Tesla held its 2022 shareholders' meeting yesterday. At the event, Tesla discussed a variety of products and features including FSD Beta 10.13, the Cybertruck, Tesla Superchargers, and a new Tesla factory.
You can watch the entire event below (starts at the 2 minute mark), or read Dan Burkland's recap, which was originally posted on dburkland.com.
Part 1 - Formal Shareholder Items
• Martin - Intro
Robyn Denholm
• Global fleet of cars and vehicles to avoid 8.4M metric tons of green house gas emissions
• Avoided emissions that were equivalent to ICE vehicles driving 20B miles
• By 2030 Tesla plans to sell 20M vehicles / year
• In June 2022 Tesla achieved the highest vehicle production month in their history
• Tesla continues to make an impact w/ Solar & Energy Storage business
• Tesla sold 4 GWH of energy storage products in 2021, enough to power 3M homes
• Solar demand has increased 4x
• Goal is for all factories to be carbon neutral
• Tesla already uses less water per vehicle than any other automaker
• Sustainability drives everything Tesla does
Stockholder Proposals
• Proxy Statement: document
Part 2 - Elon's Presentation / Q & A Session
• Attempting to achieve a 2M vehicle / year run rate by end of 2022
• Tesla just recently produced their 3 millionth vehicle
• Looking back 10 years ago, Tesla only made 2500 Roadsters and maybe a couple hundred Model S (August 2012)
• “Cleanest exponentials” -Elon Musk
• $TSLA shareholders have approved the 3-for-1 stock split
• Important to note the increase in strong free cash flow is occurring before autonomy
FSD Beta 10.13
• “This year I swear” (FSD being released to public)
• “Made some significant architectural improvements with FSD Beta 10.13 release, might qualify for 10.69” -Elon Musk
• “It's gotta earn that” -Elon Musk
• “We are going to solve Chuck's turn” -Elon Musk
• “Roughly 90% success rate w/ Chuck's turn”
• “Might be next week” -Elon Musk
• “It's working well for me” -Elon Musk
• FSD will save lives by driving an order of magnitudes safer than people
• Tesla has the highest operating margin in the entire industry
• Every time a competitor advertises for EVs Tesla notices an increase in sales
• Model Y is tracking to be highest vehicle by revenue by end of 2022 and highest by unit by end of 2023
Gigafactories
• Tesla will soon be ready to announce another factory location by end of 2022
• Tesla plans to eventually have 10-12 Giga Factories
• Each factory will have the capacity to produce 1.5-2M vehicles per year
• Fremont factory is highest output car factory in North America
• Elon thinks it's going to be a friendly competition between Berlin, Fremont, and Texas (Shanghai hard to beat)
• Tesla has produced more energy than it consumes (includes vehicle charging)
• Tesla battery recycling is already happening at a rate of 50 packs per week in Nevada
• Continues to scale
• Not that many batteries to recycle since their longevity has been really good so far (more of a longterm play)
Master Plan: Part 3
• Will be focused on scaling
• “What are all the things needed to achieve a fully sustainable global economy”
• Cathode materials
• Aluminum, Etc.
• Goal is to reiterate this is absolutely doable and that we want it to be done as fast as possible
Vehicle Structure
• Lighter
• Stiffer
• Better NVH
• Better in pretty much every way when compared to stamped underbody construction
Manufacturing
• Model Y requires only 30% of robots needed to produce vehicles as required by the Model 3
• Improved layout of factory where it is now a signal monolithic factory
• Eventually all cars will be self driving but it will be hard to replicate Tesla's manufacturing capabilities
Working at Tesla
• Employees are free to switch between SpaceX & Tesla
• Factory safety has dramatically improved, Elon believes they now have the safest factories in the business
• Tesla has encouraged employees to submit suggestions on improving factory safety with a goal of 3 suggestions per employee (They have since met that goal and safety has increased as a result)
• 3M job applicants over last year
Supercharger Network
• 99.96% uptime
• Continue to deploy V3 Superchargers, V4 set to be deployed next year
• Elon mentioned that more good news regarding the Supercharger network is coming
Safety
• Tesla has a very detailed feedback loop when it comes to vehicle crashes
• Auto seat belt tensioning is an example of how Tesla continues to improve safety via OTA updates
• Activated via Autopilot AI when a crash is 99.99%+ sure to happen
FSD Beta
• Tracking to well over 100M miles by end of 2022
• Wide spread release by end of 2022, will be available to anybody who requests it
AI Day: Part 2
• September 30th, 2022
• Elon believes Optimus will turn the notion of what an economy is on its head
Next Decade
• 10 years ago they had less than 3000 cars, now its more than 3M
• Elon thinks vehicle production should be able to exceed over 100M 10 years from now
Questions
Plans for Cash
• Tesla has used a small amount of its available cash for acquisitions and that will continue to be the case unless the right opportunity arrises (automation, software, manufacturing, etc.)
• Spending CapEx and R&D money as fast as they can without wasting it
• Share buyback may be in the cards as long as there isn't another force majeure event
Factories
• 12 factories seems to be the perfect number with a maximum production rate of 2M vehicles per factory
Cybertruck
• Specs and pricing will be different (a lot has changed since 2019)
• Inflation and various issues are to blame
• Production equipment & tooling will begin getting installed in Giga Texas, volume production still targeted by mid-2023
US & China Tension
• Elon hopes for peace and respect between the US & China
Supercharger Locations
• Permits are extremely hard to obtain in some areas (ex. Malibu)
• Tesla continues to prioritize new Supercharger locations by busiest locations
• Elon mentioned there will be an online poll where people can vote where they want new Supercharger locations built
• Trying to do more fun things when it comes to Supercharger locations (ex. Futuristic Diner in Hollywood)
4680 Output
• Tesla is making a decent number of 4680 cells each week and Elon projects that they'll be in high volume production by end of 2022
• 4680 production does not yet impact vehicle output however it will in 2023
Master Plan
• New master plan not yet ready, plan to finish it by end of August 2022
Supply Chain
• Most of commodities that go into Tesla vehicles are trending down (cost) over next 6 months which suggests that we are past peak inflation
• Elon thinks we will have a relatively mild recession for 18 months (just a guess) and that inflation should drop rapidly
Autonomy
• AI is going to increase utility of passenger vehicles by 4-5x
• Vehicles will still cost the same to produce so gross margins are expected to rapidly increase
• Elon still believes folks will have the option to own a car, rent it out when they aren't using it, or simply rent somebody else's vehicle (ex. Uber)
• “Optimus will bring the future to now”
Media
• Elon annoyed that most analysts don't drive Teslas which prevents them from having a good understanding of the Tesla customer experience
Succession
• Elon believes in strong product roadmap that will lead to success for quite some time
• Elon intends to stay with Tesla as long as he is useful, plans to continue to closely focus on factory & product design
• Tesla would continue to do well even if he was kidnapped by aliens (or returned to his own planet haha)
• The only publicly traded securities Elon owns are $TSLA and $TWTR
• Believes he has a good sense of where to point the engineering team at $TWTR to make it radically better
• Thinks Twitter would accelerate his original vision of x.com by 3-5 years and be something that is very useful to the world
Tunnels
• Elon wanted to clarify he is pro-train
• Elon believes tunnels could solve virtually any traffic problems around the world and allow above ground road space to be reclaimed for parks
Dojo & Tesla Communicating w/ Each Other
• Goal #1 is to be really good at video training
• Approaching at being the 3rd most powerful super computer in the world (geared for AI training)
• Fundamentally focused on NN training which has never been done before
• Some merit with Teslas communicating with each other but not needed for FSD (traffic, accidents, pot holes, etc.)
