Tesla's Q4 2024 Earnings Call

[00:00:02] Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Tesla's fourth quarter 2024 Q&A webcast. My name is Travis Axarod, the head of Investor Relations here at Tesla, and I am joined today by Elon Musk and Veb Abtanesha and a number of other executives. Our Q4 results were announced at about 3 p.m. Central Time in the update deck be published at the same link as this webcast.

[00:00:24] 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 findings with the SEC.

[00:00:57] 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 talk about Tesla's Q4 2024 Earnings Call. And this was a weird one. You know, Elon did not seem his typical self in this one, and I'm not casting aspersions. I'm just saying he seemed very scattered.

[00:01:26] You know, he's bouncing around back and forth from topic to topic to topic. Like, he'd be talking about autonomous driving, then he would go to Optimus, and then he'd go back to autonomous driving, then he would talk briefly about energy, and then he'd go back to Optimus, and then he'd talk about AI, and then you'd go back to Optimus again.

[00:01:41] It was just like a lot, right? And as a result, I'm going to play his entire opening remarks. Am I going to edit them at all? Mainly because the way that he bounced back and forth from topic to topic to topic, I'm kind of afraid that you might think that I edited it in a weird way. So it's completely his opening remarks will be unedited. So let's go ahead and dive into Elon's opening remarks.

[00:02:09] 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.

[00:02:36] We're staying focused on maximizing volumes and obviously doubling down more. I don't know what. Really, I was going to say doubling down on autonomy, but really it's like autonomy is like 10xing. 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.

[00:03:04] 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 to 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.

[00:03:33] There's a path to that. I mean, I think it's like an incredibly, it's 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.

[00:04:01] And that's where we're laying the groundwork for that in 2024. We'll continue to lay the groundwork for that in 2025. In fact, more than lay the groundwork, actually start building the structure. We're building the manufacturing lines. And, yeah, I'd like setting up for what I think will be an epic 2026 and a ridiculous 27 and 28.

[00:04:31] Ridiculously good. That is my prediction. Okay, so I'm going to break in real quick here. Just because Elon's opening remarks are very long. And I have a theory. When a CEO and CFO have extraordinarily long opening remarks, my personal belief is that they don't want the analyst questions.

[00:04:59] You know, they maybe didn't have a good quarter or they have something they don't want to talk about specifically. So, instead of actually, you know, giving brief opening remarks and taking questions from analysts, you know, half and half. Or usually it's like 10 minutes for the CFO, 10 minutes for the CEO opening remarks. So, 20 minutes total. And then the rest of it is analyst questions. And you may take some retail investor questions in there as well.

[00:05:29] But when they specifically have long opening remarks, like Elon's opening remarks, I can't remember exactly how long they were. But they were more than 15 minutes long. And the CFO's opening remarks. And, man, I'm going to say his name wrong. But I'm going to give it my best. Vipav Tanaji, the CFO, his opening remarks were also quite long.

[00:05:59] So, when this happens, and then on top of that, Tesla took some say.com questions for like 20 minutes. They didn't give very much time for analysts to ask questions. So, I have a theory that that's because Tesla or any company that does this, by the way, did not want to have – they didn't want to answer questions. So, having said that, let's get into the clip that Elon just talked about. Okay.

[00:06:29] So, let's move on because Elon is setting up what's to come. You know, he's talking about Tesla could become the most valuable company in the world. Like, more valuable than the next five companies total. And, you know what? That's entirely possible because Tesla is already a very profitable company. It already has a lot of value as a company. It's also possible that they won't be.

[00:06:58] You know, I don't know that it's a guarantee that it's going to be the most valuable company in the world simply because, you know, markets go up, markets go down. New vehicles come out, more affordable vehicles come out, whatever. And then, you know, Tesla has to still compete. And we're kind of getting into an area of like Ford just announced a $36,000 version of the Ford Mach-E.

[00:07:28] Like, that's a pretty compelling vehicle at $36,000. I haven't read the article. I just saw the headline on that. So, I don't know much about it. But, like, that's kind of the market – the way the market's headed. You know, the GM or the Chevy Equinox is, you know, $35,000, $40,000. So, that's a – those are both technically – I guess the Mach-E is a crossover.

[00:07:52] But those are both very popular segments in the automotive industry here in North America. So, let's move on to our next clip where Elon's going to talk about the value of full self-driving or FSD and how, you know, people still don't understand how valuable it is. So, we will listen to that and then I will talk to you on the other side.

[00:08:22] You know, as yet, very few people understand the value of full self-driving and our ability to monetize the fleet. You know, some of these things I've said for quite a long time. And I know people have said, well, you know, Elon's the boy, you're quite a 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.

[00:08:49] You know, 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, oh, FSD was a toddler. It's like, well, it's growing up now. Have you seen it? It's like walks and talks. And that's really what we've got.

[00:09:19] 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.

[00:09:48] So, you know, 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 per week. So call it 50, maybe 55 hours of the week. And it can be useful for both cargo delivery and people delivery.

[00:10:16] 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.

[00:10:46] 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. 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.

[00:11:13] And I repeat my advice, try driving the car or let it drive you. So, now, it works very well in the U.S., but of course it will, over time, work just as well everywhere else. Yeah. Yeah. So, we're working hard to grow our annual volumes.

[00:11:44] 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 in addressing that constraint. And then things are really going to go ballistic next year and really ballistic in 27 and 28. So, a bit more on full self-driving.

[00:12:14] Our Q4 vehicle safety report shows continued year-over-year improvement in safety for vehicles. So, 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.

[00:12:40] 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. All right. First, he has talked about, you know, full self-driving and people not recognizing the real value of full self-driving for a while.

[00:13:05] And he says, well, if the first time you experienced it is when full self-driver was a toddler, then maybe you should experience it when full self-driver is older. And I don't disagree with that. But I have an example to give back, right? And here's my example. If a dad goes to work every day and tells his coworker how great of a driver his toddler is, like his two-year-old is such a stellar driver. It's amazing.

[00:13:34] And he does this day after day after day after day. And then he does it for years. And in this story, the toddler ages very slowly. But he does this for years. You know, the toddler drives better than every adult, nearly every adult. We're not going to say every adult. That would be crazy. But the toddler drives nearly better than every adult.

[00:13:57] Now this dad has set an expectation that his toddler son is an amazing driver. Then one day, the coworkers get a chance to ride in the car where the toddler is driving. And this is very exciting because the hype has been, you know, it's just been building and building and building. And they all get in the car. They put their seatbelts on because they're not irresponsible. And the toddler drives. And you know what?

[00:14:24] The toddler, amazingly enough, knows how to drive, but doesn't understand the rules of the road and makes a lot of mistakes. Some of those mistakes are super dangerous. And some of those people in the car, some of the coworkers, have moments where they're like, Oh, I'm really uncomfortable. This is really scary. I don't like this. And then, you know, maybe they drive around the block and a few of those left turns are a little sketchy.

[00:14:50] You know, the toddler goes out into the lane to make this left turn. And if you're in a right-hand drive country, please use left turn for right turn. You're crossing traffic when you make this turn. And maybe some of those are a little scary and maybe not the smoothest ever. You know, again, this is a toddler driving. The fact that a toddler is driving a car is amazing.

[00:15:15] But the toddler is not driving the car at the level that the dad said that they're able to drive this car. So anyway, they go out. They have this experience. Some of the coworkers are unfazed. They're like, You know what? That was really neat. Some of the coworkers were like, I'm never doing that again. And some of the coworkers are like, I can see where this toddler is going. But he's not there yet. Right? So you have those three different opinions.

[00:15:43] But the dad, the dad gets out of the car and he beams with pride and exclaims, That was the best drive yet. Don't you guys agree? That was amazing. You know what's going to happen is the coworkers are now going to be weary. Some of them, not all of them, are going to be weary of that dad's claims.

[00:16:03] And on top of that, some of those coworkers are not going to believe what the dad says about his amazing toddler son that ages very slowly. You know, he's still two years after the fact. So he ages very slowly. People aren't going to believe that because they saw it with their own eyes that the toddler did not live up to the hype that the dad was putting out there. And I say all that to say this.

[00:16:32] At the time when full self-driving was released, it was pretty good. Like it wasn't the best ever. What like Elon had said it was, but it was pretty good for many, many years. I don't know if it's in. It's probably the entire time I've done this podcast. So for eight years, Elon has claimed that a full self-driving unsupervised full self-driving was around the corner. And it hasn't been. We're probably closer today than we were eight years ago. I'll give him that.

[00:17:01] But if Elon and Tesla were more realistic about what FSD could do at that time, early on, what it was capable of and what it wasn't capable of, I think people wouldn't be so down on the technology. But instead, they put it out there as how amazing this technology is and how it drives by itself and you hardly have to intervene. And that was not true early on.

[00:17:29] So it's not to say that the technology is not amazing. It's to say the way it was presented by company leadership was not exactly what was going on when people would experience it in real life. And there's plenty of stories if you go back when FSD was first released, which I think was in like November, October, November of 2020 or maybe it was 2021. I'm a little fuzzy on the details.

[00:17:56] But FSD was not as it was described by leadership at Tesla. And I think it's okay to share a roadmap and say, hey, here's what's coming. Here's what's around the corner. Here's what we're working on. But you need to present that in a very realistic way. You need to present the technology in a very realistic way. This is what it can do. This is what it can't do. And don't overpromise. As a matter of fact, underpromise.

[00:18:25] Let it be better than you say it is. Because if it's worse than you say it is, that's harder to overcome. If it's better than you say it is, there's like, what do you have to overcome? You're claiming it could do X, Y, and Z. And it could really do W, X, Y, and Z. You just sold a feature that's better than you said it was. How great is that? And I want to get back to this thing with the robo taxi service. Not everybody wants to loan their car out to strangers.

[00:18:54] And not everybody wants to loan their car out to even family or friends, you know, depending on the family and friends that you have. As mileage goes up on your vehicle, the chances of a major breakdown increases. And the chances of repairs increase. Costly repairs in some cases. And the value of your vehicle is going to go down. High mileage cars do not, you know, typically sell for a lot of money. Even if they're super high-end cars with good resale values.

[00:19:23] So you're basically, unless you're doing it for business or you need a little bit of extra money, I don't know the benefit of putting your car on the robo taxi network. Now, if you're doing it with the intention to make money and you're okay with all those things happening, I think that's great. And listen, I'm not saying that if the money wasn't right, I wouldn't put my Tesla on the cyber taxi or robo taxi network.

[00:19:51] I would definitely do that if the money was right. But if it was a few pennies or a few dollars a day and I was losing more value than it was worth, probably not a thing. One of the things I will give Elon, though, is the utility of that vehicle goes up significantly. So that is one of the things that I will agree with him on in that case.

[00:20:17] But yeah, I mean, I know people who bought FSD for one person bought it for $7,000. And I think both of them bought it for $7,000. But anyway, it doesn't matter. I know two people who paid for FSD, one of whom barely uses it anymore. And the other one says, I use it, but I probably shouldn't have spent the money on this. All right, let's move on to Optimus.

[00:20:47] So the training needs for Optimus or Optimus Humanoid Robot are probably at least ultimately 10x what's needed for the car. At least to get to the full range of useful roles. How many different roles are there for a humanoid robot versus a car?

[00:21:10] A humanoid robot has probably, well, 1,000 times more uses and more complex things than in a car. That doesn't mean the training scales by 1,000, but it's probably 10x. Now, you can do this progressively. So it doesn't mean like our Tesla is going to spend like $500 billion in training compute.

[00:21:35] 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, but 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.

[00:22:04] Like, it's really bananas. So that you can obviously afford a lot of training compute in that situation. In fact, even $500 billion of training compute in that situation would be quite a good deal. Yeah. The future is going to be incredibly different from the past, that's for sure. We live at this unbelievable inflection point in human history. So, um.

[00:22:35] Okay. So, a lot of bold claims about Optimus. You know, $10 trillion in revenue over like a lifetime? Like, it can't be over a year. That's a ridiculous amount of money. Over 10 years? What are we talking about? $10 trillion in revenue? Like, where is that number coming from? And, you know, they're looking at doing 100 million robots a year.

[00:23:02] And let's pretend their target price for these autonomous robots are $25,000. Then, yeah, that's $2.5 trillion a year if they can sell that many. And in four years, it'll be a $10 trillion business. Okay. I'm just not sure. Over what time period are we talking about $10 trillion in revenue? Um. I mean, if it's infinite, it's not really that.

[00:23:30] If the time period is infinite, it's not really that impressive. Like, if I was immortal, I could probably make $10 trillion in my lifetime. If I was immortal. But I'm not. All right. Let's move on to unsupervised FSD. Yeah. So, you know, the proof is in the pudding.

[00:23:52] So, we're going to be launching unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service in Austin in June. So, you know, 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.

[00:24:17] Uh, we already have, uh, Teslas 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, uh, in California.

[00:24:40] They will soon be doing that in Austin, uh, and then elsewhere in the world for the rest of our factories, which is pretty cool. Um, and the cars aren't just driving to exactly the same spot because obviously they're all going to collide at the same spot. The cars are actually programmed with, with, where, with what lane they need to park into to be picked up for delivery.

[00:25:06] So, they, they, they drive from the factory end of line to their, to their destination parking spot and, and the, and the, for, to be picked up for delivery to customers. Um, and they're doing this reliably every day, thousands of times a day. It's pretty cool. Um, like I said, these are, Teslas will be in the wild.

[00:25:34] There's no one in them, uh, in June in Austin. So, what I'm saying is, this is not some far off mythical situation. It's literally, uh, you know, five, six months away, five months away, kind of thing. Um, and, uh, while we're stepping up to putting our toe in the water gently at first, just to make sure everything's cool.

[00:26:02] Um, our solution, our, sort of, our solution, our solution is a generalized AI solution. It is not, does not require high precision maps of a locality. Um, 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, you know, put a few more toes in the water. Then put a foot in the water.

[00:26:29] Uh, with safety of the general public as, and those in the car as a top priority. Okay. So, I do think we will see some version of unsupervised full self-driving in Austin in 2025. I don't know it's going to be, you know, June of 2025, but it'll be, I think that's reasonable. I don't know that they will be able to put these cars on the road without a safety driver.

[00:26:57] Uh, unless they've already been testing it in Austin and we just don't know about it. You know, if they, if they got people driving around Austin with, with safety drivers like Waymo did before they, uh, uh, were available to the public. Then sure, that that's a real possibility and that's awesome.

[00:27:19] But if they haven't done that yet, I don't see how any municipality or governing body would let them just go whole hog without somebody in the car. In regards to the video, I have seen the video that he, that he's talking about with, uh, the cars, you know, driving from one part of the Fremont factory to the other. And it is very impressive.

[00:27:45] Here's the thing that I am, I'm saying here, uh, Tesla has manipulated many of these videos. So I don't believe any of them. Um, again, if you take it on the surface, it looks very impressive. And if they're telling the truth in this case, then, uh, it's really cool. Like it's, it's a cool video.

[00:28:08] You can go to Tesla's Twitter account and it's up there, but, um, they have massaged videos in the form before and been caught doing it. So I, I don't believe any videos that Tesla puts out. I think it's really cool, but I, I don't believe that it's accurate just because they've done this too many times for me. So I don't believe it.

[00:28:36] There was one say.com question from a retail investor that asked about the hurdles that they had to overcome, um, in terms of the cyber cab or robo taxi service. They answered part of that question. They didn't talk about any of the hurdles that they, that they had to overcome.

[00:28:59] Um, one of the things that they asked, uh, answered, excuse me, was that it would be coming to California in 2025 as well. So, um, yeah, that, that's not a surprise, just a little bit more of a confirmation. So I appreciate Tesla's cost, uh, cautious approach in terms of, you know, let's not hurt anybody in the car or any of the pedestrians around the vehicle or any of the other drivers that are driving around.

[00:29:29] So I am, I'm happy to hear that. And I don't think that they would as, as, um, hardcore as Elon says, as Tesla is at times, I don't think they're going to, you know, let their vehicles go out and wipe out a bunch of people that would one. One, that's just a really sick thing to do. And two, it's not good for business.

[00:29:50] So I appreciate the focus around safety, but yeah, I, this is, this is one of those things that, um, I do. I, I, I believe part of what they're saying. I should, let's put it that way. All right, let's go ahead and jump into our next bit, which is again about Optimus robot. So we go again, like I said, we're going to go from full self-driving to Optimus robot to full self-driving to cars, to this, to that.

[00:30:19] It just bounces back and forth. So back to Optimus robot. Uh, with regard to Optimus, um, obviously I'm making, you know, these revenue predictions, predictions. That sound absolutely insane. I realize that. Um, but, but they are, I think they will prove to be accurate. Um, yeah.

[00:30:44] Um, now, now with Optimus, there's, there's a lot of uncertainty on, 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 bullying the tracks. And so they're like, why did it, why didn't the training drive exactly at 12.05? And like, we're literally designing the train and the tracks in the station in real time.

[00:31:12] While you're saying, you're like, how can we predict this thing with absolute precision? It's impossible. Um, you know, the, the, 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? Uh, probably not. We, we, but I, but will we succeed in making several thousand? Yes, I think we will. Um, will those several thousand Optimus robots be doing useful things by the end of the year? Yes, I'm confident they will do, they will do useful things.

[00:31:42] Um, uh, that, that, those, the Optimus in use at the Tesla factories, uh, for production design one will inform how, what we change for production design two, which we expect to launch next year. Um, and our goal is to ramp prompt Optimus production faster than maybe anything's ever been ramped.

[00:32:06] Um, 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. Um, it doesn't take very many years before, you know, we're, we're making a hundred million of these things a year.

[00:32:33] If you go up by, let's say a factor, you know, by five X per year. It's insane. Insane. Not 50%, 500%. So, you know, big growth numbers. Um, yeah, but we do need to, this is an entirely new supply chain. It is entirely new technology. There's nothing off the shelf to use.

[00:33:02] We tried desperately with Optimus to, to use any existing motors, you know, any, any actuators, sensors, nothing, nothing worked for a humanoid robot at any price. We had to design everything from, from physics first principles to work for a humanoid robot. Um, and with the most sophisticated hand that has ever been made before by far.

[00:33:28] Um, and Optimus will be able to like play the piano, um, and, and be able to thread a needle. I mean, this is the level of precision no one has been able to achieve. Um, and so it's, uh, it's really something special.

[00:33:50] Um, so, um, so, and my prediction long-term is that Optimus will be overwhelmingly the value of the company. At one time, Elon thought that the energy business would be the, the driving force in the company as far as, you know, value. So obviously that's not necessarily the case.

[00:34:18] Um, but we're going to hear more about Tesla energy here in just a second. I just want to say like the growth in terms of production that Elon was talking about is great. You know, being able to do 500% more in producing 500% more year after year after year. But if you don't have the demand or the desire of people to buy those products at whatever the price is and even $25,000.

[00:34:45] If the, the robot is limited in what it can do, like it won't go out and blow the leaves in the backyard for me. And it won't vacuum and mop every day and all those other things. Then it doesn't really, you know, if it, if the only thing that it does is dusts and walks up and down stairs, I don't have a lot of value for that at $25,000. So if your demand isn't, uh, five X or 500% more each year, it doesn't really matter that you could produce it.

[00:35:14] You, you need to have people who want to buy it. Otherwise you're just going to be storing, you know, these parts in robot form, um, in a warehouse somewhere. And maybe you could use them as an army if we want to get super dystopian, but for right now, um, I'm sure they'd rather sell them. Um, okay. Next up, uh, Elon's going to talk about the energy business. Um, we're going to energy back up, back to us.

[00:35:42] Um, it was the Elon. Can you come back here for a minute? Okay. Back to us. Uh, energy storage is a big deal. Um, and we'll become, it's, it's already super important. It will become incredibly important in the future. And, and it is something that enables far greater energy output to the grid than is currently possible.

[00:36:07] Um, because the, the grid, the, the, the, the grids are, are the vast majority of the grid has no energy storage capability. So they have to design the power plants to, you know, for very high peaks, um, and assuming that there's no energy storage. Once you have grid, 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, it's at least double.

[00:36:33] Um, this will drive the demand of stationary, uh, battery packs and, and especially the grid scale ones to insane, basically as much demand as we could possibly make. Um, so, um, we, we have our second factory, which is in Shanghai that's starting operation and we're building a third factory. Uh, so we're trying to ramp output of the, of stationary battery storage as quickly as possible.

[00:37:03] Now there is a challenge here where we have to be careful to, that we're not rubbing tape, rubbing from one pocket to take to another pocket because for a given gigawatt hours per year of the, 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. Um, yeah.

[00:37:28] Um, but, but over, overall, the demand for total gigawatt hours of batteries, whether mobile or stationary that will grow to in, in, in, in a very, very big way over time. Um, so in conclusion, uh, 2025 really is, is a pivotal year for Tesla.

[00:37:53] And I, and when people look back on 2025 and the launch of unsupervised full self-driving, um, true real world AI that, that actually works. Yeah. I think they may have regarded as the biggest year in Tesla history, maybe even bigger than our first car, the Roadster or, or the modelized, so the model three or model line.

[00:38:18] Um, I, in fact, I think it probably will be viewed 25 as maybe the most important year in Tesla's history. Um, there is no company in the world that is as good at real world AI as Tesla. I don't even know if he'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. Okie doke.

[00:38:44] We will look back on 2025 and we'll see if that, if it was the biggest year for Tesla. And it might very well be. I don't know. Um, Elon at the end there with, with some extreme confidence in terms of world AI. All right. That was Elon's opening remarks. The CFO vibe have Tanasia. Uh, most of what he talked about and he talked for a long time too, but most of what he talked

[00:39:11] about was financial related and really didn't go into anything that's interesting for this show. Two things he did say though, was that one new products are coming, uh, cheaper cars, which, uh, is welcome. And then another one, he addressed, uh, tariffs. And he said that for some time now, Tesla has been trying to localize their supply chain so that the tariffs won't affect them as much.

[00:39:38] All right, let's move on to our say.com questions, which are retail investor questions. The first question is about licensing full self-driving to other automakers. So let's go ahead and listen to that. Are there any discussions with other auto companies about licensing FSG? Yes. What we're seeing is at this point, significant interest from a number of major car companies

[00:40:07] about licensing Tesla full self-driving technology. Um, what we've generally said is the best way to know what to do is take one of our cars apart. Um, and, and then you can see where the placement of the cameras are, what the thermal needs are of the Tesla AI inference computer. Um, that's better than us, you know, sending some CAD drawings.

[00:40:32] Um, and, um, and then we're only going to entertain situations where the volume would be very high. Otherwise, this is not worth the complexity. Um, and, and we will not, um, burden our engineering team with, uh, laborious discussions with other engineering teams until we obviously have unsupervised full self-driving working throughout the United States. Um, I think the interest level from other manufacturers to license FSD will be extremely high once it

[00:41:02] is obvious that unless you have FSD, you're dead. Okay. I'm a little confused on this. Um, it sounds like they're interested in licensing full self-driving, but they're not ready. Um, they're not ready because they don't have full self-driving, uh, unsupervised full self-driving driving throughout the United States. Uh, so they're not going to put that much effort into it.

[00:41:31] And honestly, if, if you said on an earnings call, Hey, um, come and talk to us about full self-driving, we would like to license in it to you. And then as a CEO, I came to you and I said, Hey, let's talk about full self-driving. And they're like, well, just take apart one of our cars and you'll see what's, what's going, what's doing. Um, I would not be interested in that. I would, I would not want to be, I'm not going to say partner, but I would like to have

[00:42:01] more information than just, uh, Hey, go buy one of our cars and tear it apart. Maybe you could just send the CAD drawings over and maybe we'll buy one of your cars and tear it apart. Maybe we'll do both, but I don't, I don't understand the reluctance here in terms of wanting to make sure that they have full unsupervised level four, level five autonomy throughout the United States or North America. Sure. That makes sense to me.

[00:42:30] I also understand not burdening your engineering team. Um, I guess what it comes down to is if you're not ready to license out your technology, why bring it up ever? If you're not willing to have those talks and, and have a few engineers available for other companies, engineers to chat with, why even bring it up? Bring it up when you're ready. Don't bring it up now. Um, so I, I understand this, this was the say.com.

[00:43:00] Question and they didn't bring it up in this earnings call, but they've brought it up in previous earnings calls. And, um, yeah. And I, I don't buy the, if, you know, by the time we have full self-driving, um, solved effectively. And if you don't have it, you'll be dead. I don't, I don't think that's true.

[00:43:22] You know, um, first of all, if you listen or believe Elon, it's going to cost more than $8,000 and they've already had to drop the price from 12,000 to 8,000. I think they were planning on raising it to 15,000. They already had to, had to drop that. Uh, and I, I can't imagine that Tesla is going to let other automakers sell it for cheaper than what Tesla is selling it for. Cause that wouldn't be good for business.

[00:43:50] So yeah, it's kind of a, it's, it's an, it's an interesting play on Tesla's part, uh, inviting people to talk to them about, or companies to talk to them about licensing full self-driving and then saying, yeah, we're not going to burden our engineer team with your engineer team until we've already got this solved. Why don't you just solve it and not bring it up? Um, and again, I realized they didn't bring it up in this case, but they've brought it

[00:44:18] up in the past and that's why they're having these conversations. So it doesn't make sense to me. All right, let's move on to our next clip. The next question is, uh, what is the status on mass production of the Tesla semi? Um, and how will it impact, uh, revenue at scale? I can say that one. So we just closed up the semi factory roof and walls last week in Reno. Um, so that has 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.

[00:44:48] Um, the first builds of the high volume semi design will come late this year in 2025 and begin ramping early in 2026. But as we've said before, you know, the semi is a TCO no brainer. Um, like it's really similar to the optimists, you know, set by how much people pay and then, you know, it, it, it has a total cost of ownership. It's much, much cheaper than any other transportation you can have. So at that point, um, when we're at scale, it will meaningfully contribute to, you know, Tesla's revenue.

[00:45:17] Well, I think it's difficult to say how much. Anything you want to add, Elon? Um, uh, no, I mean, I, I do think it tells us that I, again, with autonomy is going to be incredibly valuable. Um, you know, that we actually have a shortage of truck drivers in America. That's one of the limiting factors on transport. Um, and, um, you know, and, and, uh, people are human, so they get tired.

[00:45:44] And sometimes, and you know, there's, it's, it's, you know, I have a lot of respect for truck drivers because it's a tough job. Um, but because it's a tough job, there's not that many people that want to do it. And there's actually a few, I believe if my saying is correct, there are fewer people entering truck driving as a profession than are leaving it. Yes. So when you think, yeah, exactly. So, 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.

[00:46:15] So, uh, autonomy will be very important to meet that, that need. So like, yeah, it'll, it'll, I don't know. It's a, it's, it's, 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. Not nothing. It's probably, you know, it might, it's probably like a 10 billion a year thing.

[00:46:46] Yeah. It's a billion a month at some point, probably. But, but it's, it's, you know, all this is going to pale in comparison to Optimus. So yeah, a billion a month is, it's a lot, but it's, it's, it's not, it's going to be like 1% of Optimus or something. It's going to be something like 1% of what you think Optimus will be. Maybe not what it actually is.

[00:47:14] And, you know, honestly, let's talk about how long before Optimus becomes useful. We'll say to industry first, and then to regular schlubs like myself second. It's going to be a bit, probably. If I'm going on Elon timelines for products, not for factories, because he's usually, at some point in time, he mentioned that, you know, he kind of gets a lot of grief for his timelines, but there's a lot of timelines that he hits. And, and I agree with that.

[00:47:44] And that's a perfectly valid point. But for products, he's often very late for, for things like factories, he's usually way early. So I will give him those flowers, but you know, as a, as a independent content creator, I understand the value of diversifying where I get my money. So I have the podcast, this podcast, which, you know, you folks give me money from Patreon, which is very, very nice.

[00:48:13] And I have ads for folks who, who either can't afford or unwilling to give money. And that's okay. I don't mind that. You're just going to listen to a couple ads. So you could probably skip them if you wanted to. I won't tell, but you know, so that, that's nice that I have those revenue streams. Then I also have other podcasts that have ads on them. And, you know, one of the other ones also has a Patreon as well.

[00:48:42] So it is not a lot of money, but I have money coming in from different areas to, to keep myself afloat. If, if I was reliant on it, like I have a full-time job, that's another revenue stream and my wife works. So that's another revenue stream. So it's not like if I was only relying on Patreon for this podcast, I would be in serious financial trouble, but I'm not, you know what I mean?

[00:49:11] And $10 billion is a lot of money. And like the amount of, um, I don't know, the cockiness that he's like, is that even a lot of money anymore? Yeah, it's a lot of money. It's a, it's a lot of money to you and it's a lot of money to everybody else. Is it the most amount of money? No, but it's, it's still a lot of money.

[00:49:37] So, um, you probably as a, as a company would like to have a diverse stream of revenue of different places where your money's coming in. Like Tesla realized like $600 million in gains from their Bitcoin purchase a couple of years ago. So that's, you know, they're, they're not getting money from one particular, uh, part of their business. Um, same with, you know, if, if Apple decided that they were going to get rid of their Mac

[00:50:05] line tomorrow, cause it's not as successful as their iPhone line that there's hundreds of billions of dollars gone, but it's not as much as, you know, their, their iPhone line, right? It's probably tens of billions of dollars gone, not hundreds, but it's still, it's still a lot of money. Um, that's my point. Uh, so yeah, it's a lot of money. All right.

[00:50:33] Uh, and by the way, I also think that the Tesla semi is going to be a big deal. And if it does have full self-driving in a way that, um, Elon imagines it, I do think it will be a game changer for the, the, um, shipping industry for sure. All right, let's move on to our next clip, which I believe is about Tesla upgrading hardware

[00:51:02] three vehicles to hardware four vehicles or AI four vehicles. So they can actually, you know, someday be hopefully autonomous, maybe kind of with any luck, like fingers crossed updating to AI four. We'll actually get this done, but it probably won't let's listen to that clip though. Is it expected that Tesla will need to upgrade hardware three vehicles? And if so, uh, what is the timeline and expected impact, uh, to Tesla's CapEx?

[00:51:31] I can even refer to Costner. They're really asking the tough questions a little bit. I guess we, you know, we haven't stopped working on hardware three yet. We are still making software releases. We released the 12.6 release recently, uh, which was like, it's like a baby, uh, V13. Uh, but it's a significant improvement compared to what they had previously. Uh, and you know, people are still finding ways to distill larger models in the smaller models. So we don't give up on hardware three. We're still working on it.

[00:51:58] Uh, just the releases will trail the hardware four releases. Great. Thanks. Yeah. Uh, I mean, I think the honest answer is that we're going to have to upgrade people's hardware three computer for those that are portable self-driving. And that is the honest answer. And that's going to be painful and difficult, but we'll get it done. Um, now I'm kind of glad that not that many people bought the FSD package.

[00:52:31] Not that many people bought the FSD package. Oh boy. Uh, so that leads me to believe that if you've been subscribing, even if you started subscribing on day one, you are not going to get a upgrade. You might have to pay for it. You're, you might not even have the opportunity to pay for it. It might be too difficult, but I do appreciate that Tesla is willing to pay for people who have hardware three and to upgrade them to hardware four.

[00:53:02] Now, what if hardware four runs up against limitations and they can't do that, right? They can't, uh, they, they can't, uh, fulfill their promise of full self-driving. Will they upgrade them to hardware five? I hope so. Like they've already set a standard and what Tesla is doing is if you sell your car, uh, private party, right? I sell my car to you and I have full self-driving, then you get to keep the full self-driving. And that's really cool.

[00:53:27] But if I trade my car in Tesla removes full self-driving and they try to resell it back to you. Um, so over time, more of these cars where people paid for full self-driving and they got hardware three, they're either going to get, uh, traded in to Tesla and that'll be removed or they'll age out or they'll get wrecked or whatever.

[00:53:53] And, um, you know, they just won't, won't have that, uh, opportunity for full self-driving. But having said that, I do appreciate that Elon was like, Hey, here's the, here's the truth. We're going to have to pay to upgrade those. I think that's good to hear. So I applaud Elon for saying that. All right, let's move on to a clip about solar roof. The next question, um, has Tesla given up on ramping their solar roof product?

[00:54:25] Uh, no, we're, we're, sorry, Mike. Oh, Mike, go ahead. Yeah. Oh yeah, I can take it. Um, yeah. Solar roof remains a core part of the residential product portfolio and it still remains, um, where it draws a lot of customer interest despite it being premium products. Um, we've worked on multiple iterations of engineering to make the product easier to install and distribute, um, by producing the SKU count.

[00:54:48] And, you know, more, more recently, rather than direct installation, we are focused on growth through our nationwide network of certified installers. And many of those, um, they've been installing solar roof with us for many years. Yeah, that's actually turned out to be a much better way for the, like, it is just let the roof just supply products to the roofing industry. Um, and especially when somebody is going to, is getting a new roof anyway, or, or building a house from scratch.

[00:55:15] Obviously this is by far the most efficient, uh, time to put in a solar roof as opposed to putting a solar roof on a house that where the roof still has, you know, 20 years of life. Um, that, that's not economically sensible, but, um, but, but if it's a new house or the roof needs to be replaced anyway, then solar roof can make a lot of sense. Um, and, uh, and, and, and it is, it is a premium product.

[00:55:41] It's, it's like the, you know, it's kind of like model S model X or something. It's like a, it's a premium product. Um, I think it looks really cool. And your house, I mean, your house generates electricity. And if you combine it with the Tesla power wall 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.

[00:56:08] So it's like, I recommend anyone who had, you can afford it, get the Tesla solar roof and the power wall. Your family's life might depend on it. And, and just, and just in terms of convenience, you know, your kids are not going to yell at you because their computers don't work because the power went out and they're, and you can't charge your phone. So first work actually happens. Yeah. You literally can't even call anyone because your phone's out of juice.

[00:56:37] I like to think my kids wouldn't yell at me if the power went out and they couldn't use their electronic devices. Um, my kids don't yell at me and I try not to yell at them. So that's, you know, anyway, uh, I don't think that's a good reason to have solar roof is what I'm saying. So I went on Tesla's website and at one point in time, I could get a quote on what it costs to put a solar roof on my house. I have Tesla solar panels. I have a Tesla.

[00:57:05] So they know approximately how much electricity I'm currently generating. I would assume they know roughly how much electricity that I am using. Uh, so I should be able to go to their website, put in my address, put in my account and get a quote for a solar roof. And it would be fairly accurate because they put the solar panels on my roof. Uh, unfortunately I have to put in my information and then an installer will call me and I'm not interested in that.

[00:57:34] So, um, I wasn't able to get a price for you, but if I was to put a solar panel system on my house and we're talking, uh, 11.89 kilowatt hours of solar panels, which is what they recommended based on my electricity bill. And based on my, how much roof I have available. So it's 11.89 kilowatt hours. We'll just say 12 kilowatt hours.

[00:58:02] That would be $27,000. And then I want two power walls. So that's an additional $22,000. Um, just when you combine those two and then when you get the cash price, I would pay $42,415 for that. Now, because I don't know what the solar roof is going to cost.

[00:58:29] I can't tell you whether that's more or less for a certain, but I, I it's, it's less like at one point in time, it was like $78,000 for me to put a solar roof on my house. I don't know what it is now. It's probably less, but, uh, yeah, uh, solar panels are probably the better way to go still. And if you can afford to put a battery backup on that, all the better. Okay. Okay.

[00:58:58] Let's move on to our next clip, which is about, uh, version 14 full self-driving. And the last question from say.com, uh, what technical breakthroughs will define V14 of FSD? Given, uh, that V13, uh, already covered photon to control. Well, we're going to have a lot, but I'll help out further than, than photons to output.

[00:59:25] We're, 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. Um, I guess we could get into some of the technical details to some degree. Uh, I have to say, uh, I, I continue to be amazed by just how effective order aggressive transformers are at solving a wide range of problems.

[00:59:52] I mean, Ashok, is there anything you'd like to add there without giving away the sort of family secrets? I mean, except for things we put on X already. Um, yeah, so continue to scale the model size, uh, a lot. Um, you know, we scale a bunch in V13, but then there's still room to grow. Uh, so we're going to continue to scale the model size. We're going to increase the context length even more. Uh, the memory is sort of like limited right now. We want to increase the amount of memory, uh, also give to even minutes of, uh, context for driving.

[01:00:21] Um, we're going to add audio and emergency makers better, uh, add like data, uh, of the tricky corner cases that we get from the entire fleet, you know, any interventions or any kind of like, you know, user intervention. Um, we just add that to the data, the data set. Um, it. So scaling in basically every access to training compute. Good asset size, model size, model context, uh, and also all the reinforcement and the objectives. All right. I don't have anything to add to that. So let's get to our analyst questions.

[01:00:50] You've said in the past about LIDAR for a visibly 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. You still feel that way? Yes. Care to elaborate or just, I have another question. Uh, look, we even have a radar in the car and we turned it open. I got it. All right. So you're, you're still, yeah.

[01:01:18] People think you're crazy, you know, but, uh, uh, for, for not looking at life. Obviously humans drive without shooting lasers out of their eyes. I mean, unless you're Superman, um, you know, but, but like humans drive just with passive visual, humans drive with, with eyes and a neural net and a brain neural net. So sort of biological, which is, so the digital equivalent of eyes and a brain are cameras and,

[01:01:46] uh, and, and digital neural nets or AI. Um, so that's the entire road system was designed for passive optical neural nets. That's how the whole world system was not designed and what everyone's expecting other, that's how we expect other cars to behave. So therefore that is very obviously the solution, um, for full self driving in it as a generalized for the generalized solution for full self driving, as opposed to the very specific, you

[01:02:15] know, neighborhood by neighborhood solution, which is very difficult to maintain, which is what our competitors are doing. Um, uh, yeah, yeah. I mean, uh, LIDAR doesn't work in the fall guys. Uh, LIDAR has a lot of issues. It's like, I don't actually 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.

[01:02:44] It's simply the wrong solution for driving cars on roads. Right. You, you understand how, how LIDAR works. I, I get it. I literally designed and built our own red LIDAR. I oversaw the project, the engineering thing. Um, I, it was my decision to use LIDAR dragon and I oversaw that, that, that engineering project directly. So I'm like, we literally designed and made a radar, a LIDAR to dock with the space station. If I thought it was the right solution for cars, I would do that, but it isn't.

[01:03:14] I wonder where Adam Jonas thought this question was going to go. Like, it does seem pretty obvious that they're not going to use LIDAR in their vehicles. I'm just, I'm, I'm just super curious as to what, how we thought that question was going to go. Anyway, in case you thought that Tesla would be doing LIDAR, they're not going to. All right. Let's move on to our next analyst question.

[01:03:43] I'd have a question, you know, on, uh, deploying like robot taxes in, in June and, uh, in Austin. So that's great news. And I was wondering if it means I can, you know, drive down to Austin in June and try, um, and try, uh, unsupervised by myself with my car. Oh, it's going to be more like your fleet testing it. It'll, it'll be our fleet testing it.

[01:04:09] Um, but that's how sort of toe in the water, uh, you know, we'd be scrutinizing it very carefully, make sure it was not something we missed. Um, but it will be, you know, ride autonomous ride hailing for money in, in Austin in June. Um, and then as shortly as possible, other cities in America. And I expect us to be operating, having doing concert advice, uh, activity with, with, um,

[01:04:39] with our internal fleet in several cities by the end of the year. Um, then it's probably next year when people are, are able to add or subtract their car from the fleet. So, you know, kind of like Airbnb where you can sort of add or subtract your house or guest room. Um, you know, you can say like add it to the Airbnb inventory or, or don't add it to the Airbnb inventory.

[01:05:06] Um, you know, if you, if you're, if you're traveling for a month, you can, or whatever in case maybe you can let other people use your house. Um, and then you can, anyway, so like that's probably next year because we want to just make sure we've ironed out any, any kinks. Um, 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.

[01:05:35] It comes, you know, it's the right spot. It does exactly the right thing. All the payment systems work. The billing works. Um, yeah. Um, okay. But then like, so my thought of question would be, you know, I have a Tesla, I have FSD and I have to keep my eyes on the, on the road all the time. It's super boring because I don't really need to intervene anymore.

[01:06:02] And, uh, but the really annoying thing is that I can't just check my emails. And so are you working also on introducing, you know, like a kind of like free unsupervised where I could be eyes off and, 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 thing that I wonder if it's something we could expect

[01:06:32] for this year. It's a very selfish question. I asked for myself to be honest. Uh, yes. We just need, we need to be very confident that the probability of injury is low before, um, we allow people to check, check, check their email and text messages. In fact, right now we're in this perverse situation, which you may have encountered yourself where, um, people will actually go to manual driving to check their text messages. Yep.

[01:06:59] So the computer doesn't yell at them and then go, then put it back on autonomous mode. Once they've checked the text messages, which is obviously less safe, significantly less safe, significantly less safe than just letting people check their texts once in a while. Uh, without the computer yelling at them. Um, but we just want to be cautious about that, the habit of that we're in this sort

[01:07:23] of, you know, neither here nor there, but just for, I mean, I think it's not for many months longer. Um, 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 their text messages while steering the car with their knee and not looking out the window. And if you're like, like, like, you know, I said, right.

[01:07:50] 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. It's the capability is getting there, but it's not fully there. That's why he was using the thermal, tipping a toe in the water, then getting comfortable, then kicking it. Anyway, it's, it's, it's not far off.

[01:08:13] Um, but we would not want to prove to ourselves, prove to ourselves and also prove to regulators that the car is unequivocally safer, um, in autonomous mode than, than not. Um, and that's, we're not far off. So this is like low single digit months. To the safety aspect, we did publish our safety, uh, vehicle safety report today.

[01:08:43] And then Q4 is one crash for every 5.9 million miles driven compared to a crash every 700,000 miles without autopilot. Right. So we're getting to the point where it's an order of magnitude. Yeah. It's like 8.5 times. See, that's what's just about there. Yeah. It's amazing. Oh, I think that's a good update. I don't really have anything more to add. I mean, I think by this point in time, everybody knows that I'm suspicious of the timelines, but other than that, you know, I think it's good.

[01:09:13] Good update. All right. Let's go ahead and move to our final analyst question. Great. Alrighty. And, uh, our last question will be coming from, uh, Dan Levi at Barclays. Um, Dan, feel free to unmute yourself. Great. Uh, 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. Um, okay.

[01:09:43] I know we've heard a lot about, uh, President Trump's plans to reverse the EV mandate. And I think there's a view that given, um, regulation is a driver of EV uptake. This could slow EV uptake in the U.S. So, um, what would be your view on, on the right policy in, in the U.S., given, uh, your comments in the past of the need to push for sustainable transport?

[01:10:07] Um, you know, at this point, I think that that sustainable transport is inevitable. Um, I'm highly confident that all transport, uh, will be autonomous electric, including aircraft. And that it's simply, it's, it can't be stopped any more than one could have stopped the advent

[01:10:32] of the external combustion engine, steam engine, or, or, or one could have stopped the advent of the internal combustion engine. Um, like, like, even if you've been the biggest force advocate on earth, you'd like it, like a, like a, horses are the way, not these newfangled car automobiles. The, the, you can't stop the advent of the automobile. It's going to happen. Um, and you can't, you can't stop the advent of electric cars.

[01:11:02] It's going to happen. Um, the only thing holding back electric cars was range. And that is a sole problem. And then as a follow-up, um, you know, in the past, Elon, you had made a comment that, you know, 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, uh, the rate of acceleration of atomic efforts

[01:11:32] does impact volume growth. So perhaps you could just talk about, you know, with your efforts on FSD, uh, how we should think about your desire to put more vehicles out in, in the market to, uh, take advantage of your, of your tech advances. So I'm not sure I understand the question. Um, but we have a lot of cars and we've got millions of cars out there.

[01:11:58] Um, so is, is there a question then that how do we, how do we marry our future growth aspects with FSD? And yeah, go ahead and unmute yourself, Dan. Yeah. More, more so just how much more aggressively you would be wish it willing to, uh, you know, sell your cars versus, versus, uh, you know, in light of your, of your improvements on FSD. Yeah.

[01:12:30] Well, right now the constraint we're trying to solve is battery production, um, as opposed to demand. So we're, and 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. Um, but, uh, the problem we're wrestling with, in fact, we're talking that the executive team

[01:12:55] and I were talking about just before this call was how we've got to figure out how to increase total gigawatt hours of, of battery production this year one way or another. That's the constraint on our output. Okay. Um, I don't have any, I don't have a lot more to add here. You know, the Elon's been talking about for a while, uh, about battery constraints and then it eased up a little bit.

[01:13:21] And now we're talking about battery constraints again, and they've got a lot of, they got a lot of products that batteries are going into. So I can completely understand where that would ebb and flow. You know, they just, uh, put online their, uh, lithium ion factory or refining factory, refiner, lithium ion refining plant. Uh, they just brought that online, the one in Texas. So, you know, I, I can completely understand where they're coming from, from this point of view.

[01:13:51] Uh, the part where Elon says that, you know, uh, we're going to, it's inevitable that we'll be sustainable in terms of transportation. I agree when, you know, if, uh, I don't think anything that, uh, president Trump does, unless it's like saying, you know, we're going to tax every electric vehicle by a hundred percent. So nobody buys electric vehicles. And I don't think he's going to do that.

[01:14:21] Um, I think people are going to buy electric vehicles for their own selfish reasons, whatever that may be. Maybe they want to save money on fuel or possibly, you know, if we go into a trade war with China or not China, uh, Canada, uh, there's a chance that we'll be paying more in fuel or we'll have less fuel and that will make demand go up, which makes prices go up. So there's, there's, um, reasons that people might be driven toward electric vehicles.

[01:14:51] Uh, and, and eventually I think, you know, it'd be great if airplanes could be, you know, powered by some sort of renewable energy or some sort of like algae biofuel, which is a friend of mine when I met him 20 years ago was, was, uh, gonna plant all algae fields so he could make biofuel for jets. And, you know, that, that hasn't come to fruition and thank God he didn't do that.

[01:15:20] But, um, you know, there, there's, there are, I think there are enough reasons to buy an electric vehicle that I don't think we need, uh, uh, incentives from our governments to, to buy electric vehicles. It definitely makes it nice. It definitely helps with spurring, uh, adoption, you know, quicking in and up, making it faster, man, I'm, I'm losing my brain here.

[01:15:47] It definitely makes that process go faster or could, you know, we, we can give that adoption a boost is what I'm trying to say. But in terms of, you know, uh, the government or certain politicians saying, yeah, don't buy electric vehicles. I don't think that has a lot to do with, with whether people are going to buy them or not.

[01:16:10] Um, but the, the question is, is how long before we get to that, that, um, sustainable transportation, uh, part. And then also, you know, we need to make sure we're mining responsibly and we're recycling responsibly. You know, all of this has to like, this, this is, this is bigger than just driving an electric vehicle for sure. But I do agree.

[01:16:35] Eventually we'll get there because people are going to, uh, make choices that are in their best self-interest. And honestly, I was paying close to $400 a month at fuel when I got my car and I pay about $28 a month and a high month it's $28, uh, in electricity. So not, not too shabby. All right, everybody, that is it for me this week. Thank you for staying with us.

[01:17:02] This is, this was definitely a longer podcast than I normally do. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you want to email me and tell me your thoughts on the earnings call, it's Bodie, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. You can also find me on Twitter at 918digital and, uh, or X. And yeah, I hope everybody has a super great day, a super great weekend. And I will talk to you on Tuesday.

[01:17:49] All righty. And with that, um, I think we are all done for today. So, uh, thanks everyone so much for all of your questions. We look forward to talking to you next quarter. Um, thank you very much and goodbye.