Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Tesla Q4 and full year 2024 Financial Results and Q&A Webcast
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.
- 0:18Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to Tesla's fourth
- 0:20quarter 2024 Q&A webcast. My name is Travis Axelrod, the
- 0:24Head of Investor Relations here at Tesla and I'm joined today by
- 0:28Elon Musk and Bebop, Tunisia and a number of other executives.
- 0:32Our Q4 results were announced at about 3:00 PM Central Time in
- 0:36the update deck we published at the same link as this webcast.
- 0:40During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and
- 0:43make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our
- 0:46predictions and expectations as of today.
- 0:49Actual events or results could differ materially due to a
- 0:52number of risks and uncertainties, including those
- 0:54mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC.
- 0:58During the question and answer portion of today's call, please
- 1:00limit yourself to one question and one follow up.
- 1:03Please use the raise hand button to join the question queue.
- 1:07Before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks.
- 1:10Elon, thank you. So in summary, in Q4 we set a
- 1:14record and limit vehicles at an annualized rate of only two
- 1:17million a year. So congratulations to the Tesla
- 1:21team on excellent work. We're achieving record
- 1:24production and deliveries. We Model Y was the best selling
- 1:29vehicle of any kind for 2024. That's worth noting that the not
- 1:33just the best electric vehicle, the best vehicle of any kind on
- 1:36Earth, number one was Model Y. We're staying focused on on
- 1:41maximizing volumes and obviously doubling down for I don't know
- 1:45what it's really, I was going to say doubling down on autonomy,
- 1:50but really it's like autonomy is like 10 Xing.
- 1:54Frankly, doubling is not even enough.
- 1:57We made many critical investments in 2024 in
- 2:00manufacturing, AI and robotics that will bear immense fruit in
- 2:05the future. Immense.
- 2:06Like it's in fact to such a scale that it is difficult to
- 2:10comprehend. And I've said this before and
- 2:14I'll stand by it. I see a path, but I'm not saying
- 2:18it's an easy path, but I see a path for Tesla being the most
- 2:21valuable company in the world, world by far, Not even close.
- 2:24Like maybe several times more than I mean, there is a path
- 2:31where Tesla is worth more than the next top five companies
- 2:34combined. There's a path to that.
- 2:38I mean, I, I think it's like an incredibly, it's like a
- 2:42difficult path, but it is an achievable path.
- 2:47So, and that is overwhelmingly due to autonomous vehicles and
- 2:54autonomous humanoid robots. So our focus is, is actually
- 3:01building towards that. And then that that's what we're
- 3:06laying the ground. We will lay the groundwork for
- 3:07that in 2024. We'll continue to lay the
- 3:09groundwork for that in 2025. In fact, more than lay the
- 3:13groundwork actually be building the structure, be we're building
- 3:17the manufacturing lines. And like, yeah, I'd like setting
- 3:26up for what I think will be an epic 2026 and a ridiculous 27
- 3:33and 28. Ridiculously good.
- 3:37That is my prediction. You know, we as you have very
- 3:45few, very few people understand the value of full self driving
- 3:49and our ability to monetize the fleet.
- 3:53You know, I've some of these things I've said for quite a
- 3:56long time and I know people have said, well, you know, he owns
- 3:58the boy. You cried wolf like several
- 3:59times, but I'm telling you there's a damn wolf at this time
- 4:04and you can drive it. In fact, it can drive you.
- 4:06It's a self driving wolf. You know, for a lot of people
- 4:12that they're like their experience of Tesla autonomy is
- 4:15like if it's even a year old, if it's even 2 years old, that it's
- 4:20like me. It's like meeting someone when
- 4:21they're like a toddler and thinking that they're going to
- 4:24be a toddler forever, but obviously not going to be a
- 4:26toddler forever if they grow up. But if their last experience was
- 4:31like, oh, FSD was a toddler, it's like, well, it's grown up
- 4:34now. Have you seen it?
- 4:34It's like walks and talks, and that's really what we've got.
- 4:41And it's difficult to for people to understand this because human
- 4:44intuition is linear as opposed to what we're seeing is
- 4:48exponential progress. So that's why my number one
- 4:54recommendation for anyone who doubts is simply try it.
- 4:58Have you tried it? When's the last time you tried
- 4:59it? And the only people who are
- 5:02skeptical, the only people who are skeptical are those who have
- 5:05not tried it. So, you know, a car goes, a
- 5:12passenger car typically has only about 10 hours of utility per
- 5:15week out of 168, a very small percentage.
- 5:20Once that car is autonomous, my rough estimate is that it is it
- 5:25is in use for at least a third of the hours per week.
- 5:28So call it 50, maybe 35 hours of the week.
- 5:32And it can be used for both cargo delivery and people's
- 5:36delivery. So even let's say people are
- 5:38asleep, but you can deliver packages in the middle of the
- 5:42night or resupply restaurants or whatever the case may be,
- 5:45whatever people need at all hours of the day or night.
- 5:51That same asset, the thing that that is these things that
- 5:54already exist with no incremental cost change, just a
- 5:58software update, now have five times or more the utility that
- 6:03they currently have. I, I, I think this will be the,
- 6:09the largest asset value increase in human history.
- 6:14Maybe there's something bigger, but I'm, I just don't know what
- 6:16it is. And so people who look in the
- 6:19rearview mirror are looking for past precedent, except I, I
- 6:24don't think there is one. So, but you know, there's there.
- 6:32But like, the reality of autonomy is upon us.
- 6:35And I repeat my advice, try driving the car or let it drive
- 6:41you. So now it works very well in the
- 6:47US, but of course, it will, over time, work just as well
- 6:51everywhere else. Yeah.
- 6:59So we're working hard to grow our annual volumes, our
- 7:06constraint this year, our current constraint is battery
- 7:09packs this year, but we're working on addressing that
- 7:12constraint and I think we will make progress in addressing that
- 7:17constraint. And then things are really going
- 7:21to go ballistic next year and really ballistic in 27 and 28.
- 7:27So, yeah, so a bit more on full self driving.
- 7:36Our Q4 vehicle safety report shows continued year over year
- 7:39improvement in safety for vehicles so that the safety
- 7:42numbers, if somebody has supervised full self driving
- 7:46turn on or not the the safety differences are gigantic.
- 7:51So and people have seen the the immense improvement with version
- 7:5713 and with incremental versions in version 13 and then version
- 8:0214 is going to be yet another step beyond that.
- 8:05That is very significant. We launched the Cortex training
- 8:09cluster at Bigger Factory Austin, which was a significant
- 8:12contributor to FSD advancement and we continue to invest in
- 8:16training infrastructure out of Texas headquarters.
- 8:21So the, the, the training needs for Optimist or Optimist
- 8:25humanoid robot are are probably at least ultimately 10X what
- 8:30what's needed for the car at at least to get to the full range
- 8:34of of of useful roles. You can say like how many
- 8:38different roles are there for a humanoid robot versus a car
- 8:43Humanoid robot is has probably what 1000 times more uses and,
- 8:51and more complex things than in a car.
- 8:54That that doesn't mean that the training scales by 1000, but
- 8:59it's probably, you know, 10X now you can do this progressively.
- 9:03So it doesn't mean like hotels are going to spend like $500
- 9:05billion in training compute because we would obviously train
- 9:10the optimists to do enough tasks to match the output of Optimus
- 9:17robots. But and obviously the cost of
- 9:22training is dropping dramatically with time.
- 9:25So, but it is it is like it is one of those things where I
- 9:31think long term optimists will be optimist has the potential to
- 9:35be north of $10 trillion in revenue.
- 9:37Like it's really bananas. So that you can obviously afford
- 9:43a lot of training compute in that situation.
- 9:45In fact, even $500 billion of training compute in that
- 9:48situation would be quite a good deal.
- 9:53Yeah, the future is going to be incredibly different from the
- 9:59past, that's for sure. We live at this unbelievable
- 10:03infection point in human history.
- 10:06So yeah, so in the proofs, the proof is in the pudding.
- 10:14So we're going to be launching unsupervised full Self driving
- 10:20as a paid service in Austin in June.
- 10:25So if I've talked to the team, we feel confident in being able
- 10:32to do an initial launch of unsupervised no one in the car
- 10:37Full Self driving in Austin IN June.
- 10:40We already have Tesla's operating autonomously
- 10:44unsupervised for self driving at our factory in Fremont and will
- 10:48soon be doing that at our factory in Texas.
- 10:52So thousands of cars every day are driving with no one in them
- 10:57at our Fremont factory in in California.
- 11:01They will soon be doing that in Austin and then elsewhere in the
- 11:05world at the rest of our factories, which is pretty cool.
- 11:10And the cars aren't just driving to exactly the same spot because
- 11:15obviously they're all when it's light at the same spot.
- 11:20The, the cars are actually programmed with, with where,
- 11:23with what lane they need to park into to be picked up for
- 11:27delivery. So they, they, they drive from
- 11:30the factory end of line to their, to their destination
- 11:35parking spot and, and that, and that could be picked up for
- 11:41delivery to customers. And then doing this reliably
- 11:45every day, thousands of times a day.
- 11:50It's pretty cool. Like I said, these Teslas will
- 11:53be in the wild with no one in them in June in Austin.
- 12:00So what I'm saying is this is not some far off mythical
- 12:04situation. It's literally, you know, 5-6
- 12:10months away, five months away sort of thing.
- 12:15And while we're stepping into putting our toe in the water,
- 12:19gently at first, just to make sure everything's cool, our
- 12:24solution, our sort of our solution, our solution is a
- 12:28generalized AI solution. It is not, does not require high
- 12:31precision maps of a locality. So we just want to be cautious.
- 12:38It's not that it doesn't work beyond awesome.
- 12:40In fact it does. We just want to be put a toe in
- 12:43the water, make sure everything is OK, then, you know, put a few
- 12:47more toes in the water, then put a foot in the water with safety
- 12:52of the general public as and those in the car as our top
- 12:56priority. With regard to optimist,
- 13:04obviously I'm making you know these revenue predictions,
- 13:07predictions that sound absolutely insane.
- 13:09I realized that, but but they are, I think they will prove to
- 13:15be accurate. Yeah, yeah.
- 13:23Now with Optimus, there's there's a lot of uncertainty on
- 13:26on the exact timing because it's not like a train arriving at the
- 13:31station. For Optimus.
- 13:33We are designing the train and the station and in real time
- 13:37while also bullying the tracks. And, and so they're like, why
- 13:42did people just like, why didn't the train arrive exactly at
- 13:4512:05? And like we're literally
- 13:46designing the train and the tracking station in real time
- 13:49while you're seeing like, how can we predict this thing with
- 13:51absolute precision? It's impossible.
- 13:54You know, the, the, the normal internal plan calls for roughly
- 13:5810,000 optimist robots to be built this year.
- 14:00Will we succeed in building 10,000 exactly by the end of
- 14:03December this year? Probably not.
- 14:06We we but I but will we succeed in making several thousand Yes,
- 14:10I think we will will those several 1000 optimists robust be
- 14:14doing useful things by the end of the year?
- 14:16Yes, I'm confident they will they will do useful things that
- 14:22those the optimist in use at the Tesla factories for production
- 14:28design one will inform how would we change for production sign 2,
- 14:33which we expect to launch next year.
- 14:36And our goal is to ramp prop Optimus production faster than
- 14:41maybe anything's ever been ramped meaning like
- 14:45aspirationally an order of magnitude ramp per year.
- 14:50Now if we aspire to an order of magnitude ramp per year, perhaps
- 14:53we only end up with a half order of magnitude per year, but
- 14:57that's the kind of growth that we're talking about.
- 15:01It doesn't take very many years before, you know, we're, we're
- 15:05making 100 million of these things a year.
- 15:10If you go up by let's say a factor, you know, by 5X per
- 15:14year, insane. Not 50%, five, 100%.
- 15:24So, you know, these are big growth numbers.
- 15:31Yeah, but we do need to be. This is an entirely new supply
- 15:34chain, is entirely new technology.
- 15:37There's nothing off the shelf to use.
- 15:39We tried desperately with Optimist to to use any existing
- 15:43motors act, you know, any actuators, sensors, nothing.
- 15:48Nothing worked for a humanoid robot at any price.
- 15:52We had to design everything from from physics first principles to
- 15:56work for humanoid robot and with the most sophisticated hand that
- 16:02has ever been made before by far right Optimus will be also like
- 16:08play the piano and be able to thread a needle.
- 16:18I mean, this is the level of precision no one has been able
- 16:21to achieve. And so it's really something
- 16:26special so. Yeah, so in my prediction long
- 16:38term is the optimist will be overwhelmingly the value of the
- 16:40company regarding energy backed up back to us.
- 16:48It was the Elon can you come back here for a minute?
- 16:53OK, back to US. Energy storage is a big deal and
- 16:58will become it's already super important, will become
- 17:02incredibly important in the future.
- 17:04And and it is something that enables far greater energy
- 17:07output to the grid than is currently possible.
- 17:12Because the the grid, the the grids are, are the vast majority
- 17:17of the grid has no energy storage capability.
- 17:20So they have to design the power plants to, you know, for very
- 17:23high peaks and assuming that there's no energy storage, once
- 17:28you have grid, grid energy storage and home based energy
- 17:30storage, the actual total energy output per year of the grid is
- 17:34dramatically greater than people think.
- 17:36Maybe it's at least double. This will drive the demand of
- 17:41stationary battery packs and especially the grid scale ones
- 17:46to insane. Basically as much demand as we
- 17:49could possibly make. So we have our second factory
- 17:57which is in Shanghai that's starting operation and we're
- 18:00building a third factory. So we're trying to ramp output
- 18:03of the stationary battery storage as quickly as possible.
- 18:08Now there, there is a challenge here where we have to be careful
- 18:11to that we're not robbing take robbing from one pocket to take
- 18:14to another pocket. Because for a given GW hours per
- 18:18year of of the cell output, where if still does it go into
- 18:21stationary applications or mobile applications, it can't go
- 18:24both into both. So we have to make that trade
- 18:27off yeah. But overall the demand for total
- 18:39GW hours of batteries whether mobile or stationary that will
- 18:43grow to in a very, very big way over time.
- 18:51So in conclusion, 2025 really is a pivotal year for Tesla and I.
- 18:59And when people look back on 2025 and the launch of
- 19:02unsupervised full self driving, true real world AI that that
- 19:07actually works, I think they may regard it as the biggest year in
- 19:11Tesla history, maybe even bigger than our first car, the Roadster
- 19:18or or the model ISO, the Model 3 or Model 1.
- 19:23In fact, I think it probably will be viewed 25 as maybe the
- 19:27most important year in Tesla's history.
- 19:31There is no company in the world that is as good at real world AI
- 19:34as Tesla. I don't even know if he's in 2nd
- 19:38place like you say. Like who's in 2nd place for real
- 19:42world? AII would need a very big
- 19:44telescope to see them. That's how Fall behind they are,
- 19:50all right. Great.
- 19:52Thank you very much, Elon. And Vaibhav has some updating
- 19:54remarks as well. Yeah, I'll talk about things on
- 19:56Earth. As Elon mentioned in Q4, we set
- 20:01records and vehicle deliveries and energy storage deployments
- 20:04in an uncertain macro environment.
- 20:06We were able to grow auto and energy storage volumes both
- 20:09sequentially and on a year on year basis.
- 20:12For this, I would like to thank the efforts of everyone at Tesla
- 20:15to make this a reality and our customers who helped us achieve
- 20:19this speed. Coming into the fourth quarter,
- 20:22our focus was to reduce inventory levels in the
- 20:25automotive business and we accomplished that by ending the
- 20:28quarter with the lowest finish quote inventory in the last two
- 20:31years. This was a result of offering
- 20:34not only attractive financing options, but also other
- 20:37discounts and programs which impacted ASPs.
- 20:40While we saw volume growth in almost all regions that we
- 20:43operate in, we hit a new record of for deliveries in the Greater
- 20:47China market. This is an encouraging trend
- 20:50since we grew volume in a highly competitive Bev market.
- 20:55On the automotive margin front, we saw a quarter over quarter
- 20:58decline primarily due to lower ASPs and due to the recognition
- 21:03of FSD related revenue in Q3 from feature releases.
- 21:07Our journey on cost reduction continues and we were able to
- 21:10get our overall cost per car down below $35,000, driven
- 21:15primarily by material costs. This was despite increased
- 21:19depreciation and other costs as we prepare for the transition to
- 21:23the new Model buy for which we recently started taking orders
- 21:26in all markets. All of that case will start
- 21:29producing the new Model Y next month.
- 21:32While we feel confident in our team's abilities to ramp
- 21:36production quickly, note that it is an unprecedented change and
- 21:39we are not aware of anybody else taking the best selling car on
- 21:44the planet and updating all factories at the same time.
- 21:49This changeover will result in several weeks of last production
- 21:53in the quarter. As a result, margins will be
- 21:56impacted due to ID capacity and other land related costs as is
- 22:00common in any launch, but will be overcome as production
- 22:03present. We will be introducing several
- 22:06new products throughout 2025. We are still on track to launch
- 22:10a more affordable model in the first half of 2025 and we'll
- 22:13continue to expand our lineup from there.
- 22:17On a dollar for dollar basis, we believe we have the most
- 22:20compelling lineup today compared to the industry and it will
- 22:23continue to get better from there.
- 22:26As always, all our products come with the best software in the
- 22:29industry, autonomy features and capable of full autonomy in the
- 22:33future. And despite the premium
- 22:35experience, the total cost of ownership is close to mass
- 22:38market less premium competitors. Energy storage deployments
- 22:43reached an all time high in Q4 and this and resulted in but
- 22:49declined sequentially. This was a result of higher,
- 22:54this sorry growth came from Megapack and Power.
- 22:59Both businesses continue to be supply constrained and like Ilan
- 23:02mentioned, we're trying to ramp up production with mega Factory
- 23:07Shanghai coming online this quarter onwards.
- 23:11While quarterly deployments will likely continue to fluctuate
- 23:14sequentially, we expect at least 50% growth in deployments year
- 23:18over year in 2025. Gross profit and margins in the
- 23:22service and other business was up year over year but declined
- 23:26sequentially. This was the result of higher
- 23:29service center costs and lower profit from used car business.
- 23:33The businesses with this there was another primarily support
- 23:36our new car business especially through their impact on total
- 23:39cost of ownership. Therefore, while they manage
- 23:41them to be positive on a GAAP business, we do not expect
- 23:45similar margins as the rest of the business.
- 23:48There's a lot of uncertainty around tariffs.
- 23:50Over the years, we've tried to localize our supply chain in
- 23:54every market, but we are still really reliant on parts from
- 23:57across the world for all our businesses.
- 23:59Therefore, the imposition of tariffs, which is very likely
- 24:04and any of the supercosity will have an impact on our business
- 24:08and profitability. Our operating expenses grew both
- 24:12year over year and sequentially. The biggest driver of the
- 24:15increase was R&D as we continue to invest in AI related
- 24:19initiatives. The remaining increase came from
- 24:23growth in our sales capabilities and marketing efforts from
- 24:26preferred program. For 2025, we expect operating
- 24:30expenses to increase to support our growth initiatives.
- 24:34It is important to point out that the net income in Q4 was
- 24:37impacted by a 600 million mark to market benefit from Bitcoin
- 24:42due to the adoption of a new accounting standard for digital
- 24:45assets whereby we change we will take mark to market adjustments
- 24:49to other income every reporting period going forward.
- 24:54Our free cash flow for the quarter was 2 billion and
- 24:57despite CapEx increase of 2.4 billion in 2024, we were able to
- 25:01generate free cash flow of 3.6 billion for the year.
- 25:05CapEx efficiency is something we are extremely focused on.
- 25:10While we have invested in AI related initiatives, we've done
- 25:13so in a very targeted manner to to to utilize the spend to get
- 25:18immediate benefits. The build out of Cortex was
- 25:22exceeded because of the rule ex actually how explored the rule
- 25:28out of FSD V version 13, a cumulative AI related CapEx
- 25:33including infrastructure so far has been approximately 5
- 25:36billion. And for 2025, we expect our
- 25:39CapEx to be flat on a year over this year basis.
- 25:43In conclusion, you know like Elon said, 2025 is going to be a
- 25:48pivotal year for Tesla. There are a lot of investments
- 25:51which we've made and we'll continue to make in this coming
- 25:54year, which will set the pace for the next phase of growth.
- 25:59And you know, it is something which now I'm getting out, out
- 26:03of work. It is going to be out of this
- 26:05world and we just are playing, putting the bank foundation and
- 26:11that's all I have. Great.
- 26:13Thank you very much, Vaibhav. Now we will move over to
- 26:16investor questions. Maybe we'll start with say.com.
- 26:19The first question is, is unsupervised FSD still plan to
- 26:23be released in Texas and California this year?
- 26:25What hurdles still exist to make that happen?
- 26:29You addressed the Texas piece, I think already so.
- 26:31Yeah, I'm confident that we will release unsupervised FSD in
- 26:35California this year as well, you know, yeah, in fact, I think
- 26:42we will at most likely release unsupervised FSD in many regions
- 26:49of the country of the US by the end of this year.
- 26:53Like I said, we're, we're just putting a toe in the water, then
- 26:56few toes, then the foot, then leg, then, you know, make sure
- 26:59everything's cool. And we're, we're looking for a
- 27:05safety level that is significantly above the average
- 27:08human driver. So it's not anywhere like much
- 27:11safer, not like a little bit safer than human, way safer than
- 27:13human. So the standard has to be very
- 27:16high because the moment there's any kind of, you know, accident
- 27:21with an autonomous car, this immediately gets worldwide
- 27:27headlines. Even though about 40,000 people
- 27:30die every year in car accidents in the US and that most of them
- 27:35don't even get a mention anywhere.
- 27:38But if somebody's creates a shin with an autonomous car, it's
- 27:41headline news. We wouldn't want that.
- 27:44Yeah, so it's really from an ex. The only thing holding us back
- 27:49is an excess of caution, but people can certainly get a feel
- 27:53for how well the car would perform as unsupervised FSD by
- 27:57simply having a car, allowing a car to drive you around your
- 28:00city. And see, how many times do you
- 28:03have to intervene? Not where you wanted to
- 28:05intervene or we're a little concerned, but how many times do
- 28:08you have to intervene for, for definite safety reasons.
- 28:12And you will find that that is currently very rare and over
- 28:16time almost never great. Thank you very much.
- 28:22The next question is, are there any discussions with other auto
- 28:25companies about licensing FSG? Yes.
- 28:33What we're saying is at this point significant interest from
- 28:38a number of major car companies about licensing Tesla full soft
- 28:43driving technology. What we've generally said is the
- 28:47best way to know what to do is take one of our cars apart and,
- 28:54and then you can see where the placement of the cameras are,
- 28:57what the thermal needs are of the Tesla AI furnace computer.
- 29:02That's better than us, you know, sending some CAD drawings and,
- 29:07and then we're only going to entertain situations where the
- 29:10volume would be very high. Otherwise it's not worth the
- 29:12complexity and and we will not broaden our engineering team
- 29:18with laborious discussions with other engineering teams until we
- 29:23obviously have unsupervisable self driving working throughout
- 29:26the United States. I think the interest level from
- 29:31other manufacturers to license FSD will be extremely high once
- 29:35it is obvious that unless you have FSD, you're dead.
- 29:42Yeah, great. Thank you very much.
- 29:46The next question is, is Optimist now mostly design
- 29:49locked for 2025 production? Optimist is not design locked.
- 29:57So when I say like we're, we're designing the train as it's
- 30:02going to, we're, we're redesigning the train as it's
- 30:04going down the tracks while redesigning the tracks and the
- 30:06train stations. Yeah, it's, it's, it's rapidly
- 30:11evolving. It's rapidly evolving in a good
- 30:13direction. You know, it's, it's pretty,
- 30:17pretty damn amazing actually. Teams doing a fantastic job.
- 30:20We really have by far, I think by far the best team of humanoid
- 30:25robotics engineers in the world. And, and we also have all the
- 30:30other ingredients necessary, you know, because you need a, you
- 30:33know, great battery pack, you need great power electronics,
- 30:36you need great charging capability, you need, you know,
- 30:40great communications, going to have Wi-Fi and cellular
- 30:43connectivity. And, and of course, you need
- 30:48real world AI and then the ability to scale that production
- 30:54to significant to huge levels. So you have to design for
- 30:58manufacturing the things that I mean really what what other
- 31:02companies are missing is they're missing the real world AI and
- 31:05they're missing the ability to scale manufacturing to millions
- 31:11of units a year. I think that is an
- 31:14underappreciated. I think that industrialization
- 31:17and design is a whole different thing than making a design.
- 31:21Yeah, prototypes are trivial. Basically, prototypes are easy,
- 31:25Production is hard. I've said that for many years.
- 31:28The problem is that there's like those who've never been involved
- 31:31in production or manufacturing somehow think that once you come
- 31:35up with some Eureka design that you magically can make a million
- 31:38units a year. And this is totally false.
- 31:41The there needs to be some, there's some Hollywood story or
- 31:44where they show actually, the problem is manufacturing.
- 31:48I never even heard of one is is, you know, it's just doesn't fit
- 31:51the narrative. The Hollywood thing is like,
- 31:53it's like some lone inventor in a garage goes Eureka and
- 31:57suddenly it files a patent and suddenly there's millions of
- 32:00units. I like, I'm listening to guys.
- 32:02We're we're missing really 99% of the story, 1% is any of the
- 32:08old saying one like a product is 1% inspiration, 99%
- 32:12perspiration. The Hollywood church is 1%
- 32:15inspiration, and mine is, which forgets about the 99%
- 32:18perspiration of actually figuring out how to make that
- 32:21initial prototype manufacturable and then manufacture at high
- 32:24volume such that the product is reliable, low cost, consistent,
- 32:28doesn't break down all the time, and that is 100 times hotter at
- 32:32least than the prototype. Then you have to get it there,
- 32:35deliver it. Yeah.
- 32:36Yeah, you're going to read all these regulations and there's a
- 32:39million regulators around the world.
- 32:40It's pretty difficult. Great.
- 32:42Thank you. The next question is also
- 32:45optimist related. When will Tesla start selling
- 32:48optimists? I mean mobile price pay.
- 32:53Well, the IT may for this year, we expect to just close the loop
- 32:58with optimists being used internally at Tesla because we
- 33:03obviously can easily use several 1000 humanoid robots at the
- 33:08Tesla for, you know, like the most boring, annoying tasks in
- 33:13the factory. Like the task nobody wants to do
- 33:16where we have to like beg people to do this task.
- 33:19And then they that it's like like the robots totally happy to
- 33:24do the boring, dangerous, repetitive task that no, no
- 33:26humans want to do. And then that's also actually
- 33:29some of the easiest use cases for us to, you know, have, have
- 33:33optimists do things like, you know, like load, load the the
- 33:39hopper, like like for, you know, like I say, lit in body line.
- 33:42If you like, transporting, you know, pieces of sheet metal to
- 33:45the, the, the, the robot, which is really robot, the robot
- 33:49welding line for the body. And you just have to they
- 33:52non-stop take things out of out of a from 1 fixture to another
- 33:58fixture. And it's a very boring job.
- 34:02That's the kind of thing what the optimists could do.
- 34:04I'm a guy who runs around and comes all the wealth stubs and
- 34:08the independence. Yeah, there's, there's a ton of
- 34:11boring jobs, tedious jobs, dangerous, you know, slightly
- 34:15dangerous jobs that that's perfect botiness.
- 34:18So we expect to use octopus for those tasks at our factories and
- 34:22and that'll help us close loop for improvement This year.
- 34:26It's really with the production version 2, which I think
- 34:32launches sometime next year. I'd like to be the beginning of
- 34:36next year, but maybe it, it's more like the middle of next
- 34:39year. And and then we have to just
- 34:43with a, with a production line that is designed for, you know,
- 34:49on the order of 10,000 units a month versus 1000 units a month.
- 34:54So like when you design A unit for, like when you design A
- 34:57production line for 1000 units a month, it takes you a while to
- 35:00actually reach anywhere close to 1000 years a month.
- 35:04When you design and before any given product production output,
- 35:09it takes you a while to actually reach its potential.
- 35:12But the current line that we're designing is for roughly 1000
- 35:16years a month of of Optimist robots.
- 35:20The next line would be for 10,000 years a month.
- 35:24The line after that would be for 100,000 years a month.
- 35:30And I think probably with product with version two, that
- 35:35is a very rough guess because there's so much uncertainty
- 35:38here. Very rough guess that we start
- 35:40delivering optimist robots to companies that are outside of
- 35:45Tesla in the maybe the second-half of next year,
- 35:47something like that. But like, so this is such an
- 35:50exponential round that it'll go from no one's receiving humanoid
- 35:54robots to these things like coming out like crazy.
- 35:58We can't build enough. Well, we're always going to be
- 36:00in the, we can't build enough situation.
- 36:05Demand will not be a problem even at a high price.
- 36:08And, and then as I said, like once we start, once we're at a
- 36:11steady state of above 1,000,000 units a year, I, I think the
- 36:16production, you know, I'm confident at 1,000,000 units a
- 36:18year that the production cost of optimists will be less than
- 36:23$20,000. You compare the complexity of
- 36:26optimists to the complexity of of a car.
- 36:30So just the total mass and complexity of Optimus is is is
- 36:36much less than a car. So I would expect that at
- 36:41similar volumes to say the Model Y, which is the over a million
- 36:44years here that you'd see Optimus be, I don't know, half
- 36:47the for half the cost or something like that.
- 36:51What the, what the price of Optimus is is a different
- 36:53matter. The price of Optimus will be set
- 36:56by the market demand. Great.
- 37:00Thank you very much. The next question is what is the
- 37:04status on mass production of the Tesla Semi and how will it
- 37:08impact revenue and scale? I can take that one.
- 37:12So we just closed up the semi factory roof and walls last week
- 37:15in Reno. So that has schedule which is
- 37:17great. With the weather in Reno, you
- 37:19never know what's going to happen.
- 37:20But we're prepping for mechanical installation of all
- 37:23the equipment in the coming months.
- 37:25The 1st builds of the high volume Semi design will come
- 37:27late this year in 2025 and begin ramping early in 2026.
- 37:31But as we've said that before, you know, the Semi is ATCO, no
- 37:35brainer. It gets really similar to
- 37:38optimistic, you know, set by how much people pay and you know it,
- 37:43it has the total cost of ownership.
- 37:44It's much, much cheaper than any other transportation you can
- 37:47have. So at that point, when we're at
- 37:49scale, it will meaningfully contribute to, you know, Tesla's
- 37:52revenue. I think it's difficult to say
- 37:54how much if you want anyone. No, I mean I I do think it tells
- 38:01us semi again with autonomy is going to be incredibly valuable.
- 38:08You know, that we actually have a shortage of truck that drivers
- 38:11in America. That's one of the limiting
- 38:12factors on transport. And, you know, and people are
- 38:20human, so they get tired and sometimes, you know, there's
- 38:25it's, you know, I have a lot of respect for truck drivers
- 38:27because it's a tough job. But because it's a tough job,
- 38:31there's not that many people that want to do it.
- 38:33And there's actually fewer, I believe my saying is correct.
- 38:37There are fewer people entering truck driving as a profession
- 38:40than are leaving it. Yes.
- 38:41So when you think. Yeah, exactly.
- 38:43So. So when you consider, OK,
- 38:45there's more people leaving truck driving as a profession
- 38:47than entering it, well, we're going to have a real logistics
- 38:49problem as time goes by. So autonomy will be very
- 38:54important to meet that that need.
- 38:59So like, yeah, it'll, it'll I don't know.
- 39:03It's it's it's it's a several billion a year opportunity,
- 39:06which I don't know in this context is that these days I do
- 39:11several billion a year matter. I think it does not nothing.
- 39:18It's probably, you know, it might, it's probably a good ten
- 39:20billion year thing. Yes, a billion a month at some
- 39:24point probably. But but it's it's you know, all
- 39:28this is going to pale comparison to Optimus.
- 39:31So yeah, a billion a month is, it's a lot, but it's, it's not,
- 39:38it's going to be like 1% of optimism something, you know.
- 39:43Great. Thank you very much.
- 39:44We already covered the next question in company remarks.
- 39:48So moving on, is it expected that Tesla will need to upgrade
- 39:53Hardware 3 vehicles? And if so, what is the timeline
- 39:56and expected impact to Tesla's CapEx?
- 40:00I can refer to cost there. They're really asking the tough
- 40:04questions on there. I I guess we, you know, we
- 40:07haven't stopped working on Hardware 3 yet.
- 40:09We are still making software releases.
- 40:11We released the 12.6 release recently, which was like it's
- 40:15like a baby V13, but it's a significant improvement compared
- 40:19to what they had previously. And you know, people are still
- 40:22finding ways. There's still larger models in
- 40:24the smaller models. So we don't given up on hardware
- 40:263. We're still working on it, just
- 40:28the releases will trail the hardware for releases.
- 40:33Great. Thanks, Sheriff.
- 40:34Yeah. I mean, I think the honest
- 40:38answer is that we're going to have to upgrade people's
- 40:44hardware free computer for those that have bought, bought full
- 40:46self driving and that is the honest answer.
- 40:49And that's going to be painful and difficult, but we'll get it
- 40:51done now. I'm kind of glad that not that
- 40:55many people bought the FSD package.
- 41:00Thanks, Elon. The next question Has Tesla
- 41:03given up on ramping their Solar Roof product?
- 41:09No, we're sorry, Mike. Oh, Mike, go ahead.
- 41:12Yeah. Oh, yeah, I can take it.
- 41:14Yeah. Solar Roof remains a core part
- 41:16of the residential product portfolio and it still remains
- 41:20where it draws a lot of customer interest despite it being
- 41:22premium products. We've worked on multiple
- 41:25iterations of engineering to make the product easier to
- 41:27install and distribute by producing the SKU count.
- 41:31And you know, more more recently rather than direct installation,
- 41:34we are focused on growth through our nationwide network of
- 41:37certified installers and many of those they've been installing
- 41:41Solar Roof with us for many years.
- 41:45Yeah. That's actually turned out to be
- 41:46a much better way for the like it's just let the roof just
- 41:50supply product to the roofing industry.
- 41:53And especially when somebody's going to is getting a new roof
- 41:56anyway or building a house from scratch.
- 41:58Obviously this is by far the most efficient time to put in a
- 42:01solar roof as opposed to putting a solar roof on a house that,
- 42:05where the roof still has, you know, 20 years of life, that
- 42:10that's not economically sensible.
- 42:11But, but if it's a new house or the roof needs to be replaced
- 42:16anyway, then solar roof can make a lot of sense.
- 42:20And, and, and, and it is, it is a premium product.
- 42:24It's, it's like the, you know, it's kind of like Model S, model
- 42:28X or something. It's like a, it's a premium
- 42:30product. I think it looks really cool and
- 42:34your house, I mean your house generates electricity and if you
- 42:36combine it with the Tesla Powerwall battery, then you can
- 42:40be self-sufficient. So even if the grid turns off,
- 42:44even if the grid turns off for several days, your house still
- 42:47works and your roof looks awesome.
- 42:51So it's like, I recommend anyone go ahead, you can afford it.
- 42:55Get the Tesla solar roof and the Powerwall.
- 42:58Your family's life might depend on it.
- 43:00Get enough and and just just in terms of convenience, you know
- 43:04your kids are not going to yell at you because their computers
- 43:06don't work because the power went out and they're and you
- 43:09can't charge your phone first work actually happens Yeah, you
- 43:17wish we can't even call in one because your phone's energies.
- 43:21Thank you very much. The next question was covered in
- 43:25opening remarks, so we will skip that.
- 43:27And the last question from say.com, what technical break
- 43:30theories will define the 14 of FSD given that the 13 already
- 43:37covered photon to control? Well, we're going to help a lot
- 43:43further than photons to output. We've been in sort of the
- 43:48nothing, but that's the situation, nothing but neural
- 43:51Nets from photons to controls for a while now.
- 43:54We're just improving the neural Nets.
- 43:58I guess we could get into some of the technical details to some
- 44:01degree I'd say I continue to be amazed by just how effective
- 44:09order aggressive Transformers are at solving a wide range of
- 44:11problems. I mean, Ashok is anything you'd
- 44:15like to add there without giving away the sort of family secrets?
- 44:18I mean, except all things we put on next already.
- 44:22Yes, they continue to scale the model size a lot.
- 44:25You know, we scale a bunch of V13, but then there's still room
- 44:28to grow. So we're going to continue to
- 44:30scale the model size. We're going to increase the
- 44:32context length even more. The memory is sort of like
- 44:35limited right now. We want to increase the amount
- 44:37of memory also give to even minutes of context for driving.
- 44:42We're going to add audio and emergency make this better, add
- 44:46like data of the tricky coral cases that we get from the
- 44:49entire fleet. You know, any interventions or
- 44:51any kind of like, you know, user intervention, we just add that
- 44:54to the data, the data set. So scaling in basically every
- 44:59access to training, compute, data set size, model size, model
- 45:02context and also all the reinforcement learning
- 45:04objectives. Great.
- 45:08Already with that, we will move over to analyst questions.
- 45:13So just as a reminder, you will need to unmute yourself to ask
- 45:17your question. And the first question will be
- 45:19coming from Daniel Roska from Bernstein.
- 45:22Daniel, please go ahead and unmute yourself.
- 45:25Hey, good evening, everybody. It's Tanya from Bernstein.
- 45:28Elon Tesla's share price clearly already includes quite a few of
- 45:32the anticipated benefits you talked about today.
- 45:35Yet, realizing what you call a kind of difficult but achievable
- 45:38will take some time. What are you pushing the Tesla
- 45:41executive team to do differently now to accelerate the innovation
- 45:46in order to realize the value you described for the company?
- 45:53Well, I mean, we're working on perfecting real world AI and
- 46:01making rapid progress week over week.
- 46:02If not, you know, suddenly month over month, it's often week over
- 46:05week. I spent a lot of time with the
- 46:10Tesla AI team and the Tesla optimist team.
- 46:13I mean, I go where the problem is essentially like not, you
- 46:17know, something, you know, portion sometimes like don't
- 46:21talk to Tesla executive and like, hey, we don't see you very
- 46:23often. I'm like, that's because your
- 46:24stuff is working awesome. Your stuff working really great.
- 46:28Unfortunately, I didn't see them very often because I go where
- 46:30the problem is. So, you know, whatever the
- 46:35problem is what like what's, what's the greatest challenge
- 46:37that lies ahead? So obviously there's, there's,
- 46:40there are many challenges with optimists.
- 46:44It's a hard problem to solve, many challenges with the vehicle
- 46:49autonomy. But we're making rounded
- 46:51progress in both, yeah. OK.
- 46:59I mean, it sounds like you, you've got a conviction that the
- 47:03pieces you need right are, are in place.
- 47:07If we kind of go 12 months down the line and we look back and
- 47:10you had some of those. But maybe what are the kind of
- 47:13two or three KPIs that would tell you that, you know, you're
- 47:17on track and it's going the right way and the pieces you've
- 47:20put in place are the right pieces, but that's kind of what
- 47:22I'm looking for or other way around.
- 47:27Where would it be off most likely in your mind that you
- 47:30say, hey, I need to go back there and I need to change
- 47:32something to enable the team better?
- 47:38Well, I mean, I think my, the predictions that I'm making here
- 47:41are going to be pretty accurate, you know, and it's worth an
- 47:47exercise. Sometimes girls say, oh, Elon's
- 47:48always late. Well, actually, no, the problem
- 47:50is that the media reports on when I'm late, but never reports
- 47:53when I'm early. So sure, I'm optimistic, but I'm
- 47:56not that optimistic. You know, there are many cases
- 48:00in past where I actually we've been early, you know, such as
- 48:03completion of the Shanghai factory or in fact the factory
- 48:08completion is generally been ahead of schedule, not behind.
- 48:13So, yeah, so the, but I like I said, I'm very confident we'll
- 48:22have released unsupervised full self driving fully autonomous
- 48:26Teslas in Austin and several other cities in America by the
- 48:30end of this year. That's probably everywhere in
- 48:34America next year that everywhere in North America at
- 48:38least. I think in terms of next year
- 48:41our constraints, I think it's likely to be just regulatory,
- 48:46you know, like like Europe really has for example.
- 48:49Europe is a layer cake of regulations and bureaucracy
- 48:52which that really needs to be addressed.
- 48:56You know, there's this, you know, joke like America
- 49:00innovates, Europe regulates. It's like guys, there's too many
- 49:05reps on the field. I mean, for example, for us just
- 49:09to release just to release supervised full self driving in
- 49:12Europe, even though it works really well.
- 49:15We have we have to go through a mountain of paperwork with the
- 49:19Netherlands, which is our primary regulatory authority.
- 49:22Then the Netherlands presents this to the EU and I think May,
- 49:28and there's like this big EU country committee, we expect it
- 49:33to be approved at that time, but there's nothing we can do to
- 49:36make that May happen sooner. In fact, nobody seems to do.
- 49:41If I guess all the countries would have to somehow vote in
- 49:46some way to have it happen sooner than May, otherwise it
- 49:50won't happen sooner than May. So then well then when is
- 49:54unsupervised ever see a lot in Europe?
- 49:57I'm like maybe next year maybe, I don't know to find out when
- 50:04the EU is meeting again. Sometimes it's a 12 month
- 50:07cadence, sometimes a six month cadence.
- 50:10Then in China, which is the gigantic market, we do have some
- 50:16challenges because they weren't currently allow us to transfer
- 50:20training video outside of China and then U.S. government won't
- 50:24let us do training in China. So we're in a bit of a blind
- 50:27there. So but like what are a quandary?
- 50:32So, So what we're already solving then is by literally
- 50:37looking at videos of streets in China that are available on the
- 50:42Internet to understand, and then feeding that into our video
- 50:48training. So that publicly available video
- 50:51of street signs and traffic rules in China can be can be
- 50:57used for training. And then also putting it in a
- 51:01very accurate simulator. And so it will train using SIM
- 51:06for, you know, bus lanes in China, like bus lanes in China.
- 51:10By the way, what about the biggest challenges in the FSD
- 51:16work in China is the bus lanes are very complicated and there's
- 51:21like literally like hours of the day that you're allowed to be
- 51:23there and not be there. And then if you accidentally go
- 51:25in that bus lane at the wrong time, the the you get an
- 51:28automatic ticket instantly. So it's kind of a big deal bus
- 51:34lanes in China. So we're going to put that into
- 51:36our simulator train on that. The car has to know what time of
- 51:41day it is, read the sign anyway, we'll get the solved.
- 51:45But you know, I think we'll have anticipated FSD in almost every
- 51:53market this year limited simply by regulatory issues, not
- 52:02technical capability. And then and then unsupervised
- 52:06FSD in the US this year in many cities, but nationwide next
- 52:11year. And and hopefully we have
- 52:15unsupervised FSD in most countries by the end of next
- 52:18year. That that's the best my
- 52:21prediction with best data that I have right now.
- 52:25Great. Thank you very much.
- 52:26The next question will come from Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley.
- 52:30Adam, please feel free to unmute yourself.
- 52:33Thanks, everybody. So, Elon, you've said in the
- 52:36past about LIDAR that for AVS at least, that LIDAR is a crutch, a
- 52:42fool's errand. I think you even told me once,
- 52:44even if it was free, you'd say you wouldn't use it.
- 52:47You still feel that way? Yes.
- 52:51Care to elaborate or just I have another question?
- 52:56Look, we even have a radar in the car and we turned it off.
- 53:01I got it. All right.
- 53:02So you're you're still. Yeah.
- 53:04People think you're crazy, you know, but for not.
- 53:10Obviously humans drive without shooting lasers out of their
- 53:13eyes. I mean, what's your Superman,
- 53:17you know? But, but like humans drive just
- 53:19with passive visual, it was drive with, with eyes and a
- 53:24neural net and a brain neural net.
- 53:25So sort of biological. So the digital equivalent of
- 53:29eyes and a brain are cameras and, and, and digital neural
- 53:34Nets or AI. So that's the entire Rd. system
- 53:39was designed for passive optical neural Nets.
- 53:43That's how the whole world system was not designed and what
- 53:46everyone's expecting other that's how we expect other cars
- 53:48to behave. So therefore that is very
- 53:51obviously the solution for full self driving in it as a
- 53:55generalized for the generalized solution for full self driving
- 53:59as opposed to the very specific, you know, neighborhood by
- 54:01neighborhood solution, which is very difficult to maintain,
- 54:04which is what our competitors are doing.
- 54:05I got it. Yeah, Yeah.
- 54:12I mean, Lidar doesn't work in the fall guys.
- 54:15Lidar has a lot of issues. Like I don't absolutely like the
- 54:19SpaceX Dragon docks with the space station using LIDAR.
- 54:22That a a program that I've personally spearheaded.
- 54:26I don't have some fundamental bizarre dislike of Lidar.
- 54:30It's simply the wrong solution for driving cars on roads.
- 54:34Right you you understand how how Lidar works I I guess.
- 54:37I naturally designed in both the R and red Lidar.
- 54:40I oversaw the project, the engineering thing.
- 54:43I, it was my decision to use Lidar and Dragon and I, I always
- 54:47saw the, that, that engineering project directly.
- 54:50And so I'm like, we literally designed a major, a lighter to
- 54:54dock with the space station. If I thought it was the right
- 54:56solution for cars I would do that, but it isn't.
- 54:59Yeah. All right, just as a follow up
- 55:00at CES, you said I, I, I'm paraphrasing that any AI will be
- 55:05able to do any cognitive tasks not involving atoms within the
- 55:10next three or four years. And that would imply, Elon, that
- 55:12before the end of President Trump's term in office, that AI
- 55:15would be moving pretty damn quickly into the physical world.
- 55:18What are the world of photons and atoms?
- 55:21And I'm, I'm thinking, given your work with the
- 55:24administration, how confident are you that the US has will
- 55:28have the manufacturing and the supply base to, to make good on
- 55:33your excitement about physical AI by the, you know, end of by
- 55:36the latter this decade? We seem pretty vulnerable right
- 55:38now. I've seen you tweeting about or
- 55:40sorry X saying, excuse me, Elon, about China Freudian slip about
- 55:45China having like making more drones in a day than the US
- 55:49makes in a year and all the entanglement of the supply.
- 55:52So what has to happen in the US to make that possible?
- 55:55What's your message and what can what can you do about it?
- 55:59And what's relevant for Tesla shareholders?
- 56:01Thanks, Elon. Well, at Tesla, obviously we
- 56:04think manufacturing is cool. SpaceX, we think manufacturing
- 56:08is cool, but in general for talented Americans, they need to
- 56:15beyond, you know, my beyond my companies, beyond me and the
- 56:19people and my teams here in general, we need to make
- 56:21manufacturing full again in America.
- 56:25And you know, like, I honestly think people should move from
- 56:29like law and finance into manufacturing.
- 56:30That's my honest opinion. We have too much.
- 56:33This is both a complement and a criticism.
- 56:35We have too much talent in law and engineering, law and finance
- 56:38in America, and there should be more of that talent in
- 56:41manufacturing. So, yeah, I mean, it tells us
- 56:54we're making sure that we can continue to manufacture our
- 56:58stuff even in the event of geopolitical tensions rising to
- 57:05very high levels. Great.
- 57:09Thank you very much. The next question will come from
- 57:12Pierre Fergu at New St. Pierre.
- 57:15Please feel free to unmute yourself.
- 57:19Hey, thanks guys for taking the question.
- 57:22So I have a question, You learn on deploying like robotaxis in
- 57:27in June and in Austin. So that's great news.
- 57:30And I was wondering if it means I can, you know, drive down to
- 57:33Austin in June and try and try unsupervised by myself with my
- 57:38car. Oh, it's going to be more like
- 57:42your fleet testing it. It'll it'll be our fleet testing
- 57:47it. But that's not sort of toe in
- 57:50the water. You know, we'll be scrutinizing
- 57:53it very carefully. Make sure it's not something we
- 57:56missed. But it will be, you know, right,
- 58:01autonomous ride hailing for money in, in Austin in June and
- 58:07then as shortly as possible other cities in America.
- 58:11And I expect us to be operating during unsupervised activity
- 58:17with, with, with our internal fleet in several cities by the
- 58:21end of the year. Then it's probably next year
- 58:25when people are are able to add or subtract their car from the
- 58:29fleet. So you know, kind of like Airbnb
- 58:32where you can sort of add or subtract your house or your
- 58:35guest room. You know, if you can say like
- 58:38add it to the Airbnb inventory or don't add it to the Airbnb
- 58:42inventory. You know, if you're, if you're
- 58:47traveling for a month, you can or whatever in case maybe you
- 58:52can let other people use your house and then you can anyway.
- 58:57So like that's probably next year because we want to just
- 59:00make sure we've ironed out any, any kinks.
- 59:04And a lot of it is not like we're not splitting the atom
- 59:07here. It's just a bunch of work that
- 59:09needs to be done to make sure the whole thing works
- 59:11efficiently, that people can order the car, it comes, you
- 59:16know, it's the right spot, does exactly the right thing.
- 59:19All the payment systems work. The billing works.
- 59:25Yeah. OK.
- 59:28But then like, so my sort of question would be, you know, I
- 59:32have a Tesla, I have FSD and I have to keep my eyes on the on
- 59:36the road all the time. It's super boring because I
- 59:38don't really need to intervene anymore.
- 59:41And the really annoying thing is that I can't just check my
- 59:47emails. And so are you working also on
- 59:50introducing, you know, like a kind of like free unsupervised
- 59:53where I could be eyes off and, and I would be able to check my
- 59:58e-mail and we just need to with a 5 second notice.
- 1:00:01I have to go back and keep an eye on what's happening or?
- 1:00:04Is that something you're working on as well because it feels so
- 1:00:07close with with be certain that I wonder if it's something we'd
- 1:00:10expect for this year. It's a very sensitive question I
- 1:00:12asked for myself, to be honest. Yes, we just need, we need to be
- 1:00:17very confident that the probability of injury is low
- 1:00:20before we allow people to to check, check, check with their
- 1:00:25e-mail and text messages. In fact, right now we're in this
- 1:00:29perverse situation, which you may have encountered yourself,
- 1:00:31where people will actually go to manual driving to check their
- 1:00:36text messages so the computer doesn't yell at them and then go
- 1:00:41then put it back on autonomous mode once they've checked the
- 1:00:45text messages, which is obviously less safe,
- 1:00:48significantly less safe, significantly less safe,
- 1:00:51significantly less safe than just letting people check their
- 1:00:54texts once in a while without the computer yelling at them.
- 1:00:59But we just want to be cautious about that, the advent of that
- 1:01:01we're in this sort of, you know, neither here nor there, but just
- 1:01:07for, I mean, I think it's not for many months longer.
- 1:01:12But yeah, we're in this perverse situation where people will turn
- 1:01:15the car off autopilot so the computer doesn't yell at them,
- 1:01:17check the text, text messages, well, while staring the car with
- 1:01:20their knee and not looking out the window and.
- 1:01:26There like like Elon said, right?
- 1:01:29If you have any problems with the system and when people are
- 1:01:33not looking, that is a dangerous and that's what we're trying to
- 1:01:37avoid. It's the capabilities getting
- 1:01:40there, but it's not fully there. That's why he was using the
- 1:01:43Thermo, tipping a toe in the water, then getting comfortable.
- 1:01:47Thank you. Anyway, it's it's not far off,
- 1:01:54but we wouldn't want to prove to ourselves, improve, improve to
- 1:01:58ourselves and obviously prove to regulators that the car is
- 1:02:03unequivocally safer in autonomous mode than than not.
- 1:02:11And that's we're not far off. So this is like low single digit
- 1:02:16months. To to the safety aspect, we did
- 1:02:19publish our safe vehicle safety report today and then.
- 1:02:23Q 4 is. 1. Crash for every. 5.9 million
- 1:02:26miles driven compared to a crash every 700,000 miles without all
- 1:02:30kind of. Right.
- 1:02:31So we're we're getting to the point where it's an order of
- 1:02:34magnitude. Yeah, it's like 8.5 tons, so
- 1:02:36it's just about there. You know, it's amazing.
- 1:02:40Great. Alrighty.
- 1:02:41And our last question will be coming from Dan Levi at
- 1:02:45Barclays. Dan, feel free to unmute
- 1:02:47yourself. Great, good evening.
- 1:02:50Thank you for taking other questions.
- 1:02:53Elon, you've talked about the need for proliferation of
- 1:02:57sustainable transport in the past as part of a sort of
- 1:02:59broader push to sustainable energy.
- 1:03:03OK. I know we've heard a lot about
- 1:03:05President Trump's plans to reverse the the EV mandate.
- 1:03:08And I think there's a view that given regulation is a driver of
- 1:03:12EV uptake, this could slow EV uptake in the US.
- 1:03:15So what would be your view on on the right policy in in the US
- 1:03:22given your comments in the past the need to push for sustainable
- 1:03:27transport? You know, at this point, I think
- 1:03:33that that sustainable transport is inevitable.
- 1:03:38I'm highly confident that all transport will be autonomous
- 1:03:44electric, including aircraft, and that it's simply it's it
- 1:03:49can't be stopped any more than one could have stopped the
- 1:03:52advent of the external combustion engine, steam engine,
- 1:03:55or or one could have stopped the advent of the internal
- 1:04:00combustion engine. Like like even if you've been
- 1:04:03the biggest horse advocate on Earth, it like it like a all
- 1:04:08your courses are the way got these newfangled car
- 1:04:12automobiles. You can't stop the advent of the
- 1:04:15automobile. It's going to happen and you
- 1:04:19can't. You can't stop the advent of
- 1:04:21electric cars. It's going to happen.
- 1:04:24The only thing holding back electric cars was range, and
- 1:04:27that is a solved problem. Great.
- 1:04:35And then as a follow up, you know, in the past, Elon, you had
- 1:04:40made a comment that you know, you'd be willing to sell cars
- 1:04:43effectively no margin to get the cars out there.
- 1:04:46And there's a comment in the release today of the rate of
- 1:04:50acceleration of autonomy efforts does impact volume growth.
- 1:04:53So perhaps you could just talk about, you know, with your
- 1:04:57efforts on FSD, how we should think about your desire to put
- 1:05:03more vehicles out in, in the market to take advantage of
- 1:05:08your, of your tech advances. So I'm not sure I understand the
- 1:05:14question, but we have a lot of cars.
- 1:05:16I mean, you've got millions of cars out there.
- 1:05:19So is, is there a question Dan that how do we, how do we marry
- 1:05:24our future growth aspects with FSD?
- 1:05:29And yeah, go. Ahead and meet yourself, Dan.
- 1:05:34Yeah, more, more so just how much more aggressively you would
- 1:05:38be willing to you know, sell your cars versus versus, you
- 1:05:44know, in light of your, of your improvements on FSD.
- 1:05:50Well, right now the constraint we're trying to solve is battery
- 1:05:54production as opposed to demand. So you're and now Q1, we've got
- 1:06:01this massive factory retooling for the new Model Y, for
- 1:06:04example, that obviously has a sort of impact on output.
- 1:06:09But the problem reversing with in fact we're talking the
- 1:06:14executive team and I were talking about just before this
- 1:06:17call was how we've got to figure out how to increase total GW
- 1:06:21hours of battery production this year one way or another.
- 1:06:25That's the constraint on our output.
- 1:06:31Great. All righty.
- 1:06:32And with that, I think we are all doing for today.
- 1:06:36So thanks everyone so much for all your questions.
- 1:06:38We look forward to talking to you next quarter.
- 1:06:41Thank you very much and goodbye. Hey, thank you so much for
- 1:06:48listening today. I really do appreciate your
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