So there's actually a lot of the
- 47:01credit for the Optimus Engineering is, is actually also
- 47:05new, new engineers, many of them that are just out of college
- 47:08actually. So the Optimus engineering team
- 47:13is a. Very talented engineering team,
- 47:17I'd say like wow, actually so and you know, the optimist
- 47:25reviews at this point are the the engineering review and then
- 47:31there's the manufacturing review being done.
- 47:33It's simultaneously with an iterative loop between
- 47:39engineering, design and and manufacturing, because then we
- 47:42see. We, we.
- 47:43We. We.
- 47:43Designed something and we see like, oh man, that's really
- 47:45difficult to make. We need to change that design to
- 47:48make it easier to manufacture. So we've made radical
- 47:51improvements to the design of Optimus while increasing the
- 47:55functionality, but making it actually possible to manufacture
- 47:58like I'd say Optimus 2 is almost.
- 48:00Impossible to manufacture, frankly, but by two bipolars
- 48:06point we've gone from, you know, a person in a robot outfit to
- 48:12what what people have seen with Optimus 2.5 where it's doing
- 48:15Kung Fu. You know, it was like after this
- 48:18was at the at the Tron premiere doing Kung Fu, you know, just
- 48:24out in the open, you know, like with Jared Leto, like there
- 48:28wasn't nobody was controlling it.
- 48:31It was just doing Kung Fu with Jared Leto, you know, at the
- 48:36Tron premiere. You can see the videos online
- 48:41and actually The funny thing is like a lot of people walked past
- 48:43it thinking it was just a person.
- 48:48Even though with Optimus 2.5, you can see that it has, you
- 48:52know, a waist that's three inches wide that results in not
- 48:55a human. So but the movements were so
- 49:00human like that people didn't realize.
- 49:01A lot of people didn't realize they were looking at a robot.
- 49:04So, and what I'm saying is like Optimus 3 will be a giant
- 49:11improvement on that and made it scale.
- 49:17But like I said, a very difficult thing.
- 49:20Yeah, the the optimist sort of engineering and manufacturing
- 49:26reviews. And there's the Friday night
- 49:28meeting with optimists, which sometimes goes till midnight.
- 49:32And then my Saturday meeting is, is with the is, is the Saturday
- 49:37afternoons with the the AI5 chip design team.
- 49:43So those two things are crucial to the future of the company.
- 49:52Great. And Dan, did you follow up?
- 49:53Yeah. Just as a related, maybe you
- 49:57could just talk about to what extent are the AI efforts at
- 50:00Tesla and XAI complimentary or are they just different forms of
- 50:05AI? Maybe you can just help
- 50:07distinguish for the audience? Thank you.
- 50:09Yeah, there there are different. Forms of AI so the you know the.
- 50:20The ex AI so Grok is like a a giant model that that you could
- 50:25not you could not possibly squeeze Grok onto a car, that's
- 50:29for sure. It is a giant piece of a model.
- 50:31It's with Grok. It's trying to say solve for
- 50:34artificial general intelligence with a massive amount of AI
- 50:38training compute and and inference compute.
- 50:43So for example, for Croc 5 will actually only run effectively on
- 50:47a GV300. That's, that's how much of A
- 50:49beast that Croc 5 is. So, you know, whereas Tesla's,
- 50:59you know, models are, I don't know, maybe about less than 10%
- 51:04the size, maybe closer to 5% the size of, of, of Croc.
- 51:10So yeah, they're, they're they're, they're really coming
- 51:14at the problem from very different angles.
- 51:19X and Grok are are you know they're competing with.
- 51:25You know, Google Gemini and opening I ChatGPT and that kind
- 51:28of thing. So, and some of it's
- 51:33complementary, for example, for grok voice, being able to
- 51:37interact with grok in the car is cool Grok for you know, Optimus
- 51:44voice recognition and voice generation is grok.
- 51:49So that's that's helpful there. But they are.
- 51:52Coming at it from kind of opposite ends of the spectrum.
- 51:56Already, Adam, let's give it another try.
- 52:01When you're ready, please unmute yourself for the next question.
- 52:09Already unfortunately still having audio issues, so we're
- 52:13gonna move on to Walt from Light Shed.
- 52:20Walt, please go ahead and unmute yourself can.
- 52:26You hear me now? Yes, Perfect.
- 52:29Thank you. Just getting back to Austin, if,
- 52:33if you can remove the safety driver at year end, is the
- 52:37limitation the Bay Area just regulatory or is it kind of the
- 52:40market by market learning process?
- 52:42And I guess similarly in the 8 to 10 markets that you mentioned
- 52:45to get added, is the decision there to put, you know a safety
- 52:49attendant in the passenger seat or the safety driver?
- 52:52And is that like your step by step process to opening up a
- 52:57market or is it really just the regulation in the individual
- 52:59market? Well, it's, I think, I think
- 53:03even if the regulators weren't making us do it, we'd still do
- 53:05that as the, as the sort of right, sort of cautious,
- 53:09cautious approach to a new market.
- 53:11So just to make sure that we're being, you know, paranoid about
- 53:15safety, I think it makes sense to have a sort of a sort of a
- 53:21either safety driver or safety occupant in the car when we
- 53:25first go to new markets. To just to confirm that there's
- 53:28not something we're missing. Because all it.
- 53:31Takes is like one in 10,000 trips to go wrong and and you've
- 53:34got you've got an issue. So it's it just to make sure
- 53:39like is is there some peculiarity about a city like a,
- 53:42a very difficult intersection or I don't know, something that's
- 53:47that's an unexpected challenge in in a city for that one in
- 53:5110,000 situation. So, right, I think we, we, we
- 53:59probably could just let her loose in the, in this, in these
- 54:01cities, but we just don't want, we don't want to take a chance.
- 54:03And, and, and like, you know, what we're talking about here
- 54:05is, you know, maybe 3 months of safety driver in, in a new metro
- 54:11to confirm that it's good. And then we take the safety
- 54:13driver off that, that kind of thing.
- 54:16OK. And then on, on FSD 14, it has a
- 54:20different feel than 13 and it's also I think a little different
- 54:23than what it feels like in in Austin.
- 54:25Are you, is it basically def different development pass path
- 54:29that you're doing in terms of the robotaxi stuff versus what
- 54:32you're dropping to the early adopters?
- 54:34And when you and when you push these new builds, is it that
- 54:38you're you're looking for notable improvements in
- 54:40intervention rates or is that largely solved and it's more
- 54:43about adding the functionality like the parking, the Dr. modes
- 54:46or or just the overall comfort? Now the the first priority when
- 54:50we release a a major new software architecture of.
- 54:55For autopilot is safety. So, so it's, it starts off with
- 54:59safety, obviously safety prioritized and then we've, and
- 55:03then we solve comfort thereafter, which is why I don't
- 55:06recommend people take the, the initial version.
- 55:09Like like that's why I say like, yeah, most people should wait
- 55:12until 14.2 for before they actually download version 14
- 55:19because by 14.2 we'll have addressed many of the comfort
- 55:21issues. The priority is, is very much
- 55:26safety 1st and then thereafter the comfort issues.
- 55:29That's why most people are like, probably it'll be a little like
- 55:34it'll be safe but jerky. And we just need time to kind of
- 55:40smooth the rough edges and solve for comfort in addition to
- 55:43safety with a with a major news autopilot architecture change.
- 55:52But it really is, I mean, I, I, I know what the, you know, the
- 55:57road map is for the Tesla real world AI and, and a very
- 56:02granular detail. Obviously Ashok is leading that.
- 56:05And, and I mean, I spent a lot of time with the team going, you
- 56:09know, in, in like excruciating detail here on, on what, what,
- 56:17what we're doing to improve the real world AI.
- 56:21And like I said this, this car is going to feel like it is a
- 56:24living creature. And that's with AI 4 before even
- 56:27AI 5. Yeah, the road map is super
- 56:30accelerating like it's like so like waiting so much like
- 56:34released all the stuff we're working on in terms of like, you
- 56:37know, what we ship to customers versus robotaxi, it's mostly the
- 56:41same. Obviously customers have
- 56:42somewhat features like you know, they can choose the car wants to
- 56:45park in a spot or driver or something like that, which is
- 56:48not super relevant for Robotaxi. But there's only a few minor
- 56:51changes like those ones. But the majority of the
- 56:54algorithms and architecture, everything is the same between
- 56:56those two platforms. Yeah.
- 56:59But and as I mentioned earlier, like we'll be adding reasoning
- 57:02to, I don't know, Shrek, is that like reasoning in like 14.3,
- 57:07maybe 14.4, something like that? Yeah.
- 57:10Or by end of this year for sure. Yeah, so with reasoning, it's
- 57:14literally going to think about which parking spot to pick at
- 57:18the. So it's going to say this is the
- 57:19entrance, but actually probably there's not a parking spot right
- 57:23at the entrance if it's a full, you know, if the if the parking
- 57:27lot is fairly full, the probability of an open parking
- 57:29spot right at the entrance is very low.
- 57:32But actually what it'll simply do is drop you off at the
- 57:34entrance of the store and then go find a parking spot.
- 57:39But it's it's going to get very smart about figuring out a
- 57:41parking. Spot it's going to spot.
- 57:43Figure out it's going to spot Empty spots.
- 57:46Much better than human. It's got 360° vision.
- 57:50And it's gonna, yeah. Yeah, like I said, just it's.
- 57:54It's gonna use reasoning to solve things.
- 57:58And putting that all inside the computer that has a four is the
- 58:02actual challenge. And that's what the team is
- 58:03working on. Because obviously you can do
- 58:05reasoning on the server that takes whatever, but then in car
- 58:07you need to make real time decisions.
- 58:10So putting on the computer that's in the car, that's the
- 58:13challenge. Yeah, that's why I say like,
- 58:15like I have a pretty good understanding of like AI, you
- 58:19know, the, the sort of the, the giant model level with Grog and
- 58:22with, with Tesla. And like I'm confident in saying
- 58:25that Tesla has the, the Tesla AI has the highest intelligence
- 58:28density when you look at the, the intelligence per GB.
- 58:32I think like Tesla, AI is probably an order of magnitude
- 58:35better than anyone else and doesn't.
- 58:38Have any choice because that that AI has got to fit in the AI
- 58:41for computer. The but the the discipline of
- 58:46having that level of AI intelligence density will pay
- 58:51great dividends when you go to something that has an order of
- 58:54magnitude, order of magnitude more capability like AI5.
- 58:58Now you have that same intelligence density but but you
- 59:01got 10 times more capability in the computer.
- 59:06Great. The next question will come from
- 59:08Colin at Oppenheimer. Colin, please unmute yourself
- 59:12when you're ready. Alan, go ahead and unmute
- 59:20yourself please. Thanks so much guys.
- 59:22You know, I appreciate you bringing up the, the challenges
- 59:25of hand dexterity and humanoids, you know, along with the
- 59:28complexity of the supply chain and the, the vertical
- 59:30integration you guys are pursuing.
- 59:32You know, I'm just trying to harmonize the, the timeline for
- 59:34the start of production, you know, next year with the current
- 59:37state of the supply chain and what sounds like a fair amount
- 59:39of work remaining on the dexterity before you can really
- 59:42freeze the hardware design and and start to scale up
- 59:45production. Well.
- 59:51We're not the, the hardware design will not actually be
- 59:53frozen even through startup production.
- 59:57There'll be continued iteration because a bunch of the things
- 1:00:00that you discover are very difficult to make.
- 1:00:02You only find that pretty late in the game.
- 1:00:05So we'll be doing rolling changes of of for the optimist
- 1:00:09design even after startup production.
- 1:00:12But I do think that the the you know, the new hand is.
- 1:00:18An an incredible piece of engineering and you know,
- 1:00:23that's, well, actually we'll have a production intent
- 1:00:27prototype ready to show off in, you know, Q1, probably February
- 1:00:32or March and then we're yeah. We're we're, we're going to be.
- 1:00:40Building a, you know, million unit Optimus production line,
- 1:00:46you know, hopefully with the production start towards the end
- 1:00:49of next year, but that that production ramp will take a
- 1:00:54while to get to annualized rate of 1,000,000 because it's going
- 1:00:58to move as fast as the the slowest, dumbest, least lucky
- 1:01:03thing out of 10,000 unique items.
- 1:01:08But it, but it will, it will get to 1,000,000 units and then
- 1:01:13ultimately, you know, we'll do Optimus 4.
- 1:01:16That'll be, you know, 10 million units, Optimus 5, maybe 50 to
- 1:01:23100 million units. I mean, it's really pretty
- 1:01:24nutty. Yeah.
- 1:01:30All righty, that is unfortunately all the time we
- 1:01:33have for Q&A today. Before we conclude though,
- 1:01:36Vaibhav has some closing remarks.
- 1:01:39Thanks, Davis. I want to take the time to talk
- 1:01:42about an extremely important vote which is being held on
- 1:01:45November 6th. The meeting will shape the
- 1:01:49future of Tesla and we are asking you as our shareholders
- 1:01:53to support Elon's leadership through the two compensation
- 1:01:56proposals and the re election of Ira, Kathleen and Joe to the
- 1:02:01board. Note that it is a team sport and
- 1:02:04here at Tesla, the board is an integral part of the winning
- 1:02:07team. Shareholders are at the center
- 1:02:11of everything we do at Tesla, and a special committee has laid
- 1:02:15out a compensation package. Like Elon said, don't we don't
- 1:02:19even want to call it a compensation package.
- 1:02:21Yeah. So the point is that I just like
- 1:02:23there needs to be enough voting control to give a strong
- 1:02:25influence, but not not so much that I can't be fired if I go
- 1:02:28insane. But I you know, and I think
- 1:02:33that's sort of numbers in the mid 20s approximately.
- 1:02:36As a company that has already gone public, there's no.
- 1:02:39That we've investigated every possible way to how do you
- 1:02:42achieve increased voting control without, you know, is there some
- 1:02:50way to have like a super voting stock?
- 1:02:51But there there really isn't, is there is no way to have a super
- 1:02:54voting stock after you've gone public.
- 1:02:57But for example, Google, Meta, you know, many other companies
- 1:03:04have this, but they, they had it before they went public.
- 1:03:09And so it sort of gets, I guess grandfathered in.
- 1:03:12Tesla does not have that. So it's just like I said, I just
- 1:03:18don't feel comfortable building a robot army here and not and
- 1:03:20then, you know, being ousted because of some ASEAN
- 1:03:26recommendations from ISS and Glass Lewis who have no freaking
- 1:03:30clue. I.
- 1:03:31Mean those guys are corporate terrorists and.
- 1:03:35And the problem yeah. So let me like explain.
- 1:03:36Like the core problem here is that so many of the index funds,
- 1:03:42the passive funds vote along the lines of what whatever Glass
- 1:03:47Lewis and ISS recommend. Now, they've made many terrible
- 1:03:53recommendations in the past that if those recommendations have
- 1:03:56been followed, would have been extremely destructive to the
- 1:03:59future of the company. But if you've got passive funds
- 1:04:02that essentially defer responsibility for the vote to
- 1:04:08Glass Lewis and ISS, then you can have extremely disastrous
- 1:04:13consequences for a publicly traded company.
- 1:04:15If if too much of the publicly traded company is controlled by
- 1:04:19index funds, it's de facto controlled by Glass Lewis and
- 1:04:23ISS. This is a fundamental problem
- 1:04:27for corporate governance because they're not voting along the
- 1:04:31lines that are actually good for shareholders.
- 1:04:37That's the that's the big issue. I mean, that's what it comes
- 1:04:41down to. ISS, Glass Lewis Corporate
- 1:04:44Terrorism? Yeah.
- 1:04:47And I would say, you know the special committee did an amazing
- 1:04:49job in constructing this plan for the benefit of the
- 1:04:53shareholders. There is no nothing which gets
- 1:04:56passed on till the time shareholders make substantial
- 1:05:00returns. So that's why, you know, in the
- 1:05:02end, I would say, I would urge you to not only work on the
- 1:05:07plan, but also work on all the three directors because of their
- 1:05:11exceptional knowledge and experience.
- 1:05:13And literally, you know, we at Tesla work with these directors
- 1:05:18day in, day out. I mean, there is not even a
- 1:05:21single day that one of the directors I haven't spoken to or
- 1:05:26one of my colleague hasn't spoken to.
- 1:05:28And we're the even the directors out here are not just reading
- 1:05:32out of. You know, PowerPoint
- 1:05:34presentations, they're actually working with us day in, day out.
- 1:05:38So again, I just urge you guys as shareholders to work along
- 1:05:42the board's recommendation. Thank you guys.
- 1:05:45Great. Thank you, Vaibhav.
- 1:05:47We appreciate everyone's questions today.
- 1:05:48We look forward to talking to you next quarter.
- 1:05:50Thank you very much and goodbye. Hey, thank you so much for
- 1:05:53listening today. I really do appreciate your
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