Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Tesla Q1 2025 Financial Results and Q&A Webcast
Transcript
- 0:01Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the show.
- 0:03This is stage 0. My name is Will Walden.
- 0:06I'm your host. And in today's episode, we're
- 0:09going to be showing you a clip of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
- 0:13Now, Elon, in this clip explains how Doge is doing and what
- 0:17they've done to uncover some secrets and some fraud and how
- 0:21much money they've recovered for the government.
- 0:24And then after that, it's Donald Trump explaining to his cabinet
- 0:29how he views Elon Musk. Now, the second or the first
- 0:35part of this shows that Donald Trump doesn't.
- 0:41I think he likes him in a way like he likes him as a person.
- 0:44But he says something that you'll find a little bit, I
- 0:50wouldn't say shocking, but it's something that we didn't expect
- 0:53over here at Stage Zero. And that is that he says that he
- 0:56doesn't really need Elon. And you'll listen to the clip
- 1:00and then let me know in the comments if you have comments on
- 1:03your podcast platform. If you don't have comments on
- 1:05your podcast platform, you can go to our YouTube channel, Stage
- 1:090 News. And we're going to be discussing
- 1:12this over there in a future video as well.
- 1:15So go over there, subscribe to that.
- 1:18And also, when you have a second, I just need one second
- 1:20of your time and I'm going to give you 10 years of my time.
- 1:24I just need a second for you to hit the subscribe or follow
- 1:26button on your podcast platform. I'm going to give you 10 more
- 1:29years of this show uninterrupted, not behind a
- 1:33paywall for free for 10 more years.
- 1:37That's my promise to you. And I'm going to make every
- 1:39single episode better and better every single time.
- 1:43And most of these episodes are going to be 5 minutes or 10
- 1:46minutes, somewhere in that range.
- 1:48So you can get all the news as fast as you can and get on with
- 1:52your day. So please give me a second of
- 1:54your time. I'll give you 10 years of mine.
- 1:56All right, here's Elon talking to Trump's cabinet and then
- 2:01Trump talking about Elon. Notice what Trump says about
- 2:05Elon. Good afternoon, everyone, and
- 2:08welcome to Tesla's first quarter 2025 Q&A webcast.
- 2:12My name is Travis Axelrod, Head Investor Relations and I'm
- 2:15joined today by Elon Musk, Deva Taneja and a number of other
- 2:19executives. Our Q1 results were announced at
- 2:21about 3:00 PM Central Time in the update deck being published
- 2:24of the same link as this webcast.
- 2:27During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and
- 2:29make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our
- 2:32predictions and expectations as of today.
- 2:35Actual events or results could differ materially to a number
- 2:38due to a number of risks and uncertainties including those
- 2:41mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC.
- 2:44During the question and answer portion of today's call, please
- 2:46limit yourself to one question and one follow up.
- 2:49Please use the Raise Hand button to join the question queue.
- 2:53Before we jump into Q&A, Elon will be providing an update.
- 2:56Elon. Hello everyone.
- 2:58Well, it's never a dull moment these days and thanks for sure
- 3:03every day is going to be exciting As some people know,
- 3:08there's been some blowback for the time that I've been spending
- 3:10in government with the Department of Government
- 3:12Efficiency or DOGE. I think the work that we're
- 3:16doing there is actually very important for trying to rein in
- 3:19the insane deficit that is leading our country, United
- 3:22States, to destruction. And the Doge team has made a lot
- 3:27of progress in addressing waste and fraud.
- 3:30The natural blowback from that is those who were receiving the
- 3:33wasteful dollars and the fortunate dollars will try to
- 3:38attack me and those team and anything associated with me.
- 3:44So but then I am really left with two choices.
- 3:47Should we just let the waste and fraud continue?
- 3:51And I was continuing at it to grow at a really unsustainable
- 3:54pace that was bankrupting the country or to fight the waste
- 4:00and fraud and try to get the country back on the right track.
- 4:03And I, I believe the right thing to do is to just fight the waste
- 4:08and fraud and get the country back on the right track and
- 4:12working together with the President Trump and his
- 4:14administration. Because if the ship of America
- 4:19goes down, we all go down with it, including Tesla and everyone
- 4:23else. So I think this is this critical
- 4:27work. Now, the protest that you'll see
- 4:30out there, they're very organized.
- 4:32They're paid for. They're they're obviously not
- 4:37going to say it meant that the reason that they're protesting
- 4:41is because they're receiving fraudulent money or that they're
- 4:47the recipients of wasteful digest, but they're going to
- 4:51think they come up with some other reason.
- 4:54But that is the the real reason for the protests.
- 4:57The actual reason is that is that those receiving the waste
- 5:02and fraud wish to continue receive receiving it.
- 5:05That is the real thing that's going on here, obviously.
- 5:10So now that said, I, I do think there's, you know, the, the,
- 5:17the, the large slug of work necessary to get the village
- 5:23team in place and working in the government to get the financial
- 5:29house in order is mostly done and I think.
- 5:40Starting probably in next month, May, my time allocation to DOGE
- 5:51will drop significantly. I'll have to continue doing it
- 5:54for, I think probably the remainder of the president's
- 5:58term just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop
- 6:03does not come roaring back, which we'll do if, if it has the
- 6:08chance. So.
- 6:12So I think I'll continue to spend, you know, a day or two
- 6:16per week on government matters or as long as the president
- 6:21would like me to do so and as long as it is useful.
- 6:26But starting next month, I will be allocating far more of my
- 6:32time to Tesla. And now that the the major work
- 6:38of establishing the Department of Government efficiency has
- 6:40done so at Tesla, we've gone through many, many a crisis over
- 6:49the years and actually been through many near to many near
- 6:55death experiences. Like we're probably we're on the
- 6:59rabbit edge of death at least and maybe a dozen times.
- 7:03It's been so, so many times. This is not one of those times.
- 7:08We're not on the rugged Japan, not even close.
- 7:12So, you know, there are some some challenges and I expect
- 7:19that this year will be there'll probably be some unexpected
- 7:23bumps this year. I remain extremely optimistic
- 7:29about the future of the company. The future of the company is
- 7:34fundamentally based on large scale autonomous cars and and
- 7:44large scale being large volume vast numbers of autonomous
- 7:48humanoid robots. So the the value of the company
- 7:58that makes truly useful autonomous humanoid robots and
- 8:03autonomous useful vehicles at scale at low cost, which is what
- 8:09Tesla is going to do is staggering.
- 8:14I continue to believe that Tesla with excellent execution will be
- 8:20the most valuable company in the world by far.
- 8:22But that's an important if we must execute well.
- 8:29But if we do execute well, I do, I think Tesla will be the most
- 8:36valuable company in the world by far.
- 8:38It may be as valuable as the next 5 companies combined.
- 8:42So there'll be a few bumps along the road before before that
- 8:50happens. I said I think on the last
- 8:53earnings call that you know the well we'll start to see the
- 9:01prosperity of autonomy take effect in a material way around
- 9:06the middle of next year. We still expect, we expect to
- 9:09have these be selling fully autonomous rights in June in
- 9:13Austin as as we've been saying we're now several months.
- 9:18So that that's continued. But the real question from
- 9:22financial standpoint is when does it really become material
- 9:25and affect the bottom line of the company and start to be a
- 9:30fundamental part of the, of the, of the, when does it move the
- 9:36financial needle in a significant way?
- 9:38That's probably around the middle of next year.
- 9:42So it can happen next year. And then once it does stop, move
- 9:46the move the financial needle in a significant way, it will
- 9:49really go exponential from there.
- 9:52So that's I'd encourage people to look beyond like the, you
- 9:57know, some sort of bumps and potholes of the road immediately
- 10:08ahead of us. Left your gaze to the bright
- 10:15shining, you know, citadel on a hill.
- 10:19I don't know some Reaganesque imagery and that's where we're
- 10:29headed and not, not, not too distant future like I said and
- 10:32the next year. So let's see with respect to
- 10:43supply chain risk, something that something that Tesla has
- 10:46been working on for several years is to localize supply
- 10:50chains does actually make sense from a cost standpoint, from A
- 10:56and from a logistics risk standpoint is to have the supply
- 11:03chains be at least located on the continent in which the car
- 11:06is built. And so we are the least
- 11:13accompanied, the least affected car company with respect to
- 11:18tariffs, at least in most respects.
- 11:20I mean, it remains to be seen. Now tariffs are still, yeah,
- 11:27tough on a company where margins are still low.
- 11:31But we, we do have localized supply chains in North America,
- 11:37Europe and China. So that's that puts us in a
- 11:42stronger position than any of our competitors.
- 11:57And undoubtedly I'm going to get a lot of questions about
- 11:59tariffs. And I, I just want to emphasize
- 12:02that this, this, the tariff decision is entirely up to the
- 12:05president of the United States. I will weigh in with my advice
- 12:09with the president, but he, he, he will listen to my advice, but
- 12:14then it's up to him, of course, to make his decision.
- 12:18I, I've been on the record many times as saying that I believe
- 12:22lower tariffs are generally a good idea for prosperity, but
- 12:27this decision is fundamentally up to the elected representative
- 12:29of the people being the president of the United States.
- 12:32So, you know, I'll continue to advocate for lower tariffs
- 12:38rather than higher tariffs, but that's all I can do.
- 12:42So now, now let me walk you through why I'm so excited about
- 12:47the future of Tesla. So first of all, autonomy, the
- 12:50team and I are laser focused on bringing robo taxi to Austin
- 12:53engineering unsupervised autonomy will first be solved
- 12:58for for for the model Y in in Austin.
- 13:07And then actually we should parse out the term robotic taxi
- 13:12or robo taxi and just generally like what's the the cyber cab?
- 13:15Because we've got a product called the cyber cab and then
- 13:18but any any Tesla which could be an S3X or Y that is autonomous
- 13:24is a robotic taxi or robotaxi. It's very confusing.
- 13:30So the vast majority of the Tesla fleet that we've made is
- 13:35capable of being a robotaxi or robotic taxi.
- 13:41And as we regarding from once we can make the halt the system
- 13:48work where you can have paid rides fully autonomously with no
- 13:51one in the car in in one city that that that is a very
- 13:57scalable thing for us to go broadly within whatever
- 14:01jurisdiction allows us to to operate.
- 14:04So because what we're solving for is a general solution to
- 14:08autonomy, not a city specific solution for autonomy.
- 14:14Once we make it work in a few cities, we can basically make it
- 14:17work in all cities in that in that legal jurisdiction.
- 14:22So if it's once we can make it based work in a few cities in
- 14:25America, we can make work anywhere in America.
- 14:30Once we can make work in a few studies in China, can make can
- 14:33work anywhere in China, likewise in Europe, limited only by
- 14:38regulatory approvals. So this is the advantage of
- 14:43having a generalized solution using artificial intelligence
- 14:49and the an AI chip that tells the design specifically for this
- 14:54purpose, as opposed to very expensive sensors and high
- 15:01precision maps of a particular neighborhood where that
- 15:04neighborhood may change or often changes and then the cost stops
- 15:08working. So we have a general solution
- 15:10instead of a specific solution. Yeah.
- 15:20And regards to optimists, making good progress on optimists, we
- 15:27expect to have thousands of optimists robots working in
- 15:34Tesla factories by the end of this year doing this for work.
- 15:41And we expect to scale optimists up faster than any product I
- 15:48think in history to get to millions of units per year as
- 15:54soon as possible. I I think feel confident in
- 15:58getting to 1,000,000 years per year in less than five years,
- 16:03maybe four years. So, but 20-30 I felt confident
- 16:13in predicting 1,000,000 Optimus units per year and it might be
- 16:172029. So let's see with respect to
- 16:22energy, energy business is doing very well.
- 16:26The Megapack is enables utility companies to output far more
- 16:35total energy than would otherwise be the case.
- 16:39When you think of the the energy capability of a grid, it's much
- 16:44it's much more than it's a total energy output per year is.
- 16:50If power plants could operate at peak power for all 24 hours as
- 16:58opposed to being at half hour or sometimes 1/4 power at night,
- 17:03then you could double the energy output of existing power plants.
- 17:09But in order to do that, you need to buffer the energy so
- 17:12that you can charge up the something like battery pack at
- 17:15night and then discharge into the grid during the day.
- 17:19So this is a a massive unlock on total energy output of any given
- 17:28grid over the course of a year. And utility companies are
- 17:33beginning to realize this and are buying in our megapacks at
- 17:37scale. So at this point, a GW class
- 17:42factory is quite a common thing. So with many orders in the offer
- 17:48for GW and beyond batteries and we expect the energy, the
- 17:56stationary energy storage business to scale ultimately to
- 17:58terawatts per year. So very, very good numbers.
- 18:08Now Q1, you know, first quarters of a year are usually pretty
- 18:13tricky because it's usually the worst quarter of the year
- 18:17because people don't want to go buy a car in the middle of
- 18:21winter during a Blizzard. So, and this so we picked Q1 as
- 18:29like a good quarter to do a cut over to the new version of the
- 18:35Model Y and we changed production of the world's best
- 18:39selling cars. Worth remembering the Model Y is
- 18:41the best selling car of any kind on earth with a 1.1 billion unit
- 18:47per year output of a single model.
- 18:51And we did this changeover at the same time in factories all
- 18:54across the world. So congratulations to the Tesla
- 18:57team on an amazing job in pulling off what is a very
- 19:00difficult transition. So yeah, it's a, it's really
- 19:08that was very impressive work. So yeah, in conclusion, while
- 19:19there are many near term headwinds for us in the border
- 19:21industry, the future for Tesla is brighter than ever.
- 19:27The value of the company is delivering sustainable abundance
- 19:30with our affordable AI powered robots.
- 19:33So this, this, I like this phrase, sustainable abundance
- 19:40for all. If you say like, what's the
- 19:44ideal future that you can imagine, that's what you'd want.
- 19:47You'd want abundance for all in a way that's sustainable.
- 19:53It's good for the environment. Basically, this is the happy
- 19:57future. If you say what's, what's the
- 19:59happiest future you can imagine? One which is that would be a
- 20:03future where there's sustainable abundance for all.
- 20:06Closest thing to heaven we can get on earth, basically.
- 20:13So thank you again to the Tesla team for all their efforts of
- 20:18the challenging time and look forward to continuing to lead
- 20:22the team to great success in the future.
- 20:29Great. Thank you very much, Elon.
- 20:31Before we move on, Vaibhav has some operating remarks as well.
- 20:35Thanks, Elon. As Elon mentioned, in Q1, we
- 20:38achieved something which has never been undertaken in the
- 20:41automotive industry of updating all our factories for the best
- 20:45selling car in the world all at the same time.
- 20:48And this is this. People don't understand this was
- 20:51not a small feat. We're not aware of anybody else
- 20:56being able to do the best selling car all at once within
- 20:591/4 and that too hitting all the timelines which we had
- 21:03established at the beginning. So when big kudos to the team
- 21:07for making this happen. Additionally, we also hit a
- 21:11record gross profit for energy storage business in the quarter.
- 21:16Now getting back into the business, there's been a lot of
- 21:18speculation as to the reasons for decline of our vehicle
- 21:22deliveries in the first quarter. We had previously guided that we
- 21:26will be updating all factories and this would lead to several
- 21:29weeks of lost production, which did happen.
- 21:32As per the Ripper effect of the change is not having enough new
- 21:37Model Y available in most markets for people to see and
- 21:41experience till the last few weeks of the quarter.
- 21:45Additionally, the negative impact of vandalism and
- 21:49unwarranted hostility towards our brand and our people had an
- 21:53impact in certain markets. Despite this, we were able to
- 21:58sell out legacy Model Y in US, China and a few other markets
- 22:02within the world. And again, you know, just so
- 22:05that people understand, we were producing the legacy Model Y
- 22:09till middle to end of February and we switched over and we were
- 22:13able to still sell out within that period.
- 22:16So again, big achievement by all the people at just start to make
- 22:21it happen. We've been extremely, we have a
- 22:25very, extremely competitive vehicle lineup which with most
- 22:30vehicles going through a recent update and after that advances
- 22:35in FSD, you have a personal chauffeur which can take you
- 22:39almost anywhere under supervision.
- 22:42There are numerous stories shared by customers ranging from
- 22:45how it has improved their daily commute, to providing mobility
- 22:49customers with disabilities, to giving older customers the
- 22:53ability to travel comfortably and independently.
- 22:56Not only is FSD supervised safer than a human driver, but it is
- 23:01also improving the lives of individuals who experience it.
- 23:04And again, this is something you have to experience and anybody
- 23:09who has experienced just knows it and you know, we've been
- 23:13doing a lot lately try and get those stories out at least on X
- 23:19so that people can see how other people have benefited from this.
- 23:24Now coming into some of the financial stuff, auto margins
- 23:29declined sequentially primarily due to the reduction the total
- 23:32number of deliveries, lower fixed cost absorption due to
- 23:38factory change awards and lower regulatory credit revenues,
- 23:42offset slight by a slight increase in pricing due to the
- 23:46launch of new Model 1 despite incentives which we had to sell
- 23:51legacy Model 1. Energy storage business like I
- 23:55said before has achieved yet another milestone of great
- 24:00highest gross profit in the quarter.
- 24:03This was despite, you know, sequential decline in
- 24:06deployments. The importance of this business,
- 24:09as you know mentioned is really profound, especially in this
- 24:14environment because you know, if in order for grids to work
- 24:19properly with the demands from AI and all this, you need some
- 24:23more stability. And this is by far the simplest
- 24:27and best solution which we are aware of which can help do this.
- 24:31And we've also developed certain unique solutions to help our
- 24:35customers to achieve this. Additionally, you know on the
- 24:39Powerwall side, we've been selling the new Powerwall 3 and
- 24:45you know it's been received with very good reception from
- 24:48customers. And to the extent that we are
- 24:51currently supply constraint on services and other margins, they
- 24:57were slightly down sequentially primarily because of the
- 25:00pressure on our used car business and insurance business.
- 25:03Note that we continued our journey to improve profitability
- 25:07in our services and position business through better label
- 25:09product today. As previously discussed, our
- 25:13operating expenses continue to increase sequentially primarily
- 25:17due to our AI related initiatives including Optimus
- 25:21and also constant development for our vehicle programs
- 25:24including cyber Caps, SEMA and cheaper models.
- 25:28These expenses flow through R&D. We believe even in the current
- 25:32environment it is the right strategy making investments in
- 25:36these areas to position us for the long term.
- 25:40These increases were offset by decreases and the CNA from
- 25:44changes in our micro level program.
- 25:48Other income reduced significantly on a sequential
- 25:51basis. The primary reason was Bitcoin
- 25:56mark to market loss in Q1 versus gain in Q4 resulting in a 472
- 26:02million drop. The remainder of the change is
- 26:04because of FX management. With the adoption of the new
- 26:08mark to market standard for Bitcoin, we expect increased
- 26:12volatility in other other income in addition to the FX
- 26:16reputability. I know with tariffs is the
- 26:20hottest topic which people talk about and it has various impacts
- 26:24to our business on as Elon mentioned, you know on the
- 26:28vehicle business, we've been on this journey of regionalization
- 26:32for years, specifically in the US Model Y has been rated the
- 26:38most American model made car on cars.com made in America index
- 26:43three years ago. This is part is of the all the
- 26:47work which the team has been doing over the years and to the
- 26:50extent that today, you know, if you look at our vehicle line up
- 26:55in US, we're about approximately on a weighted average basis 85%
- 27:02USMCA compliant. So like Elon said, this
- 27:06definitely gives us a bigger edge as compared to our other
- 27:09OEMs in terms of managing the tariffs.
- 27:12But we're not immune because when the 230 Section 232 auto
- 27:17tariffs become effective in May which includes Canada and Mexico
- 27:22and Canada and Mexico has been part of our regionalization
- 27:25study, they will have an example of profitability.
- 27:29And I know research modelling on this impact has been up about
- 27:33couple of 1000 people, which is pretty much in line with what
- 27:37we've been forecasting. The impact of tariffs on the
- 27:41energy business will be outside since we so much LFP battery
- 27:47cells from China. We are in the process of
- 27:49commissioning equipment for the local manufacturing of LFP
- 27:52battery cells in the US. However, the equipment which we
- 27:56have can only service a fraction of our total installed capacity
- 28:01at like later on we've also been working on securing additional
- 28:06supply chain from non China based supplies but it will take
- 28:09time. Also note that you know mega
- 28:13fact irrespective of all the impact on US from from our
- 28:18energy from tariffs on the energy business, we do have
- 28:22manufacturing China which just started operations in Q1 and
- 28:26that our that that should take care of our business outside of
- 28:31US. There's also an important impact
- 28:35of tariffs on our capital investments.
- 28:37I know this is going to sound counterintuitive since in order
- 28:41to own onshore manufacturing or expand lines, we have to bring
- 28:45equipment from outside the US because there is not that much
- 28:48capacity in the US and the current trade environment, you
- 28:52know, such equipment being brought in, is subject to the.
- 28:55Expenses bringing in from China right now.
- 28:57Exactly. And and the reality is that
- 29:03China has the basic one which has the most capacity to provide
- 29:07this our CapEx guidance inclusive of model tariffs.
- 29:14Even with the optimization we have tried to do, it is
- 29:16forecasted to be still in excess of 10 billion this year and we
- 29:21are still evaluating what more to do on this one.
- 29:25To summarize, we have near term challenges in our business due
- 29:28to tariffs and bad image. We think our strategy of
- 29:32providing the best product at a competitive price is going to be
- 29:35a winner and this is the reason we are still focused on bringing
- 29:38cheaper models to market soon. The start of production still
- 29:42planned for June. Additionally, the advancement in
- 29:46FSD related features including pilot robotaxi launch in Austin
- 29:51later this year should help create a new head of demand.
- 29:55I would like to thank everyone at Tesla and our customers.
- 30:01Fantastic. Thank you very much, Eva.
- 30:03Now we will move on to investor questions.
- 30:05We will start with questionsfromsay.com.
- 30:08First question is what are the highest risks, highest risk
- 30:12items on the critical path to robotaxi launch and scaling?
- 30:22Is Ashok Yeah we've got a shock all on sure.
- 30:26Well just just talked by the disambiguate the Cybercam from
- 30:34robotaxi. So the when will the Teslas
- 30:45because the Teslas that will be fully autonomous in June in
- 30:50Austin are probably model wise. So that is, that's, that's
- 30:59currently on track to, to be able to do paid rides fully
- 31:03autonomously in Austin in June and, and, and then to be in many
- 31:14other cities in the US by the end of this year.
- 31:19It's very difficult. It's difficult to predict the
- 31:20exact ramp sort of week by week and month by month, except that
- 31:26it will ramp up very quickly. So it's going to be like some
- 31:31basically an S curve where it's very difficult to predict the
- 31:33intermediate slope of the S curve, but you kind of know
- 31:36where the S curve's going to end up, which is the vast majority
- 31:39of the Tesla fleet being autonomous.
- 31:42So that's why I feel confident in predicting large scale
- 31:48autonomy around the middle of next year.
- 31:51But yeah, certainly the second-half of next year,
- 31:54meaning I break that there will be millions of Teslas operating
- 32:00autonomously, fully autonomously in the second-half of next year.
- 32:10Yeah, it does seem increasingly likely that there will be a
- 32:21localized parameter set of that sort of, you know, like that,
- 32:36especially for places that have say very snowy weather, like say
- 32:43if you're in the Northeast or something like this, you can
- 32:46think of it. It's kind of like a human.
- 32:48Like, you know, if you you could be a very good driver in
- 32:52California, but are you going to be also a good driver in a
- 32:54Blizzard in Manhattan? You're not going to be as good.
- 33:00So there is actually some value in you're still drive, but your
- 33:03probability of an accident is higher.
- 33:05So there's, it's, it's increasingly obvious that
- 33:07there's some value to having a localized set of parameters for
- 33:19different, you know, different regions and, and localities.
- 33:28But this is the output that the nice staff category.
- 33:30It's not the required category really.
- 33:35The car is just very much like a human.
- 33:38It's, it's digital neural Nets and cameras and humans operate
- 33:43with biological neural Nets and eyes.
- 33:47And so the same strengths and weaknesses will be present or,
- 33:54you know, a digital neural net and cameras versus a biological
- 33:58neural net and eyes. Ashok, you'd like to elaborate
- 34:01on that? Yeah.
- 34:03And speaking to the location specific models, we still have a
- 34:06generalized approach and you can see that from in our deployment
- 34:10of FSD supervised in China, where with this very minimal
- 34:14data that's like China specific, the models generalize quite well
- 34:17to completely different driving styles.
- 34:20That just like shows that the a based solution that we have is
- 34:23the right one. Because you know, if you had
- 34:26gone down the previous rule based solutions or like more
- 34:30hardcore HD map based solutions, it would have taken like many,
- 34:33many years to get China to work. You can see those in the videos
- 34:36that people post online themselves.
- 34:40So the generalized solution that we are pursuing is the right one
- 34:45that's going to scale well. And you can think of this like
- 34:47location specific parameters that you don't need to ask a
- 34:50mixture of experts. And if you're sort of like
- 34:53familiar with the A models and Grog and others, they all use
- 34:58this mixture of experts to sort of like specialize the
- 35:01parameters to specific tasks while still being general.
- 35:04This makes the the model to use limited amount of compute to
- 35:10solve for the reliability of tasks that it has to solve in
- 35:15terms of addressing the question that asks for you know, what are
- 35:17the critical things that we need to get right?
- 35:20One thing I would like to note is validation.
- 35:22Self driving is a long tail problem where there can be a lot
- 35:25of edge cases that only happen very, very rarely.
- 35:28Currently we are driving around in Austin using our QA free, but
- 35:31then it's like super rad to get interventions that are critical
- 35:35for a void XC operation. And so you can like go many days
- 35:38without getting any single intervention.
- 35:40So you can't easily know whether you're improving or regressing
- 35:44in your capacity. And we need to build out
- 35:47sophisticated simulations including neural network based
- 35:50video generation that's not happening in the background to
- 35:53make sure that we deliver a safe product and we are able to
- 35:57measure our safety even though we can't just exceed we're
- 36:02driving around the block or something like that.
- 36:04Yeah. I mean, very basic terms, if
- 36:08that if we're seeing an accident every 10,000 miles, well then
- 36:12you have to drive 10,000 miles on average before you get an
- 36:14accident or an intervention. So it's like, OK, now imagine, I
- 36:20mean, we must be really, it must be very waked up by the sheer
- 36:27number of Teslas doing some. It's in in Austin right now.
- 36:31We're like, what? It's going to look pretty
- 36:33bizarre. Some people are chasing.
- 36:39Yeah, there's just always a convoy of Tesla's going, going
- 36:43well, just going all over to Austin in circles.
- 36:49But yeah, as I just can't emphasize this enough in order
- 36:53to get figure out long tail things, you if it's one in
- 36:5610,000, that's that's one in 20,000 miles or one in 30,
- 36:59though now you know, the average person drives 10,000 miles in a
- 37:02year. So now try to compress that test
- 37:05cycle into a matter of, you know, a few months.
- 37:09That means you need a lot of cars doing a lot of driving in
- 37:16order to compress that ward. Just do do in a matter of a
- 37:20month what would normally take someone a year.
- 37:24Yeah. And I would just also add that,
- 37:26you know, if you haven't looked at those videos coming out of
- 37:30China, people are. Oh yeah, those videos are
- 37:32amazing. Yeah, they're putting it to real
- 37:34test. I mean, they're the dark roads,
- 37:37frankly, I think. The Chinese consumer might be
- 37:39the most romantic consumer. And I actually customers in
- 37:45China are awesome. They have a lot of fun with the
- 37:49cars. I saw one guy take a Tesla on
- 37:54autonomous on a narrow dirt Rd. yes, across like a mountain.
- 37:59And I'm like still a very brave person.
- 38:03And I said this driving along on the road with no barriers where
- 38:07makes a mistake, he's going to plunge through his doom.
- 38:10But it worked. Great.
- 38:14Thank you. And if if the question was on
- 38:16Cyber cab itself, we're we're in B sample validation now.
- 38:21Yeah, Yeah. We should ask that question too.
- 38:22Yeah, we have our first. Like big builds coming at the
- 38:30end of this quarter within Q2 and then you know, in the coming
- 38:33months they'll start to large scale, you know, installation of
- 38:37all the equipment in Giga, Texas with, you know, still on
- 38:39schedule for production next year.
- 38:41Yeah. And I just want to also clarify
- 38:43because I think people don't understand the thing that
- 38:45there's no new building being built and where is Cyber Cab
- 38:49going? Oh, it's in the game.
- 38:50It's. Literally the same.
- 38:51Factory. Yeah, yeah.
- 38:53If everything is it's happening and people don't know it's just
- 38:57happening upstairs in all along lines while we're still building
- 38:59the Model YS and cyber trucks every day.
- 39:02Yeah, yeah. It's worth noting that the, you
- 39:04know, the the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin is 3 times the size of
- 39:08the Pentagon, including the garden.
- 39:11Yeah, including the Ground 0 garden.
- 39:15So, you know, good. Because of the Pentagon.
- 39:16Like this spelling used to look big, but then you won't.
- 39:23Great. Thank you very much.
- 39:25The next question is when will FSD unsupervised be available
- 39:28for personal use on personally owned cars?
- 39:37Before the end of this year, not necessarily.
- 39:40I say with within the US like like we do want to test like
- 39:45we're at Tesla, we're absolutely hardcore about safety.
- 39:49You know, we go to great lengths to make the safest car in the
- 39:52world and have the lowest accidents per mile.
- 39:55And so and look, if you just live lost.
- 40:00So we want to be very careful. So it's so and we want autonomy
- 40:04to be definitively safer than manual driving.
- 40:08So it's not enough that it just be as safe, it needs to be
- 40:11meaningfully safer than if it's cars manually driven.
- 40:16So and we want to confirm that there's not something it.
- 40:23We just want to be cautious with the rollout.
- 40:25We don't want to jump in at the deep end with an army.
- 40:30So with that said, I think we should people should we should
- 40:37be able to have have it work in several studies later this year
- 40:43for personal use. So you know, the acid test being
- 40:49you should be able to can you go?
- 40:50Can you go to sleep in your car and wake me to your destination?
- 40:55And I'm confident that will be available in many cities in the
- 41:00US by the end of this year. Great.
- 41:05Thank you very much. The next question is, is Tesla
- 41:08still on track for releasing more affordable models this year
- 41:12or will you be focusing on simplified versions to enhance
- 41:14affordability similar to the rear wheel drive Cybertruck?
- 41:19Yeah, We're still planning to release models this year.
- 41:21As with all launches we're working through like the last
- 41:23minute issues that pop up, we're knocking them down one by one at
- 41:27this point. I would say that ramp maybe
- 41:30might be a little slower than we had hoped initially, but there's
- 41:33nothing, you know, just kind of given that turmoil that exists
- 41:35in the industry right now, but but there's nothing that's
- 41:39blocking us from starting production within the next
- 41:41within the timeline laid out in in the opening remarks.
- 41:44And I will say, it's important to emphasize that, as we've said
- 41:46all along, the full utilization of our factories is the primary
- 41:48goal for these new products. And so flexibility of what we
- 41:52can do within the form factor and, and you know, the, the
- 41:56design of it is really limited to what we can do on our
- 41:58existing lines rather than building new ones.
- 42:01But we've been targeting the low cost of ownership.
- 42:03Monthly payment is the biggest differentiator for our vehicles.
- 42:06And that's why we're focused on bringing these new models with
- 42:08the, you know, the lowest price to the market within the
- 42:11constraints I just highlighted. Great.
- 42:15Thank you very much. The next question is does Tesla
- 42:18see robo taxi as a winner take most market And as you approach
- 42:22the Austin launch, how do you expect to compare against
- 42:25Waymo's offering especially regarding pricing, Geo fencing
- 42:29and regulatory flexibility? Well, OK, the issue with with
- 42:34Waymo's cars is that cost way more money Rosha, but that is
- 42:49the issue. You know, they cost very
- 42:51expensive, made in low volume Teslas are, you know, I don't
- 42:56know, probably cost 1/4 of 20% of what, what, what way more
- 43:02costs and, and made in very high volume.
- 43:08So, you know, ironically, like we are the ones that made the
- 43:14bet that a pure AI solution with cameras and what do you the car
- 43:18actually will listen for sirens and that kind of thing is the
- 43:21right move. And we decided that that
- 43:25expensive sensor suite is the way to go, even though Google is
- 43:29very good at AI. So I'm running and you know, it
- 43:34is worth noting that Tesla is both an incredible AI, you know,
- 43:37AI software team and AI hardware chip design team prospect from
- 43:43nothing. They didn't require anyone or
- 43:45just both it. So yeah, it's really, I mean, I
- 43:52don't see anyone being able to compete with Tesla at present.
- 43:56I'm sure that will change eventually, but at least as far
- 44:05as I'm aware, Tesla will have, I don't know, 99% market share or
- 44:14something ridiculous. That 90 something percent at
- 44:17least I don't know, at least some of them might change.
- 44:21But you know, if you if we have millions of cars deployed next
- 44:26year and unless others have millions of cars deployed like
- 44:32we'll have unless we're blocked by regulatory situations, it
- 44:38won't be long. I mean, in a few years, why 10
- 44:40million autonomous cars on the roads and, you know, and, and
- 44:46counting I. Mean the the other thing which
- 44:50people forget is like, we're not just developing the software
- 44:53solution, we are also manufacturing the cars.
- 44:55Yeah. And like you know what like way
- 44:58more hands they're taking cars then trying to put.
- 45:01Way more money. We, we don't do that.
- 45:05So that that definitely gives us a big peg up.
- 45:08And like Elon said, we already have a big existing fleet which
- 45:13hopefully with the software update could become autonomous.
- 45:17With the software update bid will become autonomous.
- 45:21To be clear, the model wise that we're talking about in being
- 45:24autonomous in Austin in June are the modelized we're model wise
- 45:27we make currently there's no change to it.
- 45:29I. Think people don't appreciate
- 45:31that the car which they can buy today?
- 45:33The car that they have or. The car they have is capable of,
- 45:37yeah, these kind of things. In fact, it does Dr.
- 45:41autonomously from the factory to the end of line every car.
- 45:44Yeah, so in the US through. The tunnel, the model wise,
- 45:48everything. Right.
- 45:48Yes, exactly. We have It is being put to to
- 45:53use. It's it's, it's doing useful
- 45:56work fully autonomously at the factories.
- 45:58As a truck was mentioning the cars drive themselves from end
- 46:01of line 22 where this was being picked up by a truck to be to be
- 46:06taken to a customer. And I am confident also that
- 46:10later this year the first Model Y will drive itself all the way
- 46:15to the customer. So from our probably from a
- 46:20factory in Boston and our one in here in Fremont, CA, I'm
- 46:27confident that from both factories we'll be able to drive
- 46:30directly to a customer from a factory.
- 46:34School delivery. Yeah, literally goes from the
- 46:38end of line and drives themselves to your house.
- 46:40It's important to note in the factories we don't have
- 46:42dedicated lanes or anything. People are coming in and out
- 46:45everyday, trucks delivering supplies, parts, construction,
- 46:48you know. And people can film it.
- 46:50By the way, you can see this from the road like it's
- 46:52uncovered. Exactly.
- 46:54And there's videos, people take videos online and anyone who
- 46:57wants to go see it can just drive past our Fremont factory
- 47:00and see the autonomous cars driving themselves.
- 47:03And they drive themselves and they put themselves in the exact
- 47:05right spot to be picked up. Yeah, the logistics yard is
- 47:08right there in the open. Yeah.
- 47:09We don't move it again to another.
- 47:11Lane, but they go, they go to a specific spot, spot, spot.
- 47:14Yeah, yeah. So that that's just a routine
- 47:19like everyday thing. Great.
- 47:23Thank you very much. The next question is can you
- 47:26please provide an update on the unboxed method and how that is?
- 47:30Progressing. Sure.
- 47:33It's progressing, absolutely. As I mentioned just a minute
- 47:35ago, like it is the basis for our cyber cat manufacturing
- 47:38process. It's really what we changed in
- 47:40order to allow the low cost of production and also get the
- 47:43Super high levels of automation, you know, really levels of
- 47:46automation that are sort of unheard of in vehicle
- 47:48manufacturing scales, but not something that you know, you
- 47:51when you see it be produced, you'll, you'll, you'll think of
- 47:53in terms of like, wow, that's how the car has been built for
- 47:55100 years. It's really something we've
- 47:57changed in the past year. We've been like focusing on a
- 48:00lot of key development areas like marrying these large sub
- 48:02assemblies together in a precise way, in an accurate way.
- 48:06We've also de risked things like corrosion of, of uncoated
- 48:10aluminum structures, you know, the ceiling across the seams of
- 48:13the vehicle and when you marry several components and we've
- 48:15even done early crash testing and we've proven that like, you
- 48:18know, it's, it's going to be just as safe as every other
- 48:20carbon build. And so like we're as you know
- 48:24with all that combined, we kind of go into the builds that we
- 48:26have at the end of this quarter for the for the Cyber Cab
- 48:29product and that's the next real big test of full scale, you
- 48:33know, integration of the unboxed process.
- 48:36And yeah, that's kind of where we are.
- 48:39So you'll see them intestinal on the test roads in a couple of
- 48:42months. Yeah, although the line won't be
- 48:46obviously at this rate initially.
- 48:48Initially I the the this is a revolutionary production system.
- 48:54I'm not sure what the right word is.
- 48:57Unboxing sounds like something like when you get your phone
- 48:59can. You open it up.
- 49:01Yeah, you have like a pleasant experience when you take your
- 49:03phone out-of-the-box, but which of course is nice, but this is
- 49:08my favorite revolutionary than that.
- 49:11This is this is a very profound reimagining of how to make cars
- 49:18in the 1st place. No cars made like this anywhere
- 49:21in the world. The factory is the product as
- 49:24much as the car is the product. So it's really just the first
- 49:29principles approach to manufacturing that will
- 49:35ultimately allow us, I think to, I'm trying to think, I'm
- 49:38confident, ultimately allow us to achieve a cycle time in a
- 49:45unit every 5 seconds or less of a single line.
- 49:50And we want to incorporate some of these for testing it into our
- 49:53existing production lines as well to progress with the wine
- 49:56cyber truck already. So this is something I've been
- 49:59thinking about for, for a long time.
- 50:00And I've, I've sort of, I've been thinking about this for a
- 50:03long time and it's kind of, it's, it's not a crazy thing
- 50:08like like a car every 5 seconds may sound like it's coming out
- 50:12like bullets, but actually it's coming out at walking speed.
- 50:15It's like a meters, a meter a second.
- 50:18So this is like we're still far away from caring about the
- 50:25aerodynamic drag of the manufacturing line, you know,
- 50:29because you're you're still at 3 miles an hour type thing, you
- 50:36know, every 5 seconds sounds crazy, but it's 3 miles an hour
- 50:38what we're talking about. So yeah, you can run away from
- 50:42it basically. But that's still by far the
- 50:47fastest line on Earth, you know, And it's like half hour many
- 50:54half order many like fun. What's like messing the line?
- 50:58I don't know if it's like about the.
- 50:59Shanghai phase two and. That's us 33 seconds, yes, we're
- 51:03the fastest, right? I would think so we think, we
- 51:05think we're the fastest at 33 seconds in our Shanghai factory.
- 51:11But but this, this would be, you know, 6 times faster or seven
- 51:16times faster amounts. So yeah, I mean, it'll be slower
- 51:24than that first. But the point is that like when
- 51:27you, when you fully optimize the design and operation of the next
- 51:32generation factory that we're building right now, the 5 second
- 51:36cycle time or less is the design is capable of it.
- 51:42You know, So if you, you know, like when you, when you go
- 51:47through like a radical new architecture, you go from like
- 51:49being like in a, I mean, I'd say like probably in particular as
- 51:54an A+ on, on a moderately, you know, an advanced but still
- 52:00traditional, traditional car production system, sort of
- 52:07they're really doing about as good as possibly as possible to
- 52:10do within a conventional scenario.
- 52:15So trying to get much below, you know, sort of below like 30
- 52:20seconds, extremely difficult. But if not and you start getting
- 52:24into sort of impossible where you just, you have to be fast
- 52:27that a human could possibly move.
- 52:29So then the autonomous line, it really just needs to be robust,
- 52:34moving really fast. And that's where you get to some
- 52:375 seconds. But we'll so but we'll start off
- 52:42with getting AC and instead of an A getting AC and a new
- 52:46architecture, but then the the potentials there over time to
- 52:51move that up to an an A+ within an A+ architecture.
- 52:56Great. Thank you very much.
- 52:58The next question is how is Tesla positioning itself to
- 53:01flexibly adapt to global economic risks in the form of
- 53:03terrorists, political biases, etcetera?
- 53:06As Ilan said, you know, we've been the spicing team been at at
- 53:11for a while. We continue to mitigate global
- 53:14economic risks like tariffs and political biases by
- 53:17regionalizing parts supply near its factories in North America,
- 53:21Berlin and Shanghai. For example, in North America,
- 53:24our high volume vehicle programs have over 85% North America
- 53:27content and Shanghai vehicles have over 95% local content.
- 53:32Berlin has similar levels of regionalization as North
- 53:35American when you exclude the battery and we are working on
- 53:38regionalizing the battery as well.
- 53:41This is a pre pandemic strategy that we accelerated post
- 53:44pandemic through supply diversification, dual sourcing,
- 53:48vertical integration, advanced analytics and local partnerships
- 53:52to ensure supply chain resilience and production
- 53:54stability. Having said that, we are not
- 53:57100% insulated and these tariffs are higher on our low volume
- 54:01platforms than the high volume ones.
- 54:05Yeah. In fact, there's no more
- 54:07vertically integrated car company in Tesla.
- 54:09I mean, we're take about it most buddy, integrated car company
- 54:14since you know, Henry Ford back in the day when they're doing
- 54:20mining iron and stuff and growing rubber trees.
- 54:24So like we're not growing rubber trees and mining iron.
- 54:27Yeah, but we are, we have both today at a lithium refinery in
- 54:33South Texas and it's the I think the biggest lithium refinery
- 54:38outside of China, I think. Is that right?
- 54:42Yeah, I think so. But it has it's output potential
- 54:47would be the biggest one thing refinery has.
- 54:48Yeah. And we've got space to expand it
- 54:50if we need to build more, right. So and then we've got the
- 54:53cathode refinery in Austin next to the next to the gig factory.
- 54:57We're going to figure out what to do about the anode.
- 55:02This is an ongoing subject of discussion.
- 55:07Best, the best of all possible worlds would be figure out how
- 55:10to have no anode test, anode test part being no part.
- 55:15That's, that's the dream of the lithium batteries to be anode,
- 55:19not have an anode. But either way, we, we better
- 55:23have the anode, the cathode and the lithium and the electrolytes
- 55:27and the separator to make a cell.
- 55:33But but you know, there's no other car company that is
- 55:36building lithium refineries and cathode refineries.
- 55:40We're ridiculously vertically integrated and that and that's
- 55:45our best position to protect against supply chain
- 55:50disruptions. Yeah.
- 55:52You want to talk about progress in the.
- 55:54Yeah, certainly for in ourselves we've, you know, we've multi
- 55:58sourced every component and we have, you know, every part
- 56:03coming from at least two different countries large, which
- 56:05is and that we started this, the supply chain team and the
- 56:09engineering team worked together on this for the last couple of
- 56:11years to to put that together. It's not something we did in a
- 56:14couple of months, you know, this is years of work.
- 56:17So we're, you know, we're in a good position to to the
- 56:21advantage of that. And the and the insourcing of of
- 56:23lithium and and cathode, they're the two most critical parts of
- 56:27the battery that's, you know, run in that backyard and and
- 56:31we're totally insulated from the oil.
- 56:34It needs to be an operation, operation.
- 56:38We also make our own cells, by the way.
- 56:40So cell production, if you took this, this, you know, this, you
- 56:46make the anode, the cathode, the lithium, the electrolyte
- 56:49separator, the can. And then you got to put all that
- 56:52together in the cell factory. And there are entire companies
- 56:57that all they do is produce cells, but they don't do the
- 56:59other stuff. They don't refine lithium or the
- 57:02cathode or you know, so our cell production is is going quite
- 57:07well. And I think we're are we, we're
- 57:13currently sort of the lowest cost per kWh, yeah, in the
- 57:18others for our all cells we purchase in North America.
- 57:22Yeah. So it's all those cost to us.
- 57:24Yeah. So we have the lowest cost per
- 57:26kWh all things considered. So the Tesla cell is the most
- 57:30competitive cell, yeah, for a kWh putting to a car.
- 57:35If it's if the Tesla sell it's lower cost, then it's the
- 57:38supplier sell. Yeah, yeah.
- 57:40And the, the plan that's here is to really build off that base.
- 57:42You know, getting to lowest cost is it's it's the hardest
- 57:48challenge for so many battery. You know, it's relatively easy
- 57:51to build a flashy product that does one thing well.
- 57:55To build something at high volume and low cost is super
- 57:58difficult. And we're kind of using that as
- 57:59base to then build off and and add, you know, performance in
- 58:02different areas. So new products coming out,
- 58:06yeah. So yeah, I mean.
- 58:13To Elon's point that there's a there's a lot of advantages for
- 58:15regionalization. You know, the most important
- 58:18thing is we're not finding the working capital for six to eight
- 58:20weeks on the ocean. If there's a design change, then
- 58:23everything that's in transit basically has to be scrapped.
- 58:26Secondly, port disruptions as we saw during COVID can be very
- 58:29expensive because slight disconnects can shut down
- 58:31production. So then your only option is
- 58:33costly air as per light. It also gives us resilience and
- 58:36supply chain. If one region is down, we can
- 58:37bridge with others. It's more worth to set up in the
- 58:40beginning, but it's critical to have when the need arises.
- 58:43Having said that, it's unrealistic to zero 100%
- 58:45regionalization across the board for specialized areas such as
- 58:47semiconductors. In such cases, our team works
- 58:50very closely with our partners to ensure we have strategic
- 58:53banks in place and a disruption doesn't impact production while
- 58:57we step stand up the the regional manufacturing for that
- 58:59particular commodity. And you know, I'll say like on
- 59:02the rest of the vehicle, like you know, was talking about with
- 59:04cells, we're also heavily very integrated import ingots, you
- 59:08know, internal castings, you recycle those and melt some.
- 59:10There's the same thing with plastics, but it doesn't mean
- 59:13we're not exposed. You know, we do have some areas
- 59:18where we use rare earth magnets, you know that.
- 59:20And we've been working for years to to find alternate sources and
- 59:23bring those up as well as we have burn texture machines.
- 59:25And as we've mentioned in the past, we're working our ferrite
- 59:27lovers for some time. So like as Karen said, you know,
- 59:32with our heavy regionalization percentages, we're definitely
- 59:34like the lowest, you know, exposed to this.
- 59:37But we're not completely new in this Bible I've mentioned in
- 59:40several remarks. Great.
- 59:44Is it similarly related on the battery guide, just Tesla still
- 59:48a battery supply constraint as noted on the Q4 call?
- 59:51And does that change the tariffs?
- 59:54So this is Karen. We've been working very hard to
- 59:56expand battery cell production in the US, both with vendors and
- 1:00:00what Bonnie mentioned earlier with the 4680 program.
- 1:00:04And we're also working on moving the upstream supply chain for
- 1:00:07battery cells in the United States for several years.
- 1:00:09And that strategy is really starting to pay off Now.
- 1:00:12As it stands right now, we're not constrained on battery cells
- 1:00:14supply for vehicles. The recent tariffs do pose some
- 1:00:17challenges to Tesla Energy, well, like our CFO mentioned
- 1:00:19earlier, but it's something we've been anticipating and we
- 1:00:22should be able to resolve. In a timely fashion.
- 1:00:25We actually have a plan to find a place.
- 1:00:27We're executing towards it. We also have some other sourcing
- 1:00:31sources coming online to supplement the shortfall.
- 1:00:34And then of course, we have the LFV production that's happening
- 1:00:37in house. We have we have a slight
- 1:00:41disconnect of aligning the right cells with the right path.
- 1:00:44So that's the little bit of puzzle that we have to solve
- 1:00:48internally. But as far as cells go, there's
- 1:00:50no shortage. Great.
- 1:00:53Thank you very much. The next question is, did Tesla
- 1:00:56experience any meaningful changes in order inflow rate in
- 1:00:59Q1 relating to all of the rumors of brand damage?
- 1:01:04So. In Q1, as mentioned earlier, we
- 1:01:07took the best selling car over the last two years and ramped up
- 1:01:11all four of our global factories.
- 1:01:13And in less than 8 weeks, we've already gone to the rate of our
- 1:01:16previous model wise the factories.
- 1:01:18So just kudos again to the team for the great job there.
- 1:01:22And despite the economic strain and negative articles that had
- 1:01:26in California and Q1, Tesla remained the best selling card,
- 1:01:30not just EV. And additionally, we had a
- 1:01:32record number of test drives globally in Q1 as well.
- 1:01:36So interest remains high. And so right now we continue to
- 1:01:41see, you know, good interest still on.
- 1:01:44Vehicles. Yeah, I mean, Tesla's wanting
- 1:01:49you to sort of the macro demand for cars, you know, so when when
- 1:01:57there is economic uncertainty, people generally want to pause
- 1:02:03on buying during a major capital purchase like a car.
- 1:02:08But you know, as far as absent macro issues, we don't see any
- 1:02:15reduction in demand. Correct.
- 1:02:18And that's where we continue to focus on affordability and it's
- 1:02:22a fun focus there. Yeah.
- 1:02:25Fantastic. Thank you, guys.
- 1:02:27The next question is regarding the Tesla Optimist pilot line.
- 1:02:30Could you confirm it if it is currently operational?
- 1:02:32If so, what is the current production rate of Optimist
- 1:02:35bonds per week? Additionally, how might the
- 1:02:37recent tariffs impact the scalability of this production
- 1:02:40line moving forward? And optimist, I want to just
- 1:02:48want to emphasize Optimus is still very much development
- 1:02:50program. It's not, it's not a you know,
- 1:02:53it's not a large volume production.
- 1:02:54It's fine. You know, this this year, you
- 1:02:57know, we'll make a few that you know, we do expect to make
- 1:03:00thousands of Optimus robust, but most of that production is going
- 1:03:03to be at the end of the year. So the almost everything in
- 1:03:09Optimus is new. There's there's not like an
- 1:03:12existing supply chain for the motors, gearboxist, electronics,
- 1:03:16actuators, really anything in the in the almost anything in
- 1:03:19the optimist apart from the the AI for Tesla, the Tesla AI
- 1:03:25computer, which is the same as one in the car.
- 1:03:29So when you have a new complex manufactured product, it'll move
- 1:03:37as fast as the slowest and least lucky components in the entire
- 1:03:40thing. And as a first order
- 1:03:43approximation, there's like 10 to 10,000 unique things.
- 1:03:47So, so that's why that's why it doesn't anyone who tells you
- 1:03:51they can predict with precision the production ramp of the truly
- 1:03:58new product is doesn't know what they're talking about.
- 1:04:04It is literally impossible. So you go through this like
- 1:04:10series of constraints where it's like this part's limiting
- 1:04:12factor, now that part's limiting factor, this part's limiting
- 1:04:15factor, and multiply that by 1000 basically.
- 1:04:20And then the rate of the production ramp is decided by
- 1:04:23how quickly you can solve each of those problems.
- 1:04:28Now you know Optimus was affected, you know, by the
- 1:04:37magnets issue from China because the optimist actuators in the
- 1:04:41arm do use permanent magnets. Now Tesla as a whole does not
- 1:04:44need to use some of the magnets. But when something is volume
- 1:04:49constrained like like an arm of the robot, then you want to try
- 1:04:55to make the motors as small as possible.
- 1:04:57And then so we just did design in permanent magnet, permanent
- 1:05:01magnets for those motors. And those were affected by the
- 1:05:04supply chain, you know, by by basically China requiring an
- 1:05:07export license to send out any rare earth magnets.
- 1:05:15So we're working through that with China.
- 1:05:17Hopefully we'll get a license to use the rare earth magnets.
- 1:05:22China wants some assurances that these are not used for military
- 1:05:24purposes, which obviously they're not.
- 1:05:26They're just going into a humanoid Rd. launch.
- 1:05:29So it's not a weapon system, but that that is an example of a
- 1:05:36general challenge there. But I'm confident we'll overcome
- 1:05:41these issues and we'll, by the end of this year have thousands
- 1:05:45of off most robots. Great.
- 1:05:48Thank you very much. And the last question, we
- 1:05:51already covered earlier whether Robotex was still on track for
- 1:05:54this year. So with with that we can move on
- 1:05:57to analyst questions. The first question is going to
- 1:06:00come from Pierre at New St. Pierre.
- 1:06:04Please unmute yourself. Hey guys, can you hear me?
- 1:06:11Yeah, that's great. I'm super excited to hear that
- 1:06:15Robotaxi and Optimus becoming the very tangible feature for
- 1:06:18Tesla. But I have actually a question
- 1:06:20on the on the legacy, not the legacy, but the current like
- 1:06:25auto business. And when I look back at the ramp
- 1:06:27of Model 3 a few years ago, I really saw it as being the
- 1:06:33iPhone of cars, a new product completely reinvented, very
- 1:06:37different user experience, vastly superior, impossible to
- 1:06:42to match for traditional competitors.
- 1:06:46And for the iPhone, it resulted in the the high end of the
- 1:06:50smartphone market quadrupling in size and actually Apple taking
- 1:06:5460% market share. And so when you look at the
- 1:06:57Model 3 and the Model Y today, I think they are still like really
- 1:07:01vastly superior to any other cars.
- 1:07:03And I wonder why they've taken about 15% of their addressable
- 1:07:09market and not more actually. So another way to put it is
- 1:07:12what, why are there so many people still buying game WS and
- 1:07:15Mercedes knowing that the Model 3 and the Model YS are out there
- 1:07:20and available? And I wonder if you've, if
- 1:07:24you're trying to solve that's rather internally, if you
- 1:07:27understand why, you know, what are these auto buyers who are
- 1:07:31not buying a Model 3 or a Model Y missing And, and if you have
- 1:07:36ideas of things you could do to address that, maybe there is
- 1:07:39enormous value left on the table there.
- 1:07:42Yeah, that's what I'm wondering these days.
- 1:07:47Yeah. I the, the, the, the reality is
- 1:07:50that in the future, most people are not going to buy cars.
- 1:07:55So it's, it's kind of what, you know, what one could sort of
- 1:07:58say. Look, I think you want to
- 1:08:01continue with your, your phone metaphor.
- 1:08:04I mean, you can remember the days of the flip phones when
- 1:08:06there was, you know, 100 different flip phone designs.
- 1:08:10And, and I would, you know, the, the mistake that lump
- 1:08:14manufacturers made was to try to make that many different
- 1:08:18variants of a foot bone, which was a mistake.
- 1:08:22They should have made the iPhone so because obviously everyone's
- 1:08:30going to want a smartphone. But in the beginning of the of
- 1:08:32when, when you know, the iPhone came out, I was like, wow, I
- 1:08:35can't believe these guys are not reacting as though this, this is
- 1:08:40death. But they didn't they, they kept
- 1:08:44making variance of flip phones. Nokia.
- 1:08:49Nokia I think at one point was the most valuable company in the
- 1:08:51world or close to it. But they kept making flip
- 1:08:54phones, you know, trying to find another mock niche.
- 1:08:58Maybe somebody wants a phone of a different style, maybe this
- 1:09:03different colour or whatever it is.
- 1:09:07Nope. They just want a super
- 1:09:09intelligent phone. They can do everything, just one
- 1:09:15SO. I said this many, I said this
- 1:09:25many years ago, but in in the future, in in the not, not too
- 1:09:30distant future, buying a gasoline car that is not
- 1:09:35autonomous will be like riding a horse while using a flip phone.
- 1:09:38Some people still do it, but it's rare.
- 1:09:46OK. And.
- 1:09:48Thank you. The next question comes from
- 1:09:50Emmanuel Rosner at Wolfe. Emmanuel, please, I'm here.
- 1:09:55So. Great.
- 1:09:58Thanks for taking my question. So Ilan, the the public version
- 1:10:02of the FSD software still has a decent amount of I guess
- 1:10:08intermittent human interventions that are required.
- 1:10:12So what's still required for the software on your end to get to a
- 1:10:16level where it doesn't need to be supervised?
- 1:10:19And I'm asking that in the context of, obviously, the June
- 1:10:22launch being in the next couple of months, what still needs to
- 1:10:26happen? And we are working on a number
- 1:10:31of items too. Yeah, I mean we are aware of the
- 1:10:36interventions that are happening in the public bills and that's
- 1:10:40why we are hardcore burning it down.
- 1:10:42And really just picking some initial launch city helped us
- 1:10:46focus on like solving all the issues that you'd face here, for
- 1:10:49example, like it's focusing on Austin.
- 1:10:51We're not like solving all the issues that, you know, customers
- 1:10:53in Boston or somewhere else might face.
- 1:10:56And then here we just like, you know, have a big list of all the
- 1:11:00issues, just burn it down. And that's what the team is
- 1:11:02working on along with other sort of like redundancy issues.
- 1:11:06For example, if one of the computers goes down right down
- 1:11:09the customer fleet, it would like throw the red hands and ask
- 1:11:13you to take over. But we don't want that kind of
- 1:11:15situation. So you're solving both like the
- 1:11:17reliability issues of the autonomy software and also the
- 1:11:19reliability issues of the system software together for Austin?
- 1:11:28Yeah, really. Just we just worked through a
- 1:11:30long tail of unusual interventions.
- 1:11:36So, and these are really very rare, like as a single
- 1:11:41intervention every 10,000 miles. I mean, that's a lot of driving
- 1:11:44you've got to do to even find one case within Athens.
- 1:11:49Yeah, and some interventions due.
- 1:11:50To. Systematic missing
- 1:11:53functionality. For example, for handling
- 1:11:55emergency vehicles correctly, you don't need to consume audio
- 1:11:58as an input other than the customer facing versions don't
- 1:12:02have audio input, but the version that's in that's going
- 1:12:05to be in Austin will have audio input and so on.
- 1:12:10OK, but would you have like remote operators for example?
- 1:12:15I mean every now and then if a car gets stuck or something
- 1:12:17someone will like, you know, unblock it.
- 1:12:19But it's just figured we are a bit conservative and tend
- 1:12:23towards more safety than even if we get stuck every now and then.
- 1:12:28We do have remote support but it's not going to be required
- 1:12:32for safe operation. If anything, it's just required
- 1:12:34for more availability. Anyway, it's only a couple
- 1:12:39months away, so you can just say for yourself in a couple months
- 1:12:42in Austin. Great.
- 1:12:45Our next question comes from Edison at Deutsche Bank.
- 1:12:52Edison, please unmute yourself. Hi.
- 1:12:55Thank you very much for the question.
- 1:12:57So I want to ask about the the optimist supply chain going
- 1:13:02forward. You know, you mentioned, you
- 1:13:04know, very fast ramp up. What do you envision that supply
- 1:13:08chain looking like? Is it going to require many more
- 1:13:12suppliers to be in the US now because of the tariffs?
- 1:13:16How, how, how does one kind of think about what needs to happen
- 1:13:18there? We.
- 1:13:24Have to see how things settle out.
- 1:13:25I don't know yet. I mean some things we're doing
- 1:13:33as Pretoria talked about, which is that we're, we've already
- 1:13:36taken many steps to localize our supply chain.
- 1:13:39We're more localized than any other manufacturer and and we
- 1:13:44have a lot of things and under way that to to increase the
- 1:13:48localization to reduce supply chain risk associated with
- 1:13:52geopolitical uncertainty. Did you follow up?
- 1:13:57Yeah, wanted to come back actually to the, the robo taxi
- 1:14:01then. Do you have a sense on, on how,
- 1:14:04how many cars or how, how big the scale will be initially and
- 1:14:07how that might ramp up? I know you're, you're targeting,
- 1:14:09you know, millions of, of vehicles in the second-half kind
- 1:14:12of of next year. But initially at launch, how,
- 1:14:15how many vehicles would be reasonable?
- 1:14:17And is it going to be as simple as if one goes to Austin, let's
- 1:14:21say in late June or July, you'll be able to to request?
- 1:14:26Yeah, we're still debating the exact number to start off on day
- 1:14:31one, but it's like, I don't know, maybe 10 or 20 vehicles on
- 1:14:34day one and watch it carefully, scale it up rapidly after that.
- 1:14:43So, you know, we want to make sure that we're paying very
- 1:14:46close attention the first time this happens.
- 1:14:51But yeah, you'll be able to end of June or July, just go to
- 1:14:55Austin and what are Tesla? What time does drive great?
- 1:15:02The next question comes from George at Canaccord.
- 1:15:07Hi, thank you for taking my question.
- 1:15:09It has to. Do with FSD pricing, can we
- 1:15:12envision when you launch unsupervised FSD that there
- 1:15:16could be sort of a multi tiered pricing approach to unsupervised
- 1:15:21versus supervised similar to what you did with autopilot
- 1:15:24versus FSD in the past? Thank you.
- 1:15:29I mean, this is something which we've been thinking about.
- 1:15:32I mean, just so you know, for people who have been trying FSD
- 1:15:37and who've been using FSD, they think even the current pricing
- 1:15:41is too cheap because for 99 bucks basically getting a
- 1:15:46personal show. Yeah, I mean, we, we do need to
- 1:15:50give people more time to to they want to look at like the key
- 1:15:55break point is can you read your text messages or not?
- 1:15:59Yes, can you write a text message or not?
- 1:16:01Because obviously people are doing this, by the way, with an
- 1:16:03autonomous cars all the time. And if you just go over, go over
- 1:16:07drive down the highway and you'll see people texting while
- 1:16:10driving, you know, doing 80 miles an hour.
- 1:16:13Yeah, but depending on makeup, doing their hair with, with the
- 1:16:18mirror down and texting and driving at 80 miles an hour.
- 1:16:23This is a concurrence. So people eating lunch, you name
- 1:16:28it, shaving, you know. So anyway, but right now the car
- 1:16:39is very insistent that you pay attention to the road.
- 1:16:43So which reduces the value somewhat because it's very
- 1:16:51rigorous about you paying attention to the road.
- 1:16:53And we'll gradually lighten up on that with, you know, every
- 1:16:57every few weeks or every month, we'll, we'll relax that a little
- 1:17:01bit, make up so you can be more and more able to do things you
- 1:17:09want to do and not have the card to manage your rate of
- 1:17:12detention. So, so that, that, that value,
- 1:17:17it'll really be profound when you can basically do whatever
- 1:17:20you want, including sleep and, and, and then that $99 is going
- 1:17:27to seem like the best $99 you've ever spent in your.
- 1:17:31Life and George, did you have a follow up?
- 1:17:34My follow up is about geographic expansion.
- 1:17:37Just maybe discuss additional markets.
- 1:17:39You know there's. Been some news around India
- 1:17:40recently that you could launch this year and next.
- 1:17:43Thank you. So, yeah, I mean we we've been
- 1:17:47working on getting into II is a very hard market and especially
- 1:17:53the current and I don't want to talk just about tariffs, but the
- 1:17:58current tariff structure with India is that any car which we
- 1:18:01send in is subject to 70% tariff also on like a 30%, you know
- 1:18:07luxury tax on it. So you know, the same car which
- 1:18:10we're sending is like 100% more expensive than what it is.
- 1:18:15So that creates a lot of, you know, anxiety.
- 1:18:19It's like, you know, people feel OK, they're paying too much for
- 1:18:22the car. And by the way, we're not
- 1:18:24getting the money. The local government is getting
- 1:18:26the money. And that's why we've been very
- 1:18:28careful trying to figure out when is the right time.
- 1:18:33We, like I said, we are working on it.
- 1:18:35It's a great, it would be a great market to enter because
- 1:18:39India has a big middle class which we would want to type in
- 1:18:43and that is the market which we want to be in.
- 1:18:46But again, these kind of things create a little bit of tension
- 1:18:49which we are trying to work around.
- 1:18:53Great. Thank you so much.
- 1:18:55The next question comes from Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley.
- 1:19:04Go ahead. Adam.
- 1:19:11We, we can't hear you, Adam. So, Mindy, we'll put you back in
- 1:19:15the queue and we'll move to Colin Langan from Wells Fargo
- 1:19:19while Adam figures out his audio.
- 1:19:26Colin, please unmute yourself. Oh great.
- 1:19:29Do you hear me? Yes.
- 1:19:31Oh, great. You know you're still.
- 1:19:33Sticking with the vision only approach, a lot of autonomous
- 1:19:36people still have a lot of concerns about, you know, sun
- 1:19:39glare, fog and dust. Any color on how you anticipate
- 1:19:43on on getting around those issues?
- 1:19:46Because I my understanding it kind of blinds the camera when
- 1:19:48you get glare and stuff. Actually it does not find the
- 1:19:53camera. The we use an approach which is
- 1:19:59direct photon count. So when you see the a processed
- 1:20:04image, so the image that goes from the sort of photon counter.
- 1:20:11So the silicon, the silicon photon counter that gets goes
- 1:20:15through a digital signal processor or image signal
- 1:20:18processor. That's, that's normally what
- 1:20:22happens. And then that then the image
- 1:20:25that you see looks all washed out because if it's you point
- 1:20:28the camera at the sun, it, the post processing of the photon
- 1:20:33counting washes things out. It actually adds noise.
- 1:20:40So quite a big breakthrough that we made some time ago was to go
- 1:20:44with direct photon counting and bypass the image signal
- 1:20:48processor and that. And then you can drive pretty
- 1:20:53much straight at the sun. And you can also see in what
- 1:20:57appears to be the blackest of night.
- 1:20:59And then here in fog, we can see as well as like people can
- 1:21:05probably better, but in fact say quite slightly better than
- 1:21:08people than the average person anyway.
- 1:21:13And yeah, so so the. Camera is able to see when
- 1:21:20there's direct glare on it. I'm surprised by that.
- 1:21:25OK. And then just.
- 1:21:27There are obviously media reports the other day that the
- 1:21:30affordable model was delayed. Doesn't sound like that's
- 1:21:32correct. Those reports also talked about
- 1:21:35it being more of a cheaper version of the Model Y Any color
- 1:21:40on what we should expect is, is it a cheaper version of the
- 1:21:43Model Y or is it actually going to be a design change with it?
- 1:21:48So, and I think Lars already covered it in answering one of
- 1:21:52the say.com questions, The real thing which we are trying to
- 1:21:55focus on is affordability and using our existing lines.
- 1:22:01And there's always limitations when you're using existing lines
- 1:22:05as to how many different form factors can you ping to.
- 1:22:08So that's the way I would say you should think about it, and I
- 1:22:13don't. Know yeah and I think I said
- 1:22:15this before and other other calls like, you know, with the
- 1:22:18recent upgrades telling the Model 3 and the worldwide
- 1:22:20platforms, we made some pretty great cars at pretty great
- 1:22:23prices and we had a bunch of features and things like that.
- 1:22:26I think it's easy to consider that, you know, moving forward,
- 1:22:30Tesla doesn't make bad cars. And we always make, you know,
- 1:22:33our intent is not to make a car that is any worse than any car
- 1:22:36we've ever produced in the past. And so, you know, the models
- 1:22:38that come out the next months will will be built on our lines
- 1:22:41and will resemble in form and shape the cars we currently
- 1:22:43make. And, and you know that the key
- 1:22:45is that they'll be affordable and you'll be able to buy one.
- 1:22:49Great. We might have time for one last
- 1:22:52question, Adam. We'll try your audio again.
- 1:22:55You want to try to unmute yourself, Adam.
- 1:23:00All right. Unfortunately still not working.
- 1:23:08All right. Oh, all right guys.
- 1:23:13Technology go. Ahead.
- 1:23:16Yeah, hi. Yeah, in the February 28th Joe
- 1:23:18Rogan interview, Elon, you advocated for a rampant tariffs
- 1:23:23to give people time to adjust. Otherwise quote you said the
- 1:23:26system would break and bad things would happen.
- 1:23:29So are things breaking yet? And if the announced as if the
- 1:23:34tariffs as announced remain in place?
- 1:23:37When would things start breaking?
- 1:23:40Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, I'm, I'm not, I'm, I'm,
- 1:23:44I'm one of many advisors to the president.
- 1:23:46I'm not the president. So, and but I, you know, I've
- 1:23:52made my opinion clear to the president and that, you know,
- 1:23:59and, and other people made their opinion clear to the president
- 1:24:02because he is there, he listened, he talks to many
- 1:24:04people and he makes his decision.
- 1:24:07And, you know, I'm hopeful that president will observe whether
- 1:24:11my predictions are more accurate than the predictions of others
- 1:24:13and perhaps where my advice differently in the future, which
- 1:24:17we'll see. But, you know, I'm an advocate
- 1:24:23of, you know, predictable tariff structures and generally I'm an
- 1:24:29advocate for, you know, free trade and lower tariffs.
- 1:24:37Now, 1 does need to take a look at where if, if, if some country
- 1:24:44is doing something predatory with tariffs or is providing
- 1:24:49that extreme support for if a government is providing extreme
- 1:24:52financial support for a particular industry, then you
- 1:24:57have to do something to counteract that.
- 1:25:00So, but I think that that's on a case by case basis
- 1:25:02strategically, but you know, the the president is the the elected
- 1:25:10representative people and his fully within his rights to do
- 1:25:13what he would like to do. OK, Elon, I, I, I respect that.
- 1:25:22Just as just as a follow up and thanks again between between
- 1:25:25China and the United States, who in your opinion is further ahead
- 1:25:30on the development of physical AI specifically on humanoids?
- 1:25:36And and also drones. I'd be interested and and is it
- 1:25:39even close and kind of how I I yeah, I'm serious.
- 1:25:42Well, I think you know the answer to drones.
- 1:25:46I mean, yeah. You know, a friend of mine,
- 1:25:53Yuval made this, you know, posted on XI, reposted it, I
- 1:26:00think a prophetic statement, which is any country that cannot
- 1:26:03manufacturers own drones is doomed to be the vassal state of
- 1:26:06any country that can. And we can't, American cannot
- 1:26:11currently manufacture its own drones.
- 1:26:15But that's it again, unfortunately.
- 1:26:21So China I believe manufacturers about 70% of all drugs.
- 1:26:25And if you look at the total supply chain, China is almost
- 1:26:28100, almost 100% of drones are have a supply chain dependency
- 1:26:32on China. So China is in a very strong
- 1:26:34position and here in America and we need to shift more of our
- 1:26:44people and resources to manufacturing because this this
- 1:26:50is and I have a lot of respect for China because I think China
- 1:26:55is amazing actually. But the United States, the
- 1:26:58United States do not have such a severe dependency on China for
- 1:27:01bad groans and be unable to make them unless China gives us the
- 1:27:07parts, which is currently the situation, You know, with
- 1:27:12respect to humanoid robots. I do not think there is any
- 1:27:19company in any country that can match Tesla.
- 1:27:27Tesla and SpaceX are #1 so. And then now I'm a little
- 1:27:38concerned that on the leaderboard ranks 2 through 10
- 1:27:44will be Chinese companies, but I'm confident that rank one will
- 1:27:50be Tesla. Great.
- 1:27:54Well, I think that's unfortunately all the time we
- 1:27:56have for today. We appreciate all your questions
- 1:27:58and look forward to talking to you next quarter.
- 1:28:00Thank you very much and goodbye. Did you catch that, what Trump
- 1:28:04said about Elon? And it's it's telling the kind
- 1:28:08of person that Trump thinks Elon is now.
- 1:28:11And I'm not taking a side here. I am more in favor of doing the
- 1:28:15right thing and being nice to people than I am about anything
- 1:28:19else. And something is telling about
- 1:28:22the way that Donald Trump just kind of blows off Elon in this
- 1:28:25clip. And I would say that about
- 1:28:27anybody. I'm I'm not for or against
- 1:28:31anything. I just know what I hear.
- 1:28:34Right? And if you didn't hear that,
- 1:28:36then go back, rewind a little bit, check it out.
- 1:28:39Notice how he kind of just like brushed Elon off as one of those
- 1:28:43people that like, I don't really need the guy.
- 1:28:45He just came in here and did this thing.
- 1:28:47And that's cool. You know, like that's kind of
- 1:28:48how he how he worded it. But yeah, I mean, let me know
- 1:28:52what you think in the comments. Let me know how you feel about
- 1:28:54this because I'm here to have a conversation with you.
- 1:28:57And we are also a community here.
- 1:29:00And if you want to join our community for further
- 1:29:02discussion, we have a Discord. I'm going to leave it in the
- 1:29:05description down below. So thank you so much for
- 1:29:08listening today. I appreciate your time and I
- 1:29:10appreciate you spending it here with me on stage 0 Elon Musk
- 1:29:13podcast. Take care of yourselves and each
- 1:29:15other and I will see you in the next one.