Tesla is rapidly progressing towards achieving full self-driving capabilities and expects to reach tens of millions of self-driving cars before the end of the decade, marking a significant shift in the automotive industry
Questions to inspire discussion
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What were the Q1 results for Tesla?
—The Q1 results for Tesla were discussed during the call, with Elon providing opening remarks and discussing the business outlook and forward-looking statements.
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What is Tesla's focus for the future?
—Tesla is focusing on driving demand for their products, increasing investments in AI, and improving overall profitability.
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What is Tesla's plan for self-driving cars?
—Tesla plans to operate a fleet of self-driving cars, similar to Airbnb and Uber, with the goal of growing to tens of millions of cars worldwide.
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What is Tesla's approach to improving their products?
—Tesla uses a combination of real-world data, simulation systems, and feedback from employees and customers to continuously improve the safety and quality of their vehicles.
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What are Tesla's plans for increasing sales?
—Tesla plans to continuously improve the affordability and value for money of their products, making the price more accessible to the majority of people living paycheck to paycheck.
Key Insights
Autonomous Driving Technology
- 🚗 The rate of improvement in FSD version 12 is rapid, with over 300 billion miles driven, and the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy.
- 🤖 We're making rapid progress in training for autonomy, and it's only a matter of time before we exceed the reliability of humans in driving.
- 🚗 Tesla expects broad-based regulatory approval for unsupervised FSD in the US and other countries as well, as long as there is conclusive data showing that autonomous cars are safer than human-driven cars.
- 🤖 Tesla's constant feedback loop and improvement process for autonomous driving is mostly learning on its own based on data, without requiring much engineering interventions.
- 🤖 The main focus for Tesla is to solve autonomy and be able to turn it on for a gigantic fleet.
- 🚗 Tesla anticipates reaching tens of millions of self-driving cars before the end of the decade, marking a significant shift in the automotive industry.
- 🤖 Tesla's approach to self-driving with low-cost inference computer and standard cameras can achieve self-driving without the need for radars or ultrasonics, potentially disrupting the industry.
Business and Market Expansion
- 📈 The energy storage deployments, particularly the MEAP pack, reached an all-time high in q1, leading to record profitability for the energy business and is expected to continue increasing significantly faster than the car business.
- 🚀 Tesla expects to beat supplier cost of nickel based cells by the end of the year, driving significant cost savings and competitive advantage.
- 🤖 The timeline for scaling the semi is planned for late 2025 with external customers starting in 2026, showing Tesla's commitment to expanding their vehicle offerings.
- 🚗 "If somebody doesn't believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company."
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XMentions: @Tesla @CuriousPejjy @Tesla @gfliche @farzyness @herbertong @theJeffLutz @TeslaBoomerMama @FutureAza @R6Alex @HabitatsDigital
Clips
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00:00 🚗 Tesla had a successful Q1 with record profitability in energy, increased AI training capacity, and accelerated vehicle model launches, but faced challenges with declining auto margins, increased operating expenses, and negative free cash flow.
- Q1 results were announced, and during the call, they discussed business outlook and made forward-looking statements, with Elon providing opening remarks.
- Despite challenges, Tesla's team executed well in Q1, with record profitability in energy business, increased AI training capacity, and an accelerated launch of new vehicle models.
- Tesla has increased vehicle production capacity, rolled out FSD version 12 to over 1.8 million vehicles, reduced the subscription price to $99 a month, and is working on expanding AI infrastructure.
- Tesla is no longer training constrained and is making rapid progress with the installation and commissioning of 35,000 H100 computers, with plans to reach 85,000 by the end of the year, and is excited about the future of autonomy and electric vehicles.
- Auto margins declined slightly due to various factors, but cost reduction initiatives and increased demand for EV credits have helped offset the impact, showing Tesla's ability to reduce costs without sacrificing quality.
- Tesla is focusing on driving demand for their products through various initiatives, experiencing progress in their energy business, expecting growth in energy storage deployments, facing an increase in operating expenses, negative free cash flow in the first quarter, making the decision to reduce head count, and aiming to improve overall profitability and increase investments in AI.
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09:04 🚗 Tesla plans to increase 4680 production, expects FSD approval, and aims to operate a fleet of millions of cars worldwide, utilizing a constant feedback loop for improvement and potential AWS-like distributed inference using Hardware 5.
- Tesla's 4680 production has increased, with plans to beat supplier cost of nickel based cells by the end of the year, and Optimus is expected to start limited production in the factory by the end of the year.
- Tesla expects broad regulatory approval for unsupervised FSD in the US and other countries, as long as the data shows that autonomous cars are safer than human-driven cars.
- Tesla will operate a fleet of cars similar to Airbnb and Uber, with the goal of growing to tens of millions of cars worldwide, using a constant feedback loop for improvement.
- Tesla is considering the potential for AWS-like distributed inference using Hardware 5 in their cars, which could result in a fleet of 100 million Teslas with a vast amount of AI compute power available for various tasks.
- Tesla uses a combination of real-world data, simulation systems, and feedback from employees and customers to continuously improve the safety and quality of their vehicles, with a focus on automatic learning and improvement without requiring much engineering intervention.
- The data from driving is added to the neural network, which learns automatically without specific instructions.
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18:09 🚗 Tesla is focusing on advancing their vehicle lineup, including a $25,000 vehicle, increasing production of self-driving cars and Cybertruck, and finalizing engineering for high volume production of the semi.
- Advanced models will lead to a step change improvement in the capabilities of the car, but there are quirks that need to be addressed before release, and scaling laws in model size, data, training compute, and architecture can lead to better performance.
- Future performance can be predicted based on past trends, and an official announcement for the $25,000 vehicle timeline is requested.
- Tesla is updating their vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of low-cost vehicles and focusing on solving autonomy for a large fleet.
- Tesla anticipates a significant increase in the value of their self-driving cars, with the Cybertruck ramping up production to 1K a week, facing challenges with new technologies and supplier limitations.
- Tesla is in talks with automakers about licensing FSD, the engineering of the semi is being finalized for high volume production, and the first vehicles are planned for late 2025.
- The production ramp for the MEAP is planned to increase from 20 gwatt hours per year to 40 gwatt hours per year by the end of the year, with the second GA line commissioned and no limitations on the ramp.
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23:34 🚗 Tesla expects higher sales, emphasizes commitment to autonomy and AI, and is reorganizing for future growth.
- Elon Musk discusses new vehicles and his involvement with Tesla, emphasizing his commitment to the company's prosperity.
- Tesla expects higher sales this year and is confident in their ability to outperform their Chinese competitors in the future.
- Tesla is not just an auto company, it is also focused on autonomy and AI, and if you don't believe in that, you shouldn't invest in the company.
- Elon Musk is confident that Tesla will achieve autonomy for vehicles, but expresses caution about the potential risks of super sentient humanoid robots.
- Shareholders may have the opportunity to ratify competition, the company could buy back shares with positive cash flow, and headcount reductions were made to eliminate redundancies and duplication of efforts.
- The company is going through a pruning exercise to reorganize for the next phase of growth in order to become stronger and more resilient.
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32:35 🚗 Tesla is confident in their self-driving technology, plans to integrate cameras and inference computers into their cars, and may sign a licensing deal with OEMs this year to ensure excellent sales and affordability.
- Tesla is confident in their approach to self-driving technology and believes that once it becomes obvious that their solution is the right approach, other manufacturers will want to license their software and use the same cameras and inference computer.
- All cars will need to be smart cars in order to survive, and Tesla may sign a licensing deal with OEMs this year.
- Tesla plans to integrate cameras and inference computers into their cars within three years, and they believe they can continue to lower prices while remaining cash flow positive through cost reduction efforts.
- To ensure excellent sales, Tesla needs to continuously improve the affordability and value for money of their products, making the price more accessible to the majority of people living paycheck to paycheck.
- Tesla is continuously improving their products to meet increasing standards, with the updated Model 3 offering added value at a lease price as low as $299 a month.
- The company plans to accelerate the launch of FSD in new markets, including China, by using a neural net-based autonomy system that can be adapted to different driving rules and regulations.
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39:33 🚗 Tesla expects Q2 to be better despite Q1 challenges, aims to simplify sales process, and plans to monetize idle compute in their vehicles for computing tasks.
- Supply constraints and various challenges in Q1 impacted results, but Tesla expects Q2 to be better with confidence in unit growth for 2024.
- Tesla is simplifying the sales process and aiming to be the leader in AI for the physical world.
- Tesla cars can be used for workloads like batch processing documents, and it's important to maximize their use for computing tasks.
- Tesla plans to monetize the idle compute in their vehicles, potentially reaching 100 gaw of usable computer power.
- Workloads can be distributed across nodes in Tesla cars without draining the battery, unlike in laptops and cell phones.
- Running your plugged-in car for 10 hours uses 10 kilowatt hours of compute, with built-in liquid cold thermal management for distributed power generation and cooling.
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44:59 🚗 Tesla is making progress on 4680 ramp, focusing on Cyber truck, reducing costs, and considering selling cells to other automakers to generate revenue.
- Tesla is making good progress on the 4680 ramp and expects to exceed the competitiveness of suppliers by the end of the year, with a focus on the Cyber truck ramp and prudent investment in capacity expansions.
- Internal sales were a hedge against the increase in cost per kilowatt hour of batteries due to massive orders from suppliers, and it is recommended to drive FSD 12.3 to understand the company.
- Tesla is working on reducing costs for new products by transferring the technology and engineering work from existing products.
- Tesla is considering converting 4680 cells and selling them to other automakers to generate additional revenue, as they are seeing more competitive prices for batteries from their suppliers.
- Tesla is working to insert themselves into the upstream supply chain to reduce overall costs and is expecting fluctuations in battery cell production.
- Future market conditions will change, with potential complications from incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act, leading to a stronger demand for US-produced cells and the need for a hedge against these changes.
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51:03 🚀 The speaker announced departure from Tesla after meeting with Elon, expressing gratitude for the opportunity and support over the past seven years.
- The speaker announced their departure from the world of investment relations after meeting with Elon about a month ago.
- The speaker expresses gratitude for the opportunity to work at Tesla and thanks the team, investors, and shareholders for their support over the past seven years.
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Duration: 0:52:32
Publication Date: 2024-04-24T10:44:50Z
WatchUrl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMoERNcd5ug
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