Tesla's Q2 2024 Earnings Call

[00:00:01] Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Teslas Q2 2024 Q&A webcast. My name is Travis Axarad, Head Investor Relations. 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.

[00:00:19] 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. Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy,

[00:00:48] autonomous driving, earnings calls and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host. And on this episode we are going to go over Teslas Q2 2024 Earnings Call. And yeah, it was subdued. Tesla played the hits. It was just like a local cover band,

[00:01:10] another way to kind of explain this episode was like a Golden Girls flashback episode. And I don't know how many people who listen to this podcast are going to get that, but yeah, just think Betty, or I guess Rose, Dorothy, Blanche,

[00:01:30] Sophia all sitting at the table eating cheesecake flashing back on previous episodes that they've already recorded. That's what this earnings call was, but I do have some things that I don't know if I would call it new, but I have some things that are noteworthy

[00:01:46] from the earnings call. So let's go ahead and get into them. We're going to start with Elon's opening remarks, which for Elon were quite short. It's about a nine minute open remarks. So I'll see you on the other side. Thank you. You're quite welcome.

[00:02:02] So to recap, we saw a large adoption exploration of EVs and then a bit of a hangover as a little struggle to make compelling EVs. So quite a few getting electric vehicles that have entered the

[00:02:19] market and mostly they have not done well, but they have to scan other EVs very substantially, which has made it a bit more difficult for Tesla. We don't see this as a long-term issue, but

[00:02:31] really it's fairly short-term. And we still firmly believe that EVs are best for customers and that the world has had full electrified transport, but just the cars, but also aircraft and boats. Despite many challenges, the Tesla team did a great job executing

[00:02:56] 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're investing in many future projects including AI training and adherence and radio infrastructure to support future products.

[00:03:18] We won't get too much into the product roadmap here because that is reserved for product announcement events, but we are in fact to deliver a more affordable model in the first half of next year. Really by far the biggest differentiator for Tesla is autonomy.

[00:03:40] And in addition to that, we have scale economies and I think we're the most efficient electric vehicle producer in the world. So while others are pursuing different parts of the AI robotic stack, we're pursuing all of them. The sloughs for better cost control, more scale,

[00:04:01] quicker time to market and a superior product, applying not to register autonomous vehicles, but to autonomous humanoid robots like Optimus. Regarding full-subtriving and rubber taxi, we've made a lot of progress with full-subtriving Q2 and with version 12.5 beginning rollouts.

[00:04:24] We think customers will experience a step change improvement in how well supervised full-subtriving works. Version 12.5 has five times the parameters of 12.4 and will mode finally most the highway and city stacks. So with the highway side, the soil at this point

[00:04:45] is pretty old. So often the issues people encounter are on the highway, but with 12.5 we would finally merge 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 how it's better to simply try it

[00:05:07] 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

[00:05:23] 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 the paddle, they tend to continue using it. So it's very

[00:05:38] compelling and this I think will be a massive demand driver. Even unsupervised full-subtriving will be a massive demand driver. And as we increase the miles between intervention, it will transition from supervised full-subtriving to unsupervised full-subtriving

[00:06:02] and we can unlock massive potential in the week. We're corresponding to some robotaxi with the product unveil by a couple months where it's shifted to 10 to 10, so the 10th of October. And I wanted to make some important changes that I think would improve the

[00:06:31] the robotaxi or the main thing that we're going to show. And we're also going to show off a couple of other things. So moving back a few months allowed us to prove the robotaxi as well as add in a couple other things for the product unveil.

[00:06:58] We're also nearing completion of the South expansion to be gigatexas which will house our largest clit training cluster today. This will be an incremental 50,000 H100s plus 20,000 of our hardware of oral AI by a Tesla AI computer. With Optimus, Optimus is already performing tasks

[00:07:22] in our factory and we expect to have Optimus production version one and 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

[00:07:48] 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. There will be production version two of Optimus.

[00:08:12] For the energy business this is growing faster than anything else. This is what we are really demanding, rather than production constraint. So we're ramping up production in our US factory as well as building our mega factory in China that should roughly double our output.

[00:08:37] It may be triple potentially. So in conclusion, we're super excited about the progress forward. We're changing the energy system, happy to work around, happy to approach the economy. The art technique is massive but I think the future is incredibly bright.

[00:08:58] Yeah, 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 MSD essentially enabling the fleet to operate like a giant autonomous fleet

[00:09:29] and it takes evaluation I think to some pretty crazy number. I can invest things on the order of $5 trillion. I think they're probably not wrong and long-term Optimus I think is achieves evaluation several times that number. I want to thank the Tesla team for strong execution

[00:09:52] and looking forward to exciting years in. So in the beginning there Elon took a little dig at the other automakers for not making compelling enough EVs that they could sell at higher

[00:10:03] prices and that's why Tesla had to lower their prices. That could be true or it could be that the other automakers made really nice cars or at least decent EVs but they wanted

[00:10:18] too much money. They wanted more money than the people who were buying cars at this point in time wanted to spend. Right now, groceries are expensive, gas is expensive. I just went to California over the weekend to see the All Blacks versus Fiji Rugby match which was amazing.

[00:10:37] $5 a gallon in California. I forgot to fuel up in Yuma. We stopped in eight but I forgot to fill up in Yuma which was like $3.20 a gallon which is still not cheap. By the way, we're

[00:10:53] in my wife's car not in my car it's bigger. But yeah so I paid almost $2 more a gallon 50 miles away from Yuma than I did in actual Yuma. So the point is things are expensive right now

[00:11:11] and people don't want to spend a bunch of money when there's uncertainty especially here in the US with what's going on with the political environment. There's just a lot of kind of uncertainty. There's not a lot of I wouldn't say people are unsettled but people are

[00:11:29] kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop here. So if the cars are too expensive people aren't going to buy them and if Tesla was killing it in terms of making their cars so compelling that

[00:11:39] people were willing to spend any price for them they could sell their cars at a higher price too but they can't. They're still selling plenty of cars, don't get me wrong.

[00:11:50] As far as I'm concerned and I'm not an investor or an analyst, as far as I'm concerned they're not going to end out of the park sales wise when you consider all the other factors that go into it

[00:12:03] but yeah the little dig at other automakers. Elon does that a couple times throughout the earnings call. I don't think it's fair but he does it. Next up we have retail investor questions and the first question is on the Tesla Roadster. The first question is what

[00:12:19] is the status on the Roadster? As with respect to the Roadster we've continued most of the engineering and I think there's still some upgrades we want to make to it but we expect to be in

[00:12:33] production with Roadster next year. It'll be something special like a whole thing right? I don't have much to say on the Roadster but I am curious if they'll be able to actually hit their target sales price that they had when they launched the Roadster

[00:12:55] or excuse me not launched but announced the Roadster all those many years ago with the Tesla Semi which honestly seems like forever ago. It had to be pre-2018. I think that's going to be harder

[00:13:08] for them to do. Before we go to the next clip I did take some notes on some things that I'm not going to play clips on. I'll just kind of give you an update here. Robotaxi announcement is postponed

[00:13:26] to October 10th. It'll be a bigger product announcement. There sounds like there's going to be one more thing. The Elon didn't really mention it. He started the earnings call off saying, hey this isn't the time or place for product announcements. He said that several

[00:13:44] times throughout the earnings call when people asked but he did make comments that in terms of Robotaxi goes. He did make comments that it's going to be pretty much the entire fleet would be eligible for the Robotaxi network when that comes online or whatever they're calling it

[00:14:04] Robocab. Robotaxi is its own thing but the whole network where you can put your car online on the network and rent it out, Elon thinks Tesla owners, the majority or most Tesla owners would want to

[00:14:18] have their vehicle on the network because it would make them money and who wouldn't want to make money? I would argue that some people wouldn't want to make money and I don't even think it's

[00:14:27] the majority of people would want to put their car on the network. I think people would try it. I would try it but I think a lot of people would look at the risk of putting your vehicle on the

[00:14:38] network and say, you know what? I'm not sure I'm willing to accept that much risk for a few extra dollars every week. It all depends on what Tesla is willing to pay you to put the car on the

[00:14:54] network and then also what happens if there's an accident or someone messes up your car or they smoke in your car. A lot of people, this is the car that they're using to get back and forth

[00:15:06] to work with. It is Tesla going to give you a loaner until it's fixed who's going to pay for it. All of that stuff is kind of up in the air in terms of how that's going to work. So I would say

[00:15:20] in theory a lot of Tesla owners would look at what Tesla has to offer when it comes to putting your car on the network but there's going to be a calculation where they're like, this is

[00:15:36] it's either worth it or not worth it to them. I don't want, I was going to speculate on what it might be worth to somebody. If I could make 400 extra dollars a week and it's not going to throw

[00:15:45] a bunch of miles on my car, I would absolutely consider it as long as Tesla was going to take care of any issues that happened and if there was an accident or somebody

[00:15:58] decided they're going to cut up my seats in my car, Tesla would take care of that and give me a rental or a loaner until that would be fixed. I think that would be a fair trade depending

[00:16:11] again on how many miles it is but if we run into one of those things where like when the supervised FSD trial was happening and the car was running into curbs and Tesla was like,

[00:16:29] yeah we're not going to pay for that. I don't know that that would be something I would want to have to deal with if it got too close and scuffed up my wheels or something and Tesla didn't want

[00:16:45] to pay for that because that's just considered everyday wear and tear. That's not everyday wear and tear for me so I guess it depends. It's a long drawn out way of saying that depends. In terms of Optimus, they talk about Optimus a little bit in this earnings call.

[00:17:03] Limited production in 2025 and those units will be just for Tesla and then they think that Optimus will be useful by the end of 2025 and in 2026 they'll start selling it to outside customers. Elon did say that he thinks that everybody in the world would

[00:17:27] want one so however many billions of people in the world there are they could sell one Optimus robot to everybody and I don't think that's even remotely the case nor do I think Elon

[00:17:40] thinks that but he said it. Now that we're at this part of the presentation I'm realizing these all might have been in Elon's opening remarks. I honestly can't remember yet. I kind of maybe

[00:17:52] did not do a very good job of separating my notes on this. Let's go on to our next investor question and that's on unsupervised full self-driving. I guess that's really just a question one would expect the first when can we do unsupervised full self-driving.

[00:18:12] It's difficult obviously my predictions of this have been overly optimistic in the past so I mean based on the current trend it seems as though we should get miles between interventions we high enough that it's far enough to access the humans that you could do

[00:18:36] unsupervised possibly by the end of this year. I would be shocked if we cannot do it next year. The next year seems highly probable today based on point simply plus the points of the curve of miles between intervention that trend exceeds humans for sure next year.

[00:19:02] I have had my heart broken on this question for the longest time because it's never right. Whatever Elon says is never the case in this regard so by the end of this year

[00:19:17] I would be shocked. I would be shocked by the end of 2025 based on history full self-driving unsupervised happening on the level that Elon says that it could work right. It might work in several select areas across the country or across the world but full level four or even

[00:19:37] level five full self-driving or autonomous driving I don't think we're anywhere close and this is you know not a new opinion or a unique one for sure but eventually Elon's going to say this feature

[00:19:56] is coming later this year whether this year is in 2030, 2050 or 2070 we don't know but he'll say it's coming later this year and it will I just don't know which year that's going to be.

[00:20:11] Next up we have a clip on 4680 battery cells and how that's going. Our next question is what is the current status of 4680 battery cell production and how is the ramp up progressing? 4680 production ramps strongly in Q2 delivering 51% more cells than Q1 while reducing COG significantly. We

[00:20:33] can't produce more than 1400 time of trucks of 4680 cells a weekend we'll continue to ramp output as we've got cost up further towards the cost parity target we set for the end of the year.

[00:20:44] We build our first validation cyber truck with dry cathode process made on our mass production equipment which is a huge technical milestone and super proud of that. We're on track for production launch with dry cathode in Q4 and this will enable cell cost to be significantly below

[00:21:03] available alternative such as the original goal of 4680. All right I don't have much to say on that so let's move on to an update on giga mexico. What is the updated timeline for giga mexico and what will be the primary vehicles produced initially? Well we currently

[00:21:25] are poised on giga mexico. I think we need to see just where things stand after the election. Trump has said that Europe would have a tariffs on vehicles produced in Mexico so it doesn't make

[00:21:39] sense to invest a lot in Mexico if that is going to be the case so we're kind of going to see where things play out politically. However we are increasing capacity at our existing factories quite significantly and I should say that the cyber taxi or robotaxi will be

[00:22:04] will be produced here at our headquarters at giga texas. All right thank you. As will as will optimus towards the end next year for optimus production version two about the high volume version of optimus would also be produced here in Texas.

[00:22:23] I think this is a good answer. We already knew that robotaxi was going to be produced at giga texas so that's not a shock but I think that's reasonable. It's reasonable that Tesla would

[00:22:37] want to look at what's going on in the US politically before building a plant across the border that they might have to pay a bunch of tariffs on or we would as consumers not

[00:22:48] Tesla themselves. Next up we have a question on Elon allocating resources between all of his companies whether that's hardware or employees how that works so let's go ahead and listen to that clip

[00:23:08] and before we do Elon talks about AGI which is advanced general intelligence which has to do with AI just in case you were not aware. All right let's listen to the clip. The first question

[00:23:19] comes from Will Stein from Truis. Will please go ahead and unmute yourself. Great thanks so much for taking my question this relates a little bit to the last one that was asked. Elon I share your

[00:23:31] strong enthusiasm about AI and I recognize Tesla's opportunity to do some great things with the technology but there are some concerns I have about Tesla's commercialization and that's what I'd like to ask about specifically there were some news stories through the quarter

[00:23:47] that indicated that you redirected some AI compute systems that were destined for Tesla instead to XAI or perhaps it was DAX I'm not sure and similarly a few quarters ago if you recall I asked about your ability to hire engineers in this area and you noted that

[00:24:08] there was a great desire for some of these engineers to work on projects that you were involved with but some of them weren't at Tesla they were instead at XAI or perhaps even XS again

[00:24:20] so the question is when it comes to your capital investments your AI R&D your AI engineers how do you make allocation decisions among these various ventures and how do you make Tesla owners comfortable that you're doing it in a way that really benefits them thank you.

[00:24:42] Yeah I mean I think you're referring to a very like an old article regarding GPUs like that's like six or seven months old. Tesla said we have no place to turn them on

[00:24:56] so it would have been a waste of Tesla capital because we would just have to order H100s and have no place to turn them on so it was just that this wasn't a this big XAI or Tesla

[00:25:12] there's there was no that the Tesla data centers were full there was no place to actually put the we've been working 24-7 to complete the South extension on the Tesla impact of Yarn and Texas that's us that's South extension as well will house the 50,000 H100s

[00:25:34] and we're beginning to move the H100 server acts each place there but we were really needed we needed that to be complete physically give you counters you know or a computer or a GPUs and turn them on but no you need you need a desk

[00:25:55] so far so I want to be clear that was in total interest not contrary to Tesla's interest the Tesla no good to have to use that catch them up the split second that South extension was able to take GPUs which is really just this week

[00:26:18] we're moving GPUs in there and we'll bring them online was about to XAI the there's a lot of people that only want to work on AGI so what I was finding was that

[00:26:37] when trying to group people to Tesla they they were they were only interested in working on AGI not the problems and and they want to start do a startup so it was case of either they

[00:26:53] go to a startup or and I'm involved or they do a start up I'm not involved those are two choices this wasn't oh they were they would come to Tesla they were not going to come to Tesla

[00:27:08] either any circumstances so yeah yeah I mean I would even add that you know AI is a broad spectrum and there are a lot of things which you know we are focused on also driving as Tesla and also Optimus but there's the other spectrum of AI which

[00:27:36] we're not working and that's the kind of work which other other companies are trying to do in this case XAI so you have to keep that in mind that it's a broad spectrum it's not just

[00:27:48] one specific thing yeah I want once again I want to just repeat myself here I tried to recruit them to Tesla including to so like you can work on AGI if you want and they refused only then was XAI created

[00:28:04] okay so I'm gonna I have I have maybe a different timeline in my head on this so I'm going to give Elon the benefit of the doubt here and if everything he said was true this is a reasonable

[00:28:16] explanation next up we're going to hear a little update on full self-driving licensing and what needs to be done on the OEMs side so let's say that I have an automotive company

[00:28:34] kilowatt EVs and I'm licensing full self-driving from Tesla what do I need to do on my side of the for my side of the deal what what kind of hardware do I need to implement how does that work

[00:28:49] and by the way in this example I'm a legacy automaker in addition to being a automaker so let's listen to that the next question comes from Alex Potter from Piper Alex please go ahead

[00:29:00] and unmute yourself perfect thanks um wanted to ask a question on FSD licensing you mentioned that in passing previously it was just wondering if you can elaborate maybe on the mechanics of how that would work I guess presumably this would not be some sort of simple plug-and-play proposition

[00:29:21] that presumably an OEM would need I don't know several years to develop its own vehicle platform that's based on FSD I imagine they would need to adopt Tesla's electrical architecture, compute, sensor stack so correct me if I'm sort of misunderstanding this but if you had a cooperative

[00:29:40] agreement of some kind with another OEM then presumably it would take you several years before you'd be able to recognize licensing revenue from that agreement is that the right way to think about that yes the OEM's not very fast it's not really a sensor suite it's just cameras

[00:29:59] but they would have to integrate our AI computer and have cameras with 360 degree view and at least the gateway like what talks to the internet and communicates with the Tesla system what with that you need kind of a gateway computer too so it's really gateway computer

[00:30:21] with the cellular and Wi-Fi connection the Tesla AI computer and seven cameras or not cameras in a 360 degree view but this will give it give them the speed at which the order of streamers

[00:30:36] it would be several years before you see this in volume okay good that's that's more or less what I expected so then the follow-up here is if you did sign an FSD licensing agreement

[00:30:51] with another automaker when do you think you would disclose that would you do it right when you sign the agreement or only after that multiple years has passed and the vehicle is ready to

[00:31:00] be rolled out I think it depends on on the OEM I guess we'd be happy either way yeah it depends on you know what kind of agreement we entered into a lot of those things are

[00:31:18] we're not in those out yet so we make that determination as and when we get to that point all right and the kind of deals that are obviously relevant are only if you know

[00:31:32] some OEM is willing to do this in a million cars a year or something significant it's not even like 10,000 or 100,000 cars a year we could just make that ourselves well it turns out the kilowatt automotive or I think it maybe I said kilowatt EVs whichever

[00:31:48] one it was turns out I don't make enough cars for Tesla to want to license their technology to me unfortunately but this does make sense I do wish that you know legacy automakers had a little bit

[00:32:03] faster turnaround than they do they wish they could be a little bit more agile but they have literally hundreds of years of you know intellectual debt that they have you know they've got billions of dollars in different processes across multiple factories across multiple units

[00:32:23] they're not really a they're not really set up to be super agile they're set up to do you know a new model car every year with incremental updates and in seven to ten years

[00:32:35] that car gets a big refresh and then the process starts over again so this does make sense from a business standpoint and again I am not a business person but from a business standpoint

[00:32:47] I don't know how much sense this makes to Tesla to even license it out because by the time these companies can kind of work this into their supply chain and into their their production

[00:33:01] flow it seems like they're going to be getting older hardware could be I guess it kind of depends on how Tesla develops this and and packages it but it seems like it might be a little bit more

[00:33:13] difficult than even what they're saying just in the earnings call next we're going to hear a little update on full self-driving take rates like how many people are actually buying it after the price drop I think you mentioned that FST take rates were up materially after you

[00:33:31] reduced the price is there any way you can help us quantify what that means exactly thank you yeah you know we've shared the that how that we've seen a meaningful increase I don't want to

[00:33:45] get into specific because we started from a low base and but we are seeing encouraging results and the key thing here is like Elon said we need to experience it because works can't describe it

[00:34:00] till the time we actually use it and that's why we are trying to make sure that anytime a car is getting delivered people are being sure how this thing is working because when you see it working

[00:34:11] you realize how great it is I mean just to give you one example so again there's a vice example but I have more than 20 miles commute into the factory almost every day I have zero interventions on the latest time and the car just literally dies from your work

[00:34:29] and especially with the latest version wherein you know we're also tracking your eye moment the steering wheel nag is almost not there as long as you're not driving sunglasses well we're fixing the sunglasses thing so it makes you so you will be able to drive it will

[00:34:47] we'll be able to have sunglasses on and have the car drive yeah so um but you know what is the sure number of times I've talked with smart people who like live in New York or in downtown Boston

[00:35:00] and don't ever drive um and then are asking me about FST I'm like you can just get a car and try it um and uh if you're not doing that you have no idea what's going on

[00:35:16] the answer starts off with um that there's a meaning there was a meaningful increase when they reduced the price in the take rate for full self-driving but they don't want to share numbers because they started from a low base so at $15,000 at $12,000 people were just not buying it

[00:35:37] at $200 a month they were not subscribing what is a meaningful increase uh if you have a 2% take rate and you bump that up to a 6% take rate that could technically be a meaningful increase

[00:35:53] but it may not be a profitable increase so I'm also curious did when they reduced the price did a bunch of people jump on board and then they got a huge spike but then after that initial spike

[00:36:10] where did it fall to or if it did like I'm speculating now because I don't know but I'd be interested to see how that graphs out in terms of uh people actually uh continuing

[00:36:23] to want it not just spurred on by a price drop but actually spurred on by wanting uh this wonderful product that Elon keeps saying uh that it is and he even said it in here you know people

[00:36:35] in New York who don't drive their own cars don't understand I really have a problem with this kind of messaging I'm gonna talk about that here at the end but people are smart and they do understand

[00:36:47] I have a I don't know I'm gonna let this go because we've already been on here for 36 minutes at this point. Our final analyst question is about the inflation reduction act which is the federal

[00:37:00] tax credit here in the US for consumers but it also gives automotive companies tax credits for building battery factories and EV plants and all that stuff so they're gonna talk about that right

[00:37:12] quick. I guess we can ask you know if if Trump wins there's a higher chance that IRA could get cut. I think Elon you had commented online that Tesla doesn't survive on EV subsidies but when

[00:37:25] Tesla loses a lot of support if IRA goes away I think Model 3 and Y get IRA help for customers and I think your batteries get production tax credits so so just one can you clarify if the

[00:37:37] IRA ends you know would it be a negative your profitability in the near term? Why might it not be a negative and then you know any framing of the current you know support

[00:37:47] you've got IRA related? I guess that there would be like some impact but I think it would be devastating for our productors but it would hurt Tesla slightly but long term probably actually

[00:38:10] helps Tesla you might guess. But I don't see this as a foreign excuse. Value of Tesla overwhelmingly it's autonomy. These other things are in the noise relative to autonomy so I recommend anyone who doesn't believe that Tesla will solve the global autonomy should not hold Tesla stock,

[00:38:41] should sell it Tesla stock, if you believe Tesla will solve autonomy you should buy Tesla stock and well these other questions are in the noise. Yeah I mean I'll have this just to clarify a few

[00:38:58] things that at the end of the day when we are looking at our business we've always been looking at it whether or not IRA is there and we want our business to grow healthy without having any

[00:39:12] you know subsidies coming in which are where you look at it and that's the way we always model everything and that is the way internally also even when we're looking at battery costs yes IRA

[00:39:27] there are manufacturing credits which we get but we always drive ourselves to say okay what if there is no IRA benefit and how do we operate in that kind of environment like Elon said we

[00:39:39] definitely have a big advantage as compared to our competition on that front we delivered it and you can see it in the numbers over the years so that there is you cannot import the fundamental

[00:39:52] sides of the business and then on top of it once you add autonomy to it like Elon said it becomes meaningless to even think about the the short term. All right so I don't think very many people

[00:40:09] think it's a good idea for businesses to rely on government subsidies to stay in business as a matter of fact if any business person on an earnings call said hey these government subsidies are

[00:40:21] really important to our business they're probably not going to be in business for very long so I'm okay with the subsidies for corporations not really being around in my personal feelings I have very conflicting feelings on government subsidies and incentives and all that stuff so I'm going to

[00:40:45] just say that I thought this was a decent answer and let's move on to our wrap up here so again I said this earlier this is not exactly this was not a earnings call with a lot of like

[00:41:03] insight it wasn't an earnings call with a lot of like oh my gosh I didn't know that it wasn't an earnings call where they're explaining some process that they had to solve and they get into the

[00:41:12] nitty gritty details on how they how they solve this engineering problem which is why one of the reasons why I like these earnings call this was we're playing the hits it was the Golden Girls

[00:41:22] flashback show you know it's it's reliable and one of the things that is always reliable is Elon is going to do one of two things or even two of two things honestly he's going to talk about how

[00:41:36] dangerous it was when elevators first came out and why you had to have an elevator attendant and why we don't have to have one anymore when it comes to make the analogy for full self-driving and he's going to talk about how certain people don't understand the importance

[00:41:51] of blank the importance of what Tesla is doing in this particular space whether that's full self-driving robotaxis or or Tesla energy and maybe that's true maybe there are people out there who just don't

[00:42:06] understand but here here's my bugaboo and I took a lot of this out but I'm I'm I'm ranting for this reason because it does bug me maybe what Elon seen is true but the other side of that coin is maybe they do understand

[00:42:26] and they don't want to buy into Elon's vision when it comes to solving these problems or they don't want to pay Elon money because of his outspokenness about a variety of different things

[00:42:40] or they don't want to pay Tesla the money they that Tesla wants for these services because they are charging too much there's any number of reasons while why people may not buy into Tesla's

[00:42:57] solutions in these regards and it really bugs me when Elon boils it down to people don't understand people understand people are very smart that is not what's going on here

[00:43:09] what happens is they don't want to do it for x y or z reasons I understand this as someone who follows this very closely and talks about it twice a week pretty much for the last eight years

[00:43:24] on this podcast I understand full self-driving I think full self-driving is super impressive like it is it is so impressive it is a feat like Tesla really accomplished something did they accomplish what they said they were going to accomplish no not yet

[00:43:46] that are they charging too much money for it yes in my opinion they are but some people in this podcast that listen to this podcast in our community some people are never going to pay for it and they

[00:44:00] agree with me some people have paid for it and regretted it and some people have paid for it and loved it and by the way I hear from all of these folks a sampling of all these folks

[00:44:12] whenever I talk about this stuff this is an individual decision and an individual preference and it has to do with how much money you have to spend on something whether you value it whether you think you're going to use it there's so much going on in terms of

[00:44:29] you know it's more expensive to eat it's more expensive to drive it's more expensive to do blah blah blah like there's just a lot going on right now and maybe it's not the right time

[00:44:41] for people or for businesses to make that kind of investment to shell out x amount of money for this or maybe it's not the right solution so I'm gonna get off my soapbox because we're

[00:44:55] right about 45 minutes here I do want to thank everybody for listening I hope you learned something I hope that I wasn't too opinionated in this episode if you want to email me and let

[00:45:08] me know that I was it's bodi b o d i e at 918digital.com if you want to follow me on x it's at 918digital and if you want to sign up and become a patron you can go to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt

[00:45:22] or support kilowatt dot com thank you everyone for listening to this episode now let's see friday's episode will be news I hope you all have a wonderful week and I will talk to you on friday okay um I think that's unfortunately all the time we have for today

[00:45:57] uh we appreciate all of your questions we look forward to talking to you next quarter thank you very much and goodbye