2024 Tesla Shareholder Meeting: Part 1 Q&A

[00:00:00] I guess with that, we can go to Q&A. Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host. And on today's episode, we are going to cover Tesla's 2024 shareholder meeting

[00:00:36] and we are going to cover the questions portion of the episode. Here's the thing about this though. The questions portion was almost an hour. Now I was able to take out a lot of questions that were, let's just call them sycophant

[00:00:57] questions that you'll still hear some of those but I was able to take out a lot of questions that just weren't important. But there's still some stuff in there that I think is really interesting and we're

[00:01:09] kind of leading in or at least in my brain what I'm doing with this show is I'm trying to lead into the August announcement that Tesla is going to have over RoboTaxi. And because of that, I'm trying to give as much context as humanly possible leading

[00:01:24] into that event. To that end, I do think it's valuable as listeners to people who listen to this show and in the community for us to hear some of the questions that these people asked Elon. Again, we don't have to listen to all of them.

[00:01:40] A lot of it is just, hey, Elon, you're great. Go to Disneyland. And that was not a question. That was a statement that actually happened. I don't think I left that in there but I might have.

[00:01:51] But the point is, is that I do think that some of these questions will be relevant for people who follow Tesla. I don't necessarily know if they'll be relevant for that event in August, but it gives us a firm base.

[00:02:08] Now I told you all of that so I could tell you this. I'm splitting the questions portion into two shows because I don't want them to be over and I don't want this episode to be over an hour. Last episode was over an hour.

[00:02:20] This episode could be over an hour if I'm not careful. So we're going to read off some Patreon supporters and then we'll get right into part one of Elon's question and answer session.

[00:02:33] So let me pull up my Patreon here because I was trying to do multiple things at once and I closed it out. All right, here we go. Patreon is making it harder and harder to find out who's continuing to support this show. So let's start with Jerbo.

[00:02:46] Jerbo welcome back. KiwiGram, Steve, Charles, Paul, John, let's see just another Nick, Charles F. The other one was Charles S. Electron Raceway Fabricator, Scott, Gene, Chris B., Jamie, Don, Christopher, Steven, Alex, Alky Bob. I want to know the name behind Alky Bob.

[00:03:15] FriendlySleet66, Joseph and is Jerbo in here twice? Jerbo you were in here twice. You might want to look at that. Steve and Bruce W. and we'll end it at Bruce and we will recognize everyone else in the next episode. But thank you everyone who is supporting this show.

[00:03:41] I really appreciate it. If you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt or support kilowatt.com and you can support it there as well. All right, let's start off with our first question from Elon's question and answer session. Hey, Elon.

[00:04:00] Last year I thanked you for making the world a better place for my son to live in and I wasn't clear in particular I was referring to what you've done for the first amendment and our rights. Thank you.

[00:04:19] History will not forget it and the sacrifices you made and the risks you took will pay off and have paid off. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I very much appreciate that. I think it's you have to say like why was the first amendment so important?

[00:04:36] Is because people came here from places where if they spoke their mind, they would be put in prison or killed or just shut out from society, ostracized. So freedom of speech is absolutely fundamental to a good future and yeah, that's the

[00:04:51] reason for acquiring Twitter and trying to just make it a free speech platform. And I think it's very important to just the future of civilization. So thank you. Yeah, on the surface of it, I agree with what Elon is saying.

[00:05:10] I do think that freedom of speech is super important. It's one of the most important freedoms that we have here in the United States and I know that's not everywhere so I'm not going to mention any other countries because I'm just not as sure.

[00:05:27] I know that there are speech laws in other countries that have to, you know, roughly democracies like we have here in the United States. I know every country is a little different, not bashing any country. But Elon has done nothing for freedom of speech.

[00:05:40] He has been he has said, hey, we need to have freedom of speech. It's really important and that's good. But he owning Twitter or X does not make you a freedom of speech warrior. So he's actually done some things that may be hurt freedom of speech.

[00:06:00] If you're a freedom of speech absolutists and you banned impersonators, political accounts, private jet trackers and journalists, all of these things that Elon and X have done, you are not a free speech absolutists. You are applying the rules that you think are important to apply.

[00:06:22] So you are, what's the word? You are moderating that speech, which doesn't make you a free speech absolutist. And by the way, I fully support platforms like Facebook and Twitter and or X and Instagram and TikTok moderating what content goes on their platform

[00:06:42] because that isn't a freedom of speech issue. Those are private companies. They're welcome to moderate what they want. If you come into my house, there are certain things that you can and can't say. Like I genuinely have no problem if my kids swear. I don't they don't.

[00:06:57] But I don't care if they say the F word. I don't care if they I mean, there might be some words that I'm like, hey, cool it down a little bit. But for the most part, I don't care if my kids swear or not. They really don't. They're 11.

[00:07:08] But they really don't. They choose not to. But the thing is, is how they use it, how they use those words while they're doing it. So if they're like if they drop something and they say a swear word, fine.

[00:07:21] If they say it towards somebody, now we have a problem. I am moderating that speech in our house. Hate is pretty much banned in my house because I don't like that word, because I feel like there is a lot of feeling, negative feelings attached to that word

[00:07:39] when you direct it towards another person. If you can't get the pickle jar open, you're like, oh, I hate this thing. That's not a big deal. But if you say I hate you towards another person, I feel that that's that crosses the line.

[00:07:51] So in my own house, I am a fan of free speech. But in my house, my wife and I moderate what people say in our house.

[00:08:02] As far as the government goes, I don't think the government has a right in what you say for with your freedom of speech. And so far, I think for the most part, they don't. Not totally.

[00:08:17] But we're doing pretty good compared to a lot of other countries out there. I will say that does not save you. And I'm going off on a rant, so I'm sorry. That doesn't save you from the court of public opinion.

[00:08:31] If you say something, and Elon has experienced this for sure, if you say something that is unpopular in our society that we have all agreed and negotiated and said this is what's acceptable and this isn't,

[00:08:43] if you say something that's unpopular, then you're probably going to get a lot of grief for it. However, should we like burn this person's life totally to the ground so that they can never, you know, get better and become a better person?

[00:08:57] No, I don't think that's right either. So I'm going to stop talking and I'm just going to move on to clip number two, which is about bundling full self-driving with maybe some other subscription services that Tesla has. I work for Tesla sales in Orland Park, Illinois.

[00:09:15] And I was always wondering, do you think Tesla could ever move forward towards bundling software as like a package to, you know, possibly increase take rate for FSD, you know, maybe bundle it with premium connectivity and future software options?

[00:09:33] I think we definitely want to encourage people to try FSD. And one of the things that sort of I think probably makes sense is that when we have a significant improvement, every time we have a significant improvement in FSD, give people, you know,

[00:09:49] give all customers like a two-week free trial. So like, hey, we've made an improvement to FSD, you know, try it for another two weeks. You know, with 12.4, we finally get rid of the steering wheel nag, which I know is driving people crazy. Yeah.

[00:10:05] Like thank heaven for small mercies. So, you know, even just something like that, not having the steering wheel nag and obviously having far lower intervention count, like far more miles between interventions. So I think we'll, you know, I think keep sort of offering people free trials of FSD

[00:10:29] every time we make a significant improvement. As somebody who has not paid for full self-driving and probably won't, I love the idea of every couple of months getting a two-week free trial to, you know, test it out and kind of see how it goes.

[00:10:46] I talked a little bit about my experience on last episode, so I won't do that again here. But I love that for somebody who does a podcast about electric vehicles to be able to test out the new build for two weeks.

[00:10:57] That's awesome. I don't have to pay for anything. I'd love that. One person later on, I didn't include it, they did ask if Tesla would just ever enable the ability for people who paid for full self-driving to transfer that to their next vehicle.

[00:11:14] Let's just make that process permanent. Elon said it's really difficult to do the full self-driving transfers. And he was kind of himmin' and hawnin' a little bit when he was answering this guy's question. And somebody in the crowd yelled out, one more quarter!

[00:11:31] And Elon said, ah, I don't know, one more quarter! And he was like, okay, one more quarter. And then the crowd cheers. Well, the thing is, Tesla's, that's a lever that Tesla can pull. That's a carrot that they can dangle in front of people who already have Teslas

[00:11:45] to buy another car at the end of the quarter. If they're thinking about it, that's a lever they're gonna pull anyway. He doesn't care if it's one more quarter. They're gonna pull that lever whenever they think it's appropriate to pull that lever.

[00:11:58] And they're gonna continue to do it. It's not gonna happen one more quarter. It's gonna continue to happen until it stops selling cars. So my general feeling on this, and I've talked about this on the show, is that they should raise the price of every single car,

[00:12:10] every single Tesla by about $2,500 and just include FSD in every car and say, hey, we think full self-driving is so important. We are going to include this in every single vehicle. But they're not gonna do that.

[00:12:26] And they're not gonna do that because Elon thinks that a lot of people, a vast majority of people, are gonna spend between $8,000 and $15,000 I would imagine at some point it will go up with Tesla to put your car on the robotaxi network or whatever

[00:12:41] to do any of these things that Elon says that full self-driving will be able to do but hasn't quite gotten there yet. I don't think trying to make money with full self-driving in that way of selling that subscription price is a...I don't think that's working for them.

[00:12:59] Elon and Tesla have not been transparent on the FSD take rate. How many people are buying it in any meaningful way. It was $200, it dropped down to $100. We didn't hear them say boo about how many people are paying $100 for this service. I'm sure it's a number of people.

[00:13:20] There was a...I can't remember if I included it yesterday in the clip or not. But there was a slide that Elon said that subscription services made money for the first time ever. I think that's great. The vast majority of that money

[00:13:36] is probably coming from the people paying $99 a month, not people paying $8,000 for full self-driving. But I don't... I think when Elon and the team sat down and they're like, we're going to do full self-driving and we're going to do it right and we're going to sell it,

[00:13:56] I think they overvalued what normal people would be willing to pay for. And that seems to be bearing out in what's going on with Teslas. So also, I like what this guy that originally asked the question, I like what he was thinking.

[00:14:17] I just wanted to pay him a little compliment. Let's go ahead and move on to Elon's billions. Two questions actually. First, after $56 billion, you can afford to probably take kids to Disneyland now. Is that where you're going? Well, I mean,

[00:14:38] by the way, it is worth emphasizing that there's Teslas stock that I have to own for five years. So, you know, it's not actually cash and I can't cut and run nor would I want to. But... And I've actually been to Disneyland

[00:14:57] and Disney World many times with kids. It's a little tough for me to go these days without closing a ruckus. You know, maybe I should just like wear a Mickey Mouse outfit and just go and pretend I'm like one of the... So as we work on autonomy

[00:15:17] and we're getting to that threshold where things are getting to a seriously advanced level, eventually there are going to be some harsh consequences, part of breaking through, right? And I'm just curious where your mind is at on that and have you thought about

[00:15:36] some of those early consequences that we're unfortunately going to have to have in order to have a better, safer future. I'm just wondering... You mean like scary robots or what? No, in the cars with full self-driving. Okay. Like, we've seen some companies that there's been some unfortunate

[00:15:55] mishaps and they've just straight up closed shop and you know, I don't know. That's not the plan. But those are real consequences of developing this technology and I'm just wondering where your mind is at on that. Yeah, well, we do try to be very careful

[00:16:12] with the deployment of FSD and we do have a lot of cars. So inevitably when there are a lot of cars and you've got billions of miles, you do have the law of large numbers where, okay, there's a small chance of something bad happening

[00:16:29] but when you look at the sort of safety per mile, because we've got a lot of miles, it's very clear that the safety per mile is better than human driving. So we can show that to regulators and obviously make our case to the public

[00:16:45] and say like actually, you know, human driving is not perfect. You know, there's a person killed roughly every 80 million miles. So like 35, 40,000 people are killed every year in the US from auto accidents. What matters is like, are we making that number smaller?

[00:17:02] And as long as we're making that number smaller, we're doing the right thing. Okay, so I agree with Elon in this respect. Like the idea that there will no longer be car accidents ever and nobody will ever die from a car accident

[00:17:17] from, you know, let's say five years from now until the world ends and implodes is ridiculous. Goodness knows how long stairs have been around and people still fall downstairs and die. Like it's just going to happen. So you can't ever get to zero.

[00:17:34] So I like what Elon's saying here is the technology good enough to reduce year by year auto related deaths. I think that is a success in some ways, a success. Like obviously you're going to have edge cases where the death is directly related to full self driving

[00:17:53] and that is going to be a bummer and a lot of people are going to point to that and say, see this kills, but it doesn't. It's very hard to measure all of the times that it kept you from dying.

[00:18:06] It's really hard to measure all of the times it kept you from getting into a car accident. So all we could do is look at the number of deaths before autonomous driving. I'm going to use autonomous driving, not full self driving because other companies are working on this.

[00:18:18] Look at the deaths before autonomous driving and look at the death rates after autonomous driving. But I know for me in my Tesla, you know, it like if I'm spaced out or I'm looking to the left for some reason because I'm looking in my mirror

[00:18:34] and somebody on the freeway slams on my brake when I say mirror, like I'm looking at the mirror and somebody on the freeway slams on my brake when I say mirror, like I want to change lanes. Let's say I'm on the freeway,

[00:18:44] I want to change, get into the left lane. I'm looking at my console at my infotainment system because you can see the camera there but I also check my mirrors and I'm checking my mirror and the person in front of me slams on their brakes.

[00:18:57] My car alerts me to that. I appreciate that. Anytime we can get more of these safety related features even if it's not full self-driving, that's a good thing. Like let's reduce those accidents and hopefully reduce those deaths over time. Although I don't think Elon answered

[00:19:16] this one particular gentleman's question, he asked what happens, he danced around it so it was kind of hard to tell what he was asking anyway but he was asking what happens if full self-driving kills someone like the way, not way mode, like the Uber vehicle?

[00:19:33] What happens when that occurs? And that's already occurred on some level. We have the death in Northern California that Tesla settled. So I don't know if they were technically blamed for that but it's probably happened where full self-driving or autopilot was on and somebody died

[00:19:53] and Tesla was blamed for it. I don't know what those outcomes were because a lot of those things are settlements. So I guess we'll have to see. Alright, next up we're going to hear a little bit about the referral program and if it's coming back. Hey Elon.

[00:20:12] Hey, huge fan and I think history will show that you've had a profound impact on humanity. So I think that's just given. And just a couple of questions I guess. I fixed my Tesla addiction by putting cars on Turo and I found that about half my renters

[00:20:27] is the first time they're driving a Tesla and then the other half really want to buy one after they've tried it out. So I guess a couple of questions. When could we expect maybe the referral program to come back if it would come back?

[00:20:39] And could we also get a passenger van like a 12 passenger van sometimes soonish? I'll add that to my list. So the referral program I think we'll reexamine the referral program probably next quarter. And it is very important to sort of look at

[00:21:16] what is the fully considered cost of a Tesla. So with the referral program it effectively increases the price of the car. So is the price increase? What is better for the end customer? A slight price increase because of the referral program or not.

[00:21:33] But we'll reexamine that I think in next quarter and see if it makes sense. I think some kind of referral program does make sense. But I think for a lot of people by far the biggest thing we see is that people just can't afford the car.

[00:21:53] That's the biggest thing. That's the limiter on demand. You can imagine in the limit if there was say an 18, like if Model Y cost less than $20,000 it would sell probably 5 million units. Like it would be insane. So now that's not feasible today

[00:22:16] but I think working on figuring out ways to make more affordable vehicles is really the game changer. For most people it is really not a question of whether they want a Tesla. They do want a Tesla. They simply do not have enough money to afford one.

[00:22:32] So we have to make it affordable. That's essential. Again, I don't know if this is a great answer or not but I will say I would like a minivan. I don't care who makes it. An electric minivan.

[00:22:45] My wife is dead set on her next car being a minivan and I need an EV minivan. I understand that Chrysler does the hybrid. I'd rather stay away from hybrids if I can get away with it. Plus, there have been some problems with that particular vehicle.

[00:23:03] I don't know how they are in like the last year or so but I genuinely need an EV minivan. So if you work for a car company and you want to build one, let me just build it. You don't even have to let me know.

[00:23:15] I'll probably buy the first one if possible or my wife will. So Elon said that a lot of people want to buy Teslas. The problem is they can't afford Teslas. I would argue that a lot of people want to buy EVs but they can't afford EVs

[00:23:32] because I have more people in my life right now who would rather have an EV than have a Tesla and that has nothing to do with Elon or his politics. They just don't like the way the car looks or they're Chevy fans or they're GM,

[00:23:43] not GM, that's the same company or they're Ford fans or whatever. Way back when I started this podcast in 2016, there was me in my friend group that wanted an EV and now I have, there are so many people in my life who are open to getting an EV

[00:24:02] that's not a Tesla. So I think Elon's point is relevant. I just think replace Tesla with any other EV company. All right, next up we're just going to hear about Elon's safety. I left this in here because I thought it was interesting. Elon, thank you for hosting us.

[00:24:26] If you can see me, I'm trembling uncontrollably. I really look up to you, shareholder, consumer. You know, tripled my humble, tiny little portion of your shares the last two days. Just being engaged, knowing we're coming here and appreciate you

[00:24:44] hosting shareholders and it just means so much to us. You're welcome. You're an absolute idol. This question comes because I care about you as a human being but in the context of being a shareholder, unlocking these values of optimists,

[00:25:01] we need you and just with all the global uncertainty, you're so high profile, just want to make sure you're doing everything to make sure you're safe and healthy for the future of the company. I say that because I care about you as a person

[00:25:17] but since this is a shareholder meeting in the spirit of shareholder value. Well, thank you. I appreciate the kind sentiments. Yeah, I think I probably need to work out and not get assassinated or something. I mean, it is getting a little crazy these days.

[00:25:42] You know, like to first approximation, the probability that a homicidal maniac will try to kill you is proportionate to how many homicidal maniacs hear your name. Okay. So they hear my name a lot. I'm like, okay, I'm on the list, you know?

[00:26:02] So yeah, so we actually did have two homicidal maniacs in the last roughly seven months come to aspirationally try to kill me and a bunch of other people. So it's not just me. And there wasn't like an actual issue that they articulated. They were just, you know,

[00:26:20] in the homicidal maniac career. So I do need to be kind of careful. It does, which is not great because it like forces me to be a bit more sort of standoffish, you know, and, you know, like, so now I've stopped signing things because just, you know,

[00:26:42] something, because that would be a sure way to homicidal maniac. I'll just sign something and then shoot them to everything. So then I have to be more standoffish and stuff which I prefer not to be but it seems wise. Like John Lennon who was singing about

[00:26:58] hey, can't we all just be nice to each other and then he got shot by one of his fans. Like, okay. We'll try to avoid that. So I appreciate the kind sentiments. I will endeavor to stay alive and... My podcast is not big enough

[00:27:18] for someone to want to kill me. Now I'm not trying to get to that size but I'm just saying we're small over here at the Kilowatt Podcast. Nobody wants to kill me, which I'm grateful for. Don't get me wrong, but I am a little hurt

[00:27:33] and no one wants to kill me. Anyway, our last question or yeah, the last question is drivers and interventions. Driverless cars and interventions. So let's go ahead and get to that. Hey, Elon, on your right. Sorry, yeah. My name is Keanu.

[00:27:50] I'm a long time fan of your like brand and company and everything. I'm wondering when you take the driver out of the seat for the driverless car, how do you plan to handle interventions, which I'm sure will happen at some rate, even if they're rare. Yeah, so there's...

[00:28:09] I mean, clearly we want to make sure that if there's no driver in the car, the probability of a severe intervention is extremely low. You know, we want to make sure that the car is extremely cautious around vulnerable road users like cyclists or pedestrians.

[00:28:25] So really we'd want the probability of hurting a pedestrian or cyclist to be incredibly low, like way lower than someone driving a car. Then there are interventions that happen where the car is simply, I don't know, gets stuck down a one-way street with a crazy construction situation

[00:28:52] but in which case it'll basically phone home and say, help, I'm stuck. And then I think we can probably solve a lot of these things just by, you know, remoting into the car and kind of like steering it like a giant RC car. That's what I'm guessing...

[00:29:10] that's what I think we'll do. And we're going to find out a lot more about this during the RoboTaxi event. So I'm just going to leave it here because we've been going for about 30 minutes. I want to thank everybody so much for listening to this episode.

[00:29:26] Hopefully this isn't too bothersome for you. I know there's a lot of people out there who really don't care about Tesla or want to hear anything about them. And I know I'm dedicating a lot of the show to Tesla but I do think that the number one player

[00:29:41] in the U.S. for sure for EVs, but probably the world, and I do think that covering this is important as we go into, like I said, we have three new vehicles I think that Tesla set to unveil soon. We have the RoboTaxi event

[00:30:01] that Tesla's going to do and I'm sure they'll do another event like AI Day or Battery Day or whatever, sometime soon within the year. So I think all of this sets us up for those events. So we have context to go back to when Elon says something

[00:30:16] and we're like, wait a second, I don't know where this is coming from. Well now because we've listened to this stuff we do know where it's coming from. And I promise I'll try and control the ranting especially on Freedom of Speech in the next episode. Sorry about that.

[00:30:30] All right everybody, thanks so much for listening. If you want to go to Patreon and see what we're doing patreon.com forward slash kilowatt or support kilowatt.com and if you want to email me it's bodebodeat918digital.com Thank you all so much for listening

[00:30:45] I hope you have a wonderful weekend and to every father out there, all the fathers, happy Father's Day. Our next episode will be on Tuesday and that episode will be part two of the question and answer session and then on Friday we'll cover the actual shareholder

[00:30:59] meeting with the proposals and stuff like that. I have to do a little bit more research for Friday's show.