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6,900 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | Peter Supino: Question on tariffs and another on the growth environment. If tariffs increase the cost of phones, I wonder how you would envision AT&T Inc. and the industry potentially reacting to that on a sustained basis? And then with your comments on the possibility of a slower growth environment, I wonder if you could refresh us on the expense reduction opportunity outside of consumer wireline and what else you might have in mind for a slower growth marketplace. Thank you. Good morning, Peter. So first of all, let's kind of start with our customer base and customers and what might happen or not happen in tariffs. As I said, my comment to visibility is not great around what the future holds, but if I think about the dynamics of handset costs, it's probably important for us to take a step back and realize we are dealing with SKU costs on handsets right now that are quite a bit more expensive than they were even four years ago or three years ago. And whenever those dynamics have occurred, we have come up with different solutions in the marketplace that ultimately allows the customer to manage through those things. Customers, of course, make choices from their point of view as to what they wish to do like, possibly extending life cycles of handsets. And we have done that within the context of our business model. Even though we have been seeing average cost of assets increasing over time. As you know, we have done a nice job of improving the profitability and performance of this business. So if tariffs are the next driver of an increase in the unit cost of handsets, I imagine we are going to have to go through the exact same play, which is first of all, understand what the customer needs and then make some adjustments to how we support them in that process, but that process is going to be taking that cost as we have traditionally done and largely moving it through to the end user and fitting it into the business model of ultimately what we can afford to derive the right level of returns in our business. And, I |
6,901 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | it into the business model of ultimately what we can afford to derive the right level of returns in our business. And, I think we have demonstrated over time that we have done that fairly effectively. So I think that if ultimately costs are passed to us, from those that we buy handsets from, unfortunately, for the customer, we are going to have to come up with some new ways for them to figure out how to digest that increase in pricing. I do not see the business model dramatically changing to, you know, accommodate subsidy levels that are much different from what's out there today. And the modest adjustments we make to those day in and day out. But we will find different creative ways to build plans and approaches and supports that allow them to continue to use the network effectively and do what they need to do and feel good about it. And I also do not know. And if I step back and think about consumer behavior in this, handsets are just, you know, one part of a broader ecosystem of decisions that can goods and services. And if their flat panel TV in their house is going to be more expensive and if their laptop is going to be more expensive and how they choose to kind of manage this dynamic within that ecosystem. I think we are all going to learn, but I feel pretty good that we have demonstrated we can get through that cycle. In terms of the growth environment, look, we have I thought we have given you some pretty good views around how we are managing costs across the business. In its entirety. It's not just consumer wireline. We laid out for you in the analyst day what we are doing across the entire wireline business. And there's certainly in that six billion dollar pool that we are looking at plenty of opportunity to address things that we can move forward and readjust, and we are being pretty diligent about that. But we are also improving other parts of our business actively. And we have shared some of that with you. We have talked about what we are doing broadly across our call centers, we talked to you about |
6,902 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | shared some of that with you. We have talked about what we are doing broadly across our call centers, we talked to you about how we are getting more efficient in our software development and our information technology organizations. Shared with you that we have done a lot better in how we have managed our digital channels for acquisition, and customer awareness, and that's before I think we have really gotten good at the operational side of our digital channels, which we are investing pretty heavily in that I think we can have some additional uplift in the efficiency of how we bring customers into the business and support them. So I think what we gave you an indication that we are very comfortable with our guidance for this year is there's a lot of places we know we can go and operate the business a little more effectively and continue to work our expense lines more aggressively. And I think you saw that in the first quarter. We clearly invested a little bit more in customer acquisition, but I am pretty proud of the overall margin performance the team delivered. And how we balance those things out. And I think we know how to do that, and we will continue to do that going forward. |
6,903 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | Pascal Desroches: Peter, one other thing to add. Q1 when you look at it was impacted by launch expenses associated with our guarantee. So the organic expense performance was really, really good. Thanks, Peter. We will go to the next question, please.
Operator: Our next question comes from Benjamin Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Benjamin Swinburne: Thanks. Good morning. Two questions. John, I doubt you will answer this specifically, but I figured I would ask anyway. There was a press report back in March around AT&T Inc. in talks to acquire Lumen's mass market consumer fiber business. Curious if you had any comment on that or maybe just if you cannot or will not talk more broadly about how you are thinking about inorganic investments at AT&T Inc., just given the transformation over the last few years, but also the success you are having with your fiber strategy in general. And then I was curious if you could talk a little bit more about the FCC's recent orders on kind of legacy infrastructure sounded like you thought maybe you could move quicker. I do not know if that's on wire centers or that six billion pool or kind of all of the above, but could you come back to that comment and tell us, you know, what's happened and how that may impact your ability to take costs out of the business even faster than you already sort of laid out for us. Thank you very much. |
6,904 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | John Stankey: Good morning, Ben. I am not going to make any comments on rumors and speculation that you reference. What I can tell you is I will repeat what I have said about inorganic activity in the business of always keep my mind open to something that I think can improve value for the shareholder. That's clear and centered on what we have laid out as our key strategic thrust in the business. That's to be the best in connectivity, I have articulated that anything that allows me to accelerate what I believe is a reordering of assets for converged connectivity in the markets it becomes a make-buy kind of analysis which is I know what I can make it for, and I have plenty of opportunity to make. More infrastructure investment in the business and across the nation. Demonstrated that we are pretty good at that. Completing our recent commitments early our cost per. We have been giving you a lot of insight into how effectively we have been doing that on our fiber build. I think you should take some satisfaction in what you see happening in the fixed wireless growth that's an artifact, not exclusively, but partly because of our modernization efforts in the wireless network that as we complete those things, it opens up geographies that we previously had closed that we can now sell into so you can see that we are getting operational execution around those things. And as long as I can, you know, build opportunity and do it effectively, that's a good thing to do, and I think it's a sensible deployment of shareholder capital. If something were to come up inorganically that looked like it rival those types of business cases or look similar to that or gave me, you know, a way to accelerate that where the market power of accelerating that did something good, of course, I would be open to it. And as I have said earlier, I continue to be looking for opportunities in the business to find those nice tack-ons, bolt-ons, add-ons to our connectivity business that are a little less capital intensive that might be that next thing that |
6,905 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | bolt-ons, add-ons to our connectivity business that are a little less capital intensive that might be that next thing that we can interest our customers in and making an incremental purchase decision from us that is going to be an entry to connectivity and how they use our core services. And, do not know if and when something like that will pop around, but certainly if it does, I would spend a lot of time understanding whether or not we can build some organic value for the shareholder as a result of it. On the FCC orders, here's what I would tell you right now. I think we are in a great place. We talked a little bit about this in December when we had you all together, and I think I characterized it at the time that we have been working on this for a number of years and that there had been a lot of pick and shovel work to get to this time and a lot of which we were not necessarily exposing you to or talking about, but to get to the moment we talked about in December, fifty years of work at the state level, took a lot of work internally about reordering data and structuring organizations differently. To get focused on things, to get the work set up properly, and I felt like we had it all in a pretty decent package, and I used the characterization in December, and I said it felt like we are about ready to move from maybe an environment where there was a bit of regulatory headwinds or little reticence to change to one with regulatory tailwinds. And that ended up being true. And I think this FCC, since it ceded what, ninety days ish ago, has already moved to take out some procedural steps on the applications that we had pending to begin doing the things in wire centers that we articulated to you in December we needed to do to pull those costs out. And I think we are sitting at somewhere along the lines right now about twenty-five percent of our wire centers where we have what I would call fairly clean sailing to act on all the plans that we told you we needed to do to sunset, and we have more applications now |
6,906 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | call fairly clean sailing to act on all the plans that we told you we needed to do to sunset, and we have more applications now pending. And we are actively working with the FCC about how to do that more effectively. I would tell you right now my bias internally as I talk with our folks is I think we now are focused on the effectiveness of our execution and less on the effectiveness of our operational execution and less on the effectiveness of the execution of our legal and regulatory affairs organization. Right. And I am going to say that deliberately because internally, I know there will be a couple of departments that will be running down the hallways, cheering and skipping and saying that they are not on the critical path anymore. And that's the way I feel. And I feel that we are now at a point where our operating groups need to go get the work done. And there's plenty of runway in front of them to do that. And they are doing that and beginning to step up on that, and that's how the management team is focused. We still have regulatory steps to get through. But I am not worried about those becoming inhibitors for us to achieve the guidance that we put in front of you back in December. |
6,907 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | Benjamin Swinburne: Thanks a lot.
Operator: We will go to the next question. And our next question comes from John Hodulik with UBS. Go ahead. |
6,908 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | John Hodulik: Great. Thank you. And I think you two quick ones. First for Pascal, is there any way to frame the impact of the or quantify the impact of the higher upgrade that you are seeing so far in the second quarter guess you gave us the free cash flow. So but for the quarter, but anything on what that could do to us wireless margins or wireless EBITDA growth. That's number one. And then on the business side, if we add back the vendor adjuster it looks like EBITDA was only down about five percent. This a good rate going forward? I mean, obviously, the trend had been above twenty percent. You guys have been done a great job on the cost side, but is this about the level that we should expect as we look out over the next twelve months in that segment? Thanks. Hey, John. Thank you for the question. First on upgrades, here is the way I think you should think about it. Probably late in Q1, and as I mentioned in my comments in Q2, we have accelerated in Q3 two. We saw an acceleration of upgrades. We think some of this may be a pull forward in anticipation of the tariffs. So in terms of Q2, I would expect elevated levels of upgrades. I mean, you see Q1 as a benchmark. I think, you know, thinking about it in the context of at least around the same levels. And so as you make your way through the balance of the year, of course, we are always impacted by the normal seasonality that you get with upgrades. Being more heavily weighted towards the second half of the year. But you know, I think that's a good way to think about our upgrade. And you know, we might be seeing how much of this was pulled forward from the second half. In terms of business wireline performance, I would start and say we are really pleased with the execution of the team. You know, there's a new leadership team in place there, and they have come in. And I think they have gotten the organization focused. On driving growth in connectivity revenues, and we are pleased with how that is going. Importantly, they have taken some steps to really rationalize |
6,909 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | connectivity revenues, and we are pleased with how that is going. Importantly, they have taken some steps to really rationalize some of the cost base recognizing that they still have a pretty meaningful base of legacy revenues. I think this quarter you benefited from price increases on legacy plans. Those price increases typically come with higher churn as you make your way through subsequent quarters. So I think as you think about the balance of the year, we do expect some of the trends to moderate and that we will see a pickup in legacy revenue declines as you make your way through. Also, this quarter, we benefited from the settlement. I mentioned in my commentary, that was think about that as around forty-five million dollars. So we are really pleased but I think it's too early to really change our outlook for that segment. |
6,910 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | John Hodulik: Thanks, John. We have the next question, please.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from Michael Rollins with Citi. Please go ahead.
Michael Rollins: Thanks, and good morning. Two topics. If I could. First, AT&T Inc. reported an acceleration of fixed wireless net adds, and it coming at a time when you are expanding the mid-band 5G coverage. So curious if you can give us an update on how AT&T Inc. is looking at the penetration and financial prospects from X Wireless. And do these network enhancements give you an expanded opportunity to take more share of broadband outside of the fifty plus, you know, million passing that you are trying to get to with fiber by the end of this decade. And then just second on ARPU. Just curious when you think about pricing actions that AT&T Inc. has employed over the last couple of years, and you set that against the competitive backdrop and macro landscape. Could you just frame the opportunities for AT&T Inc. to continue to improve ARPU for both postpaid phones and the fiber subscribers. Thanks. |
6,911 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | John Stankey: Morning, Mike. So as I just mentioned, part of what's happening on the fixed wireless side is as we have done the modernization of the conversion of the Alcatel Lucent. Excuse me. Nokia. I am dating myself. The Nokia footprint into the Ericsson footprint, that conversion as we go into those geographies opens up territory where we because we had not done the modernization to the level we like with all of our Spectrum assets and the most modern equipment they typically were not open for fixed wireless access. And that has opened up some footprint that will continue to open up as we go through that over the course of the next couple of years. And, I would also tell you on the margin we are seeing better performance off of that investment than what we would have anticipated. So as we kind of thought about one of the economic reasons why we felt this was the right move, we understood that we would get some better yields off the network given the equipment deployments we were using, the more modern equipment, some of the strategies around how we would actually integrate on a single vendor solution and those are helping. We have also been doing the network is a living, breathing thing. We have gotten better at yield and traffic management. In some ways that we can use some of those efficiencies back against the network in places maybe we had not anticipated. Two years ago that have opened up some opportunity. And I would just tell you our strategy overall around how we think about using fixed wireless access has not changed. But what's happening is I think you are seeing the learning benefits of focus. The business, in my estimation, has a much clearer point of view right now on the multiyear capital deployment and what we are doing and what footprints in terms of our investment. And so this is it's not just about where you are deploying fiber and where you are not. It's about what you need to do to make sure that you can transition out of legacy services, so that you have the right infrastructure in |
6,912 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | what you need to do to make sure that you can transition out of legacy services, so that you have the right infrastructure in place, whether it be wireless, fixed, to serve those customers, I think that clarity and the repeatability of that month in and month out is allowing all the organizations that are necessary to serve customers and sell product to get a lot better at what they are doing. And so we are moving up that learning curve of where we want to deploy our fixed wireless muscle all consistent with what I talked about before, which is we like to use it as a catch product from legacy broadband services that we are not going to invest in building fiber in. We would like to use it as a holding product when we know we are going to be building fiber within a period of time, but we can provide a better solution or some market penetration on a converged basis until that fiber gets there. What we can do in the business segment where the portfolio of the business is clearly a great match for fixed wireless long term, because of their usage characteristics and demand characteristics. All those reasons that we think are the right use cases to deploy we are just getting better at our muscles around how to find those customers, and how to activate that through our various channels and partners. To drive that volume. And so I feel really good about the customer base that's coming in. You know, we continue to test that and look at it and say, are we getting the right customers? Are they going to have longevity? Are they going to be profitable? And, I think we will continue to find place to ramp this modestly as we move forward. But nothing's really changed in our point of view other than we are getting better at all aspects of how we run our business. Yields on the wireless network, efficiency, lining up markets to distribution channels, coming up with the right offers that we can make accretive over the long haul. And I think that just means we are going to get better over time. On the ARPU side, look, I am sorry to |
6,913 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | over the long haul. And I think that just means we are going to get better over time. On the ARPU side, look, I am sorry to sound like a broken record. We are going to continue to do what we have done pretty consistently over the last five years, which is we are going to find opportunities in our customer base where we think utility and value has improved tremendously. And because of the performance of the products and how customers are using them. Allow us to have opportunities to possibly adjust what that means for pricing. I think we have done that pretty artfully over the last several years. You see the right trends in our ARPU performance. I think in this quarter, you should see anything in there that you look at and say, that's disconcerting or different than what you have been seeing over the last number of years. We are also going to be very sensitive to the realities of the markets we are in. If we walk into a slower growth economic environment or there's a dynamic that goes on later in this year where growth is not what we expected it to be, then we will be smart about how we work with our customers over the long haul and make sure that we do the right thing to keep the franchise healthy and make sure that we are providing value in the right ways back to those customers. So I will tell you great products, superior products, generally allow you to have a little bit more pricing flexibility, and I have been saying all along you should expect that since fiber is the best fixed broadband product in the market over time, you are going to continue to see margins improve on it. You are going to see its scale operationally. You are going to see it get more profitable. And you are seeing that. And I do not think we are at the end of that runway. Of that dynamic continuing to materialize. |
6,914 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | Michael Rollins: Alright. Thanks for the questions, Mike. We are going to go to the next one. Operator?
Operator: Absolutely. Our next question comes from Bryan Kraft of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Bryan Kraft: Thanks. Good morning. Just regarding Pascal's churn comments, I wanted to follow-up there. I think you said, Pascal, that 2Q would be similar to 1Q and then second half would be characterized by typical seasonality. Assume that means we should look at historical sequential step-ups in the back half of the year off of 2Q and estimated churns that right way to think about. And, also, in general, how much of the higher churn is a function of, would you say contract roll-offs picking up versus increased competitive intensity, and then lastly, I was wondering if you would just comment on your outlook for gross ad in year over year gross ads to continue. And lastly, if upgrades are being pulled forward due to tariff concerns, do you think switching between carriers is also being pulled forward? It seems like both yourselves and Verizon yesterday are talking about pretty strong gross ad performance currently. Thanks. |
6,915 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | Pascal Desroches: Hey, Bryan. Thank you for the question. Remember, coming into the year, we said that we would have a higher level of contract roll-offs this year. And we also said that we would expect the overall industry growth to be lower than it has been. Those two factors were baked into our expectations that this year we would have higher churn than we saw last year. I think as a good rule of thumb, 2023 was probably a year where we had similar levels of contract roll-offs that we are seeing in 2025. And so I think that's a good benchmark for thinking about how this is playing out in 2025. And as I would expect, as you look at sequential performance in churn for the back half of the for key two in the back half of the year. I would tell you 2023 is probably a good proxy to use as your benchmark. In terms of gross adds, what I can tell you is what we have seen so far in the second quarter. We, you know, we have continued with really good performance, and we are happy with how the team is executing and competing for the gross adds in the market. Place. |
6,916 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | John Stankey: Bryan, I would just add in. I mean, obviously, we gave you some guidance and we characterized for you what we expect. In growth in our wireless business, and we do expect to continue growing our if you know, it's a math issue, it turns up a little bit. Yeah. Gross is going to end up going up a little bit as a result of that. That's kind of plan we are operating to right now, and that's all baked into what we just articulated for you moving forward. But what I would stress is comments I made earlier in the call, which is how we are focusing on which customers to bring in as we are driving those gross additions and our focus on the high-value customers, especially in the Converge space. And when you LTVs are going up because you can consolidate customers and we just gave you an indication that that's the case. Then you obviously maybe invest a little bit differently as a result of that. And what I think we are doing, I am very comfortable with, relative to the customers I see coming in, and our ability to put incremental products and services on them that have durability and longevity and whether that's a fiber customer that, you know, we are adding wireless onto or the other way around, or it's the newly consolidated fixed wireless access customer that has good runway because of the profile of the network in that area that ultimately can consolidates wireless lines. I am willing to invest in those in the right way because of that increased lifetime value. And, I think we are doing a good job of making that happen and I am very comfortable running that play moving forward through the balance of this year.
Pascal Desroches: Thanks for the questions, Bryan.
Bryan Kraft: Thank you.
Operator: We will go next question, operator.
Operator: Next question comes from Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. |
6,917 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | Operator: Next question comes from Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Sebastiano Petti: Hi. Thank you for taking the question. Just wanted to maybe I guess, kind of wrap in, you know, Bryan as well as John and Mike's question just you know, help us think about I guess, the comfort or the confidence in getting to the high higher end of the mobility service revenue, I guess, more particularly the EBITDA guidance of the higher end of three percent to four percent. Just what underlies or underscores that confidence from the management team just kind of given the higher activity that we are seeing here? Obviously, cost opportunities, but just could double click on that a little bit. And then, John, going back to perhaps what you talked about of you know, the longer-term plans were based on low single-digit GDP moderating inflation and the management team's ability to adjust your operating posture to prioritize free cash flow, does that put your forty-five million fiber target passing, you know, at risk at all as you think about or extrapolate over the next several years? Thank you.
Pascal Desroches: Let me start. In terms of how to think about mobility, this past quarter, we delivered three point five percent growth. And it's important to keep in mind that we that included a cost of launching. Our AT&T Inc. guarantee. And so it so we were able to absorb that higher promotions and still delivered three and a half percent growth. As I look at the rest of the year, here are a couple of things to keep in mind. There are some adjustments we are going to we have made on auto bill pay discount, which should also help the balance of the year. Also, we said we are accelerating some of our cost actions that were planned for later in the year we are moving those forward. That will help AT&T Inc. Mobility from here. So, overall, we feel really good about the market we put out there at the beginning of the year, and we continue to march towards that. |
6,918 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | John Stankey: Sebastiano, I do not know. I guess to answer your question, I obviously like everybody else and my visibility is not perfect right now. I wake up every morning expecting that I could see something today that I had not seen before that we have to adjust to. I feel good about our flexibility in being able to do that given where the business is right now after several years of really hard work. To give us that latitude. The way I think about our capital allocation and it's really related to how I characterize our confidence in moving forward with share buyback right now. Trying to be pretty deliberate and foundational and strategic in how we do these things and as I shared I think fiber's a fundamental element to communications networks moving forward. I view it as a very long-lived asset. We are investing in this not for this year or next year. We are investing in for decades. I view the restructuring reordering of the industry that we are in a fairly seminal moment around that. That there's a window here as a result of that reordering of that window is not going to stay open forever. And I look at the characteristics of the business case of fiber. And I would say that when you have a deployment and an investment, that does not require what I would say is new market development, but a share take. But, you know, the growth environment in aggregate is less of an impact on it. The not like all those customers are going to disappear. There's still homes out there with people in them that want a better service. And so historically, my bias is when you get into these economic cycles, you use your balance sheet and your strength to continue to press your bets that are the right long-term bets are going to help you be in a better position structurally. And as I think about our investments in fiber, I have a lot of reasons to think about that's an important structural long-term bet. That we want to make sure we continue to push ahead on. Our supply chain's in pretty good shape on that front. We have talked |
6,919 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | That we want to make sure we continue to push ahead on. Our supply chain's in pretty good shape on that front. We have talked about this several times. We have longer-term contracts with our suppliers. There's been a lot of work to reassure and manufacture the United States. Key elements of it and the most important element of building fiber is services. It's people power. And those all are people who work here in the United States, and they are not subject to the dynamics of tariffs and things like that. So I feel like we can manage through the cost side of it pretty well. And so my bias would be that that's a place we continue to lean in and push on and execute to our plan. |
6,920 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | Pascal Desroches: Thanks for the questions, Sebastiano.
Sebastiano Petti: We will go to the next question, please.
Operator: You. And our next question today comes from Jim Schneider of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Jim Schneider: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions too if I may. First is on the overall consumer health. How would you kind of characterize the state of the consumer at this point? Obviously, many moving parts in this market. But do you see any evidence of consumers less willing trade up or even trading down or consumer credit quality issues that may sort of be impacting things in over the next couple of quarters. From what you can see today. And the second is on capital allocation. Can you maybe just sort of frame your earlier comments on M and A and buybacks in terms of is the buyback guidance you have provided independent of any inorganic activities you might consider, or is it contingent on it? And if it's contingent, is there a minimum level of buybacks you would not go below? Thank you. |
6,921 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | John Stankey: Hi, Jim. So I think the short answer to your question is I am not seeing anything right now in a change in any dynamics of consumer behavior that I would say is out of pattern or out of trend to the business with maybe a couple things on the margin. One is I think the prepay market is a little bit slower than it had been. I think that's probably an artifact of has some degree of immigration but I do not know that that's economic per se. I am not concerned about it. It's what we had expected and have been sharing with you that I would have expected that dynamic to evolve as the policies of the United States changed around it. And you know, I think what Pascal shared with you earlier, which is maybe there's some behavior in the right now where some people are trying to get ahead of perceptions of what might happen to unit costs on things that are important to them and pre-buying as a result of that, and we will see if that is in fact the case. Our sense is that there's a little bit of that going on and how that sustains itself over what period of time and when does that shift. I do not know. But other than that, I think that's all I have seen. I certainly watch what's going on in the broader economy. Do not have any news to break on that. It's not my news. It's, you know, what I see macroeconomists representing. It's what I hear from retailers. We continue to pay attention to it. But as we started out, as I shared with you in my opening comments, the good news is, you know, we are not showing up. We are not that dining out experience. We are not a discretionary choice. We are pretty far down the list of things that people are going to part ways with if they are managing dollars and cents and, I think that's a good place to be. And I believe the combination, as I said earlier, opportunities to run our business more efficiently. Are opportunities to take share in places and still grow even if it's growing on more value-oriented plans. Pretend well for the company even if some consumers are going to put |
6,922 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | grow even if it's growing on more value-oriented plans. Pretend well for the company even if some consumers are going to put off choices on some upgrades or incremental purchases in places. The question on the Oh, I am sorry, the capital allocation. I apologize if small trivial question. Look. We gave you our guidance and our commitment in our order of capital allocation for a reason. And we intend to execute it carry it through, and that's a priority for this management team and the business to do that. I cannot see everything in the future. I do not know that something does not come up, but we are starting down this path. Our confidence in our share buyback is indicative of the fact we are starting it early that we are doing it at a time where I think some would say the visibility is not as great right now as it was six months ago. Because we believe strongly in it. We think it's the right thing to do, and I am committed to executing and carrying it forward. |
6,923 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | Jim Schneider: Thanks for the question, Jim.
Jim Schneider: Operator, we are going to take our last question.
Operator: Absolutely. And our final question today comes from Kannan Venkateshwar with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Kannan Venkateshwar: Thank you. So, John, just from a macro environment perspective, I guess, is there a certain growth framework you are working with, especially in the wireless side? I mean, in terms of either trying to retain a certain amount of share in the market or certain amount of activity. And, you know, is that is that something that sets a floor in some ways in terms of managing your P and L? The mobility side. Then on the property commissioning side, I think there's been a couple of real estate sales, at least with some of the wire centers earlier this year. Is there more opportunity to extract capital out of that business potentially at a faster pace, at some point, and, you know, what should we look out for in terms of goal posts? As that process moves along? Thank you. |
6,924 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | John Stankey: Sure. So the way I think about it, I have articulated this before, is I am very focused on what our shares of revenues are within an industry. And we have as we talk about things like our gross ads or net ads inflated and the value of a particular net ad or gross ad and the way I try to get the management team centered on it is if we can drive recurring service revenues and we have the right margins structure, that's going to be a good thing for the business. And I think if you go back and if you look at what been able to do over the last couple of years, we have done a really good job of managing our share of service revenues in the market. That we are actively participating in. And I think we have done that in a way that's returning. And I believe that that's where I should have the team focused, and it's where we will continue to be focused always with the mindset that, I think to be a really great company, we are ultimately going to have to be a share leader in places. And I am fully aware that we are not in that position. Right now and I would like to see our team achieve that. I do not view that as a quarter to quarter thing. I do not engineer a quarter's net adds or gross adds based on some assumption around that. But I step back and I say, what are the right things we need to do structurally in the business? That allow us over time to affect that kind of a share shift? How do we get the asset baselined up properly? How do we position the brand in the most effective way? What do we do to ensure that we have got the right kind of innovation and converged offers in place that will ultimately yield the shifts in share that designate us as a market leader in terms of the overall revenues that are available the pool of the market that we choose to play in. And I think we are making steady progress across those things. Right? Just gave you examples of the modernization that we are doing in the infrastructure that I think will serve us well for the long haul. You see what we are trying to do to |
6,925 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | that we are doing in the infrastructure that I think will serve us well for the long haul. You see what we are trying to do to reposition the brand right now and establish the framework of how we continue to evolve that platform and the value proposition to the customer on that platform. When I talk about where we are going on the innovation of converged products, those are important things that come in with it. So I think that's how I try to get the management team focus as opposed to saying, in this quarter, I need to engineer for this number because of some expected goal of me being a share leader in a position. I think that's earned over time. Not earned in a ninety-day cycle. In terms of where we have additional opportunities, we have given you, I think, about as good a visibility to our business over the next three years as we have done in a long time. When we talked to you in December, we outlined for you that we have a pretty good handle on that package of opportunities. We restructure the business exit legacy businesses, exit footprint, that there's a lot of pools of cost and opportunity in that. We have taken what I believe are achievable and reasonable estimates of that and factored them into our guidance. Over the next three years that we have provided to you. And some of those things like where we think we have higher value assets for disposition that we can use to reinvest back in the business as cash flows, to modernize things or pay for fiber, invest. We have done the best planning we can about that. And incorporated those things that we can catch. But I am going to be honest with you. When you are disassembling infrastructure that's been built over a hundred years, sometimes you are going to miss something. You know, sometimes there's going to be an opportunity that presents itself you did not expect. I mean, maybe we were wrong in our estimates of what copper might sell for in the market when it's reclaimed. It sells higher than we expect, and there's incremental money that comes from it. But |
6,926 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | for in the market when it's reclaimed. It sells higher than we expect, and there's incremental money that comes from it. But we have done our best of kind of giving you our point of view of what we think all those things in the Mixmaster, including property dispositions and things that we can work through, are going to yield back to the shareholder base and I am not in a position to kind of tell you that I think that there's a remarkable upside or downside you should bet on at this juncture. Folks, I appreciate you being with us today, and I thank you for your continued interest in AT&T Inc. As I said at the beginning of my comments, I feel really good about where we started the year, coming off what was a really solid and foundational year, and I could not be more delighted in the fact that this is the quarter that we are making a pivot, and adjusting our capital allocation to begin a buyback program that we worked really hard to get to. And can demonstrate to our shareholders that their patience with us has been rewarded. So thank you very much for your time, and everybody have a good rest of the week. |
6,927 | T | 1 | 2,025 | 2025-04-23 08:30:00 | AT&T Inc. | 100,231 | Operator: Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day. |
6,928 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Operator: Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to Tesla's Fourth Quarter 2024 Q&A Webcast. My name is Travis Axelrod, the Head of Investor Relations here at Tesla, and I am joined today by Elon Musk and Vaibhav Taneja and a number of other executives. Our Q4 results were announced at about 3.00 p.m. Central Time in the update deck we published at the same link as this webcast. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC. During the question-and-answer portion of today's call, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please use the raise hand button to join the question queue. Before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks. Elon? |
6,929 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Thank you. So, in summary, in Q4, we set a record and delivered vehicles at an annualized rate of nearly 2 million a year. So, congratulations to the Tesla team on excellent work, achieving record production and deliveries. Model Y was the best-selling vehicle of any kind for 2024. That's worth noting. Not just the best electric vehicle, the best vehicle of any kind on earth, number one was Model Y. We're staying focused on maximizing volumes and obviously doubling down for, I don't know what, it really, I was going to say doubling down on autonomy, but really it's like autonomy is like 10x-ing. Frankly, doubling is not even enough. We made many critical investments in 2024 in manufacturing AI and robotics that will bear immense fruit in the future, immense. Like it's, in fact, to such a scale that it is difficult to comprehend. And I've said this before, and I'll stand by it. I see a path, I'm not saying it's an easy path, but I see a path for Tesla being the most valuable company in the world by far, not even close. Like, maybe several times more than, I mean, there is a path where Tesla is worth more than the next top five companies combined. There's a path to that. I mean, I think it's like an incredibly, just like a difficult path, but it is an achievable path. So -- and that is overwhelmingly due to autonomous vehicles and autonomous humanoid robots. So, our focus is actually building towards that. And that's where we're laying the ground. We laid the ground work for that in 2024. We'll continue to lay the ground work for that in 2025. In fact, more than laid the groundwork actually, so it would be building the structure, it’d be we're building the manufacturing lines and like -- like, setting up for what I think will be an epic 2026 and a ridiculous ‘27 and ‘28. Ridiculously good. That is my prediction. As yet, very few people understand the value of Full Self Driving and our ability to monetize the fleet. I've -- some of these things I've said for quite a long time and I know people said, |
6,930 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | and our ability to monetize the fleet. I've -- some of these things I've said for quite a long time and I know people said, well, Elon is the boy who cried wolf like several times but I'm telling you there's a damn wolf this time and you can drive it. In fact, it can drive you. It's a self-driving wolf. For a lot of people, like their experience of Tesla autonomy is like, if it's even a year old, if it's even two years old, it's like meeting someone when they're like a toddler and thinking that they're going to be a toddler forever. But obviously they're not going to be a toddler forever if they grow up. But if their last experience was like, FSD was a toddler, it's like, well, it's grown up now. Have you seen it? It's like walks and talks. And that's really what we've got. And it's difficult for people to understand this because human intuition is linear as opposed to what we're seeing is exponential progress. So, that's why my number one recommendation for anyone who doubts is simply try it. Have you tried it? When's the last time you tried it? And the only people who are skeptical, the only people who are skeptical are those who have not tried it. So, a car goes -- a passenger car typically has only about 10 hours of utility per week out of 168. A very small percentage. Once that car is autonomous, my rough estimate is that it is in use for at least a third of the hours of the week. So, call it 50, maybe 55 hours of the week. And it can be useful both for cargo delivery and people delivery. So, even let's say people are asleep, but you can deliver packages in the middle of the night or resupply restaurants or whatever the case may be, whatever people need at all hours of the day or night. That same asset, the thing that these things that already exist with no incremental cost change, just a software update, now have five times or more the utility than they currently have. I think this will be the largest asset value increase in human history. Maybe there's something bigger, but I just don't know what it is. |
6,931 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | will be the largest asset value increase in human history. Maybe there's something bigger, but I just don't know what it is. And so people who look in the rearview mirror are looking for past precedent, except I don't think there is one. So -- but the reality of autonomy is upon us. And I repeat my advice, try driving the car or let it drive you. So, now it works very well in the US, but of course it will over time work just as well everywhere else. So, we're working hard to grow our annual volumes. Our constraint this year -- our current constraint is battery packs this year, but we're working on addressing that constraint. And I think we will make progress on addressing that constraint. And then things are really going to go ballistic next year, and really ballistic in ‘27 and ‘28. So, yeah. So, a bit more on Full Self Driving. Our Q4 Vehicle Safety Report shows continued year-over-year improvement in safety for vehicles so that the safety numbers, if somebody has supervised Full Self Driving turned on or not, the safety differences are gigantic. So, and people have seen the immense improvement with Version 13 and with incremental versions in Version 13 and then Version 14 is going to be yet another step beyond that that is very significant. We launched the Cortex training cluster at Gigafactory Austin, which was a significant contributor to FSD advancement, and we continue to invest in training infrastructure out of Texas headquarters. So, the training needs for Optimus or Optimus humanoid robot are probably at least ultimately 10x of what's needed for the car, at least to get to the full range of useful roles. You can say, how many different roles are there for a humanoid robot versus a car? Humanoid robot has probably, well, 1000 times more uses and more complex things than in a car. That doesn't mean the training scales by a 1000, but it's probably 10x. Now you can do this progressively. So it doesn't mean like, or Tesla is going to spend like $500 billion in training compute. Because we obviously train |
6,932 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | So it doesn't mean like, or Tesla is going to spend like $500 billion in training compute. Because we obviously train Optimus to do enough tasks to match the output of Optimus robots. And obviously, the cost of training is dropping dramatically with time. So, it is one of those things where I think long-term, Optimus will be -- Optimus has the potential to be north of $10 trillion in revenue. Like, it's really bananas. So that you can obviously afford a lot of training compute in that situation. In fact, even $500 billion training compute in that situation would be quite a good deal. Yeah. The future's going to be incredibly different from the past, that's for sure. We live at this unbelievable inflection point in human history. So, yeah. So, the proof is in the pudding. So, we're going to be launching unsupervised Full Self Driving as a paid service in Austin in June. So -- and I've talked with the team. We feel confident in being able to do an initial launch of unsupervised, no one in the car, Full Self Driving in Austin in June. We already have Tesla's operating autonomously unsupervised Full Self Driving at our factory in Fremont and we’ll soon be doing that at our factory in Texas. So, thousands of cars every day are driving with no one in them at our Fremont factory in California. They will soon be doing that in Austin and then elsewhere in the world for the rest of our factories which is pretty cool. And the cars aren't just driving to exactly the same spot because obviously it all, [went and collide] (ph) at the same spot. The cars are actually programmed with what lane they need to park in to be picked up for delivery. So, they drive from the factory end of line to their specific - to their destination parking spot and then could be picked up for delivery to customers and then doing this reliably every day, thousands of times a day. It's pretty cool. Like I said, the Teslas will be in the wild with no one in them, in June in Austin. So, what I'm saying is this is not some far-off mythical situation. |
6,933 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | will be in the wild with no one in them, in June in Austin. So, what I'm saying is this is not some far-off mythical situation. It's literally, five, six months away, five months away kind of thing. And while we're stepping into -- putting our toe in the water gently at first, just to make sure everything's cool, our solution is a generalized AI solution. It does not require high precision maps of a locality. So we just want to be cautious. It's not that it doesn't work beyond Austin. In fact, it does. We just want to be, put a toe in the water, make sure everything is okay, then put a few more toes in the water, then put a foot in the water with safety of the general public and those in the car as our top priority. With regard to Optimus, obviously I'm making these revenue predictions that sound absolutely insane. I realize that. But they are, I think, they will prove to be accurate. Yeah. Now, with Optimus, there's a lot of uncertainty on the exact timing, because it's not like a train arriving at the station for Optimus. We are designing the train and the station and in real time while also building the tracks. And so they're like, people shouldn’t say like, why didn't the train arrive exactly at 12:05? We're literally designing the train and the track and the station in real time while you're saying, how can we predict this thing with absolute precision? It's impossible. The normal internal plan calls for roughly 10,000 Optimus robots to be built this year. Will we succeed in building 10,000 exactly by the end of December this year? Probably not, but will we succeed in making several thousand? Yes, I think we will. Will those several thousand Optimus robots be doing useful things by the end of year? Yes, I'm confident they will do useful things. The Optimus in use at the Tesla factories, production design one, will inform how - what we change for production design two, which we expect to launch next year. And our goal is to ramp prompt Optimus production faster than maybe anything's ever been ramped. |
6,934 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | we expect to launch next year. And our goal is to ramp prompt Optimus production faster than maybe anything's ever been ramped. Meaning, like aspirationally an order of magnitude ramp per year. Now, if we aspire to an order of magnitude ramp per year, perhaps we only end up with a half order of magnitude per year. But that's the kind of growth that we're talking about. It doesn't take very many years before we're making 100 million of these things a year. If you go up by, let's say, a factor, by 5x per year, insane. Not 50%, 500%. So, these are big growth numbers. Yeah. But we do need to be -- this is an entirely new supply chain, is entirely new technology. There's nothing off the shelf to use. We try desperately with Optimus to use any existing motors, any actuators, sensors, nothing worked for our humanoid robot, at any price. We had to design everything from physics first principles to work for a humanoid robot and with the most sophisticated hand that has ever been made before, by far. And Optimus will be able to like play the piano and be able to thread a needle. I mean this is the level of precision no one has been able to achieve. And so it's really something special. So, yeah, so -- and my prediction long term is that Optimus will be overwhelmingly the value of the company. Regarding energy, back to Earth. Mr. Elon, can you come back here for a minute? Okay, back to Earth. Energy storage is a big deal and will become, it's already super important, will become incredibly important in the future. And it is something that enables far greater energy output to the grid than is currently possible. Because the grid, the grids are -- the vast majority of the grid has no energy storage capability. So, they have to design the power plants to, for very high peaks and assuming that there's no energy storage. Once you have grid energy storage and home-based energy storage, the actual total energy output per year of the grid is dramatically greater than people think. Maybe it's at least double. This will drive the |
6,935 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | energy output per year of the grid is dramatically greater than people think. Maybe it's at least double. This will drive the demand of stationary battery packs, and especially the grid scale ones, to insane, basically as much demand as we could possibly make. So, we have our second factory, which is in Shanghai, that's starting operation and we're building a third factory. So we're trying to ramp output of the stationary battery storage as quickly as possible. Now, there is a challenge here where we have to be careful to that we're not robbing from one pocket to take to another pocket because for a given gigawatt hours per year of the cell output, we have to say, does it go into stationary applications or mobile applications? It can't go both into both. So, we have to make that trade-off. Yeah. But overall, the demand for total gigawatt hours of batteries, whether mobile or stationary, that will grow in a very, very big way over time. So, in conclusion, 2025 really is a pivotal year for Tesla. And when we look back on 2025 and the launch of unsupervised Full Self Driving, true real-world AI that actually works, I think they may regard it as the biggest year in Tesla history, maybe even bigger than our first car, the Roadster or the Model S, so the Model 3 or Model Y. In fact, I think it probably will be viewed ‘25 as maybe the most important year in Tesla's history. There is no company in the world that is as good at real-world AI as Tesla. I don't even know who’s in second place. Like, you say like who's in second place for real-world AI. I would need a very big telescope to see them. That's how far behind they are. All right. |
6,936 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Travis Axelrod: Great. Thank you very much, Elon. And, Vaibhav has some opening remarks as well. |
6,937 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Vaibhav Taneja: Yeah, I'll talk about things on Earth. As Elon mentioned, in Q4, we set records in vehicle deliveries and energy storage deployments in an uncertain macro environment. We were able to grow auto and energy storage volumes both sequentially and on a year-on-year basis. For this, I would like to thank the efforts of everyone at Tesla to make this a reality and our customers who helped us achieve this feat. Coming into the fourth quarter, our focus was to reduce inventory levels in the automotive business and we accomplished that by ending the quarter with the lowest finished good inventory in the last two years. This was a result of offering not only attractive financing options but also other discounts and programs which impacted ASPs. While we saw volume growth in almost all regions that we operate in, we hit a new record for deliveries in the Greater China market. This is an encouraging trend since we grew volume in a highly competitive BEV market. On the automotive margin front, we saw a quarter-over-quarter decline primarily due to lower ASPs and due to the recognition of FSD related revenue in Q3 from feature releases. Our journey on cost reduction continues, and we were able to get our overall cost per car down below $35,000, primarily by material costs. This was despite increased depreciation and other costs as we prepare for the transition to the new Model Y for which we recently started taking orders in all markets. All our factories will start producing the new Model Y next month while we feel confident in our team’s abilities to ramp production quickly, know that it is an unprecedented change and we are not aware of anybody else taking the best-selling car on the planet and updating all factories at the same time. This changeover will result in several weeks of lost production in the quarter. As a result, margins will be impacted due to idle capacity and other ramp related costs, as is common in any launch, but will be overcome as production is ramped. We will be introducing several new |
6,938 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | related costs, as is common in any launch, but will be overcome as production is ramped. We will be introducing several new products throughout 2025. We are still on track to launch a more affordable model in the first half of 2025 and will continue to expand our lineup from there. From a dollar-for-dollar basis, we believe we have the most compelling lineup today compared to the industry, and it will continue to get better from here. As always, all our products come with the best software in the industry, autonomy features and capable of full autonomy in the future. And despite the premium experience, the total cost of ownership is close to mass market, less premium competitors. Energy storage deployments reached an all-time high in Q4, and this -- and resulted in -- but declined sequentially. This was a result of higher -- sorry, growth came from Megapack and Powerwall. Both businesses continue to be supply constrained, and like Elon mentioned, we're trying to ramp up production with Megafactory Shanghai coming online this quarter onwards. While quarterly deployments will likely continue to fluctuate sequentially, we expect at least 50% growth in deployments year-over-year in 2025. Gross profit and margins in the service and other business was up year-over-year but declined sequentially. This was the result of higher service center costs and lower profit from used car business. The businesses within service and other primarily support our new car business, especially through their impact on total cost of ownership. Therefore, while we manage them to be positive on a GAAP basis, we do not expect similar margins as the rest of the business. There's a lot of uncertainty around tariffs. Over the years, we've tried to localize our supply chain in every market, but we are still very reliant on parts from across the world for all our businesses. Therefore, the imposition of tariffs, which is very likely, and any [Indiscernible] will have an impact on our business and profitability. Our operating expenses grew both |
6,939 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | is very likely, and any [Indiscernible] will have an impact on our business and profitability. Our operating expenses grew both year-over-year and sequentially. The biggest driver of the increase was R&D as we continue to invest in AI-related initiatives. The remaining increase came from growth in our sales capabilities and marketing efforts from referral program. For 2025, we expect operating expenses to increase to support our growth initiatives. It is important to point out that the net income in Q4 was impacted by a $600 million mark-to-market benefit from Bitcoin due to the adoption of a new accounting standard for digital assets, whereby we will change -- we will take mark-to-market adjustments through other income every reporting period going forward. Our free cash flow for the quarter was $2 billion, and despite CapEx increase of over $2.4 billion in 2024, we were able to generate free cash flow of $3.6 billion for the year. CapEx efficiency is something we are extremely focused on. While we have invested in AI-related initiatives, we have done so in a very targeted manner to utilize the spend to get immediate benefits. The build-out of Cortex was accelerated because of the role -- actually to accelerate the rollout of FSD Version 13. Accumulative AI-related CapEx, including infrastructure, so far has been approximately $5 billion. And for 2025, we expect our CapEx to be flat on a year-over-year basis. In conclusion, like Elon said, 2025 is going to be a pivotal year for Tesla. There are a lot of investments which we have made and will continue to make in this coming year, which will set the pace for the next phase of growth. And it is something which now I'm getting out of earth, it is going to be out of this world. And we just are putting the right foundation. And that's all I have. |
6,940 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Travis Axelrod: Great. Thank you very much, Vaibhav. Now, we will move over to investor questions and we'll start with say.com. The first question is, is unsupervised FSD still planned to be released in Texas and California this year? What hurdles still exist to make that happen? You addressed the Texas piece, I think, already, so...
Elon Musk: Yeah, I'm confident that we'll release unsupervised FSD in California this year as well. Yeah, in fact, I think we will most likely release unsupervised FSD in many regions of the country of the US by the end of this year. Like I said, we're just putting our toe in the water, then a few toes, then a foot, then leg, then make sure everything is cool. And we're looking for a safety level that is significantly above the average human driver. So, it's not anywhere like much safer, not like a little bit safer than human, way safer than human. So the standard has to be very high because the moment there's any kind of accident with an autonomous car, this immediately gets worldwide headlines, even though about 40,000 people die every year in car accidents in the US, and most of them don't even get a mention anywhere. But if somebody scrapes a shin with an autonomous car, it's headline news.
Vaibhav Taneja: We want to avoid that.
Elon Musk: Yeah. So it's really from an -- the only thing holding us back is an excess of caution. But people can certainly get a feel for how well the car would perform as unsupervised FSD by simply having a car, allowing the car to drive you around your city and see how many times did you have to intervene. Not where you wanted to intervene or were a little concerned. But how many times did you have to intervene for, for definite safety reasons. And you will find that that is currently very rare, and over time, almost never.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Thank you very much. The next question is, are there any discussions with other auto companies about licensing FSD? |
6,941 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Yes. What we're seeing is, at this point, significant interest from a number of major car companies about licensing for Tesla Full Soft Driving technology. What we've generally said is the best way to know what to do is take one of our cars apart, and then you can see where the placement of the cameras are, what the thermal needs are of the Tesla AI inference computer. That's better than us sending some CAD drawings. And then we're only going to entertain situations where the volume would be very high, otherwise it's not worth the complexity. And we will not burden our engineering team with laborious discussions with other engineering teams until we obviously have unsupervised Full Self Driving working throughout the United States. I think the interest level from other manufacturers to license an FSD will be extremely high once it is obvious that unless you have FSD, you're dead.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Thank you very much. The next question is, is Optimus now mostly design locked for 2025 production?
Elon Musk: Optimus is not design locked. So, when I say like we're designing the train as it's going to -- we're redesigning the train as it’s going down the tracks while redesigning the tracks and the train stations.
Vaibhav Taneja: Every [indiscernible]. |
6,942 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Vaibhav Taneja: Every [indiscernible].
Elon Musk: Yeah, it's rapidly evolving. It's rapidly evolving in a good direction. It's pretty damn amazing actually. Team’s doing a fantastic job. We really have, by far, I think by far the best team of humanoid robotics engineers in the world. And we also have all the other ingredients necessary, because you need a great battery pack, you need great power electronics, you need great charging capability, you need great communications, great Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity. And of course, you need real-world AI. And then the ability to scale that production to huge levels. So you have to design for manufacturing. The things that, really what other companies are missing is they're missing the real-world AI and they're missing the ability to scale manufacturing to millions of units a year.
Vaibhav Taneja: I think that is an underappreciated thing that industrialization of design is a whole different thing than making a design. |
6,943 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Yeah, prototypes are trivial basically. Prototypes are easy, production is hard. I've said that for many years. The problem is that there's like, those who have never been involved in production or manufacturing somehow think that once you come up with some eureka design that you magically can make a million units a year. And this is totally false. There needs to be some Hollywood story where they show actually the problem is manufacturing. I've never even heard of one. It just doesn't fit the narrative. The Hollywood thing is like it's like some lone inventor in a garage goes Eureka and suddenly it files a patent and suddenly there's millions of units. I, like, I'm listening to guys who were missing most really 99% of the story. 1% is another old saying of one person -- like a product is 1% inspiration 99% perspiration. The Hollywood shows you 1% inspiration and minus, but forgets about the 99% perspiration of actually figuring out how to make that initial prototype manufacturable and then manufactured at high volume such that the product is reliable, low cost, consistent, doesn't break down all the time, and that is 100 times harder, at least, than the prototype.
Vaibhav Taneja: Then you have to get it there, deliver it, I think, yeah.
Elon Musk: Yeah, you have to meet all these regulations, and there's a million regulators around the world, it's pretty difficult.
Travis Axelrod: Great, thank you. The next question is also Optimus related. When will Tesla start selling Optimus, and what will the price be? |
6,944 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Well, the -- it may -- for this year we expect to just close the loop with Optimus being used internally at Tesla, because we obviously can easily use several thousand humanoid robots at Tesla for the most boring, annoying tasks in the factory, like the tasks nobody wants to do, where we have to like beg people to do this task. And then they -- then it's like the robot's totally happy to do the boring, dangerous, repetitive task that no humans want to do. And that's also actually some of the easiest use cases for us to have Optimus do things like load the hopper, like, say you're loading the body line if you're transporting pieces of sheet metal to the robot, which is already robot, the robot welding line for the body, and you just have to nonstop take things out of a, from one fixture to another fixture. And it's a very boring job That's the kind of thing what the Optimus could do.
Vaibhav Taneja: The guy who runs around all the wall studs and the pins. |
6,945 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Vaibhav Taneja: The guy who runs around all the wall studs and the pins.
Elon Musk: Yeah, there's a ton of boring jobs, tedious jobs, dangerous, slightly dangerous jobs that are perfect for Optimus. So we expect to use Optimus for those tasks at our factories and that'll help us close loop for improvement this year. It really was the production Version 2 which I think launches sometime next year. I'd like it to be the beginning of next year but maybe it's more like the middle of next year. And then we have to -- with a production line that is designed for -- on the order of 10,000 units a month versus 1,000 units a month. So, when you're designing a production line for 1,000 units a month, it takes you a while to actually reach anywhere close to 1,000 units a month. For any given production output, it takes a while to actually reach its potential. The current line that we're designing is for roughly 1,000 units a month of Optimus robots. The next line would be for 10,000 units a month. The line after that would be for 100,000 units a month. And I think probably with Version 2, it is a very rough guess because there's so much uncertainty here, very rough guess that we start delivering Optimus robots to companies that are outside of Tesla in maybe the second half of next year, something like that. But like I said, this is such an exponential ramp that it will go from no one's receiving humanoid robots to these things like coming out like crazy.
Vaibhav Taneja: We can't build enough. |
6,946 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Vaibhav Taneja: We can't build enough.
Elon Musk: We're always going to be in a we can't build enough situation. Demand will not be a problem even at a high price. And then as I said, like, once we start -- once we're at a steady state of above 1 million units a year, I think the production -- I'm confident at 1 million units a year, that the production cost of Optimus will be less than $20,000. If you compare the complexity of Optimus to the complexity of a car, so just the total mass and complexity of Optimus is much less than a car. So, I would expect that at similar volumes to say the Model Y, which is over 1 million units a year, that you'd see Optimus be, I don't know, half the cost or something like that. What the price of Optimus is a different matter. The price of Optimus will be set by the market demand.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Thank you very much. The next question is, what is the status on mass production of the Tesla Semi? And how will it impact revenue and scale?
Lars Moravy: I can take that one. So, we just closed out the Semi factory roof of walls last week in Reno, a schedule, which is great with the weather. In Reno, you never know what's going to happen. But we're prepping for mechanical installation of all the equipment in the coming months. The first builds of the high volume Semi design come late this year in 2025 and begin ramping early in 2026. But as we've said before, the Semi is a TCO, no-brainer. I think it's really similar to Optimus, set by how much people pay and it has the total cost of ownership, it's much, much cheaper than any other transportation you can have. So at that point, when we're at scale, it will meaningfully contribute to Tesla's revenue. I think it’s difficult to say how much. Anything you want to add Elon? |
6,947 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: No. I mean, I do think that Tesla Semi, again with autonomy, is going to be incredibly valuable. That we actually have a shortage of truck drivers in America, that's one of the limiting factors on transport. And people are human so they get tired and sometimes there's -- it's -- I have a lot of respect for truck drivers because it's a tough job. But because it's a tough job, there's not that many people that want to do it. And there's actually fewer -- I believe, if my saying is correct, there are a few people entering truck driving as a profession than are not leaving it.
Vaibhav Taneja: Yes.
Elon Musk: So when you think, yeah, exactly. So when you consider, okay, there's more people leaving truck driving as a profession than entering it, well, we're going to have a real logistics problem as time goes by. So autonomy will be very important to meet that need. So like, yeah, it will -- I don't know. It's a several billion a year opportunity, which I don't know in this context. Is that -- these days, does several billion a year matter? I think it does. It's not nothing. It's probably -- it might -- it’s probably like a $10 billion a year thing. That's $1 billion a month at some point probably. But it's -- all this is going to pale in comparison to Optimus. So yeah, $1 billion a month is a lot but it's not -- it's going to be like 1% of Optimus.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Thank you very much. We already covered the next question in opening remarks, so moving on. Is it expected that Tesla that will need to upgrade Hardware 3 vehicles? And if so, what is the timeline and expected impact to Tesla's CapEx? I think they are referring to cost there.
Elon Musk: They're really asking the tough questions, aren't they? |
6,948 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: They're really asking the tough questions, aren't they?
Vaibhav Taneja: I guess we reached -- we haven't started working on Hardware 3 yet. We are still making software releases. We released the 12.6 release recently, which was like a -- is like a baby V13, but it's a significant improvement compared to what they had previously. And people are still finding ways, there are still larger motors in the smaller models. So we don't give up on Hardware 3, we're still working on it. Just the releases will trail the Hardware 4 releases.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Thanks.
Elon Musk: Yeah. I mean, I think the honest answer is that we're going to have to upgrade people's Hardware 3 computer for those that have bought Full Self Driving, and that is the honest answer and that's going to be painful and difficult but we'll get it done. Now, I'm kind of glad that not that many people bought the FSD package.
Travis Axelrod: Thanks, Elon. The next question. Has Tesla given up on ramping their solar roof product?
Elon Musk: No, we -- sorry, Mike, go ahead, yeah.
Unidentified Company Representative: Yes, I can take it. Yeah, solar roof is a core part of the residential product portfolio and it still remains. It draws a lot of customer interest despite it being premium products. We've worked on multiple iterations of engineering to make the product easier to install and distribute by reducing SKU count. And more recently, rather than direct installation, we are focused on growth through our nationwide network of certified installers. And many of those, they've been installing solar roof for many years. |
6,949 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: That's actually turned out to be a much better way for the -- like it's just let the roof -- just supply products to the roofing industry. And especially when somebody's is getting a new roof anyway or building a house from scratch, obviously, this is by far the most efficient time to put in a solar roof as opposed to putting a solar roof on a house that -- where the roof still has 20 years of life. That's not economically senseful. But if it's a new house or the roof needs to be replaced anyway, then solar roof can make a lot of sense. And it is a premium product. It's like the Model S, Model X or something, like it's a premium product. I think it looks really cool. And you -- I mean, your house generates electricity. And if you combine it with the Tesla Powerwall battery, then you can be self-sufficient. So, even if the grid turns off, even if the grid turns off for several days, your house still works, and your roof looks awesome. So, it's like, I recommend anyone who had -- who can afford it, get the Tesla solar roof and the Powerwall. Your family’s life might depend on it. And just in terms of convenience, your kids are not going to yell at you because their computers don't work because power went out and you can't charge your phone. Actually happens. Yeah. You literally can't even call anyone because your phones out of juice.
Travis Axelrod: Thank you very much. The next question was covered in opening remarks, so we will skip that. And the last question from say.com. What technical breakthroughs will define V14 of FSD, given that V13 already covered photon to control? |
6,950 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Well, we're going to help a lot -- help a lot further than [indiscernible] We've been in sort of the nothing but nets situation, nothing but neural nets from photons to controls for a while now for just improving the neural nets. I guess we could get into some of the technical details to some degree. I have to say I continue to be amazed by just how effective order aggressive transformers are at solving a wide range of problems. I mean, Ashok, is there anything you'd like to add there without giving away the sort of family secrets?
Ashok Elluswamy: I mean, except for things we put on X already. Yeah, it's continuing to scale the model size a lot. We scale a bunch in V13, but then there's still room to grow. So we're going to continue to scale the model size. We're going to increase the context length even more. The memory is sort of limited right now. We want to increase the amount of memory, also give to even minutes of context for driving. We're going to add audio and emergency vehicles better, add data of the tricky common cases that we get from the entire fleet, any interventions or any kind of user intervention. We just add that to the data, the dataset. So the scaling in basically every axis, training compute, data set size, model size, model context, and also all the reinforcement learning objectives.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Alrighty. With that, we will move over to analyst questions. So just as a reminder, you will need to unmute yourself to ask your question and the first question will be coming from Daniel Roeska from Bernstein. Daniel, please go ahead and unmute yourself.
Daniel Roeska: Hey, good evening, everybody. It's Daniel from Bernstein. Elon, Tesla's share price clearly already includes quite few of the anticipated benefits you talked about today, yet realizing what you call kind of difficult but achievable will take some time. What are you pushing the Tesla executive team to do differently now to accelerate the innovation in order to realize the value you described for the company. |
6,951 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Well, I mean, we're, I think, working on perfecting real-world AI and making rapid progress week over week, if not month, certainly month over month, but often week over week. I spent a lot of time with the Tesla AI team and the Tesla Optimus team. I mean, I go where the problem is essentially. Like, not -- if something's, this is, unfortunately sometimes, like, don't talk to Tesla executives, and like, hey, we don't see you very often. I'm like, that's because your stuff is working awesome. If you start working really great, unfortunately, I didn't see them very often because I go where the problem is. So, [indiscernible] what's the greatest challenge that lies ahead? So obviously there are many challenges with Optimus. It's a hard problem to solve. Many challenges with vehicle autonomy. But we're making rapid progress in both. Yeah.
Daniel Roeska: Okay. I mean, it sounds like you've got a conviction that the pieces you need, right, are in place. If we kind of go 12 months down the line and we look back, and you had some of those, but maybe what are the kind of two or three KPIs that would tell you that you're on track and it's going the right way and the pieces you've put in place are the right pieces, right? That's kind of what I'm looking for or other way around, where would it be off most likely in your mind that you say, hey, I need to go back there and I need to change something to enable the team better? |
6,952 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Well, I mean, I think my predictions that I'm making here are going to be pretty accurate. And it's worth the next -- sometimes people say, Elon's always late. Well, actually, no, the problem is that the media reports on when I'm late, but never reports when I'm early. So sure, I'm optimistic, but I'm not that optimistic. There are many cases in the past where I actually, we've been early, such as completion of the Shanghai factory or factory completion has generally have been ahead of schedule, not behind. So, yeah, so the -- but I like to say I'm very confident we'll have released unsupervised Full Self Driving fully autonomous Teslas in Austin and several other cities in America by the end of this year. That's probably everywhere in America next year, and everywhere in North America at least. I think in terms of next year our constraints, I think it's likely to be just regulatory. Like Europe really has, for example, Europe is a layer cake of regulations and bureaucracy, which really needs to be addressed. There's this joke like America innovates, Europe regulates. It's like, guys, there's too many refs on the field. I mean, for example, for us to just to release supervised Full Self Driving in Europe, even though it works really well, we have to go through a mountain of paperwork with the Netherlands, which is our primary regulatory authority. Then the Netherlands presents this to the EU and I think May. And there's like this big EU country committee. We expect it to be approved at that time, but there's nothing we can do to make that may happen sooner. In fact, nobody seems to do it. But I guess all the countries would have to somehow vote in some way to have it happen sooner than May. Otherwise, it won't happen sooner than May. So then when is unsupervised FSD allowed in Europe? I’m like, May next year maybe? I don't know. I have to find out when the EU is meeting again. Sometimes it's a 12-month cadence, sometimes a six-month cadence. Then in China, which is a gigantic market, we do have some |
6,953 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Sometimes it's a 12-month cadence, sometimes a six-month cadence. Then in China, which is a gigantic market, we do have some challenges because they weren't, currently allow us to transfer training video outside of China. And then the US government wouldn't let us do training in China. So we're in a bit of a bind there. So like, bit of a quandary. So we are already solving then is by literally looking at videos of streets in China that are available on the Internet to understand and then feeding that into our video training so that publicly available video of street signs and traffic rules in China can be used for training and then also putting it in a very accurate simulator. And so it will train using SIM for bus lanes in China. Like bus lanes in China, by the way, were about the biggest challenges in making FSD work in China is the bus lanes are very complicated. And there's like literally like hours of the day that you're allowed to be there and not be there. And then if you accidentally go in that bus lane at the wrong time, you get an automatic ticket instantly. So, it's kind of a big deal, bus lanes in China. So we're going to put that into our simulator, train on that. The car has to know what time of day it is, read the sign. Anyway, we'll get this solved. But I think we'll have unsupervised FSD in almost every market this year limited simply by regulatory issues, not technical capability. And then unsupervised FSD in the US this year, in many cities, but nationwide next year. And hopefully we have unsupervised FSD in most countries by the end of next year. That's my prediction with the best data that I have right now. |
6,954 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Travis Axelrod: Great. Thank you very much. The next question will come from Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley. Adam, please feel free to unmute yourself.
Adam Jonas: Thanks everybody. So, Elon, you've said in the past about LiDAR, for AVs at least, that LiDAR is a crutch, a fool's errand. I think you even told me once, even if it was free, you'd say you wouldn't use it. Do you still feel that way?
Elon Musk: Yes.
Adam Jonas: Care to elaborate or just, I have another question.
Elon Musk: Look, we even have a radar in the car and we turned it off.
Adam Jonas: I got it. All right. So you're still -- people think you're crazy for not looking to LiDAR.
Elon Musk: Obviously humans drive without shooting lasers out of their eyes. Unless you're Superman. But like humans drive just with passive visual, humans drive with eyes and a neural net and a brain neural net. So the digital equivalent of eyes and a brain are cameras and digital neural nets or AI. So that's the entire road system was designed for passive optical neural nets. That's how the whole road system was not designed and what everyone's expecting, that's how we expect other cars to behave. So therefore that is very obviously the solution for Full Self Driving in it as a generalized, but the generalized solution for Full Self Driving as opposed to the very specific, neighborhood by neighborhood solution, which is very difficult to maintain, which is what our competitors are doing.
Adam Jonas: I got it.
Elon Musk: Yeah. I mean, LiDAR doesn't work in the fall, guys. LiDAR has a lot of issues. I don't have to like, the SpaceX Dragon docks with the space station using LiDAR that a program that I've personally spearheaded. I don't have some fundamental bizarre dislike of LiDAR. It's simply the wrong solution for driving cars on roads.
Adam Jonas: Right. You understand how light are works. I get it. |
6,955 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Adam Jonas: Right. You understand how light are works. I get it.
Elon Musk: Literally designed and built our own red LiDAR. I oversaw the project, the engineering thing. It was my decision to use LiDAR on Dragon and I oversaw the engineering project directly. So I'm like we literally designed and made a radar, a LiDAR to dock with the space station. But if I thought it was the right solution for cars, I would do that, but it isn't.
Adam Jonas: Yeah. All right. Just as a follow up. At CES, you said, I'm paraphrasing, that any AI will be able to do any cognitive task not involving atoms within the next three or four years. And that would imply, Elon, that before the end of President Trump's term in office, that AI would be moving pretty damn quickly into the physical world, into the world of photons and atoms. And I'm thinking, given your work with the administration, how confident are you that the US will have the manufacturing and the supply base to make good on your excitement about physical AI by the end of -- by latter this decade. We seem pretty vulnerable right now. I've seen you tweeting about, or sorry, X-ing, excuse me, Elon, about China, Freudian slip, about China having like making more drones in a day than the US makes in a year and all the entanglement of the supply. So, what has to happen in the US to make that possible? What's your message and what can what can you do about it and what's relevant for Tesla shareholders? Thanks, Elon. |
6,956 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Well, at Tesla, obviously, we think manufacturing is cool. SpaceX, we think manufacturing is cool. But in general, for talented Americans, they need to be beyond, beyond my companies, beyond me and my teams here, in general, we need to make manufacturing cool again in America. And, like, I honestly think people should move from like law and finance into manufacturing. That's my honest opinion. We have too much, this is both a compliment and a criticism. We have too much talent in law and finance in America. And there should be more of that talent in manufacturing. So, yeah. The potential for the future. I mean, it tells that we're making sure that we can continue to manufacture our stuff. Even in the event of geopolitical tensions rising to very high levels.
Adam Jonas: Great. Thank you very much. The next question will come from Pierre Ferragu at New Street. Pierre, please feel free to unmute yourself.
Pierre Ferragu: Hey, thanks guys for taking the question. So, I have a question on deploying like robotaxis in June in Austin. So that's great news. And I was wondering if it means I can drive down to Austin in June and try unsupervised by myself with my car, or it's going to be more like your fleet testing it? |
6,957 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: It'll be our fleet testing it. That's our sort of toe in the water. We'll be scrutinizing it very carefully, make sure it's not something we missed. But it will be, autonomous ride-hailing for money in Austin in June. And then as shortly as possible other cities in America. And I expect us to be operating, doing unsupervised activity with our internal fleet in several cities by the end of the year. Then it's probably next year when people are able to add or subtract their car from the fleet. So, kind of like Airbnb where you can sort of add or subtract your house or your guest room, you can say like add it to the Airbnb inventory or don't add it to the Airbnb inventory. If you're traveling for a month, or whatever, in case maybe you can, that other people use your house. Anyway, that's probably next year because we want to just make sure we've ironed out any kinks. And a lot of it is, it's not like we're not splitting the atom here. It's just a bunch of work that needs to be done to make sure the whole thing works efficiently, that people can order the car. It comes, it's the right spot, does exactly the right thing. All the payment systems work. The billing works.
Pierre Ferragu: Yeah. Okay. But then, like, so my follow-up question would be, I have a Tesla, I have a FSD, and I have to keep my eyes on the road all the time. It's super boring because I don't really need to intervene anymore. And the really annoying thing is that I can't just check my emails. And so are you working also on introducing, like a kind of like free and supervised where I could be eyes off and I would be able to check my email and we just need to, with a five second notice, have to go back and keep an eye on what's happening or is that something you're working on as well? Because it feels so close with this certain that I wonder if it's something you'd expect for this year. It's a very sensitive question. I asked for myself to be honest. |
6,958 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Yes, we just need -- we need to be very confident that the probability of injury is low before we allow people to check with their email and text messages. In fact, right now we're in this perverse situation, which you may have encountered yourself where people will actually go to manual driving to check their text messages so the computer doesn't yell at them and then go then put it back on autonomous mode once they have checked the text messages, which is obviously less safe, significantly less safe, significantly less safe than just letting people check their text once in a while without the computer yelling at them. But we just want to be cautious about the advent that we're in this sort of, neither here nor there, but just for, I mean, I think it's not for many months longer. But yeah, we're in this perverse situation where people will turn the car off autopilot so the computer doesn't yell at them, check the text messages while steering the car with their knee and not looking out the window.
Ashok Elluswamy: And like Elon said, if you have any problems with the system and when people are not looking, that is a dangerous thing. And that's what we're trying to avoid. The capability is getting there, but it's not fully there. That's why he was using the term of tipping a toe in the water, then getting comfortable, then keeping going.
Elon Musk: Yeah. Anyway, it's not far off. But we would not want to prove to ourselves and also prove to regulators that the car is unequivocally safer in autonomous mode than not. And that's, we're not far off. So, this is like low single-digit months.
Ashok Elluswamy: To the safety aspect, we did publish our Vehicle Safety Report today. And then Q4 is one crash for every 5.9 million miles driven compared to a crash every 700,000 miles without…
Elon Musk: We're getting to the point where it's an order of magnitude.
Ashok Elluswamy: Yeah, it's like 8.5 times safer. So it's just about there. It's amazing. |
6,959 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Ashok Elluswamy: Yeah, it's like 8.5 times safer. So it's just about there. It's amazing.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Alrighty. And our last question will be coming from Dan Levy at Barclays. Dan, feel free to unmute yourself.
Dan Levy: Great. Good evening. Thank you for taking other questions. Elon, you've talked about the need for proliferation of sustainable transport in the past as part of sort of broader push to sustainable energy. Look, I know we've heard a lot about President Trump's plans to reverse the EV Mandate and I think there's a view that given regulation is a driver of EV uptake, this could slow EV uptake in the US. So, what would be your view on the right policy in the US, given your comments in the past of the need to push for sustainable transport?
Elon Musk: At this point, I think that sustainable transport is inevitable. I'm highly confident that all transport will be autonomous electric, including aircraft, and that it simply, it can't be stopped any more than one could have stopped the advent of the external combustion engine, steam engine, or one could have stopped the advent of the internal combustion engine. Like, even if you've been the biggest [indiscerinble] advocate on earth, like courses of the way, not these newfangled car automobiles, you can't stop the advent of automobile. It's going to happen. And you can't stop the advent of electric cars. It's going to happen. The only thing holding back electric cars was range, and that is the sole problem.
Dan Levy: Great. And then as a follow up, in the past, Elon, you had made a comment that, you'd be willing to sell cars at effectively no margin to get the cars out there. And there's a comment in the release today of the rate of acceleration of autonomy efforts does impact volume growth. So perhaps you could just talk about, with your efforts on FSD, how we should think about your desire to put more vehicles out in the market to take advantage of your tech advances. |
6,960 | TSLA | 4 | 2,024 | 2025-01-29 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: So, I'm not sure I understand the question. We have a lot of cars. I mean, we've got millions of cars out there.
Vaibhav Taneja: So, is your question, Dan, that how do we marry our future growth aspects with FSD?
Travis Axelrod: Go ahead and unmute yourself, Dan.
Dan Levy: Yeah. More so just how much more aggressively you would be willing to sell your cars versus in light of your improvements on FSD.
Elon Musk: Well, right now, the constraint we're trying to solve is battery production as opposed to demand. So, there are -- now Q1, we've got this massive factory retooling for the new Model Y, for example. That obviously has a short-term impact on output. But the problem we are seeing with, in fact, we're talking that the executive team and I were talking about just before this call was we've got to figure out how to increase total gigawatt hours of battery production this year one way or another. That's the constraint on our output.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Alrighty. And with that, I think we are all done for today. So, thanks, everyone, so much for all your questions. We look forward to talking to you next quarter. Thank you very much, and goodbye. |
6,961 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Travis Axelrod: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Tesla's Third Quarter 2024 Q&A webcast. My name is Travis Axelrod, Head of Investor Relations, and I am joined today by Elon Musk, Vaibhav Taneja and a number of other executives. Our Q3 results were announced at about 3 P.M. Central Time in the update deck we published at the same link as this webcast. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC. During the question-and-answer portion of today's call, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please use the raise hand button to join the question queue. Before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks. Elon? |
6,962 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Thank you. So to recap, something that [Indiscernible] the industry I've seen year-over-year declines in order volumes in Q3. Tesla at the same time has achieved record deliveries. In fact, I think if you look at EV companies worldwide to the best of my knowledge, no EV company is even profitable. And I'm not - to the best of my knowledge, there was no EV division of any company, of any existing auto company that is profitable. So it is notable that Tesla is profitable despite a very challenging automotive environment. And this quarter actually is a record Q3 for us. So we produced our 7-millionth vehicle actually just yesterday. So congratulations to the teams that made it happen in Tesla. That's staggeringly immense amount of work to make 7million cars. So, let's see. And we also have the energy storage business is growing like wildfire, with strong demand for both Megapack and Powerwall. And as people know, on October 10th, we laid out a vision for an autonomous future that I think is very compelling. So, the Tesla team did a phenomenal job there with actually giving people an opportunity to experience the future, where you have humanoid robots walking among the crowd, not with a canned video presentation or anything, but literally walking among the crowd, serving drinks and whatnot. And we had 50 autonomous vehicles. There were 20 Cybercabs, but there were an additional 30 Model Ys operating fully autonomously the entire night, carrying thousands of peoples [Indiscernible] with no incidents, the entire night. So -- and for those who went there that -- it's worth emphasizing that these the Cybercab had no steering wheel or brake or accelerator pedals. Meaning, there was no -- there's no -- there was no way for anyone to intervene manually even if they wanted to. And the whole night went very smoothly. So, regarding the vehicle business, we are still on-track to deliver more affordable models starting in the first half of 2025. This is I think probably people are wondering what should they assume |
6,963 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | affordable models starting in the first half of 2025. This is I think probably people are wondering what should they assume for vehicle sales growth next year. And at the risk of - to take a bit of risk here, I do want to give some rough estimate, which is I think it's 20% to 30% vehicle growth next year. Notwithstanding negative external events, like if there's some force majeure events, like some big war breaks out or interest rates go sky high or something like that, then we can't overcome massive force majeure events. But I think with our lower cost vehicles with the advent of autonomy something like a 20% to 30% growth next year is my best guess. And then Cybercab reaching volume production in ’26. I do feel confident of Cybercab reaching volume production in ‘26. So just starting production, reaching volume production in ‘26. And that's -- that should be substantial. And we're aiming for at least 2 million units a year of Cybercab. That'll be in more than one factory, but I think it's at least 2 million units a year, maybe 4 million ultimately. So, yeah, these are just my best guesses, but if you ask me my best guesses, that those are my best guesses. The cell 4680 lines, the team is actually doing great work there. The 4680 is rapidly approaching the point where it is the most competitive set. So when you consider the fully landed - the cost of a battery pack, fully landed in the U.S. net of incentives and duties, the 4680 is tracking to be the most competitive. Meaning lower cost [Indiscernible] considered than any other alternative. We're not quite there yet, but we're close to being there, which I think is, extremely exciting. And we've got several - a lot of ideas to go well beyond that. So if I think there's -- if we execute well, the 4680 will have the -- Tesla internally produced cell will be the most cost competitive cell in North America, a testament to a tremendous amount of hard work there by the team. So that's - we'll continue to buy a lot of cells from our competitors. Our intent is not to |
6,964 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | of hard work there by the team. So that's - we'll continue to buy a lot of cells from our competitors. Our intent is not to make to provide to make cells just internally. So I don't want to set off any alarm bells here. We're also increasing substantially our vehicle output and our stationary storage output. So we need a lot of cells. And most of them will still come from suppliers, but I think it is some good news that the Tesla internal cell is likely - is tracking to be the most competitive in the U.S. So with respect to autonomy, as people are experiencing in the cars, really from week-to-week, there are significant improvements in the miles between interventions. So with the new version 12.5, release of full self-driving in Cybertruck, combining the code into a single stack so that the, city driving and the entering the highway driving are one stack, which is a bigger burden for the highway driving. So it's just all neural nets. And the release of Actually Smart Summon. We're trying to have a sense of humor here. And we're also -- so that that's 12.5. Version 13 of FSD is going out soon. Ashok will elaborate more on that later in the call. We expect to see some roughly a 5 or 6 fold improvement in miles between interventions compared to 12.5. And looking at the year as a whole, the improvement in miles between interventions, we think will be at least three orders of magnitude. So that's a very dramatic improvement in the course of the year. And we expect that trend to continue next year. So, the current internal expectation for the Tesla FSD having longer miles between intervention than human is the second quarter of next year, which means it may end up being the third quarter, but it's next - it seems extremely likely to be next year. Ashok. Do you want to add anything? |
6,965 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Ashok Elluswamy: Yeah. miles between critical interventions, yep, like you mentioned, Elon, we already made a 100x improvement with 12.5 from starting of this year. And then with v13 release, we expect to be a 1000x from the beginning - from January of this year on production [Indiscernible] software. And this came in because technology improvements going to end-to-end, having higher frame rate, partly also helped by hardware force, more capabilities, so on. And we hope that we continue to scale the neural network, the data, the training compute, et cetera. By Q2 next year, we should cross over the average human miles per critical intervention, call it collision in that case.
Elon Musk: I mean, that that's just unvarnishing our internal estimate.
Ashok Elluswamy: Yes. Yeah.
Elon Musk: So, that's not sandbagging or anything else. Our internal estimate is Q2 of next year to be safer than human and then to continue with rapid improvements, thereafter. So, a vast majority of humanity has no idea that Teslas drive themselves. So especially for something like a Model 3 or Model Y, it looks like a normal car. So you don't expect normal car to be able to be intelligent enough to drive itself. The Cybercab looks different. Cybertruck looks different. But Model Y and Model 3 look, they're good looking cars, but look, I think, look fairly normal. You don't expect a fairly normal looking car to have the intelligence enough AI to be able to drive itself, but it does. So we do want to expose that to more people. And so we're doing every time we have, a significant improvement in the software, we'll roll out another sort of 30 day trial. So to encourage people to try it again. And we are seeing a significant improvement in adoption. So the take rate for FSD has improved substantially especially after the 10/10 event. So there's no need to wait for a robo-taxi or Cybercab to experience full autonomy. We expect to achieve that next year with the -- with our existing vehicle line. |
6,966 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Ashok Elluswamy : One point Actually Smart Summon gives a small taste of what it's going to look like, the car able to drive itself to the user within private parking lots. Currently, it's speed limited, but then it's going to quickly be increased. And we already had more than 1 million usage [Indiscernible] of Smart Summon.
Elon Musk: Yep. So, and we actually we have, for Tesla employees in the Bay Area, we already are offering a ride-hailing capability. So you can actually with the development app, you can request a ride, and it'll take you anywhere in the Bay Area. We do have a safety driver for now, but the software required to do that, we've developed and I mean, David, do you want to elaborate on that? |
6,967 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Unidentified Company Representative : Yeah. Sure. David, we showed some screenshots of this in the Q1 shareholder deck. And, yeah, this is real. We've been testing it for the better part of the year and, the building blocks that we needed in order to build this functionality and deliver it to production, we've been thinking about working on for years. It just so happens that we've used those building blocks to deliver great features for our customers in the meantime, such as sharing your profile, synchronizing it across cars, so that every single car that you jump into, whether it's another car that you own or a car that somebody's loaned to you or a rental car that you jump into, it looks exactly like yours. Everything's synchronized, seat mirror positions, media navigation, everything is the same. Just what you would expect from, one of our robotaxis. But we gave that functionality to our customers right now because we built it intending for it to be used in the future. We’re releasing that functionality now. All the -- and then cybersecurity that we knew we were going to need to deliver that functionality, sending a navigation to destination from your phone to the vehicle, and so we’re doing that now with the ride-hailing app, but it's something that we've made available to customers for years. Seeing the progress on route in the mobile app, that's something you'll need for the ride-hailing app. But again, we released it in the meantime. So it's not like we're just starting to think about this stuff right now while we're building out the early stages of our ride-hailing network. We've been thinking about this for quite a long time, and we're excited to get the functionality out there. |
6,968 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Yeah. And we do expect to roll out ride-hailing in California, Texas next year to the public. But not the California is somewhat there's quite a long regulatory approval process. I think we should get approval next year, but it's contingent upon regulatory approval. Texas is a lot faster. So it's, I'd say, like, we're -- we'll definitely have available at Texas, and probably have it available in California subject to regulatory approval. And then -- and maybe some other states actually, next year as well, but at least California and Texas. So that'd be very exciting. There's really a profound change. Tesla becomes more than a sort of vehicle and battery manufacturing company, at that point. So we published our Q3 vehicle safety report, which shows one impact for every 7 million miles of autopilot, that compares to the U.S. average of one crash roughly every 700,000 miles. So it's currently showing a 10x safety improvement relative to the U.S. average. And we continue to expand our AI training capacity to accommodate the needs of both FSD and Optimus. We're currently not a training compute constraint. That's probably the biggest factors that the FSD is actually getting so good that it takes us a while to actually find mistakes. And when you start getting to where it could take 10,000 miles to find a mistake, it takes a while to actually figure out which it is -- is this soccer ball better than -- is soccer ball A better than soccer ball B? It actually takes a while to figure it out because neither one of them are making mistakes, or takes take a long time to make mistakes. So that's actually the single [Indiscernible] based on many factors. How long does it take us to figure out which version is better? So that’s sort of high class problem. Obviously, having a giant fleet is very helpful for breaking this out. And then with Optimus, we show a massive improvement in Optimus's dexterity movement on October 10. And our next-gen, hand and forearm, which has 22 degrees of freedom double - which is double |
6,969 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | dexterity movement on October 10. And our next-gen, hand and forearm, which has 22 degrees of freedom double - which is double the prior hand and forearm, it's extremely human like. And also it's much better tactile sensing. It's really - I feel confident in saying that we have most advanced humanoid robot by long shot. And we're moreover the only company that really has all of the ingredients necessary to scale humanoid robots. Because the things that what other companies are missing is that they're missing the AI brain, and they're missing the ability to really scale to very high volume production. So some have seen some impressive video demos, but what but they’re [lacking is] (ph) localized AI and the [going] (ph) to scale volume to very high numbers. As I've said on a few occasions before, I think Optimus will ultimately be the most valuable product. So I think it has a good chance of being the most valuable product ever made. For the energy business, that's doing extremely well. And there's the opportunity ahead is gigantic. The Lathrop Megapack factory, reached 200 Megapacks a week, which is now a 40 gigawatt hour a year run rate. And, we have a second factory in Shanghai that will begin with a 20 gigawatt hour a year run rate in Q1 next year, so next quarter. And, that will also scale up. It won't be long before, we're shipping a 100 gigawatt hours a year, stationary storage at Tesla. And that'll ultimately grow I think to multiple terawatt hours per year. It has to actually in order to have a sustainable energy future. If you're not at the terawatt scale, you're not really moving the needle. So if you look at our admittedly very complicated last master plan, which I think actually is too much detail. I'll -- maybe I'll ask [Vaibhav] (ph) to analyze it. |
6,970 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Unidentified Company Representative : Sure Elon.
Elon Musk : Can give us the TLDR on the last master plan. But we showed in that last plan that it is possible to take all of us to a fully sustainable energy situation, using sustainable energy power generation and batteries and electric transport. And there are no fundamental material limitations. Like, there's not some very rare material that we don't have enough of on earth. We actually have enough of raw materials to, yeah, take all of human civilization make it fully sustainable. And even if civilization dramatically increased its electricity usage, it would still be fully sustainable. One way to think of the progress of a civilization, it's based out a little esoteric, but is percentage completion of Kardashev scale. So Kardashev Scale 1 would be you're using all the power of a planet. We were we're currently less than 1% on Kardashev Level 1. Level 2 would be using all the power of the sun. And level 3, all the power of the galaxy. So we have a long way to go. Long way to go. When you think in Kardashev terms, it becomes obvious that by far the biggest source of energy is the sun. Everything else is in the noise. So in conclusion, Tesla is focused on building the future of energy, transport, robotics, and AI. And this is a time when others are just focused on managing around near term trends. We think what we're doing is the right approach. And, if we execute on our objectives, then I think we will. Tesla my prediction is Tesla will become the most valuable company in the world and probably by a long by a long shot. I want to thank the Tesla team once again for strong execution in a tough operating environment, and we're looking forward to building, an incredibly exciting future. Thank you.
Travis Axelrod : Great. Thank you very much, Elon. And I'll let Vaibhav pass some more big remarks as well. |
6,971 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Vaibhav Taneja : Yeah. Thanks. Our Q3 results were positive and once again, demonstrate the scale to which businesses evolved. What they use with the generation of record operating cash flows of $6.3 billion. Our automotive revenues grew both quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year. While we had unit volume growth, we did experience reduction in ASPs, primarily due to the impact of financing incentives. As a reminder, we are providing these incentives primarily using third-party banks and financial institution and recognize the cost of these incentives as an upfront reduction to them. We released FSD for Cybertruck and other features like Actually Smart Summon, like Elon talked about in North America, which contributed $326 million of revenues in the quarter. We continue to see elevated levels of regular 2 week credit sales with over $2 billion of revenues so far this year. To expand on this at an industrial level, China continues to outperform U.S. and Europe by a factor of three. And if there is something to be learned from that, this gives a signal of what is to come in other regions. As customers’ acceptance of EV growth. And we feel that is the right strategy to build affordable and more compelling leads. Our focus remains on growing unit volume, while avoiding a build-up of inventory. To support this strategy, we're continuing to offer extremely compelling vehicle financing options in every market. When you compare any vehicle in our lineup with other OEMs, believe our vehicles provide much better value, particularly when you consider the safety features, performance, and unparalleled software functionalities, like David also talked about, include also what, Ashok talked about around autonomy, music options, parental controls, and much more. While every vehicle in our lineup comes up with these capabilities, there is an awareness gap, not just with buyers, but at times, even with existing owners. We plan on making these more visible in our interactions with both existing and future customers. Automotive margins |
6,972 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | owners. We plan on making these more visible in our interactions with both existing and future customers. Automotive margins improved quarter over quarter as a result of a 50 features released discussed before. Increase in our overall production and delivery volume, albeit benefit from the marketing pricing, and more localized deliveries in region, which resulted in lower freight and duties. Sustaining these margins in Q4, however, will be challenging given the current economic environment. Note that we are focused on the cost per vehicle, and there are numerous work streams within the company to squeeze that cost without compromising on customer experience. |
6,973 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Yes. I'm assuming that's a helpful -- hopefully, a helpful macro trend is if there's a decline in in interest rates, this has a massive effect on the, automotive demand. The vast majority of people is or the demand is driven by the monthly payment. Can they put monthly payment? So, like, most likely, we'll see continue to decline interest rates, which helps with affordability vehicles. |
6,974 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Vaibhav Taneja: Yeah. I mean, that is one trend which we observed in the industry that, because of affordability being impacted because of interest rates, People are willing to take cars longer, especially in the U.S. And that is actually having an impact on all our industry too. As we discussed, earlier, as we discussed impact orders, energy deployments fluctuate quarter over quarter due to customer readiness, location of orders being fulfilled, and not necessarily an indicator of demand or production within the quarter. While we did see a decline in Q3, we expect to grow our deployment sequentially in Q4 to end the year with more than doubled of last year. Energy margins in Q3 were a record at more than 30%. This is a function of mix of projects being deployed in the quarter. Note that there will be fluctuation in margins as we manage through deployments and our inventory. Our pipeline and backlog continue to grow quarter over quarter as we fill our 2025 production slots, and we're doing our little best to keep up with the demand. Just coming back on automotive margins, I talked about -- sorry. I talked about what is happening. One other thing which I want to also share is that we're -- that we will continue to keep whatever we can to squeeze like I said before about squeezing out the cost. But this is something which we also are very capable of. I mean, just in Q3, we reached our lowest cost per micro. And that is a trend which we will keep focus on. Then going on to service and other, we continue to show improvements in Q3. This was a result of better performance, both in our service business, which includes collision part sales and merchandise, and continued growth in supercharging. These field based revenues will continue to grow as the overall fleet size increases. Our operating expenses declined quarter over quarter in a year on year basis. This is partially due to the restructuring we undertook in Q2. Cost savings from these initiatives were partially offset by increase in costs related to our AI |
6,975 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | we undertook in Q2. Cost savings from these initiatives were partially offset by increase in costs related to our AI efforts. We've started using the GPU cluster based out of our factory house and ahead of schedule, and are on track to get 50k GPUs deployed in Texas by the end of this month. One thing which I'd like to elaborate is that we're being very judicious on our AI compute spend too and saying how best we can utilize the existing infrastructure before making further investments. On the CapEx front, we had about $3.5 billion in the quarter. This was a sequential increase largely because of investments in AI compute. We now expect our CapEx for the year to be in excess of $11 billion. We shared our vision for the future at the real world event at the beginning of the month. The Tesla team is hyper focused on delivering on that version, and all efforts are underway to make it a reality. While we've achieved significant progress this year, it will take time to get this as we find a new and incredibly complex technologies and navigate a fragmented regulatory landscape. Future is incredibly bright, and I want to thank the Tesla team once again for all their help. |
6,976 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | A - Travis Axelrod : Great. Thank you very much, Vaibhav. Now we'll go to investor questions. The first one is, is Tesla still on track to deliver the more affordable model next year as mentioned by Elon earlier? And how does it align with your AI product roadmap?
Lars Moravy: Sure. I mean, as Elon and Vaibhav both said, you are in plan, to meet that in the first half of next year. Our mission has always been to lower the cost of our vehicles to increase the adoption of sustainable energy and transport. Part of that is lowering the cost for current vehicles, which is where, all of the personally owned vehicles that we sell today come in. But the next stage in that really is it fits into AI roadmap is when we bring in robotaxis, which lowers the initial cost of getting into an EV. And those -- that's really where we see the marriage of EV road map and the AI road map.
Elon Musk: Yeah. It'll be with incentive sub-30k, which is kind of a key threshold.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Thank you very much. Similar, question next. When can we expect Tesla to give us the $25,000 non-robotaxi regular car model?
Elon Musk: We're not breaking it on.
Lars Moravy: Yeah. All our vehicles today are road jets. |
6,977 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: We're not breaking it on.
Lars Moravy: Yeah. All our vehicles today are road jets.
Elon Musk: I think we've made very clear that, we're the future is autonomous. It I mean, I it's going to be you know, I've actually said this many years ago, but that, in my strong belief, and I believe that is panning out to be true. So and I'll be very obvious in retrospect, is that the future is autonomous electric vehicles, and, non-autonomous gasoline vehicles in the future will be like riding a horse and using a foot bone. It's not that there are no horses. Yeah. There are some horses, but they're unusual. They're niche. And so it just everything's going to be electric autonomous. I think this is like it should be frankly blindingly obvious at this point that that is the future. So a lot of automotive companies or most automotive companies have not internalized this, which is surprising, because we've been shouting this from the rooftops for such a long time, and it will accrue to their detriment in the future. But all of our vehicles in the future will be autonomous. Yes. So all the vehicles that we've really made, all the 7 million vehicles, vast majority are capable of autonomy. And, we're currently making on the order of 35,000 autonomous vehicles a week. Compare that to, say, Waymo's entire fleet is less than – they’ve have less than a 1,000 cars. We make 35,000 a week.
Lars Moravy: Yeah. And our cars look normal. |
6,978 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Lars Moravy: Yeah. And our cars look normal.
Elon Musk: Yeah. They mostly look normal. The Cybertruck looks abnormal. And the, Cybercab/robotaxi. We wanted to have something futuristic working. I think it does look futuristic. And it's worth noting with respect to the Cybercab. It's not it's especially not just a revolutionary vehicle design, but a revolution in vehicle manufacturing that is also coming with the Cybercab. The cycle time, like, the, the units per hour of the Cybercab line it is -- like, this is just really something special. I mean, this is probably a yeah. Half order of magnitude better than other car manufacturing lines. Like not in the same league is what I'm saying. Not in the same league. So it's -- and I said, like, several years ago that the -- maybe the most I mean, the hottest Tesla product to copy will be the factory. Just like buy a factory.
Lars Moravy: Yeah. In camera versus near a factory, that's up to my --
Elon Musk: Yeah. It's like things yeah. So the and as we so we're rapidly evolving and manufacturing technology. So anyway, there's, like, basically, I think having a regular $25,000 model is pointless. Yeah. It would be silly. Like, it'll be completely at odds with what we believe.
Lars Moravy: In autonomous world. But matters as well as cost per mile of efficiency of that vehicle. And that's what we've done with the robotaxi.
Elon Musk: Exactly. Autonomous, it it's fully considered cost per mile, is what matters. And if you try to make a car that is, essentially, a hybrid manual automatic cars. It's not going to be as good as a dedicated autonomous car. So, yeah -- Cybercab is just not going to have steering wheels and pads. It's only designed to optimize for autonomy. But now it'll cost on the order of cost roughly $25,000. So it is a $25,000 car. And you can -- you will be able to buy one on an exclusive exclusively if you want. So just what happens to your mobile phones. You don't need it. |
6,979 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Travis Axelrod : Great. Thank you very much. The next question is, what is Tesla doing to alleviate long wait times at service centers?
Unidentified Company Representative : So we aim on solving problems at the source, so at the factory before they can even affect our customers. We believe the best service is no service and our heads don't even have them.
Elon Musk: If the car doesn't break, yeah. That's the best thing.
Unidentified Company Representative: Exactly. Don't see any with the test. You either do it remote, yeah fix the issue upstream or do it remotely, do it through software, maybe being at work or at home and car can be parked. And we've addressed fixed the issue, and we've partnered the field with service to make sure we're looking at the same issues. And additionally, just in Q3 Q4 of this year alone, we have opened and will open in total at nearly 70 locations. And in North America, we've significantly expand the size of each location and have doubled the size last year compared to this year.
Elon Musk: Yeah. I think it's, like, actually a lot of merit to having large service centers because you can have specialization of labor. Okay. You can start to approach. Yeah. It should be more factory like, where you can have dedicated lanes for particular types of service. And people and it's way easier for somebody to come expert in a few different types of repairs than in every repair.
Unidentified Company Representative : Exactly. This has helped us with the base set, these heavy repairs clogging up the lane. They've dedicated lanes for different type of repairs. And so it's through a bit massively treating it like a factory. |
6,980 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk : Yes. This is where a Tesla structure, I think, a strong advantage relative to the rest of the auto industry because we make the cars and we service the cars, whereas I think there's a bit of a conflict of interest with the dealer model and the traditional OEM and dealer model where the dealerships make most of their money on service. And so they don't -- they obviously assistance to reduce the servicing cost, whereas in our case, we are incented to reduce the service and cost because we carry that servicing cost. And we've got a good feedback with our cars.
Unidentified Company Representative : Exactly. If you were with the factory, with the service leaders together, and send back people from the factories that field to the factory to see it firsthand. Suggestions for manufacturing as well as for engineering on design.
Elon Musk : Yeah. So I view this as a structural -- fundamental structural advantage of Tesla versus the rest of the auto industry.
Unidentified Company Representative: Also do a bunch of work on the software side, not only to automate diagnostics so identifying what needs to be done to a car before it comes into service, but also automating all of the preparation work and aligning all the resources that are necessary in order for the car to be very efficiently worked on once it arrives. So the parts are there, like, the lift is scheduled, the technician's schedule, like, everything that's what I'm saying. This is what's wrong with me, and tells us tell the service center.
Unidentified Company Representative : The car everything ready in the van.
Elon Musk : Yeah. Please fix me and this is what's wrong.
Unidentified Company Representative : This is what I'm trying to do now. This is what I'm trying to do. Yeah.
Unidentified Company Representative : Instead of customer trying to translate the car, it's telling us directly and we're pulling that. Yeah. |
6,981 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Yeah. You don't need most of the time, you don't need to diagnose the car when it arrives. The car yeah -- this is like, again, a fundamental technology advantage and structural advantage compared to the rest of the auto industry.
Vaibhav Taneja : I think it's underappreciated as to what all we are able to do. And that's why because like you said before, most of our cars, except for Cybertruck, look the same. So people don't realize that it has so much capability.
Elon Musk: Yeah. But, like, that's better than other cars. But they don't, like, obviously, like, super futuristic. Yes.
Travis Axelrod: So yeah. Great. Thank you very much. The next question is, please provide an update on the semi. What will the next stage of growth look like, and when will FSD be ready?
Lars Moravy: Sure. So as you we posted in earnings back, we're progressing swiftly on the build of the semi factory in there, in our data factory in Reno. We've released all our major capital expenditures for that program, and we're on track to start, pilot builds in the second half of next year with production starting in the first half of 2026 and ramping really throughout the year to full production. Semi, growth will largely depend on our customers' adoption of the product.
Elon Musk: Well, I don't think we're going to be demand limited, honestly.
Lars Moravy: Yeah. Which I was going to say, which is like a brainer for the semi because it's really a commodity of total cost of ownership.
Elon Musk: Yes. Exactly. It's good. We have kind of ridiculous demand for the semi.
Unidentified Company Representative: In that world where it's about how much do I spend to go to excess lanes per mile, it's a no brainer. |
6,982 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Lars Moravy: Yeah. Fundamentally, if you've got a semi where the fully considered cost per mile or per ton of transport, is better than, say, diesel truck, any company that doesn't adopt an electric semi will lose. It's not -- it's not it's not a subjective thing. It's like whether do you like just a competitive I mean, we like, we want the start we want we want to have a good old semi-truck, but frankly, if we made an oxy semi-truck, it wouldn't matter.
Lars Moravy: And this is proving so in our fleets, in in Pepsi's Partner. In fact, the Pepsi actually said last week, they're having nobody want their drivers don't want to go back.
Elon Musk: Yeah. Yeah. As soon as we give anyone the electric semi, it it's like -- that's like the choice.
Lars Moravy: It's the, what they want to drive.
Elon Musk: Yeah. That's like so the -- like the most, like their top drivers will, they get to drive the Tesla Semi. It's, it's, it's the, it's the thing they want to drive.
Lars Moravy: It's super fun to drive. It's also very easy to drive.
Elon Musk: It's easy to drive and it holds ass. It's like fast.
Lars Moravy: Superfast. Maybe too fast.
Elon Musk: Well, but I mean, like, like, ring like this. Like, you've seen, like, the videos of where, like, I think, like, Tesla Electric Semi, like, can go uphill Just pass. Speed speeding past, like, the diesel truck or even cars. So, like, it's responsive. It it's you floor it and that that truck actually hurt. |
6,983 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Lars Moravy: And that's a benefit not only for the driver and for the goods, but also for safety in terms of other drivers on the road. You don't get stuck behind the semi. You're not, like in a slowdown situation in an on ramp. I mean, how that plays into, you know, FSD, which is the second part of the question. All of the semis have been since the couple hundred we've deployed already, and the ones that we'll be building next year and throughout, the future have all the hardware and the cameras necessary to, deploy FSD, and we're currently training with that small fleet that we have. And as soon as the fleet is trained and the neural nets are up, we'll get FSD onto that platform.
Elon Musk: Yeah. I mean, it'd be a massive improvement in, driver fatigue, because, driver safety, we've got sort of the anti-jack knifing software. You don't have to worry about your brakes overheating if you go down a down a steep hill because the -- we use regenerative, like, that that energy goes back into the pack. It's just like it's like radically better than it is in some way. It's what the drivers love it.
Travis Axelrod: Great, guys. Thank you very much. Our next question is, when will Tesla incorporate X and Grok in all of the Tesla vehicles? |
6,984 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Well, I mean, these are relatively small things. But, yeah, with the -- I think, we'll keep expanding, what is available in the car on the on screen and also improving the browser. So, just generally, you can access anything you want in the car. In fact, for the Tesla we're scheduled for autonomy. You actually want fully a system that is can do anything. Like, if you want to browse the Internet, if you want to ask AI questions, if you want to watch a movie, if you want to play a video game, if you want to do some productivity thing, you can do anything you want in an autonomous vehicle because you don't need to drive. So that's why the Cybercab got a nice big screen and a great sound system. So you can watch it -- watch a great movie with, it's like being in a Personal movie theater?
Unidentified Company Representative: This is why we've been building this functionality, adding gaming to the car, adding movies and other, you know, all sorts of different media applications of the car because the cars, that's what you're going to -- that's the cars will be built today.
Elon Musk: There's some fun games, by the way. People haven't tried it. There's Castle Doombad and Polytopia and a bunch of really fun games in the car.
Unidentified Company Representative : Yes. We're constantly looking at what features to add next and we're paying attention to what's most commonly requested by our customers.
Elon Musk: Yes. Play Castle, Doombad. You want --
Travis Axelrod: Great. Thank you guys very much. The next question is, Elon mentioned unsupervised FSD in California and Texas next year. Does that mean regulators have agreed to it in the entire state for existing Model 3 and 4 vehicles? |
6,985 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk : No. As I said earlier, California lost regulation. But they have a pathway? Yeah. I mean, there's a pathway. Obviously, Waymo operates in California. So there's just a lot of forms but a lot of approvals that are required. I mean, I'd be shocked if we don't get approval next year, but it's just not something we totally control. But I think we will get approval next year, in California and Texas. And for the end of the year, it will branch out be beyond California and Texas.
Lars Moravy : I mean, I think it's important to reiterate this. Like, homogeneity or certifying a vehicle at the federal level in the U.S. is done by meeting FMVSS regulations. All our vehicles today that are produced that are autonomous capable meet all those regulations, cybertruck need those regulations. And so the deployment of the vehicle to the road is not a limitation. What is a limitation is what you said at the state level where they control autonomous vehicle deployment. Some states are relatively easy as you mentioned for Texas. Yeah. And so other ones have in place like California that may take a little longer. Other ones haven't set up anything yet, and so we will work through those state by state.
Elon Musk : I do think we should have a federal, I agree. Like, autonomous vehicles should be approved. They just should be -- it should be possible to.
Lars Moravy: Congress, if you're listening, let's say the federal AV --
Elon Musk : There should -- there should be a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles. I mean, that's how the FMVSS is worked. Federal Motor Vehicle. The FMBSS is federal.
Unidentified Company Representative : Yeah. So, I mean, in 2017 and ‘18, they we know it's when regulators started looking at it. And it's really kind of stalled since then, but we would appreciate and would support helping out with those regulators. |
6,986 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk : It really needs to be a national approval is important. There's department of government efficiency. I'll try to help make that happen. And you said for everyone, not just Tesla, obviously. But just, like some things in the U.S. are state by state regulated for example, insurance. And it's incredibly painful to do it state by state for 50 states. And, I think we should have there should be a natural approval process for autonomy.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Thanks, guys. The next question is, what is the plan for 2025?
Elon Musk : I mean, who we just talked?
Ashok Elluswamy : Yeah. Just. We I mean, basically, we talked through this. There's a lot going on. Elon already mentioned that we're working on cheaper models to come out. I mean, there are work which the team is doing to get the factories ready today to try and make that happen on --
Elon Musk: And by the way, the amount of work required to make a lower cost car is insanely high. But, like, it is harder to get, like, 20% of the cost out of a car than it is to design the car and build the entire factory in the first place. Yeah. It's, like, excruciating. And it's -- and there's not a lot of movies made about the heroes who got 20% of the cost out of a car. But let me tell you, there should be.
Unidentified Company Representative: He's a little changes. And I it's not like a silver.
Elon Musk: Yeah. It's like there should be you the heroes who got 20% cost out of a car is like, damn, I have a lot of respect to them. It was like movie. It's like, I think you probably could make a compelling movie, but I it just no. No. Like, if you actually saw how hard it if people actually saw how hard it was to do that, you'd be like, wow. That's damn hard.
Unidentified Company Representative: Just yesterday we were talking about party. |
6,987 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Unidentified Company Representative: Just yesterday we were talking about party.
Elon Musk: Yeah. I mean, honestly, like, literally yeah. I mean, they've been there's a lot of but I do call it sort of like getting cost out of things. It's kind of like it's -- like game of pennies. So it's like game of thrones but pennies. First approximation, if you've got if you've got 10,000 items, in a car, very rough approximation, and each of them cost $4, then you have a $40,000 car. So if you want to make a $35,000 car, you're going to get $0.50 on average out of the 10,000 items.
Unidentified Company Representative: Every part.
Elon Musk: Yeah. And it's like yeah. And then, obviously, the best is you delete some parts. In fact, we've done we have to delete a lot of parts.
Unidentified Company Representative: I'm very excited about the Cybercab design and the well, how we're rethinking the design of a car for the Cybercab, designing it all for high volume production, and then designing machine that builds the machine, that is that I think is also revolutionary. And it's just there's no other car company that's even trying to do what we're doing. Like, I've even heard of it, actually. In fact, I'm certain there is someone like I'm I think this this the new machine that pulls the machine, like, it's inherent it's like the it's put it's designed to be, like, 5x better than a traditional factory. Like, cycle time – |
6,988 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Unidentified Company Representative: Cycle time and, like, part deletion and shipment. I don't think any other car company has the same level of, like, integration of thought that we have when it comes to, like, when you design a part from a white sheet of paper, who's going to make it? Where is it going to be made? How is it going be shipped? How is it going to be assembled into the vehicle? And, like, at any one point, if something is done in a silo, it becomes a bottleneck of either cost or time or efficiency. But with the robotaxi, the development, like, we've done a good job on the like, combining all that and then, like, blowing up how it's made and saying it should be made this way and rethinking it also. It's the most efficient factory possible. That shows in our -- it will show in our CapEx efficiency when we deploy it. It shows in the number of parts. It shows in the simplicity of the vehicle, but also how it performs in in terms of, like, end user, state.
Vaibhav Taneja: Just to close-up, just on the energy front also in ‘25, we will have started with flashing up mega factory Shanghai. We'll continue to increase our storage deployments with Powerwall 3. We plan to continue expanding our supercharging network, getting more OEMs on our network. 4680 that as Elon talked about. That would keep going. And then, there's we're also we'll have our lithium refinery starting to produce. So there's a lot which is going on.
Elon Musk : Yes, so many things. Like crazy thing is like Tesla is winning basically on almost every single thing we're doing. If we're not running now, we're in a where their entire large companies, that's the only thing they do.
Vaibhav Taneja : Yeah. I mean, it's a company -- there are multiple companies within the company.
Elon Musk: Yeah. Tesla's like many companies in one.
Travis Axelrod : Yeah. Guys, just a few more. What is going on with the Tesla Roadster? |
6,989 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Travis Axelrod : Yeah. Guys, just a few more. What is going on with the Tesla Roadster?
Elon Musk: Some things. Well, I just thought to go back to our long-suffering deposit holders of the Tesla Roadster. The reason it hasn't come out yet is because it is -- Roadster is not just icing on the cake, it's the cherry on the icing on the cake. And so our larger mission is to accelerate the progress towards a sustainable energy future, trying to do things that maximize probably the future is good for humanity and for Earth. And so that necessarily means that like the things like that are deserved. We'd like -- we'd all love to work on the Tesla -- next-gen -- it is super fun. And we are working on it, but it has to come behind the more things that have a more serious impact on the -- of the world. So just thank you to all our long-suffering Tesla Roadster deposit holders. And we are actually finally making progress on that. And we're close to finalizing the design on it. It's really going to be something spectacular, mind and some like [Peter Telaria] we're really good friends. Peter was lamenting how the future doesn't have flying cars. Well, we'll see. More to come.
Travis Axelrod : Yeah. Thanks very much. The next one is quite similar to other questions you've had. So when I combine it with the final question. So briefly, could you just detail how robotaxi will roll out? Will it start with a Tesla deployed fleet and then allow customers to add theirs on the subscription model, and then we'll Hardware 3 capable of this. |
6,990 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Ashok Elluswamy : Regarding the Hardware 3, what we saw with was, it was easier to make a progress with starting with Hardware 4 and on the solution and backporting to Hardware 3 instead of directly working on Hardware 3 given that Hardware 4 was more like fundamental hardware capabilities. I think that trend will continue into the next few quarters as well by the first solution rapidly with Hardware 4 and then backwardate and it just takes longer to those things because it's not fundamentally supported in the hardware and it's emulated. But yeah, initially working on Hardware 4, backwarding it to Hardware 3.
Elon Musk : Yes. So answer is we're not 100% sure, but as Ashok mentioned, because by some measure, Hardware 4 has really several times the capability of Hardware 3. It's easier to get things to work with then it takes a lot of effort to sort of squeeze that box analyst hat Hardware 3. And there is some chance that Hardware 3 is -- does not achieve the safety level that allows for unsupervised FSD. There was some chance of that. And if that turns out to be the case, we will upgrade those who bought hardware 3 FSD for free. And we have designed the system to be upgradable. So it's and it's really it's really what just to switch sort of switch out the computer type thing. Like, the camera the cameras are yeah. They're capable. But, anyway, we don't we don't actually know the answers to that. But if it does turn out, we will take we'll make sure we take care of those who are bored FSD on Hardware 3.
Travis Axelrod: Great. In the last few minutes that we have left, we will try to get in some analyst questions. The first question will be coming from, Pierre Ferragu at New Street. Pierre, please feel free to unmute yourself. |
6,991 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Ferragu Pierre: Thanks a lot, guys, for taking my question. I was wondering about, like, the compute you're, you're ramping up. So you gave, like, interesting statistics on how much you have, and you said you don't feel your compute's constrained. And I was wondering, how you are putting to work this additional compute. Is that a game for you of creating, like, larger and larger models, like next generation of models that are larger the way OpenAI go from GPT-3 to GPT-4, or is that more like you're set on your model and you need to throw more and more compute to accelerate the pace of learning to improve reliability. And then I had a quick follow-up really quick on your rollout in Texas and in California next year. The plan as you see today, is it to roll out, like, a fleet or two, with, cars that will start with, like, a supervisory, like, some soup onboard supervision, someone, sitting at the wheel just in case and removing the supervisors progressively, or are you aiming for going, free fledged without even a human super supervisor when you get started? |
6,992 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Okay. Well, I guess we're going to I'll answer, yeah, the first part of the question. The nature of real world AI is, different from, say, an LLM in that, you have a massive amount of context. So that, like, the you've got, case of Tesla 7 or 8 cameras, that, 9 up to 9 if you include the internal camera that that that so you got gigabytes of context, and that that is then distilled down into a small number of control outputs. Whereas it's like you don't really it's very rare to have in fact, I'm not sure any LLM out there who can do gigabytes of context. And then you've got to then process that in the car with a very small amount of compute power. So, it's all doable and it's happening, but it is a different problem than what, say, a Gemini or OpenAI is doing. And now part of the way you can make up for the fact that the inference computer is quite small is by spending a lot of effort on training. And just like a human, like, you the more you train on something, the less mental workload it takes when you try to -- when you do it, like when the first time like a driving it absolves your whole mind. But then as you train more and more on driving different than the driving becomes a background task. It doesn't -- it only solves a small amount of your mental capacity because you have a lot of training. So we can make up for the fact that the insurance computers -- it's tiny compared to a 10-kilowatt bank of GPUs because you've got a few hundred watts of inference compute. We can make up that with heavy training. So yeah, that's -- and then there's also vast amounts to the actual petabytes of data coming in tremendous. And then sorting out what training is important of the vast amounts of video training video data coming complete what is actually most important for trading. That's quite difficult. But as I said, we're not currently training compute constraint. -- had you want levering |
6,993 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Ashok Elluswamy : Like you mentioned, the training has both an large models, also the trend quicker. But in the end, we still got to take which models are performing better. So the validation network to picking the models because as mentioned this pretty large. We had to drive a lot of miles going close to. We do have simulation and other ways to get those metrics. Those two help, but in the end, that's a big bottleneck. That's why we're not trying to compete constraint alone. And there's other access of scaling as well, which is a data figuring office as more useful. That is an important as focusing on that.
Unidentified Company Representative : Yeah. So as it relates to the second part of your question, Pierre, about safety drivers and rolling it out. Each state has different requirements in terms of how many miles and how much time you need to have a safety driver and not have a safety driver. We're going to follow all those were not regulations are out there. But safety is a priority. But the goal is obviously at when we're ready and safety is there, we'll address from the --
Elon Musk : Yeah. I mean, I guess like we think that we'll be able to have driverless Teslas during paid rides next year, sometime next year.
Travis Axelrod : All right. Thank you. And our next question comes from Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley. Adam, please feel free to unmute yourself.
Adam Jonas : Okay, thanks, everybody. I just had a question about the relationship between Tesla and xAI. Many investors are still not clear how the work at xAI is truly beneficial to Tesla. Some even take the view that the two companies may even be in competition with each other in terms of talent and tech and even your time, Elon. So what's your message to investors on that relationship between Tesla and xAI? And where do you see it going over time? |
6,994 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Well, I should say that xAI has been helpful to Tesla AI quite a few times in terms of things like scaling it, bought it, like training, just even like recently in the last week or so, improvements in training, where if you're doing a big training one and it fails, be able to continue training and is to recover from a training on has been pretty helpful. But it but there are different problems. xAI is working on artificial general intelligence or artificial super intelligence. Tesla's trying to make autonomous cars and autonomous robots. They're different problems. So, yeah. I mean --
Ashok Elluswamy: I think we've said this before also. Like, all not all AI is equal. Right? I mean, there's AI is a broad spectrum. And we have our own swim lanes. Here, there are certain things which we can collaborate on if needed, but for the most part, we're solving different issues. |
6,995 | TSLA | 3 | 2,024 | 2024-10-23 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Yeah. Tesla’s focus on real world data. And like I said, saying it is quite a bit different from an element. Because, like, you have you have massive context in the form of video and some other audio, that's going to be distilled very like, with extremely efficient advanced compute. I do think Tesla's the most efficient, in the world in terms of inference compute. Like, because out of necessity, we have to we have to be very good at in in efficient inference. We can't pretend 10 kilowatts of GPUs in a car. We've got a couple 100 watts. So, it's pretty well designed Tesla AI chip, but it's still a couple 100 ones. But there are different problems. I mean, this is, like, the stuff that I said is, like, we're going to running in burns. I mean, it's it is running in burns. Like, answering persons, answering questions on a 10 kilowatt rack. It's like, yeah. Put that in the car. It's a different file. No. Exactly. So, xAI is because I felt there wasn't there wasn't a truth seeking digital super intelligence company out there. Like, that's what it came down to. Like, they needed to be a truth seeking like, an AI company that is very rigorous about, being truthful. So I'm not saying xAI is perfect, but that is but that is at least the explosive aspiration. Even if something is politically incorrect, it should still be truthful. I think this is very important for AI safety. So anyway, I think AI, xAI will it has been helpful to Tesla and will continue to be helpful to Tesla, but they are very different problems. Great. And, I mean, like, if you it also thinking like, what is like, what other car company has that -- has a world class trip design team? Like 0. What other car company has a world class AI team like Tesla does? 0. Those were all startups. They're created from scratch.
Travis Axelrod: Great. Thank you, Elon. And I think that's unfortunately all the time that we have for today. We appreciate all of your questions, and we look forward to hearing you next quarter. Thank you very much and goodbye. |
6,996 | TSLA | 2 | 2,024 | 2024-07-24 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Travis Axelrod: Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to Tesla's Second Quarter 2024 Q&A Webcast. My name is Travis Axelrod, Head of Investor Relations and I’m joined today by Elon Musk, Vaibhav Taneja, and a number of other executives. Our Q2 results were announced at about 3.00 p.m. Central Time and the Update Deck we published at the same link as this webcast. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC. During the question-and-answer portion of today's call, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please use the raise hand button to join the question queue. Before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks. Elon? |
6,997 | TSLA | 2 | 2,024 | 2024-07-24 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | Elon Musk: Thank you. So to recap, we saw large adoption exploration in EVs, and then a bit of a hangover as others struggle to make compelling EVs. So there are quite a few competing electric vehicles that have entered the market. And mostly they’ve not done well, but they’ve discounted their EVs very substantially, which has made it a bit more difficult for Tesla. We don’t see this as long-term issue, but really -- fairly short-term. And we still obviously firmly believe that EVs are best for customers and that the world is headed for a fully electrified transport, not just the cars, but also aircrafts and boats. Despite many challenges the Tesla team did a great job executing and we did achieve record quarterly revenues. Energy storage deployments reached an all-time high in Q2, leading to record profits for the energy business. And we are investing in many future projects, including AI training and inference and great deal of infrastructure to support future products. We won't get too much into the product roadmap here, because that is reserved for product announcement events. But we are on track to deliver a more affordable model in the first half of next year. The big -- really by far the biggest differentiator for Tesla is autonomy. In addition to that, we've scale economies and we're the most efficient electric vehicle producer in the world. So, this, anyway -- while others are pursuing different parts of the AI robotic stack, we are pursuing all of them. This allows for better cost control, more scale, quicker time to market, and a superior product, applying not to -- not just to autonomous vehicles, but to autonomous humanoid robots like Optimus. Regarding Full Self-Driving and Robotaxi, we've made a lot of progress with Full Self-Driving in Q2 and with version 12.5 beginning rollout, we think customers will experience a step change improvement in how well supervised full self-driving works. Version 12.5 has 5x the parameters of 12.4 and will finally merge the highway and city stacks. So the highway |
6,998 | TSLA | 2 | 2,024 | 2024-07-24 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | works. Version 12.5 has 5x the parameters of 12.4 and will finally merge the highway and city stacks. So the highway stack is still at this point is pretty old. So often the issues people encounter are on highway, but with 12.5, we are finally merged the two stacks. I still find that most people actually don't know how good the system is, and I would encourage anyone to understand the system better, to simply try it out and let the car drive you around. One of the things we're going to be doing just to make sure people actually understand the capabilities of the car is when delivering a new car and when picking up a car for service to just show people how to use it and just drive them around the block. Once people use it at all they tend to continue using it. So it's very compelling. And then this I think will be a massive demand driver, even unsupervised full self-driving will be a massive demand driver. And as we increase the miles between intervention, it will transition from supervised full self-driving to unsupervised full self-driving, and we can unlock massive potential in [V3] (ph). We postponed the sort of Robotaxi the sort of product unveil by a couple of months where it were -- it shifted to 10/10 to the 10th October -end because I wanted to make some important changes that I think would improve the vehicle -- sort of Robotaxi, the thing that we are -- the main thing that we are going to show and we are also going to show off a couple of other things. So moving it back a few months allowed us to improve the Robotaxi as well as add in a couple other things for the product unveil. We're also nearing completion of the South expansion of Giga Texas, which will house our largest training cluster to date. So it will be an incremental for 50,000 H100s plus 20,000 of our hardware 4 AI5 Tesla AI computer. With Optimus, Optimus is already performing tasks in our factory. And we expect to have Optimus production Version 1 in limited production starting early next year. This will be for Tesla consumption. It's |
6,999 | TSLA | 2 | 2,024 | 2024-07-24 17:30:00 | Tesla, Inc. | 27,444,752 | to have Optimus production Version 1 in limited production starting early next year. This will be for Tesla consumption. It's just better for us to iron out the issues ourselves. But we expect to have several thousand Optimus robots produced and doing useful things by the end of next year in the Tesla factories. And then in 2026, ramping up production quite a bit, and at that point we'll be providing Optimus robots to outside customers. That will be Production Version 2 of Optimus. For the energy business, this is growing faster than anything else. This is -- we are really demand constrained rather than production constrained. So we are ramping up production in our U.S. factory as well as building the Megapack factory in China that should roughly double our output, maybe more than double -- maybe triple potentially. So in conclusion, we are super excited about the progress across the board. We are changing the energy system, how people move around, how people approach the economy. The undertaking is massive, but I think the future is incredibly bright. I really just can't emphasize just the importance of autonomy for the vehicle side and for Optimus. Although the numbers sound crazy, I think Tesla producing at volume with unsupervised FSD essentially enabling the fleet to operate like a giant autonomous fleet. And it takes the valuation, I think, to some pretty crazy number. ARK Invest thinks, on the order of $5 trillion, I think they are probably not wrong. And long-term Optimus, I think, it achieves a valuation several times that number. I want to thank the Tesla team for a strong execution and looking forward to exciting years ahead. |
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