My name is Brandon Ehrhart. I'm the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. This meeting's going to be in two parts. First, we're going to cover the 12 items that stockholders have been asked to vote on, as well as any other matters that have been properly presented. Second, our founder and CEO, Elon Musk, will provide a presentation.
During the course of the following sessions, we may discuss our business outlook and make other forward-looking statements. Such statements are predictions based on current expectations.
Actual events or results could materially differ due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those disclosed in our most recent 10-K or 10-Q as filed with the SEC. Such forward-looking statements represent our views as of today, should not be relied on hereafter, and we disclaim any obligation to update them after today.
At this time, I'd like to thank members of the Tesla team and the board that are here in attendance. A representative from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tesla's independent auditor, is also present. But before we begin, I'd like to introduce you to our board chair, Robyn Denholm, who would like to say a few words.
Thanks, Brandon. Hello, everyone. As Chair of Tesla's Board, I am honored to welcome you all to our home, Texas, for our annual 2024 annual shareholder meeting. When I say I'm honored to welcome you, our shareholders, I truly am.
No other company in the world has such a diverse, engaged, and supportive set of shareholders as Tesla. No other shareholder base understands its company like you do, nor is it as committed to Tesla's mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy like you are. It is a shareholder base whose interests the Board is proud to represent.
It is also a shareholder base that understands that in order to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy and a sustainable energy economy, Tesla needs to develop the most revolutionary technologies, not only in autos, but in energy and artificial intelligence as well.
Our achievements this past year are steps towards fulfilling our mission. Some highlights include the Model Y becoming the best-selling vehicle in the world in 2023, beginning deliveries of the much-anticipated Cybertruck, proving that the muscle and utility of a pickup truck can be electric and cool, and ou r energy storage deployments reaching an all-time high in 2023, with the deployment trend continuing in 2024.
By using our products, Tesla customers avoided releasing over 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2023. That is the equivalent of 51 billion miles driven by ICE vehicles, an increase of about 18 billion avoided ICE miles since 2022.
But to continue the exponential growth in greenhouse gas emission avoidance, we not only have to get our products into as many customers' hands as possible, but we also need to increase the utilization of our products.
To help further with that goal, we released FSD Supervised, demonstrating that our approach to autonomy is scalable and that accomplishments in artificial intelligence, along with leveraging our existing production lines to get our next-generation products to market faster, are essential to achieving our mission.
We have made and plan to make further investments in the hardware and software ecosystem to further advance our path to autonomy and set a course to the realization of robotaxis. But sustainability is not just about avoiding emissions. It needs to take into account the whole life cycle, from the manufacturing of the products to the product's end of life.
That is why we source responsibly. We design our manufacturing processes to use less water per vehicle than the industry average. For the third year in a row, we power our Supercharger network with 100% renewable energy.
We are also working to build a battery material recycling ecosystem, both internally and with others, to ensure that we are moving towards a truly circular economy for energy storage. In 2023 alone, we supported the recovery of enough battery materials to build 43,000 new rear-wheel drive Model Ys.
That result is the epitome of a sustainable economy. While sustainability is our mission, we also have the goal of safety. Our cars are engineered to be some of the safest in the world, and we take real-world data from our fleet and our ability to push over-the-air updates to optimize safety for all our vehicle models. Our attention to autonomy also plays a role in our goal of safety.
Based on 2023 data, Tesla vehicles with driver-assist technologies engaged have only one vehicle accident per 5.64 million miles driven, compared to the U.S., yeah, I think it's worth quoting, compared to the U.S. vehicle fleet of one accident per 670,000 miles driven.
So not only are you protecting the environment by driving a Tesla, you're also protecting yourself and those who ride with you. With another year of progress in furthering our mission under our belt, I want to take this moment to thank our phenomenal Tesla employees, whose creativity, hard work, and dedication are the source of our success.
As, yes, huge thanks. A s most are also shareholders alongside each and every one of you, I hope each employee takes pride in the role that you have played in Tesla's accomplishments. I am proud of you, and the board and I appreciate you tremendously.
Finally, I want to remind our shareholders that your board is listening, and we are here to represent your interests. You are, yes. You are the owners of the company, and your voices, your perspectives, and your input are critical to us as a board and to the direction of the company.
My fellow directors and I serve as your fiduciaries and oversee Tesla's mission, purpose, and strategy with those responsibilities in mind. We continuously set the highest standards for ethical behavior, corporate citizenship, and corporate governance. You don't see the day-to-day work of the directors, but I can assure you this is a highly engaged board.
I would like to thank my fellow directors for their dedication, whether it be inside the boardroom, meeting with our shareholders, or working closely with our team members throughout the company. Tesla is unique. Thank you. Thank you.
Tesla is unique in how active and large our retail shareholder base is. We hope you here in this room and our shareholders joining us virtually today continue to take advantage of our shareholder platform to enhance your engagement with Tesla.
I want to give a special shout-out to our small but mighty IR team and legal team, and everyone involved in running this year's proxy campaign, both inside and outside of Tesla. There is still much to do, but it has galvanized us around the strong belief that the right things are always worth fighting for. Thank you. Now I'll hand it back. Thank you. Now I'm going to hand it back to Brandon. Thank you.
Thank you, Robyn. I will now call the meeting to order. The time is now 3:40 P.M. Central, and I declare that the polls are now open. We have already received over the past few weeks voting proxies from our stockholders. However, if you wish to vote your shares at this time, you may do so through the virtual meeting portal o r if you want to vote in person, ballots and ballot boxes are available at the front.
Tesla's board of directors has appointed Tony Carideo, a representative of the Carideo Group, to serve as the inspector of election. In addition, Broadridge Financial Services has certified that starting on April 29, 2024, the proxy materials or notice of internet availability for proxy materials were mailed or provided to all Tesla stockholders of record on April 15, 2024.
We have a majority of these outstanding shares represented at the meeting, so I declare that there is a quorum present, and that we may proceed with the meeting. The items on the agenda are as follows.
There are five Tesla proposals: the election of two Class II directors, James Murdoch and Kimbal Musk, to serve for a term of three years or until their respective successors are duly elected and qualified. To approve executive compensation on a non-advisory basis. To approve the redomestication of Tesla from Delaware to Texas via conversion.
To ratify the 100% performance-based stock option award to Elon Musk that was previously approved by stockholders in 2018. To ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as Tesla's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year 2024.
Tesla's board has recommended that our stockholders vote for each of the two director nominees and for each of the four other Tesla proposals. We have also received seven stockholder proposals that are described in the proxy statement. I would like to remind our stockholders that Tesla's board has prepared a statement in opposition to these proposals, which also appear in our proxy statement.
Let's turn to those seven stockholder proposals. The first one is an advisory vote regarding reduction of director terms to one year. Our board has recommended that our stockholders vote against this, as explained in the proxy. This stockholder proposal is proposed by Mr. James McRitchie, who has prepared a pre-recorded message.
Thank you. We presented a similar proposal in 2021. 55% supported it, even though the board put up a competing proposal, accountability every other year instead of every year. Neither received the required 67% of shares owned. 90% of the S&P 500 have a declassified board. Most institutional shareholders will again support our proposal. Join them.
The recent Delaware court case identified three legal deficiencies at Tesla. Directors were not independent, the facts of the pay plan presented to investors were misleading, and the board failed to negotiate properly.
A major part of the cure is declassifying the board so shareholders can hold directors accountable or submit their own nominations. Matt Moscardi of Free Float calls proposal number six the most important vote today, since it may enable investors to change the board, bringing new skills and professionalism. John Chevedden's simple majority vote is the other crucial vote.
Another important endorser is Nell Minow, co-founder of companies including Proxy Advisor ISS. The Musk premium is already eroding. Tesla is Musk's liquid piggy bank since it's publicly traded. His other companies are not. Either he sticks around long enough to use our shareholder capital to fund his other ventures, or he shifts his attention sooner if we reject his pay package and turn off the money tap.
Bite the bullet. Prepare for a future that doesn't depend on a superhero dictatorship. We need to transition from a board dominated by friends and family to one of expert independent directors in engineering, software, and other relevant fields. Musk is a genius. I'm saddened to see him focus his attention elsewhere, but it is happening. Don't let him siphon off more from Tesla.
We need to transition to a more democratic Tesla that can attract customers, employees, and shareholders seeking a better world ahead. Again, vote for number six and seven. Declassify the board for accountability. Lower the voting threshold for more flexibility. Vote now before the polls are closed. Your vote can make a significant difference in our future. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McRitchie. As a reminder, the board's response was contained in our proxy statement. The second stockholder proposal is an advisory vote regarding simple majority provisions in our governing documents.
Our board has recommended against and set forth for the reasons in the proxy. This stockholder proposal is proposed by Mr. John Chevedden, who is on the line to present this proposal. Mr. Chevedden, I would like to invite you to speak. You will have three minutes.
Hello, this is John Chevedden. Proposal seven, simple majority vote. Tesla's request that the board of directors take the necessary steps so that each voting requirement in the charter and bylaws that calls for a greater than simple majority vote be replaced by a requirement for a majority of the votes cast for and against such proposals or a simple majority.
This includes making the necessary changes in plain English. This proposal seven is the exact same concept that the Tesla board of directors supported at the 2022 Tesla annual meeting. The 2022 Tesla board of directors proposal then won 98% support from the Tesla shareholders who voted.
The board of directors version of this proposal would have been adopted earlier if the board of directors had only made a slight effort to encourage more Tesla shareholders to vote for their proposal.
This simple majority vote standard proposal will help improve Tesla shareholder rights. Tesla now scores a dismal 10 in shareholder rights, with 10 being the worst possible score. The Tesla board of directors supported this proposal concept in 2022 and should do so today.
Shareholder rights and a simple majority vote standar d are all the more important when Tesla has a CEO, Elon Musk, who is threatening to give less attention to Tesla and threatening to withhold advanced technology from Tesla unless he gets a $56 billion paycheck.
Never before have shareholders been under such duress when asked to approve an outrageous $56 billion CEO paycheck. Plus, there is no promise with a $56 billion paycheck that Mr. Musk will devote any minimum percentage of his time to Tesla or pursue any minimum amount of advanced technology at Tesla.
Ross Gerber of the investment firm Gerber Kawasaki said, "I believe the Tesla board of directors is the most conflicted, least independent, and most incapable board of directors in the history of business. Please vote yes, simple majority vote Proposal seven.
Thank you, Mr. Chevedden. As a reminder, the board's response is set forth in the proxy. Our third stockholder proposal is an advisory vote regarding annual reporting on anti-harassment and discrimination efforts. Our board has recommended against for the reasons set forth in the proxy.
This stockholder proposal is proposed by the New York State Common Retirement Fund as the lead filer, which has requested that Dr. Kristin Hull, as represented for Nia Impact Capital as co-filer for this proposal, present this proposal. Dr. Hull, I would like to invite you to speak. You have three minutes.
Thank you. Hello. I'm Dr. Kristin Hull of Nia Impact Capital. I'm here on behalf of lead filer, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, trustee of New York State Retirement Fund, owner of Tesla shares valued at over $650 million as of March of this year. I'm here as a co-filer of Proposal eight.
The fund is a significant long-term owner of Tesla and has an explicit focus on investing in climate solutions. Longview Large Cap Fund, through its trustee Amalgamated Bank, AP7, and Arjuna join us in filing this resolution.
Our firm name Nia means intention and purpose. We invest only in those companies we see building toward a better world, a sustainable and inclusive future. As the founder of Nia, I had been proud in our early ownership of Tesla.
I saw the potential and the need for innovation in the automotive and the clean energy market space. However, when looking under the frunk, we find failures in workplace management, one of the most important components of any business. Employees need to be hired, trained, motivated, and engaged to do high-quality work. We need those employees to be able to contribute to their top ability.
To do so, they must feel both physically and emotionally safe at work. Investors are requesting the report outlined in Proposal eight because workplace abuse, harassment, and discrimination have no place at Tesla. They can result in substantial costs, including employee turnover, increased absenteeism, and reduced productivity, as well as legal costs, all of which can, in fact, shareholders' investments in the company.
They may also lead to difficulties in recruiting high-quality employees, something that Tesla needs to remain innovative and at the forefront of a quickly moving technological landscape. We have expressed concerns about Tesla's workplace for years. Year- after- year, more harassment and discrimination allegations have emerged with fe w visible improvements in Tesla's people management policies or practices to assuage our concerns.
Lawsuits and class actions before Tesla now involve thousands of employees, with allegations including repeated use of racial epithets by managers and employees, segregation and discrimination against non-white employees in job assignments, pay and promotion, and retaliation when employees report their experiences.
These concerns are why I now formally move Proposal eight, requesting that Tesla's board commission an independent report on the effectiveness of the company's efforts to prevent harassment and discrimination within this revolutionary and innovative workspace. Thank you.
Great. Thank you, Dr. Hull. The board's response is set forth in the proxy materials. Let's turn to the fourth stockholder proposal, which is an advisory vote regarding the adoption of freedom of association and collective bargaining policy. Our board has recommended against for the reasons set forth in the proxy. This stockholder proposal is proposed by SOC Investment Group, whose representative Tejal Patel has prepared a pre-recorded message.
Hello. I'm Tejal Patel, the executive director of the SOC Investment Group, and I hereby move Proposal nine, a shareholder proposal requesting that Tesla Board of Directors adopt and disclose a non-interference and collective bargaining policy that upholds international labor rights standards in its operations.
This resolution was submitted with other co-filers, and we are concerned that Tesla's existing policy fails to clearly explain how conflicts between international and local labor law will be resolved and because of clear indications that Tesla is not adhering to its current policy despite the operational, legal, human capital management, and reputational risks involved.
We recognize that Tesla revised its global human rights policy in April 2023 to explicitly refer to the rights of workers to free association and collective bargaining, but these revisions were fatally compromised.
The statement committing to respect these rights includes the qualifier in conformance with local law rather than referencing the often higher international human rights standards, suggesting that Tesla respects these rights only as explicitly required by local laws. Numerous signs suggest that Tesla is not respecting its workers' fundamental rights.
In Sweden, Tesla has faced months-long strikes and boycotts over what has been characterized as a refusal to bargain. Moreover, as part of its reporting on the situation, Reuters wrote that Tesla has a policy of not signing collective agreements, which, if true, would directly contravene the company's current policy.
In Germany, Tesla faces allegations of refusal to bargain and poor working conditions. In the United States, Tesla has had adverse decisions by the full National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals over labor rights violations.
Just last month, the NLRB issued a complaint alleging that restrictions in Tesla's workplace technology policy served to unlawfully discourage employees from joining unions or acting concertedly. It is also relevant for shareholders to consider the broader human capital management risks Tesla faces, including reports of higher health and safety violations and injury rates than peers and numerous lawsuits alleging of hostile work environments.
Freedom of association and collective bargaining are considered enabling rights, meaning that they empower workers to effectively advocate for additional labor rights, including the right to a safe and healthy workplace free from discrimination.
The adoption of a comprehensive labor rights policy that clearly articulates a commitment to non-interference, good faith collective bargaining, and adherence to higher international standards would help Tesla better mitigate these human capital management risks as well as operational and reputational risks like we are seeing in Sweden. Therefore, we urge you to vote for item nine. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Patel. The board's response is set forth in the proxy. The fifth stockholder proposal is an advisory vote regarding reporting on effects and risks associated with electromagnetic radiation and wireless technologies.
Our board has recommended against for the reasons set forth in the proxy. This stockholder proposal is proposed by Lendri Purcell, whose representative Dr. Devra Davis has prepared a pre-recorded message.
I am Devra Davis , founder of Environmental Health Trust. I am speaking with you today on behalf of shareholder Lendri Purcell regarding her proposal seeking an annual report on the risks for magnetic fields and wireless radiation in their products.
I'm also speaking on behalf of millions of young children, infants and toddlers, and pregnant women who are more vulnerable to wireless radiation according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
I'm the founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology from the National Academy of Sciences, and I've published more than 220 scientific articles on environmental health and have concluded, along with hundreds of other experts, that current exposures to non-ionizing electromagnetic fields called EMF constitute a serious and unrecognized public health risk.
Tesla vehicles operate with a 1,200-pound battery that emits magnetic fields and also uses wireless equipment such as Wi-Fi and radar emitting wireless radiation. Tesla should provide transparent information on measured exposures and efforts to reduce them. The World Health Organization has concluded that both low levels of EMF and microwave or cellular radiation are, quote, "possible carcinogens," the same category as some pesticides and gasoline.
The companies that provide secondary insurance, like Lloyd's of London and Swiss Re, have long considered electromagnetic fields to be uninsurable, comparable to asbestos, due to potential health and environmental damages. Tesla shareholders have a right to know how the company insures itself against such risks. The fact that current levels may be legal does not mean they are safe. In fact, U.S. regulations were set more than a quarter century ago.
It has been three years since the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia determined that the FCC had been, quote, "arbitrary and capricious" in its failure to consider all of the science and refusal to update wireless limits.
Tesla has failed to inform consumers about the measured levels of magnetic fields and wireless radiation within the automobile or their other products. Infants and toddlers by law are strapped into seats to protect them during crashes, but they have no protection from EMF that can go more deeply into their thinner skulls.
To mitigate risks for Tesla, the company could shield its vehicles and ensure wireless antennas could be easily turned off. Hardware and software changes can lower exposures generally. Tesla has developed extremely rigorous compliance and hazard screenings beyond regulatory requirements for certain toxic chemicals.
Investors can encourage the company to take a similar leadership role regarding reducing EMF. It's time for the company to unambiguously compete on safety regarding wireless radiation and non-ionizing radiation emitte d by its products. Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Davis. The board's response is set forth in the proxy. Let's move on to the sixth Stockholder Proposal, which is an advisory vote regarding adopting targets and reporting on metrics to assess the feasibility of integrating sustainability metrics into senior executive compensation plans.
Our board has recommended against for the reasons set forth in the proxy. This Stockholder Proposal is proposed by Tulipshare Securities Limited, whose representative Constance Ricketts has prepared a pre-recorded message.
Good afternoon. Fellow shareholders, thank you for your time. I'm Constance Ricketts, and today I'm speaking on behalf of Tulipshare in support of Proposal 11, urging Tesla to integrate sustainability metrics, including diversity among senior executives, into executive compensation plans.
This proposal calls for robust quantitative targets and transparent reporting to both resolve executive pay plan controversies and ensure our company's long-term stability and success. Diversity and independence in leadership are essential for innovation and enhanced decision-making, while sustainability metrics in executive compensation reflect alignment with regulatory pressures, investor expectations, and responsible business practices.
Despite 75% of S&P 500 companies incorporating sustainability metrics into executive pay plans, Tesla fails to do so. This is especially concerning given our mission to accelerate the world's transition to renewable energy.
The recent ruling that voided our CEO's $56 billion pay package highlighted the need for fair and negotiated compensation plans that serve stockholders' best interests. Tesla's proxy statement does not offer substantive evidence of how the voided 2018 award harms stockholder democracy or how its ratification will cure prior deficiencies and lead to a different outcome.
Likewise, the opposition to this proposal fails to show any evidence of an existing performance-based component integrated into the executive pay structure that respects established human rights due diligence processes and principles.
Instead, it cites its human rights policy that is wholly unrelated to executive compensation and doubles down on the argument that the currently contested executive pay structure is the only means of motivation to achieve our company's mission.
This commitment to the status quo essentially dismisses the ongoing controversies that Tesla must face and overcome, including softening sales, advancing competition, split focus in leadership, a 30% drop in stock price, reduced market cap, mass layoffs, human rights violations, and ongoing legal challenges.
Tesla's executives absolutely should be duly compensated for innovative and successful business. However, stockholder democracy allows us to oppose demands like 25% control of the company and the largest pay package in corporate American history via further share issuance.
We also have the right to vote for our leadership's compensation to be commensurate with financial and sustainability performance. This does not mean we do not respect our leadership's time, energy, and contributions. Quite the contrary, as it is our duty as stockholders to ensure long-term viability and success for our company.
Thank you, Ms. Ricketts. The board's response is set forth in the proxy. Let's move on to the seventh Stockholder Proposal, which is an advisory vote regarding committing to a moratorium on sourcing minerals from deep-sea mining.
Our board has recommended against for the reasons set forth in the proxy. This proposal is proposed by As You Sow, whose representative Elizabeth Levy has also recorded a pre-recorded message.
Good afternoon, Chairman, members of the board. My name is Elizabeth Levy, representing As You Sow, speaking on Proposal number 12. We know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the bottom of the ocean. Even so, a new industry is moving forward to exploit the deep sea.
We believe this industry poses risks to Tesla now and into the future. Deep-sea mining is the process of dredging the ocean floor to extract battery-related minerals. It will indiscriminately destroy habitats and obliterate life in its path.
Seabed mining could release carbon stores and toxic sediment plumes, poisoning marine food chains and disrupting sea life breeding and migration. The deep sea is complex and abundant with life. Its ecosystems are slow-growing and fragile, with little to no ability to recover from outside disturbance.
Plans are moving forward to launch the process for commercial-scale deep-sea mining with or without regulation. Tesla's membership in the OECD and IRMA mining protocols does not resolve this issue, as neither currently applies to mining in the deep sea.
Over 800 marine science and policy experts, 25 countries, 72 indigenous groups, and 48 companies are calling for a ban, moratorium, or precautionary pause on deep-sea mining. This includes Tesla's competitors BMW, Renault, Rivian, Volkswagen, and Volvo. Even General Motors has stated it does not plan to use deep-sea mine minerals.
Our company's public stance on deep-sea mining matters. Tesla is the face of the EV transition, and its ambiguous position on deep-sea mining could drive investment in this controversial industry. Conversely, a clear stance restricting Tesla's use of deep-sea minerals can drive innovation in battery mineral tech, recycling, and circularity.
With these technologies, even the most ambitious future EV use scenarios could be met without harming the deep sea. Tesla's failure to take a stand on deep-sea mining, combined with the fact that a former Tesla board director is now serving as a board member and special advisor to the CEO of The Metals Company, the very company leading the charge on deep-sea mining, raises concerns.
Such a relationship appears to imply that Tesla supports The Metals Company in its deep-sea mining activities. Committing to a moratorium will clarify expectations and reduce reputational harm to the company, assuring customers and investors that Tesla will indeed wait until science shows deep-sea mining will not cause significant or irreparable damage. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Levy. The board's response is set forth in the proxy. Please note that now is the final opportunity to submit any votes in order for them to be counted. I declare that the polls are now closed.
Based on the proxies that we have received and the votes submitted at this meeting, I'd like to announce the results on a preliminary basis. With respect to the seven stockholder proposals, our stockholders have approved the recommendations of the Tesla board on all of them except for Proposal six regarding director terms and Proposal seven regarding simple majority voting.
Now moving on to the five Tesla proposals. First, our stockholders have approved the election of our two Class II directors, James Murdoch and Kimbal Musk, to serve for a term of three years until their respe ctive successors are duly elected and qualified.
Second, our stockholders have approved executive compensation on a non-binding advisory basis. Third, our stockholders have approved the ratification of appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as Tesla's independent registered public accounting firm for the 2024 fiscal year.
Fourth, our stockholders have approved the redomestication of Tesla from Delaware to Texas. Fifth and finally, our stockholders have approved the ratification of the 100% performance-based stock option award to Elon Musk that was approved by stockholders in 2018. The meeting is now closed. With that, Tesla shareholders, let's welcome Elon Musk.
The goal is to give people hope that there is a path to a fully sustainable global economy, that we are on that path, that we are accelerating that path, and that so long as we don't get complacent about it, it will happen.
This was really the beginning of the end of the Tesla bubble. I actually think the company could go bust.
Tesla's Model Y is the world's best-selling car, beating out Toyota's RAV4 and its Corolla models.
Regarding FSD version 12, it's profound. The rate of improvement is rapid. It might be the biggest asset value appreciation in history when you can do unsupervised Full Self-Driving.
I mean, that just sounds like a story stock, autonomous taxi. I mean, can you really balance your checkbook with, you know, sort of pie in the sky predictions like that?
If you ask the wrong question, the right answer is impossible. My prediction is that a majority of Tesla's long-term value will be Optimus a nd that prediction, I'm very confident of. It's very rare a product comes along that is seemingly impossible that experts said would never be made a nd this is one of those times.
Finally, the future will look like the future. People say, like, "Why did you make it bulletproof?" I'm like, "Why not?" Energy storage deployments, a Megapack in particular, reached an all-time high in Q1, leading to record profitability for the energy business.
This is the machine that builds the machine, and the factory is the product. This building is the most advanced car factory that Earth has ever seen.
If you value Tesla as an auto company, it's just the wrong framework. If somebody doesn't believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company. But we will, a nd we are.
Hey, guys. Welcome. Welcome to the Tesla shareholder meeting. I just want to start off by saying, "Hot damn, I love you guys." Yeah. We have the most awesome shareholder base. I mean, it's just incredible. Any public company, it's incredible. Wow.
So, and, you know, we've got a great sort of shareholder meeting here to recap the achievements of the company and tell you about where we're going a nd it's, I think it's incredible. I think we're not just opening a new chapter for Tesla. We're starting a new book. Okay. So those of you who have been following Tesla closely understand, like, you get it, you know?
The important thing is you get it. I mean, it's so the, yeah, where things are going, I think, is just going to be absolutely mind-blowing. You know, we're obviously making great progress in solving the sustainable energy problem, you know, with electric vehicles, with stationary storage, with solar.
T hen in terms of, I think in terms of the value of the company, autonomy is just such a mind-blowing thing that, like I said, you guys understand, but I think most of the world does not yet understand.
Y ou know, in talking to a lot of the sort of big institutional investors, when they're often in like New York and they don't drive cars, so I'll be like, "Have you driven our car o r have you tried self-driving, you know, the version 12.3?" T hey're like, "Oh, no." "Okay. Well, you should try it. That would be a good thing to do."
I f you just plot the points on the curve of how well autonomy is progressing and just believe the curve, it's headed towards unsupervised Full Self-Driving very quickly at an exponential pace. Yeah, it's, I mean, so. It's really as simple as that a nd in fact, I'd invite you to just do it personally. Just say, "Okay, with each release, how many miles do you drive before you have to intervene?"
It's like literally that simple. W ith each release, you'll see there's a big improvement, big improvement, and it looks like an exponential. So, and it's very clear that that will actually go to the point where it is actually far safer than a person driving the car.
I have some insight into, you know, the next releases because we've got basically for every release that's on the road, we kind of see what the next generation release is and a little bit about the release after that. So we have some insight into where it's going, and it's really amazing. No question whatsoever that it will far exceed human safety. Yeah, no question.
So, and I think, you know, I have mentioned this, but like sometimes it's like helpful to sort of reiterate and connect some of the dots because sometimes people wonder, "Well, how do you go from this big fleet to actually monetizing the fleet in an autonomous situation?" I t's actually a combination of like, it's like Airbnb and Uber to some degree.
So like there'll be some cars that Tesla owns itself in kind of like an Uber fashion, but then for the fleet that is owned by our customers, it will be like an Airbnb thing. You can add or subtract your car to the fleet whenever you want.
So you can say like, "I'm going away for a week." Just one tap on your Tesla app, your car gets added to the fleet and it just makes money for you while you're gone. Yeah. So you can say, you can add it to the fleet for a few hours, for a few d ays, for a few weeks.
Whenever you want it back, you can say, "Come back and car will come right back." I'm highly confident that it will far exceed the value, like the revenue made by the owner of the car will far exceed the actual monthly payment.
Then Tesla will obvi ously take a rev share on that, but most of the money will go to the owner of the car. This is actually going to work. This is what will happen. I mean, mark my words. This is simply a matter of time.
Now, admittedly, I'm a little optimistic sometimes. You know, I'm you know, so I don't have complete lack of self-awareness. But if I wasn't optimistic, this wouldn't exist. This factory wouldn't exist, you know? You know, that's why my brother, who's awesome, he's here, just got re-elected. No, sorry. Those things.
So like a little anecdote, like when we were kids in school, my brother would tell me the wrong time for the bus so that I wouldn't miss the bus. T hen I'd be upset with him, like, "Why did you tell me the bus was going to come earlier than it was?" H e's like, "Well, because otherwise you'd be late for the bus." This is an actual thing that would happen.
So I guess I've been sort of pathologically optimistic from birth. But that's the reason this is all this stuff is happening anyway. It's like I got to be somewhat pathologically optimistic. But I do deliver in the end. That's the important thing. So, yeah, and it's really just going to be something else. I mentioned this before, but like for ARK Invest, I'd recommend reading the ARK Invest analysis. That's the most accurate.
There may be, you know, more accurate ones, but the most accurate sort of analysis of the potential of autonomy, the most accurate that I'm aware of is Cathie Wood's ARK Invest. So, and if I recall correctly, they predicted somewhere over a $5 trillion valuation for Tesla just based on vehicle autonomy, not counting Optimus.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. So, so I think just based on vehicle autonomy, we can 10x, 110x the value of the company. I believe that's what will happen. Hey, I noticed just, what do you know? It's 4:20 P.M. I just noticed that. So, you know. S o I think that's actually, I think that's pretty accurate.
But it actually gets way crazier when you think about the Optimus robot, which is really a humanoid robot that is intended to, you know, be able to do anything you want it to do, to be, you know, your companion. It can be at your house. It can sort of babysit your kids. It could teach them, be a teacher. It, you know, it can do factory stuff.
Like I think that the ultimate ratio of, you say, how many super useful humanoid helper droids do you want? Like who doesn't want a C-3PO, you know? You know, but a C-3PO + R2-D2+ , you know, plus plus. It would be pretty awesome. I think everyone in the world is going to want one. Like literally everyone. T hen there will be obviously robots in industry making stuff.
So, I mean, I think the ratio of humanoid robots to humans will probably be at least 2 -1 , something like that. 1 - 1 for sure. So which means like somewhere on the order of 10 billion humanoid robots. Maybe 20 or 30 a nd so then it's like, okay, well let's say, you know, you kind of make, let's say the build rate is, I think the build rate will be probably something ultimately like 1 billion a year, humanoid robots.
Like actually. I f Tesla just has a 10% share of that, and it might be a lot more than 10% a nd there's, you know, who make like 100 million Optimus units a year. J ust, I mean, for reference, the auto industry is roughly 100 million vehicles per year. So that, you know, sort of similar ballpark, at least within an order of magnitude.
I think we could make one for a cost of maybe at really high scale of about $10,000. It's smaller, it'll be less expensive than a car. So, and I think if you sell it for $20,000 or something, this is at large scale volume, Tesla would basically make about $1 trillion of profit a year from that.
So, yeah. If the price earnings multiple is say on a 20 or 25, something like that, that would mean a $20 trillion market cap from Optimus alone and probably 5-10 from autonomous vehicles. So like I think it's actually conceivable. It's within the realm of possibility for Tesla to achieve a valuation 10 x that of the most valuable company today. So when I say this is like we're starting a new book, I mean, it's going to be the best book. Next level.
Next, next, next, next level. Oh, no, we need to make sure these robots are nice to us and, you know, that's very important. So anyway, so with that, let me get into the presentation. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, bla blah. Oh man. I think it might be worth us just putting a word limit on future shareholder Tesla proposals.
It's like, it's like you can't have like a novel length, you know, it's kind of like you can't have a whole novel as a Tesla proposal. So anyway, as you can see, our impact is accelerating. You know, we're starting to make a real noticeable dent in carbon emissions. So we're really, you know, making a lot of progress towards achieving our goal of sustainability.
One of the effects of autonomy is actually going to be an even greater effect on carbon emissions because I suspect that we'll go from passenger cars having about 10 hours of usage per week, about an hour and a half per day, to probably 1/3 of the hours in the week, maybe 50, 55 hours, which means the same car will be used 5x more often.
So you need a certain amount of resources to make the car, but it'll have 5x the usage, in my opinion. I think that's quite likely, which will be an even more dramatic impact on carbon emissions. So, you know, we care a lot about sustainable manufacturing. Our factories are beautiful. Like you walk around the factory, it's actually, you know, contrary to these like what you read in the press, it's like a good vibe in the factory.
Like people are smiling and happy. It's like, it's nice. S o yeah. So I mean, we do care, we actually do care a lot at Tesla about doing the right thing a nd we, you know, we're not going to be perfect, but we do care a lot about doing the right thing. So our vehicles are water efficient, energy efficient.
You know, we try whenever possible to use renewables for powering the factory a nd, you know, do our best to do the right thing. Our batteries are lasting a lot longer. I got too many things in my hand. Anyway, the batteries are lasting a lot longer, which is good. Safety is good in the factory. We're improving the affordability of EVs. You know, Model Y is comparable to BMW X3, but its actual cost of ownership on a monthly basis is much lower.
We were number one in EVs globally last year. So yeah. So yeah. So let's see. Congrats to the Tesla team on making six million vehicles all time. So I mean, the Tesla fleet is really becoming very substantial. I mean, it's going to be seven million vehicles by the end of this year. Over seven million vehicles.
O ur factory in Fremont is currently the highest volume auto factory in North America , and we broke the prior production record from when it was NUMMI. So it's actually pretty wild that we have a giant car factory in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's like, it's not exactly the cheapest place to have a car factory. It's like that in the Swiss Alps or something, you know? But we still managed to make, you know, great cars at a high volume.
T hat's a testament to the great team we've got in Fremont. So congrats to the Fremont team. Y ou know, a lot of people were saying the Cybertruck is like fake. It's never going to come out. You know, and now we're shipping a lot of Cybertrucks. We hit a weekly record of 1,300.
So, and you know, I think with the Cybertruck, it really is something special. Like people sometimes have like different opinions on the Cybertruck. But if you really want to know if something is cool, if it's a great product, like show it to a kid. Okay. Like no filter. Okay.
The kids got like no filter, like a five-year-old, six-year-old, something like that, and or even three-year-old, and say, "Which car do you like?" Cybertruck. So it's like, that's how you know. I t's finally something that it just looks like the future.
It's, and it drives so well. You know, it's comfortable. It's just a fantastic product. I think it's, I think it's our best product a nd it's a lot of innovation. It's got a 48-volt low voltage system. Finally, instead of 12 volts, 800-volt drivetrain, the world's biggest castings. You know, it's bulletproof.
All the cool things can, you know, outpull an F-350 diesel, which is a very impressive truck. I t can, you know, it can do a quarter mile faster than a Porsche 911 while towing a Porsche 911. So that's insane.
So yeah. I f you think about it, like how often do companies make products that move your heart, that are really special? It's so rare. I think this is one of them. So yeah. W e launched the upgraded 3, which is actually a fantastic car. I recommend trying it out.
It's really a great car. It's only $216 after gas savings. Like total cost of ownership, it's basically $200-something when compared to a gasoline car, a similar gasoline car. So it's really a great deal and a fun car a nd the performance, Model 3 Performance is, well, it's like, you know, faster than a Porsche 911. It's just a great, great car.
So yeah. So yeah. Yeah. O f course, Model Y became the best-selling vehicle globally, a nd this is something that we predicted. So you know, I think I said in like 2022, it would, Model Y would be the biggest car in the world by dollar volume sales. T hen 2023, it would be the biggest in unit volume, a nd it was. A gain, this year, it will be the best-selling car on earth. So yeah.
We were, obviously, we got the Tesla Semi. You know, we're in low volume production of the Tesla Semi. Just last week, I approved the plans for volume production of the Tesla Semi. We're going to make a lot of semi trucks. We're going to start off with, yeah, it's something I think it'll actually move the needle financially.
It's not like a, it's not a small thing. The thing about like commercial vehicles is that companies that use them are super objective. It's not like, it's actually, I mean, obviously we're going to make it have cool style and be an awesome car, b ut for commercial vehicles, the companies that make the buying decisions, they just look at it and say like, what are the numbers? Like, is this cost less to transport or cost more to transport than, say, a diesel truck?
The thing is that the economics are much better than a diesel truck. It's kind of basically a no-brainer. If you're a transport company, you don't use an electric Tesla Electric Semi, you're just losing money. Why would you do that? Do you not like money? Okay. But if you do like money, then I recommend using the Tesla Semi.
So I think this is really going to actually sell at a scale that people will be surprised at and will actually move the needle financially and do a lot of good. A lso for CO2 and sustainability, because semis are driven all the time, actually even at much smaller numbers, they have a very big effect on total carbon emissions solved. So obviously we've got some new products that we're working on under the covers.
I think these are, I think these are going to be pretty special. So you know, some of them, I think people maybe at first may think, "Oh, it's not going to be that amazing," but just wait. It will be. So our Supercharger network is continuing to grow. You know, rumors of the death of the Supercharger are greatly exaggerated.
We are in fact continuing to grow the Supercharger network significantly. In fact, this year, I think we will put more, deploy more Superchargers this year that are actually working than the rest of industry combined. Just FYI.
So now we are going to be more careful about like, you know, the capital efficiency of where we deploy Superchargers. But for sure, any place that has congestion, any sort of missing parts of the map that we're missing, we're going to put the Superchargers there.
So even for the remainder of the year, we expect to spend about $500 million on Supercharger deployment. So it's very significant and it'll be a well-spent $500 million. So this is, you know, it's a lot. So, and this is actually not showing a bunch of new markets that will be opening up later this year and next.
So we're obviously, we want Tesla to be worldwide and there's still a lot of countries that we, you know, have zero to very few Teslas a nd we obviously, we want Tesla everywhere. So there are a lot of new markets that we're going to open up later this year and next. We're also opening the Superchargers to other companies with the, that's the adapter to the old, somewhat clunky connector. But our goal is to be helpful to other car companies.
So any other car companies that are going electric, we do want to be helpful to them with our Supercharger network. So we're providing them with adapters and enabling them to have access to the Tesla Supercharging network because we think it's better to do that than to create a walled garden that inhibits EV growth.
Oops. There was a bit of latency here. W e're also innovating a lot in battery production with the 4680 that's built right here a nd it is, it's a hard problem. You know, like there are entire companies that just make battery cells. That's all they do, but we're making good progress.
Like all the Cybertrucks that you see use the Tesla 4680 cell. W e have a clear path to the 4680 being, we think, probably the most competitive cell from a manufacturing efficiency standpoint.
B ut it is a hard problem, I have to say. There's quite a lot of brain damage required to be good at cell manufacturing. It's like a brain damage high. But I think it does give Tesla resilience in the face of if there are changes in the, I don't know, geopolitical situation somehow.
But like it's good to have some independence in cell manufacturing. So yeah, and we're making steady progress a nd we also have the cathode refinery, which you can see behind the main factory. So you can sort of see it in the picture there. That's the cathode refinery a nd then we've got the lithium refinery in South Texas. S o we're just making sure we've kind of got the pieces of the puzzle.
I mean, if you were to look at sort of a video of how Tesla does, say, cathode and lithium refining and how the rest of industry does it, it's night and day. I mean, you can sort of eat off the floor in the Tesla refinery. I would not recommend doing so in the others. You know, it's really, it's definitely going very, very vertical here. But I think this is a, it's a wise investment that will pay off more than people realize.
So, I don't think this thing's working. This year, we're also on track to complete a massive number of energy deployments. That is a gigantic increase in deployment capability. We're really, we seem to be tracking to sort of a 200%-300% year-over-year growth in energy storage deployment and stationary pack. It's giant.
The limiting factor really is being able to build more Megapacks and build more Powerwalls. So we're ramping up production of the Powerwall 3, which is really a game changer for at the personal level.
The Powerwall 3, it usually takes about three iterations of any given technology to really, for it to be something where it's like, okay, now we're really hitting the sweet spot. So Powerwall 3 is like an epic product. The Megapack is also, it's, I'd call it sort of iteration two of the Megapack is also an epic product with the Megapack 3, which is probably a couple of years away. We'll start actually absorbing more and more of the substation of the sort of power electronics.
So I sort of think you want to get to the point with the Megapack where you can literally just take the high voltage power lines and plug them in. Just, there's no substation. We just plug them in. Just drop them down and drop it down and plug it in , and now it works. Which is like mind-blowing for the utility industry, by the way. Like, they're like, what?
Yeah. You just plug the wires in and it'll work for very high voltage. So that I think is actually going to be a major. So this is, anyway, so yeah, this is great. Excellent work by the energy storage team. Services and other are also looking good. So we're actually now making money on the services and other stuff. So this is kind of a big deal. Great. Yeah. So let's see. Yeah.
Tesla is obviously way more than a car company. You know, we do a lot of software at Tesla. You know, about, I don't know, roughly half the, or a very huge percentage of the engineering we do is actually software engineering. So Tesla's, I'd say as much a software company as it is a hardware company.
This is a very big deal because car companies are not software companies normally. So this matters a lot. So things like our automated software for energy storage, all of the software that controls the cars, the Megapacks, the Powerwalls, the solar, obviously for AI and Full Self-Driving are a big deal, insurance, service and collision. Tesla also writes a lot of software internally that helps, that like we call like the Tesla operating system internally that is head and shoulders above what any other company has.
I think probably better than any Fortune 500 company. The Tesla internal software is just way better. So it's, yeah, it's just far more than what people normally think of as a car company. Tesla is also the leader in real-world AI. So there's really, this is a big deal.
Like Tesla is ahead of Google, Meta, you know, OpenAI, anyone on real-world software actually look, taking in video and making decisions based on video. No one can, no one is even close a nd it's getting better, I say with each passing month, if not each passing week. So yeah. I t's also worth noting that Tesla is actually pretty good at chip design.
So the AI inference chip that was designed by Tesla that's in cars, we had sort of our Hardware 3 AI inference cars made in the, you know, over the past year have the Hardware 4. We've just completed design on Hardware 5, which we're now calling AI 5 because it really is, there still actually is not a chip from NVIDIA or from, and I have a lot of respect for NVIDIA, from any company that we would prefer to put in our car that is better than what we have in the car.
So we started from scratch in chip design, just as we started from scratch in AI software and have the best real-world AI software and the best AI inference chip in the world from nothing. So this is, you know, a big deal. T he capability of the chips in the car is dramatic.
Like, I mean, right now all the cars are actually training, like we have Hardware 4 run Hardware 3 in emulation mode. So we'll continue to make significant progress in Hardware 3, but later this year we'll actually bifurcate, continue wor king on Hardware 3, sort of on training on Hardware 3, but then do separate training on Hardware 4.
That'll be the sort of training cluster that we're building at the south side of the Gigafactory. T hat'll be dedicated Hardware 4 video and inference. Y ou know, so the Hardware 4 has cameras that have about 4x or 5 x better resolution a nd depending on how you count the sort of Hardware 4, it's about anywhere from 3x to 8 x better than Hardware 3. So everything you're seeing thus far is just Hardware 3 a nd we still have a long way to go before we reach the limits of Hardware 3.
So Hardware 3, I think we'll still, we'll do amazing things. But Hardware 4, I think we'll probably do about 5x better. Then Hardware 5, which comes out in about 18 months or so, is 10x more capable than Hardware 4. It's like a, so if you know NVIDIA hardware, it's sort of a B200 class computer.
So, you know, that's like this, so what we'll just progressively do is improve how many nines of reliability the car gets. T hen of course that will go into Optimus as well. So the same chip will go into, you know, Hardware 4 will go into Optimus, is an Optimus.
Hardware AI 5, which we're calling switching from Hardware 5 to AI 5, will be in Optimus and in all cars in about 18 months. It's really just a staggering amount of compute. It's very power efficient compute. It's got to be, because if you're in a mobile application like a humanoid robot or a car, you can't just be socking down 10 kW, you know, like you can in a data center.
You've got to be very power efficient. The, you know, sort of Hardware 3 and 4 are only a few hundred watts. Yeah. Yeah. This is hard. No Hardware 5 will be able to go probably up to about 700 W or 800 W b ut it'll power fluctuate contingent upon the complexity of the scene that it is in.
So if it is in a, you know, parking lot station area, it's like, you know, you know, don't have to think very much, just like a person. Like if you're in a complicated traffic scenario, you've got to think a lot more than if you're just cruising along, you know, on an empty road. But something that I think is potentially interesting down the road is like at some point the Tesla fleet, I think will probably be, you know, over 100 million vehicles.
I f each vehicle has 1 kW of efficient inference compute, I think there's a, I think there's a sort of an Amazon Web Services, AWS type opportunity because if you've got 100 million vehicles with 1 kW of efficient inference compute, you've got 100 GW of compute. Like 100 GW of compute is a lot.
It's distributed all over the world. So even so when the car is not in autonomous mode, which I think probably is, you know, doing robotaxi work maybe 50, 60 hours a week, but at 100 hours a week, it's not, it's probably stationary. So there's 100 hours of 100 GW of inference compute, which I think we should use. Why not?
You know, when people looked at Amazon, which started out, I would say as an online bookseller and as an, you know, as going to be like this incredible place where you can buy anything. T hen they, and then Amazon Web Services, like will they go to these computers that only really see peak usage sometimes? But what are they going to do when it's not peak usage? S ometimes Amazon servers are down at like 10%.
So that's when they said, well, let's do Amazon Web Services. T hen Amazon Web Services became more valuable than the entire rest of Amazon. A nyway, I think there's some kind of opportunity there that's pretty significant for Tesla down the road. You know, again, that's really, nobody's really factoring that in.
But I think that actually will be quite significant. We also are no longer compute constrained for training. So I check in with the team, it's like, is there anything we could do to improve the pace of progress with respect to training and inference?
Currently that is not the limiting factor. In fact, the limiting factor right now is that the amount of miles between interventions is so long that it takes quite a while to figure out which version is better than the other version because none of them are requiring any interventions.
So it's like, you know, if you start getting to like thousands of miles between interventions or you're like 10,000 mi to get an intervention, then like, well, the average person only drives about 10,000 mi in a year a nd if it's in an urban environment and the average speed is 20 mi an hour, I mean, so our professional test drivers get pretty bored, frankly. You know, they're like, "Okay, I drove all week and there was no intervention." Like the highlight of the week would be like, "Yes, an intervention, finally." It's like getting to that point.
So this is where actually having a giant fleet is extremely important because we can deploy a new FSD model and run it in shadow mode and see how well it performs, you know, compare how the human drives the car versus the new self-driving build and then analyze that delta in shadow mode, like the shadow knows or doesn't know, as the case may be.
T hen be able to assess by getting billions of miles very quickly with the giant fleet. Like that basically that data engine is incredibly helpful. Like actually it's not possible to solve the self-driving problem without having millions of vehicles on the road. So that's actually the, it's like figuring out clever ways to test which, how good the next build, FSD build is, is actually the limiting factor right now.
Then of course, like I said, we are building another training data center right here, which will be dedicated to Hardware 4 training. So we'll bifurcate Hardware 3 and Hardware 4 training later this year. We'll keep improving Hardware 3, but we're going to uncork the full capability of Hardware 4 as well.
So yeah. I think most people here have tried out version 12. We did say like sort of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, Full Self-Driving would be version 12. So we are actually just keeping the version arbitrarily at 12 and then like calling it 12.4, 12.3, 12.4, 12.5. But it's actually really like version 13, version 14. But anyway, this is an arbitrary designation. So 12.4 is actually like a whole different version than 12.3 and 12.5 is a whole different version than 12.4.
So you'll see really giant improvements, I think sometimes factor of 10 improvements between successive versions. T hen as I mentioned, the way it'll work for the existing fleet is you'll be able to add or subtract your car to the fleet as you'd like a nd there will also be Tesla-owned cars.
So it'll be a combination of like Uber plus Airbnb. But it'll be pretty wild that there'll be a software update and then the whole fleet suddenly becomes accessible. It's like suddenly you've got 7 million, 10 million cars that can, ultimately tens of millions of cars that can do autonomous driving and instead of being used 10 hours a week, it can be used 50 or 60 hours a week.
So it's pretty wild to just, you know, be in Palo Alto with a bunch of cubes and then a humanoid robot just walks past. We've made a massive amount of progress with Optimus in a short period of time from someone pretending to be a robot dancing in a suit to a pretty hodgepodgey robot to a robot that is actually doing useful tasks in the factory today.
So we have 2 Optimus robots in our Fremont factory that are doing basically this task, which is taking cells off the end of the line and placing them in a shipping container. Ye ah, we actually have quite a few of these cruising around our offices in Palo Alto. So there's, and I think we've got kind of like one major hardware revision, which should be done by the end of this year or early next before, and then we'll move into a limited production next year of Optimus.
Limited production for use in our factories where we'll test out the product kind of, you know, as I say, sort of eat our own dog food or whatever the electronic equivalent of that is , but I think like next year, my prediction is next year we'll have over 1,000, maybe a few thousand Optimus robots working at Tesla. T hings are going to scale up very rapidly from there.
So we'll iron out the bugs. It'll like the degree of autonomy will be radically better. You'll just literally be able to talk to it and say, please do this task or I'm going to show you something. Now do that, the thing that I'm showing you. Y ou know, get to the point where it can watch a video of something like a person and then learn just by looking at that video and do that task.
So yeah. So really it's going to be quite something. I'm confident of the prediction that there will be more, like the ratio of humanoid robots to humans will be greater than 1 - 1. So that there'll be, you know, more than 10 billion humanoid robots in the world, probably 20 or more. Tesla is going to be by far the leader in that.
You're seeing a lot of robot startups, but I think it's actually very challenging to do Optimus as a robot startup because what we found to make Optimus work, we've had to design every design from first principles, from scratch, every part of the robot. So the motors, the gearbox, the sensors, the power electronics, the communication system, everything had to be done from scratch. We found that there's basically nothing. There's no supply chain.
So even though there are many electric motors made in the world, there's no supply chain for the types of motors and sensors and gearboxes that are needed for a humanoid robot. I mean, what you're seeing here is our current generation hand and arm, but our next generation, which has 11 degrees of freedom, our next generation has 22 degrees of freedom. It will be able to play the piano.
So it's really like, wow. Now of course, like I said, we need to make sure we don't have the Terminator scenario. That's very important. So safety of the humanoid robot will be very important. But because it requires so much ground-up design, designing every motor, gearbox, sensor, power electronics from scratch, it's very hard for a startup to, if not impossible for a startup to replicate that. But at Tesla, we have the world's best electrical engineering.
I think we've got the world's best mechanical engineering for gearboxes and for electric motors, power electronics. So you know, we have the resources to do that. It applies quite well. T hen you also have to have the brain.
Y ou need a power-efficient inference computer, which we've got for the car and we'll be using in Optimus. You need AI, you need to be the best in real-world AI, and Tesla is the best in real-world AI. So you need all of these, you need a very strong hand of cards in order to make a compelling robot. T hen you also need to be very good at scale manufacturing.
So in order to have the robot not cost like hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to make it cost like $10,000 or $20,000, you actually need to design for manufacturing and be very good at manufacturing a nd what in my experience, prototypes are easy compared to volume manufacturing. Prototypes are easy, production is hard, relatively speaking.
So Tesla has the production capability, it has the engineering capability, and it has the AI hardware and software capability. E ven the most optimistic estimates that I've seen for Optimus, the Optimus, I think undercount the magnitude of what this robot will be able to do. You know, as I said at the beginning of the presentation, you know, I agree with the Ark Invest analysis that autonomous transport is called sort of a $5-$7 trillion market cap situation.
Optimus, I think, is a $25, literally $25 trillion market cap situation. Now I don't want to trivialize what's necessary to get there. I mean, it's an immense amount of work that is required to get there, like super difficult. But we are moving very fast down that road. We're going to make it happen. So thank you. I guess with that, we can go to Q&A. Sorry. Yeah. Oh, I guess we've got mics lined up. Time for the mic.
If you have a question, feel free to.
Hey, Elon. Last year, I thanked you for making the world a better place for my son to live in and I wasn't clear in particular, I was referring to what you've done for the First Amendment and our rights.
Thank you.
History will not forget it and the sacrifices you made and the risks you took will pay off and have paid off.
Thank you. Yeah. Well, I very much appreciate that. You know, I think it's, you have to say like, why was the First Amendment so important? It's because, you know, people came here from places where if they spoke their mind, they'd be put in prison or killed or just shut out from society, ostracized.
So freedom of speech is absolutely fundamental to a good future, a nd yeah, that's the reason for, you know, acquiring Twitter and trying to, you know, just making it a free speech platform. I think it's, it was like, I think very important to just the future of civilization. So thank you.
Hey, Elon, my name's Ronnie. I'm on your right side. How's it going? Hey. I work for Tesla Sales in Orland Park, Illinois. I was always wondering, do you think Tesla could ever move forward towards bundling software as like a package to, you know, possibly increase take rate for FSD, you know, maybe bundle it with premium connectivity and future software options?
I think we definitely want to encourage people to try FSD. One of the things that sort of, I think probably makes sense is that when we have a significant improvement, every time we have a significant improvement in FSD, give people, you know, give all customers like a two-week free trial.
So like, hey, we've made an improvement to FSD, you know, try it for another two weeks. You know, with 12.4, we finally get rid of the steering wheel nag, which I know is driving people crazy. Like, thank heaven for small mercies.
So, you know, even just something like that, not having the steering wheel nag and obviously having a far lower intervention count, like far more miles between interventions. So I think we'll, you know, I think keep sort of offering people free trials of FSD every time we make a significant improvement. Oh, sorry. Yeah. It's when you hear the loudspeakers, you're like, ears don't work, you know.
Good afternoon. Two questions, actually. First, after $56 billion, you can afford to probably take your kids to Disneyland now. Is that where you're going?
Well, I mean, by the way, it is worth emphasizing that it's Tesla stock that I have to own for five years. So, you know, like it's not possible to like, it's not actually cash and I can't cut and run nor would I want to.
I've actually been to Disneyland, Disney World many times with kids. It's a little tough for me to go these days without causing a ruckus. You know, maybe I should just like wear a Mickey Mouse outfit and just go and, you know, pretend I'm like one of them.
So, as we work on autonomy and we're getting to that threshold where things are getting to a seriously advanced level, eventually there are going to be some harsh consequences as part of breaking through, right?
I'm just curious where your mind is at on that and have you thought about, you know, some of those early consequences that we're unfortunately going to have to have in order to have a better, safer future? I'm just wondering.
You mean like scary robots or what?
No, no, in the cars with Full Self-Driving. Okay. Like we've seen some companies that there's been some unfortunate mishaps and they've just straight up like closed shop and, you know, that's not the plan, but those are real consequences of developing this technology. I'm just wondering where your mind is at on that.
Yeah. Well, we do try to be very careful with the deployment of FSD. Y ou know, we do have a lot of cars. So what, like inevitably when there are a lot of cars and you've got, you know, billions of miles, you do have the law of large numbers where, okay, there's a small chance of something bad happening. But when you look at the sort of safety per mile, because we've got a lot of miles, it's very clear that the safety per mile is better than human driving.
So, so when we, you know, we can show that to regulators and obviously make our case to the public and say like, actually, you know, human driving is not perfect. You know, there's a person killed roughly every 80 million miles.
So like 35,000, 40,000 people are killed every year in the U.S. from auto accidents. What matters is like, are we making that number smaller? A s long as we're making that number smaller, we're doing the right thing.
Thank you.
Hey, Elon, this is Bikash. I have one question.
Sure.
So we know that, we know that we love you all. We love from our bottom of the heart. We love you so much, Elon.
Thank you.
My question is, my question is like, we all know Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world one day. We just want to know if you have any prediction when and what is the inflection point? When we can say this is the inflection point, is it solving the FSD or is it like Optimus on ground will be the point from your, you know, perspective?
Well, as I mentioned before, I think it's worth looking at the, you know, the Ark Invest analysis. I think that is the most accurate analysis. Their prediction is, I think, $5-$7 trillion by 2029 market cap. So more than 10 x what things are today in five years. I think that is accurate.
Thank you. Thank you, Elon.
All right.
Hey, Elon. Hey. Hey, huge fan a nd I think history will show that you've had a profound impact on humanity. So I think that's just given. J ust a couple of questions, I guess. I fixed my Tesla addiction by putting cars on Turo a nd I found that about half my renters are the first time they're driving a Tesla. T hen the other half really want to buy one after they've tried it out.
So I guess a couple of questions. When could we expect maybe the referral program to come back if it would come back a nd could we also get a passenger van, like a 12-passenger van, sometime soonish?
I'll add that to my list. So, yeah, the referral program, like, yeah. I think we'll re-examine the referral program probably next quarter a nd like it is very important to sort of look at the, what is the fully considered cost of a Tesla? So with the referral program, it effectively increases the price of the car.
So, you know, is the price increase, what is better for the end customer? A slight price increase because of the referral program or not? But I think we'll re-examine that, I think, in, you know, next quarter and see if it makes sense. I think some kind of referral program does make sense.
Y ou know, but I think for a lot of people, like by far, like by far the biggest thing we see is that people just can't afford the car. That's the biggest thing. Like that's the limiter on demand. You can imagine in the limit if there was, say, you know, an 18, like if Model Y cost like less than $20,000, it would sell like probably 5 million units. Like it would be insane.
So now that's not feasible, you know, today, but I think working on figuring out ways to make more affordable vehicles is really the game changer. Like for most people, it is really not a question of whether they want a Tesla. They do want a Tesla. They simply do not have enough money to afford one. So we have to make it affordable. That's essential. Thank you.
Hey, Elon. I just want to introduce myself. My name is Hamza. First off, thank you for introducing me to Anuarbek. He and I are now like close. Thanks to you. I moved to Austin. Thanks to you. So my question is basically for FSD transfer, I think that should be something that should be ongoing.
I think not only on the benefit of you for getting more people on the fleet and getting, you know, statistics and info, but also as Tesla owners, it makes us want to get the next model and transfer over, you know, for instance, the thing that's been holding me back is wanting to wait for the FSD transfer again. So is there a reason why you haven't implemented that for like ongoing time?
It is pretty complex for us to do this. It sort of adds a fair bit of complexity to the sales process. But yeah, and it is tough because we've got our own revenue somehow. So, you know, transfer is tough. But we, sorry? One more quarter. One more quarter. Okay, one more quarter. All right. You got it. One more quarter. All right. So yeah. All right.
Elon, thank you for hosting us. If you can see me, I'm trembling uncontrollably. I really look up to you, shareholder, consumer, you know, tripled my humble tiny little portion of your shares the last two days, just being engaged. Knowing we're coming here and appreciate you hosting our shareholders, and it just means so much to us.
You're welcome.
You're an absolute idol. This question comes because I care about you as a human being, but in the context of being a shareholder, unlocking these values of Optimus, we need you a nd just with all the global uncertainty, you're so high profile. I just want to make sure you're doing everything to take care of yourself, safety, and health for the future of the company. I say that because I care about you as a person, but since this is a shareholder meeting and the spirit of shareholder value.
Well, thank you. I appreciate the kind sentiments. Yeah, I think I probably need to like work out and, you know, and like not get assassinated or something, you know. I mean, it is getting a little crazy these days. You know, like to first approximation, the probability that a homicidal maniac will try to kill you is proportionate to how many homicidal maniacs hear your name.
Okay. So they hear my name a lot. I'm like, okay, I'm on the list, you know. So yeah, so we actually did have two homicidal maniacs in the last roughly seven months come to aspirationally try to kill me and a bunch of other people. So it's not just me. T here wasn't like an actual issue that they articulated. They were just, you know, in the homicidal maniac career. So, and so I do need to be kind of careful.
W hich is not great because it like forces me to be a bit more sort of standoffish, you know. You know, like so now like I've like stopped signing things because just, you know, something because like that would be a sure way to like homicidal maniac. I'll just have to sign something and then shoot them type of thing.
So then like, you know, I have to be like more standoffish and stuff, which I prefer not to be, but it seems wise. Like I think of like John Lennon who was like singing about like, hey, can't we all just be nice to each other a nd then he got shot, you know, by one of his fans. You're like, okay. We'll try to avoid that. You know, I appreciate the kind sentiments. I will endeavor to stay alive and keep, you know, so. All right.
Hi, Elon. I was reading an article the other day. Is Tesla still have somewhere in the product timeline a home HVAC system in the works?
A home interact system. We do not have a home interact system that I'm aware of. No, no, we do not one.
HVAC system.
Oh, HVAC. Oh, HVAC. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, in the list of things that would be like more useful than or like it would be nice to do would be a great HVAC system that is very power efficient, you know, has like a built-in HEPA filter and like take a lot of the things that we've learned in the car and apply that to home HVAC b ecause I actually, maybe there is a great home HVAC system out there, but I haven't found it, which is pretty wild.
J ust building in the filtration system and, you know, being able to sort of maybe also control humidity somewhat and like to be super efficient and quiet, which are all things that we do in the car. That would be a pretty sweet thing to do. You know, maybe we can combine that with the Powerwall or something. Now on the list of things to do, that is not super high, but it would be cool to do that one day.
Hi, Elon. This is Sandeep. I just want to thank you for making the Cybertruck.
You're welcome.
Yeah, kids love it. Really, my 4- and 6-year-old, they love it.
Exactly. That's what I was saying. Kids, it's like amazing. It's like.
I went to Disney last week. Nobody looks at Disney. Everybody looks at Cybertruck.
Yeah.
There's a funny story, if you may allow. So we were preparing my daughter. We went to Disney and then from there we were driving to Disney. T hen we were preparing my daughter to, she's 4 years, to just get used to the lines a nd you know, you have to have a lot of patience to get in the line.
S he's like, "Dada, why don't we just say we'll show you our Cybertruck and then we'll cut the lines?" I mean, she got used to it because we were driving Superchargers and then everybody was coming over taking pictures. It's a funny story, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah. T hen I have a request. Would you allow 6-year-old to tour the factory maybe someday in the future? Right now it's capped at 12 years. Even though we have referral rewards, it's capped at 12 years.
Yeah.
Would you allow the kids to tour the factory? Maybe they can see the robots. Sure. Sure. We make an event or something like that.
Yeah, maybe we could have like a, we're just like worried about kids' safety and stuff, you know, in case a kid like goes running off into like the robot cell or something. But yeah, we could I think lower the, maybe have like a more limited tour that's, you know, enables younger kids to go. Sure, we'll do that. All right. Let's see. Okay.
Donald Trump has been a big critic of electric vehicles, b ut last week he surprised us by saying he's a big fan of Tesla and a big fan of you. What did you tell him?
Well, you know, I can be persuasive. So yeah, actually I don't exactly know why he, this is a good question. I mean, you know, I have had some conversations with him and he does call me out of the blue for no reason. I don't know why, but he does a nd it's like, he's very nice when he calls. Y ou know, and I was like, you know, you know, electric cars I think are pretty good for the future.
America's the leader in electric cars, you know, you know, by America and stuff. I think he actually, a lot of his friends now have Teslas and they will love it a nd he's a huge fan of the Cybertruck. So I think those may be contributing factors, you know.
Hey, Elon, on your r ight.
Sorry, yeah.
My name's Keanu, longtime fan of your like brand and company and everything. I'm wondering, when you take the driver out of the seat for the driverless car, how do you plan to handle interventions, which I'm sure will happen at some rate, even if they're rare?
Yeah, so there's, I mean, clearly we want to make sure that if there's no driver in the car, the probability of a severe intervention is extremely low. You know, we want to make sure that the car is extremely cautious around vulnerable road users, like cyclists or pedestrians.
So really we'd want the probability of hurting a pedestrian or cyclist to be incredibly low, like way lower than someone driving a car. Now then there are interventions that happen where the car is simply like, I don't know, gets stuck down a one-way street where with a like crazy construction situation.
But in which case it'll basically phone home and say, "Help, I need, I'm stuck." T hen I think we can probably solve a lot of these things just by, you know, remoting into the car and kind of like steering it like a giant RC car. That's what I'm guessing. That's what I think we'll do.
Hey, Elon, Anuarbek from Kazakhstan. Thanks for installing Superchargers. I just want to acknowledge Tesla Boomer Mama and Sawyer Merritt for all the efforts that they did to organize the. Yeah. There's an afterparty to celebrate at Lustre Pearl East if you guys want to come and celebrate all the efforts for the community. Congratulations, Elon.
Thank you. Yep.
Thanks for hosting today, Elon. It's about four years since you did Battery Day and drew out those very ambitious targets of getting to 1 terawatt-hour of batteries. Earlier in your presentation, you alluded to the great difficulty of scaling up this new technology. I think as shareholders, we're most interested.
Can you tell us a little bit more because in terms of affordability, which you also mentioned as this huge burden, these 4680s get manufacturing credits and also on the consumer side get large credits as well. If you could scale that so that we could produce full level of Cybertrucks and also start to put them back in the Y and the 3, potentially it would greatly improve affordability and be great in terms of scale.
Sure. Achieving affordability is actually at this point more about the rest of the car than it is actually about the battery pack. The price per kilowatt hour of cells from suppliers has dropped dramatically.
So there was a massive spike for a few years in the cost of lithium-ion cells from suppliers because every car manufacturer put in gigantic orders for battery packs, like giant orders. So the price of lithium and like all the raw materials and the battery cells went crazy. It doubled. Like the price of cells doubled.
The price of lithium, I think, went up at almost like fivefold or like 500%. Like it went up crazy numbers. So since then, the demand, like suppliers, battery cell suppliers have increased their supply and the orders from other car manufacturers have declined.
So I mean, it is worth noting that it's like it's tough sledding out th ere for EVs. So, you know, GM announced, I think, a 50% reduction recently in their EVs. Ford announced reductions. I think almost every manufacturer has announced reductions in their electric vehicle plans.
Now, Tesla, we're going to increase, but it is not an easy market. B ut to get the cost of the car down, it's really, the battery pack is a piece of the puzzle, but it's really everything else too. So I really would describe like making a car more affordable. It's like Game of Thrones, but pennies. Game of pennies.
So there's, quote to first approximation, 10,000 unique items in a car, a nd if each one costs $5, then you've got a $50,000 car. So to actually get the cost of the car down, you've got to chisel away pennies to get the 10,000 items to be, you know, $3 instead of $5. That's kind of what it amounts to.
Now, with respect to our own cell production, we do see a path to cost parity by the end of this year. A very difficult path to cost parity. Currently, our 4680s cost more than our suppliers. Now, they cost more than the suppliers today, but they cost less than the suppliers a year ago. So, you know, there's a bit of a feast famine thing with battery cell supplies. It's kind of like for DRAM chips, you know, like the DRAM industry goes from like, you know, oversupply to undersupply.
The price of DRAM changes like crazy. It's kind of like that for cells. So, but we expect to achieve cost parity with even the much lower supplier cell price today by the end of the year. Yeah.
Hi, Mr. Musk. I've been a long-term investor since 2012.
Great. Wow.
I voted for your compensation package in 2018 and again this year a nd shout out to Tesla Boomer Mama, Alexandra Merz. I had the privilege to talk to you in 2013 briefly, and you spoke about the truck, which became the Cybertruck. You're a man of your word.
I have friends all over the world in Asia, Canada, and Europe a nd I know the Cybertruck's been on tour. How's been the reception for the Cybertruck, and when will it be, or is it possible to sell, and when will it be sold internationally?
Yeah, so I think probably, you know, we might be able to certify it for other markets sometime next year. But like for sure this year, it's just North America. We did design the car to North American requirements because if you start going with the super set of all international requirements, it forces a lot of constraints on Cybertruck that would make the product, frankly, worse.
So I think we'll need to make a special version that is, for example, China compliant or Europe compliant. B ut it really doesn't make sense to add that complexity until we've achieved a higher volume production on the Cybertruck. There's still a lot of work to do on cost down for the Cybertruck.
You know, I generally would say like the level of difficulty of going from, say, prototype, you go from prototype to production, it's 100 x harder to go from the, you know, from prototype to production is 100 x harder a nd then once you reach production, to improve the price by 20%, like the cost of goods by 20% is harder than reaching production in the first place. Like it's mega pain. It's like, you know, and to be frank, it's not the funnest job in the world, you know.
Like chiseling pennies is not. It's like washing the dishes, frankly. You know, like wash a lot of dishes here. Like it's super fun to make prototypes. That's really fun a nd it's kind of cool to get. It's pretty cool to get the production going. Then the cost grind is a grind. That is like, you know, it's hard work. You know, there's some reward to it. Like there's sort of a reward to washing the dishes, I guess. You have to clean dishes. But that is tough. So that's real hard work.
I just have to say that there's been a really big reception. Like I have friends that, you know, message me and said they love the Cybertruck design a nd it's definitely a head turner.
Oh yeah, I think from a demand standpoint, we would have plenty of demand in other parts of the world for Cybertruck. No question. Like wherever it goes, anywhere in the world, it gets a massive crowd.
So it's not a demand thing. It's really, we've got to reach volume production, go through the cost grind. I can't, it would be difficult for me to overstate the difficulty in the cost grind. It's really intense. T hen we've got to recertify the car, which includes making some design changes to be compliant in other markets.
All right. Good afternoon, Elon. I like your shoes. I don't know if everybody else can see them.
Yeah, Cybertruck.
Out there. Cybertruck, yeah. My question was in regards to the Founders Series. Do you guys have a certain number that you are planning on making or a timeline of when the non-Foundation Series are going to come out?
Yeah, we'll start making the, we'll end the Foundation Series actually pretty soon a nd the non-Foundation Series sometime next quarter.
Hi, Elon. Thank you for delivering shareholder value a nd congrats on your pay package.
Thank you.
I'm Michael. I ask a lot of questions on the quarterly investor calls. I wanted to ask you, can you give me a little bit more color on the neural net scaling laws that you're seeing as you're training FSD?
Like how much data, how much more inference compute, how much more training compute do you need for each successive nine in reliability of the Full Self-Driving software a nd how much data are you currently collecting? Thank you.
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, that is something that we go through really every week at Tesla. I spend a lot of time with the Tesla AI team a nd you know, I think probably like, you know, like a huge portion of, I mean, it's really like a big part of my job is like, okay, we need to get the car to drive itself.
You know, and yeah, you need to solve things on a chip level for inference, for training, for software. There's also massive data storage challenges because you got petabytes of video coming in. E ven for, say, for a big NVIDIA cluster, it's actually really hard to make a big NVIDIA cluster actually work in training. It doesn't just open the box and plug it in. It's not like that at all.
It's like massive effort required to get a big training cluster to operate with, to operate at all and then operate with high uptime. So, I mean, with respect to like the various versions that we're seeing, like you go from version 12.3, like if you just ignore the 12 and think of it like three, four, five, six, that's actually the way to think about it. Ignore the 12 part and just call it like version three, version four, version five. That's version six.
That's how to think about it. Between each one, there's anywhere from, I don't know, a minimum of a doubling of improvement to, in some cases, I think a 5- 10-fold improvement. You know, especially as we eliminate sort of, say, I think we're close to eliminating almost all static object collisions.
So, you know, like curves and medians and like we're pretty close to having it to have almost zero static object collisions. So once you get to zero static, now you have a gigantic improvement in miles between intervention.
Then you get into classes of dynamic objects that are different classes and different things can get obviously very complicated if you've got a complex intersection with traffic lights all over the place and like somebody bumped the one traffic light and now it's pointing in the wrong direction.
Well, the traffic light's broken a nd there's someone who is not obeying the traffic laws because they're just running a red or they got confused about the traffic light. So you get into these very complex situations that are much harder to solve.
Like as I was saying earlier, it actually gets, as the system gets better, it gets harder to figure out which AI model is better. Like because now, you know, like okay, it's thousands of miles between intervention. How do we, as quickly as possible, figure out which AI model is better?
When you make these different AI models, they're obviously not like super deterministic. So you can have something, a new model that does, that eliminates one problem, but creates another problem.
So we're trying to solve this by a combination of simulation, uploading models, having them run in Shadow Mode. So it's actually kind of helpful that not everyone has Full Self-Driving because we can see, we can run it in Shadow Mode and see what would this new model have done compared to what the user did.
So since we've got, you know, millions of cars that we can do this with, that gives us a delta between what the AI model predicted would do and the user would do a nd if you kind of sum up the errors between them, you can see, oh, there was a bigger error stack from this model versus that model when you uploaded them into, we each uploaded them into 100,000 cars.
But that's the biggest limiter right now. It's not training, it's not data, it's actually testing the AI models. T hen figuring out clever ways to figure out if a new model is better or not. Like we know, like there are sort of particular intersections that are difficult a nd so if we just, like all the models will be great at like driving on a well-painted road with no intersection. They'll all be great at that.
But will they be great at the complicated? So we've identified several thousand intersections in the United States where we'll actually take the new model and try the car in those very difficult intersections. Like the, you know, the sort of the famous like Chuck's left turn. Yeah.
So if you imagine Chuck's left turn, hey Chuck. I wonder what the neighbors think. But there's many such complicated traffic situations in the country. So we've identified several thousand, which we then send cars to those locations to compare the models.
T hen as I mentioned, there's, we have yet to uncork any of the ability of Hardware 4, which we'll do later this year. So I think the, you know, the exponential rate of improvement of miles between intervention will continue and will accelerate. Yeah.
Hey Elon. I was wondering if, as you've called a Tesla basically a robot with wheels, and so I'm wondering kind of as that logic transfers over to Optimus, what kind of—will Tesla use any large language models on top of the current Tesla robotics capabilities? A lso if so, will Optimus have any kind of personality? W ould that be something that the end user might be able to have control over?
Yes to all of those questions. Yes to all. So like we're headed for a wild future. I mean, wild, wild, wild. You know, cars will drive themselves. People will have super helpful humanoid helper bots. Y eah, you'll be able to customize the personality, customize the voice a nd really kind of the robot will kind of get to know you as well and know your preferences.
You won't even have to say things because it'll just kind of understand you. I think it will get to this point where it's like, it'll be odd not to have a robot buddy. Like, you know, sort of not to have your C-3PO and, you know, R2-D2. So yeah. Yeah.
Hi Elon, Max here, huge fan. Thank you for hosting us. I wanted to ask you, how much integration work do you think will be needed to deploy Optimus into different types of factories, industries? Like would you need technicians or just have them go watch and like, how do you foresee that?
Well, if I think if you fast forward a few years, it really will be quite a generalized robot. Like say two years from now, like next year, like this year it's still quite specific, you know, task specific training.
So to do a particular task, we have to kind of do a fair bit of training to solve that task. But over time, I think you sort of accumulate these kind of training primitives where like calling like walking, for example, is a training primitive. Picking something, identifying an object and grabbing it would be a primitive.
T hese primitives are then generalized to anything. So you could say pick up a cup, pick up a shirt, fold the shirt. These things will generalize, I think, quite quickly. So I expect probably not next year, but like in 2026, it's really the kind of thing where you could tell it to do kind of a wide range of tasks, a wide range of tasks, including tasks where it has not specifically done that exact thing before, probably in, I'm guessing 2026.
True, a nd do you foresee a cheaper version where tasks don't require like walking, for example, or so the hardware would become a lot simpler or cheaper?
Well, we're going to focus on making just a fantastic humanoid robot at scale and really achieving scale economies and building that humanoid robot. You know, at very high volume, if you're really good at manufacturi ng, you can get the cost of almost anything down to its constituent elements.
Essentially, the weight, and if you just look at the weight of the raw materials times the value of those raw materials, excluding circuit boards, you really can say like if it weighs less, it's going to cost less. But what I'm saying is that it's better for us to achieve very high volume with Optimus than to have a wide range of robots that have lower volume. Yeah. Hi. There? Okay.
One of the best things about the recertifying of your compensation package was listening to all the positive feedback of current and former employees to what you have contributed to Tesla. In the unfortunate event that you're hit by a car not Full Self-Driving, can you take a few minutes or a few seconds and brag on your board and the rest of your leadership to assure us that even without you, Tesla has an incredible future at $30 trillion?
Well, I think Tesla has a good future without me. I think I'm a helpful accelerant to that future. F or technology, it matters if you're ahead or not ahead, a lot. So the rate of, like what matters is not innovation, but the rate of innovation. You know, can you do in one year what other companies do in two years or three years?
So like probably my, you know, biggest, most helpful thing is an innovation accelerant a nd, you know, because given enough time, the various startups that are doing humanoid robots will eventually succeed. One of them will.
S o what really matters is can we be much faster than everyone else? Can our product be done a few years ahead before theirs and be better b ecause if that's not the case, then they will achieve the valuation and not Tesla. They will make the value of product and not Tesla.
So, you know, that's where I think I'm probably most useful is that it is accelerating the pace of technology and innovation and getting to scale. Yeah. That's it mostly. But I am very much heartened by and appreciate the support of current and former Tesla employees, Tesla board, and all you guys for helping out. You know, my heart goes out to you.
Hi Elon. Jessica, or my name is Jessica. I have lived full-time RV for about three years in South Texas.
Okay.
I just wanted to thank you for your Starship, or for the Starship program and everything you're doing there. In addition to Tesla.
Do you work at SpaceX or something?
No.
Okay. Okay. But you live in an RV in South Texas?
Yeah.
Okay.
Hi, a nd in my RV park, they don't allow car camping for Teslas or electric vehicles at all if you're not pulling a trailer. I feel that there's a huge opportunity there. But also for, just for example, people who are coming into town for Starship launches in Teslas, if they could park somewhere overnight and trickle charge.
Okay.
Maybe have access to, you know, bathroom facility or just something simple like that. Just something I wanted to just put forward because I know that a lot of people come into the park and are disappointed they can't stay. So-
Okay, got it.
Just a thought.
Al l right. I'll inquire to see if there's like maybe someplace that would allow people to stay in their cars, which in a Tesla you really can often stay quite comfortably in a car, y eah, and charge. All right, thanks. All right. I think so this will have to be the last question I think, or maybe last two. Yeah. All right. So last two questions, you and you guys.
Hey Elon, my name is Steven. I'm truly thankful for all you've done for humanity and watching your companies and what you've done has been the most exciting, hope-inspiring movie that there's ever been. So thank you so much.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. My question today is about lithium refining. In the past, you stated that that would be a limiting factor in the future. I know Tesla has built the refinery in Texas. I was just kind of curious your current opinion about the refining. Do you think there's enough capacity coming online or will Tesla need to expand past Texas in that regard?
There's enough lithium refining if you count China. If there's a geopolitical challenge on that front, then there may be a shortage of lithium. But China is very good at refining. So, but I think just Tesla being figuring out lithium refining, understanding what it takes, and then, you know, once we understand how it works, then we can scale it up from there. Like I think it's pretty important to, you know, be careful with geopolitical risk and just make sure that if in a worst-case situation, that Tesla is okay. Thank you. All right, thank you.
This is the last question.
Hi Elon, thank you. Congratulations for yet another big win. I'm Nikhil. I'm based out of Silicon Valley. A s you mentioned on FSD awareness and giving people rights, because most people, unless they really experience it, they don't quite know how safe it is becoming and how convenient it is becoming. So I built TesMe, a company. It's a platform for Tesla owners to offer learning experiences, FSD.
We would love to explore how we can help scale with your support and guidance a nd we'd love to have a follow-up conversation to discuss more details with you, how we can work together. Thank you.
I have a suggestion.
Okay. Sure.
To 10 to 10.
Okay.
Can you allow me one?
Sure, sure, sure, sure. I really want to ask a question.
Follow up, please.
I'm not sure how to answer that question exactly. But I mean, we are focused on improving FSD for sure. I think the adoption will be widespread. When it is really working insanely well and it's driving like a five-star Uber driver, I think adoption will be very, very quick. All right. Thank you.
I indeed have a really good suggestion.
Okay, what's the suggestion? Sure.
I shared this suggestion with one of your FSD team, but I don't know whether it reached you or not. Basically, as FSD keeps on improving, we are not quite sure at what rate it will be improving. The much-discussed timeline. So, and so a lot of skepticism remains as to when you can exactly operate the Robot axi.
So it occurred to me that in between supervised FSD and Robo taxi, there is something intermediate stage that's commercializable, which is what I would call a robot rental car. Okay. The idea is that you would, people would go to your platform to order a rental car and you would deliver that overnight to the front of their driveway. S o the only time that the car will be driving without a person is at night with nobody.
You can take as long as you want and you drop in the front of the car a nd after that, it's supervised. So that will get you to a commercialization much sooner, much more guaranteed. So that's my suggestion.
All right. Well, I appreciate the thought. I think, like I said, the progress in FSD will be really amazing. You'll see with each successive version, like I said, the best way to think of FSD, ignore the 12, just think of the point number going from version three to four to five to six.
Y ou'll see just radical improvements with each successive version. You know, and I mean, if the current trend continues, it's going to be like you'll really find that you don't intervene in the course of a year type of thing. So even in complex situations. Anyway, with that, thank you very much for your support. So thanks, guys.