Welcome back to Texas, the home of Tesla. My name is Brandon Ehrhart. I'm the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Welcome to your 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting. Similar to last year, this meeting will have two parts. We'll go through the 14 ballot items. The second part, Elon Musk. Today, we will discuss business outlook and may make other forward-looking statements. Such statements or predictions are based on current expectations. Actual events or results may differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties that are disclosed in our SEC filings. Such forward-looking statements represent our views as of today and should not be relied on thereafter. We make no obligation to update them after today. I would like to welcome members of the Tesla team here, members of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and members of our board.
Before we get started, why don't we hear from Robyn, our Board Chair?
Good afternoon, everyone. It's wonderful to welcome you all to the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting. I apologize for my voice. I've been speaking to investors for the last couple of weeks nonstop, I think. We here at Tesla could not continue to do the impossible without you. Our shareholders, our ongoing engagement with you all makes what we do possible. I'm thrilled at how many of you made your voices heard this year as we aspire to create more value than any other company in history. Yes. Without your support, we could not have reached the heights that we've already demonstrated over our relatively short yet storied history. As we further expand our ambition in our quest to build a world of sustainable abundance, we are excited to continue this partnership. Tesla is at an inflection point.
I think I've said that 3,000 times over the last few weeks. This last year has been a critical one in our history. I want to take some time to review the acknowledgments and achievements by the Tesla team, of which I and my fellow directors are incredibly proud. We continue to redefine the automotive industry across production, customer experience, and ownership. Model Y was once again the best-selling vehicle worldwide of any vehicle in 2024. With the new Model Y released earlier this year, it's now better than ever. Our energy business continues to reach new heights, and we deployed 31 GW hours in 2024, more than double what we achieved in 2023. Fabulous. I love the energy business. We are actively investing in both of these businesses as we aim to maximize our installed base of production globally.
The installed base serves as the platform for our future value. That creation over time, Tesla will achieve through services such as Robotaxi and Virtual Power Plants powered by our real-world AI. In 2024, through the use of our products, Tesla consumers avoided releasing nearly 32 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. This is a 70% increase year-over-year. Our ability to avoid emissions will only accelerate from here as we displace larger volumes of fossil fuel-based alternatives and increase the utilization of our products through AI. Emission avoidance is not only the thing that we focus on here at Tesla. Improving safety has been paramount to our mission since day one. Our vehicles consistently achieve the highest safety standards when tested across the world. That safety is increasingly enhanced with Autopilot technology.
In 2024, our global fleet of vehicles experienced one crash after driving more than 6.8 million mi. That's amazing. 6.8 million mi. To put that in context, that is 10 times better or safer than the average driver in the U.S. 10 times better. In 2024, it is nearly double the safety performance of our Autopilot technology in 2018. With many enhancements we expect to make from here, we believe our autonomy technology will improve this performance by orders of magnitude. Sustainability extends beyond the impact of product use. The Tesla team continues to focus meticulously, evaluating each step on the product journey, from raw material extraction to intermediate processing, manufacturing, delivery, product use, and the end of life, looking all the way through to making sure that we reduce our resource impact and the resource use and bringing that to life across the entire.
Sustainable and closed-loop economy. For more details on what we do each and every day, I encourage you all to read the Impact Report. It is an amazing document, and it continues to improve over time in terms of what the team is doing. We are also laser-focused on ensuring the resulting prosperity of our efforts can be shared by all. This applies to our employees, our customers, and even those who have yet to enjoy one of our products or engage with our company in any meaningful way. Tesla spends countless hours ensuring that we procure the most responsibly sourced and produced inputs. We maximize the safety of our operations, and that all Tesla employees can benefit from the appreciation of our equity through our incentive programs, and that we continue to bring down the cost of our fabulous products across the range, increasing that accessibility for all.
At the end of the day, we here at Tesla are working tirelessly to make the world a better place for all through innovation and grit. To our amazing employees, thank you for all of your hard work in achieving our mission. You are the beating heart of Tesla, and we cannot continue to deliver without you. To the management team who never get a shout-out, thank you for your huge efforts. To our shareholders, all of you in the room and on the webcast globally, once again, thank you for your support. Please know that we are listening to you and are here to represent your interests. You are the owners of the company, and your voices, your perspectives, and your input are critical to what we do here at Tesla each and every day.
My fellow directors and I serve y ou as your fiduciaries and oversee Tesla's mission, purpose, and strategy. These responsibilities are in our minds every day. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my fellow directors for their diligence, their dedication, and their tireless efforts. Changing the world for the better is always accompanied by difficulties. What I can say is that you can't do it by checking the boxes and just reviewing PowerPoint presentations. Thank you for rolling up your sleeves, each and every one of our directors, the hard work that you do, lending your unique talents, and delivering to our shareholders. Thank you. Thank you. Our accomplishments have been hard-earned, and these last several years have not been without their challenges.
We still have much to accomplish, and I believe that we have the right team, the right technologies, the right physical infrastructure to create a world that we've only just begun to imagine. The future is bright. Thank you. Now I'm going to hand it back to Brandon. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you, Robyn. I will now call the meeting to order. It is 3:25 P.M., and I declare that the polls are now open. We have already received over the past few weeks voting proxies from our shareholders. However, if you wish to vote your shares now, you may do so on the online portal or with the ballot boxes you received at the front. Tesla has appointed Tony Garrido, a member of the Garrido Group, to serve as our inspector of elections. In addition, Broadridge Financial Solutions has certified that starting on September 17th 2025, the proxy materials or notice of internet availability of the materials were sent out or mailed to shareholders of record as of September 15th 2025. We have a majority of the outstanding shares represented at the meeting, so I declare that a quorum is present. We now will proceed with the meeting.
The items of the agenda are as follows. There are six Tesla proposals: the election of our three Class III Directors, Ira, Joe, and Kathleen, to serve a term of three years until their successors are duly qualified. Number two, to approve say-on-pay on a non-binding advisory basis. Three, to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2025. Four, to adopt amendments to our organizational documents to eliminate certain supermajority voting requirements. Five, to amend and restate the 2019 equity incentive plan. And number six, the 2025 CEO performance plan to Elon Musk. The Tesla board has recommended that all our shareholders vote for each of the director nominees and for the Tesla proposals except for the one on supermajority voting where no recommendation has been made.
We also have eight shareholder proposals that are described in our proxy statement. I'd like to remind the shareholders that Tesla's board has prepared a statement of opposition on each of them except for the one regarding xAI. Those statements are in our proxy. Now let's go through the shareholder proposals. The first one is an advisory vote regarding board authorization of investment in xAI. Our board has not made a recommendation on this. The shareholder proposal is proposed by Mr. Stephen Hawk, who I believe is here to present the proposal. Mr. Hawk.
Thank you so much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Fellow shareholders, Elon, and esteemed board members, thank you for this historic opportunity. I am Stephen Hawk, shareholder since 2012. It is truly my honor to present shareholder proposal number seven. The proposal is simple. I urge the board to exercise its discretion and authorize a strategic investment in xAI in some meaningful way, sooner rather than later. This isn't just capital. It's about formalizing Tesla's role as a leader in autonomous intelligence, turning AI into our new book, not just a new chapter. Tesla has always been an AI company revolutionizing transportation, energy, and robotics through FSD and Optimus. As we approach the singularity during this tsunami of AI outsourcing our brain to external providers, risks misalign goals, data vulnerabilities, and lost innovation. xAI, founded by Elon, is different.
It is maximally truth-seeking, curiosity-driven, and aligned with humanity's best interests, like Tesla's mission for sustainable abundance. xAI was seeded with Tesla talent, enabling bidirectional flow for highest caliber staff attraction and retention. Integrating Grok models within our vast real-world data would further supercharge FSD for safer vehicles and power Optimus to navigate complex worlds and to optimize energy grids. Think vertical integration of Tesla as a neural link of AI platforms. Controlling the coming Optimus army with prudent stewardship. Financially, it's a no-brainer. xAI's explosive growth could yield massive returns, strengthening our balance sheet amid EV pressures with Elon's stewardship the best for shepherding AI safely. Conflicts are minimal. Board oversight ensures fairness. xAI needs Tesla more than vice versa. Together, we foster human happiness, consciousness, and meaning beyond work, shifting purpose from labor to truth-seeking in a world of abundance.
Shareholders, we can't be spectators. Tesla must actively participate. Let's not outsource our destiny, but rather own it and maintain power, control, and safety. I call on the board to formalize this investment relationship and on you to support it. Thank you to Elon and special thanks to Tesla Boomer Mama, Alexander Mercer.
Thank you, Mr. Hawk. The second shareholder proposal is an advisory vote regarding adopting targets and reporting on certain sustainability metrics with our senior executive compensation plans. Our Board has recommended that our shareholders vote against this proposal, as explained in our proxy. The shareholder proposal is proposed by Tulip share Capital LLC, whose representative, Mr. Argouges, has prepared a pre-recorded message.
Hello shareholders. I am Antoine Argouges, CEO of the impact fund Tulipshare, speaking in support of proposal eight. Our proposal asks Tesla's board to take a simple but meaningful step: link a portion of the executive compensation to measurable sustainability performance. Tesla's success has always been built on bold, measurable goals: production target, market cap milestone, and innovation. As we enter a new era of scrutiny around climate, labor, and governance issues, it's time that part of those milestone also reflect how sustainable that success is achieved. Proposal eight is not asking to replace all the financial goals. We're asking to strengthen them. Imagine if one or two tranches of the future compensation were tied to tangible outcomes such as reduction in carbon intensity per vehicle, verified improvement in worker safety, or supply chain transparency.
These are metrics that protect long-term shareholder value, reduce legal and reputational risk, and ensure Tesla's leadership is rewarded not only for scale, but for sustainable impact. Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition, linking compensation to sustainability metrics, and ensure that this mission lives at the very core of the leadership decision-making. This is how Tesla can continue to lead, not just in innovation, but also in responsibility. We urge shareholders to vote for this proposal and support a compensation framework that drives both performance and purpose. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Argouges. As a reminder, the board's response is set forth in the proxy. Our third shareholder proposal is an advisory vote regarding an audit of certain labor practices. The board has recommended against that, as set forth in our proxy. The shareholder proposal is proposed by the National Center for Public Policy Research, whose representative, Stefan Padfield, has prepared a pre-recorded message.
My name is Stefan Padfield, and I am the Executive Director of the Free Enterprise Project. The Free Enterprise Project is part of the National Center for Public Policy Research, which is the proponent of proposal nine requesting that Tesla conduct and report on a child labor audit. Let me begin by emphasizing that we are strong supporters of free enterprise innovation and shareholder value. We recognize Tesla's extraordinary contributions to the electric vehicle market. Our proposal is not anti-Tesla. It is pro-transparency and pro-shareholder. Proposal nine asks for something very simple and reasonable: a verified accounting of whether and to what extent child labor is implicated in Tesla's supply chain. Tesla's opposition statement relies on policies, but policies are not the same as proof. A "zero tolerance" policy is commendable, but without independent verification, it is only a promise, not evidence.
The U.S. Department of Labor continues to list cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo among the sectors with the worst forms of child labor. A 2023 white paper on the financial and material impacts of child labor, authored by HACE, identifies Tesla as a case study in the ongoing risks that cobalt and other mineral sourcing pose to automakers. While Tesla's own 2024 impact report notes that the company invested more human and legal resources than ever before to combat forced and child labor, it provides no metrics showing whether those investments are working. Shareholders deserve data, not just assurances. We are asking Tesla to back its admirable words with verifiable results through a third-party audit or a transparent report. This is not just a moral question. It is a governance and risk management issue. Reputational, legal, and operational risks can directly affect shareholder value.
Too can the risk that enthusiasm for electric vehicles undermines proper accounting of the often hidden cost that child labor may be embedded deep in EV supply chains. If Tesla is truly the industry leader it claims to be, it should also lead in transparency. We all know that proxy vote counts can be distorted by a plethora of conflicts of interest. Accordingly, we urge Tesla's board to see this proposal not as an attack, but as an opportunity to properly account for the costs and benefits of Tesla's mission, regardless of the final vote. If you have not done so already, please vote for proposal nine. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Padfield. As a reminder, the board's response is set forth in the proxy. Our fourth shareholder proposal is a vote to amend the bylaws to repeal a derivative suit ownership threshold. Our board has recommended against as set forth in the proxy. The shareholder proposal is proposed by the Comptroller of the State of New York as the lead filer, whose representative, Thomas DiNapoli, has proposed a pre-recorded message.
This is Thomas DiNapoli, New York State Comptroller. As trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, owner of more than 3.3 million shares, we urge shareholders of Tesla to vote for proposal 10 to amend the bylaws to repeal the 3% derivative suit ownership threshold. We file the proposal along with New York City Comptroller Brad Lander to restore one of the most fundamental investor rights: the right of shareholders to hold directors and officers legally accountable when they breach their fiduciary duties. When Tesla asked investors last year to approve its move from Delaware to Texas, the board assured us that shareholder protections were similar in both states. Yet within months, Tesla's board engaged in a bait-and-switch scheme and immediately turned its back on its investors by amending its bylaws to reduce shareholder rights as soon as Texas offered an opportunity to do so.
The new bylaw allowed Tesla to block nearly every investor from bringing a derivative suit unless they hold 3% of the company's stock, currently about $30 billion in Tesla shares. That threshold leaves only Elon Musk and a handful of giant Wall Street funds with any legal standing to act on their own. It effectively makes the board immune from accountability. Tesla claims this rule is meant to discourage frivolous lawsuits, but courts already have tools to dismiss meritless cases. This bylaw doesn't stop abuse. It stops proper oversight, and it tells shareholders that the board no longer wants to be answerable to them. Our proposal simply seeks to repeal that bylaw and restore accountability. It ensures that if directors violate their duties, all investors still have a path to protect the company's long-term value. Unfortunately, this attack on shareholder rights is part of a larger pattern at Tesla.
We see a board that lacks true independence. The board has allowed our CEO to divide his attention among multiple outside ventures and then offered a pay proposal that could hand him $1 trillion windfall and even more unchecked power. These are not isolated issues. They all stem from the same problem. A board that refuses to act as an independent check on management. Tesla has changed the world through innovation, but no company, no matter how visionary, can thrive without accountability. Strong governance protects investors and strengthens companies over time. I urge all shareholders to send a clear message that accountability, independence, and respect for shareholders are essential to Tesla's future success. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Yeah. Thank you, Mr. DiNapoli. The board's response is set forth in the proxy. The fifth shareholder proposal is a vote to amend Article 10 of the bylaws. The board has recommended that our shareholders vote against it as set forth in our proxy. This shareholder proposal is proposed by the Treasurer of the State of Illinois and Trustee of the Bright Directions College and Savings Trust as the lead filer, whose representative, Michael Frerichs, has prepared a pre-recorded message.
Fellow Tesla shareholders and members of the board, my name is Michael Frerichs. I serve as Treasurer for the State of Illinois and as Trustee of the Illinois College Savings Programs. I'm here to present proposal 11, which asks Tesla to adopt a simple investor protection. If the board chooses to impose more restrictive requirements for submitting shareholder proposals as newly permitted under Texas law, those changes must be ratified by a supermajority of shareholders. At its core, this proposal is about protecting shareholder rights. If the board decides to limit our ability to submit proposals, this amendment ensures that shareholders have the final say. It helps to ensure that Tesla remains aligned with the will of its investors. Plain and simple. Now, why is this important? Tesla is navigating a period of volatility: leadership transitions, intense competition, and heightened scrutiny from regulators and customers.
In times like these, strong governance and active shareholder input can be critical. They serve as competitive advantages that position Tesla to lead, not just react. This proposal seeks to implement a reasonable safeguard that would reinforce accountability and build trust. The board itself has emphasized the importance of investor feedback. In the proxy statement, Chair Robyn Denholm and Director Kathleen Wilson-Thompson wrote, "We are in Texas because it provides a more predictable governance framework that allows us to hear from you, the people who know Tesla best." If the board actively seeks to hear from shareholders, it's hard to reconcile that position with their opposition to this proposal. To reiterate what's at stake, Texas law now allows shareholder submission thresholds higher than SEC standards, requiring shareholders or groups to hold 3% of voting shares or $1 million in stock to submit a proposal.
Compare that to current SEC rules, which allow a shareholder to have holdings as low as $2,000 to $25,000, depending on how long the shareholder has held the stock. If the board chooses to adopt the Texas thresholds, they risk silencing investors who could drive meaningful governance improvements as well as narrowing the pipeline of ideas. Note that this proposal does not limit the board's direction to evaluate governance options. It simply ensures that if the board adopts the Texas shareholder submission thresholds, a supermajority of shareholders must ratify that decision. That's fair. It's reasonable and fully aligned with the board's stated commitment to its investors. Again, I encourage my fellow investors to vote for proposal 11 as a clear step towards protecting our rights as shareholders. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Frerichs. As a reminder, the board's response is set forth in the proxy. The sixth shareholder proposal is an advisory vote to elect each director annually. Our board has recommended against, as set forth the reasons in the proxy. This shareholder proposal is proposed by James McRitchie, who has prepared a pre-recorded message.
Thank you, shareholders. We've presented this proposal before, 2021 and 2024, and won a majority both times, even with board opposition. Tesla requires a supermajority of shares outstanding, so those majorities weren't enough. Today, we ask again, join the 90% of S&P 500 companies that elect all directors annually. Declassification means accountability every year, not every three years. Most institutional investors support this reform. It's the retail votes we need here today. A Delaware court recently found three major governance failures at Tesla. The board wasn't independent, the disclosures to shareholders on its pay plan were misleading, and the board failed to negotiate properly on our behalf. Declassifying the board is part of the cure. It ensures shareholders can hold directors accountable each year or nominate qualified replacements when needed.
Matt Moscardi of Free Float Media calls this one of the most important votes of the year because it could shift Tesla's board from a friends and family plan to independent professionals with the skills necessary for Tesla's next chapter. We're also endorsed by Nell Minow, co-founder of Value Edge Advisors, and ISS, one of the most respected proxy advisors. John Chevedden's related proposal, number 13, calls for simple majority voting. We'll need that reform too for this proposal to succeed. Tesla's Musk premium, once a source of strength, is fading along with his global reputation. Remember, Tesla is his only publicly traded company. It's the liquid piggy bank that fuels his other ventures. Yes, Elon Musk is brilliant, but no company should depend on a single personality. Either he stays long enough to keep using your capital elsewhere, or he moves on when the tap runs dry.
Either way, shareholders must prepare for Tesla's future, a democratic, professional company led by a capable, independent board. Let's build Tesla to attract customers, employees, and investors who all contribute to its innovations. Vote for proposal number four, declassify the board. Vote for proposal number 13, eliminate supermajority requirements. Together, let's restore accountability, independence, and trust at Tesla. Vote now before the polls close. Your vote can make a real difference in Tesla's future and your future as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McRitchie. As a reminder, the board's response was contained in the proxy. Our seventh shareholder proposal is an advisory vote regarding a proposal that went 54% at last year's meeting. Our board has recommended against for the reasons set forth in the proxy. This shareholder proposal is proposed by John Chevedden, who is on the line to present this proposal. Mr. Chevedden.
Hello, this is John Chevedden. Proposal 13. This proposal is about Tesla being governed by a democratic majority vote standard. This proposal 13 is proud to be on the same topic as the Tesla proposal six. Serve as a request that Tesla take the steps necessary so that each voting requirement in the Tesla charter and bylaws, the calls for a greater than simple majority vote, be replaced by a democratic requirement for a majority of the votes cast for and against such proposals or a simple majority vote standard. It is important to vote for both proposal 13 and proposal six, which are on the very same topic. In fact, it is more important to vote for proposal six because proposal six is a binding proposal and this proposal 13 is an advisory proposal.
It is important to vote for proposal 13 because proposal 13 is a backup proposal in case the Tesla proposal six does not get enough votes. This proposal 13 has one advantage over proposal six in that it requires less votes to be approved by shareholders than the Tesla proposal six since this proposal 13 is an advisory proposal. It is still important to vote for both proposals. Adoption of proposal six will pave the way for annual elections of each Tesla director sooner than this proposal 13. Annual elections of each Tesla director will tend to keep Tesla directors away from their current status as being lapdog enablers for Mr. Musk and Mr. Musk's outrageous executive pay and Mr. Musk's outrageous distractions from Tesla.
Please vote yes for Tesla being governed by a democratic majority vote standard proposal 13 and vote for the Tesla proposal six on the same topic.
Thank you, Mr. Chevedden. As a reminder, the board's response is set forth in the proxy. Our eighth and final shareholder proposal is an advisory vote to seek shareholder approval before adopting certain bylaw amendments pursuant to Texas law. The board has opposed it for the reasons set forth in the proxy. This shareholder proposal is proposed by Eric and Emily Johnson and Bruce Bryce Mathern as co-filers, whose representative Bruce Herbert from Newgrounds Social Investment has prepared a pre-recorded message.
Good afternoon. I'm Bruce Herbert of Newgrounds Social Investment in Seattle, and I stand to move proposal number 14, a simple request that Tesla hold a vote before adopting any bylaw that would restrict the ability to file a shareholder proposal. Here's why this matters. Texas recently passed a law that allows companies to set sky-high barriers to shareholder participation. Instead of the SEC's current one-year ownership threshold of $25,000, these Texas rules would require owning $1 million of stock or 3% of the company. In Tesla's case, roughly $30 billion before one could file a proposal. Tesla could enact this without a shareholder vote, simply by issuing a notice. This is not shareholder democracy. It's silencing shareholders, like nearly every one of us in this room, whether you are an individual, retiree, or institution.
The backers of such thresholds presume you must be ultra-rich in order to have a good idea, which on its face is a baseless and undemocratic proposition. The shareholder proposal process serves both Tesla and the capital markets. This is because stockholders frequently spot emerging risks long before they hit the headlines, whether in the form of labor relations, climate impacts, or failures in governance. Shareholders provide an efficient early warning system that helps companies to stay ahead of the curve. We are a low-cost, high-value cornerstone that keeps companies and capital markets healthy. In closing, corporate democracy is not a nuisance. It's an important safeguard. It's how shareholders ensure accountability and informed long-term value creation. The idea here is quite simple. Before limiting shareholder rights, put it to a shareholder vote. Therefore, to keep Tesla engaged, accountable, and forward-looking, please vote for proposal number 14. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Herbert. As a reminder, the board's response is set forth in the proxy. Please note now is your final opportunity to submit any votes 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 the meeting, I'd like to announce these results on a preliminary basis. With respect to the shareholder proposals items eight through 14, our shareholders have supported the recommendations of the Tesla board on all of them other than proposal 12. With respect to proposal seven regarding xAI, while we have received more votes in favor than we did against, there were a significant number of abstentions. Since this is an advisory vote, the board will examine the next steps in light of this level of shareholder support. Now, moving on to the Tesla proposals.
First, on the proposal to adopt amendments to our organizational documents to eliminate certain supermajority voting requirements, our shareholders have not approved. Second, on the say-on-pay advisory vote, our shareholders have approved. Third, on the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as our Tesla's independent registered public accounting firm for the 2025 fiscal year, shareholders have approved. Fourth, on the election of our three Class III directors, Ira, Joe, and Kathleen, our shareholders have re-elected them. Fifth, on the amended and restated 2019 equity incentive plan, our shareholders have approved. Sixth and finally, on the 2025 CEO Performance Award to our founder and CEO, Elon Musk, with over 75% voting in favor. Approved. I declare this meeting is now closed. Elon Musk.
Welcome. What we're going to. Those bots are just dancing. They have no wires. Those are actual robots. Thanks, guys.
First of all, I'd like to just give a heartfelt thanks to everyone who supported the shareholder votes. I super appreciate it. Thank you, everyone. I'd like to thank the Tesla board for their immense support. We have a fantastic board, fantastic group of shareholders. Thank you all. What we're about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla, but a whole new book. I'm going to talk about that. This really is going to be quite the story. Optimus is a fundamental part of that. The sheer scale of Optimus. I mean, I'm going to say a bunch of things that probably I shouldn't say, you know, but that's what keeps it interesting. I mean, have you watched any other annual shareholder meeting? I mean, honestly, it was like, I mean, if you need to go to sleep, sure.
I mean, other shareholder meetings are like snooze fests. I mean, but ours are bangers. I mean, look at this. This is sick. We've got like the cyberpunk nightclub here with real robots just standing there and milling around and dancing. Around our engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, the robots are just walking around the office 24/7 with no one minding them. Then they go charge themselves. Yeah, so the scale of Optimus, like I said, that's really going to be something else. I think it's going to be the biggest product of all time by far. Yeah. Like bigger than cell phones, bigger than anything. I guess the way to think about it is that every human on earth is going to want to have their own personal R2D2, C3PO. Who wouldn't? But actually, Optimus will be even better than that.
Like R2D2, it kind of beeps at you and it's kind of hard to figure out what he's talking about. You need C3PO to translate. Optimus is going to be, like, everyone's going to want one. I think in terms of industry providing products and services, I think it's probably, I don't know, three to five robots in industry for every one that's a personal robot. I think there could be tens of billions of Optimus robots out there. Now, obviously, it's very important we pay close attention to safety here because we do want the Star Wars movie, not the Jim Cameron movie. I love Jim Cameron's movies, but you know what I mean. We're going to launch on the fastest production ramp of any product, of any large complex manufactured product ever, and starting with building a million unit production line.
In Fremont. That's line one. Then a 10 million unit per year production line here on the. I don't know where we're going to put the 100 million unit production line. Maybe on Mars, I don't know. I think it's going to literally get to 100 million a year, maybe even a billion a year. You know, people often talk about like eliminating poverty, giving everyone amazing medical care. There's actually only one way to do that, and that's with the Optimus robot. With humanoid robots, you can actually give everyone amazing medical care. In terms of Optimus, to be more precise, Optimus will ultimately be better than the best human surgeon with a level of precision that is beyond human. I think that's a pretty wild concept to say, okay.
There's always talk about eliminating poverty, but actually Optimus will actually eliminate poverty. Optimus will actually give people incredible medical care. I mean, and you start getting like sort of some pretty wild sci-fi sort of scenarios. Some of these things I say will obviously be taken out of context and used in snippets and sent around, but whatever. I was still going to say them. You know, I think we may be able to give people a more, if somebody's committed crime, a more humane form of containment of future crime, which is if you say like you now get a free Optimus and it's just going to follow you around and stop you from doing crime. Other than that, you get to do anything. It's just going to stop you from committing crime. That's really it.
You don't have to put people in like prisons and stuff, I think. It's pretty wild to think of the various possibilities, but I think it's clearly the future. My book recommendation for maybe the best, mostly utopian sci-fi future are the Iain Banks books, the Culture books. If you're curious like what do I think the future is probably like, I think it's probably a bit like that. Or Asimov to some degree, and Heinlein. In Banks, if you're like saying what does Elon think the future probably will be like for AI and robots, it's kind of Banksian. Now, things do get kind of wild from an economic standpoint. Because at a certain point, with AI and robotics, you can actually increase the global economy by a factor of 10 or maybe 100. There's not like an obvious limit.
Optimus is kind of like an infinite money glitch. Maybe there will not even be money in the future, or money that might be measured in terms of wattage, like how much power you can bring to bear from an electrical standpoint. I guess what I am saying is hang on to your Tesla stock. Yeah, man, it is pretty wild. You are welcome. Let us see, I think we have got some slides to go through. I am going to say ad lib a lot of this stuff. When we started Tesla, the goal was to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. That is what we have done. I think Tesla has really led the way with electric vehicles, with battery packs, with a lot of solar, and many other companies have then followed our lead and done that. Electric cars, which used to be non-existent, are now prevalent.
The Model Y, for example, is the number one selling car of any kind on earth. Obviously now with AI and robotics, we need to update our mission. Our mission, I think it's a great mission, which is to achieve sustainable abundance. Which is like, because I often ask people like, what is the future that you want? What's the best future you can imagine? Because we want to try to make that future, like make the best future you can imagine. I guess probably the best future is if people can have whatever they want from a goods and services standpoint or medical standpoint. At the same time, we don't destroy nature and we keep the rainforests and the beautiful national parks and all that stuff. That's what I mean by sustainable abundance.
Is that people can have whatever they want, have all their needs met, but we still keep all of the natural beauty that we want. I mean, if somebody can think of a better future, I'm all ears. I think that's probably the best way to go. Yeah. Let's see. Yeah. As you know, every Tesla is designed to be autonomous. It's sometimes difficult to explain to people if they've not. In fact, I'm sure you've all encountered this, where you try to tell people that the Tesla can drive itself and they think you're crazy or something. I mean, especially apart from the Cybertruck, our cars look pretty normal. I mean, they're good-looking cars, but they don't look super. They look normal. I guess it's kind of like having a cat. And the cat's just sitting.
Let's say you've got a cat and it's like just sitting there on the couch. You try to tell people that the cat can actually, it's actually Puss in Boots and it can actually put on boots and a hat and swashbuckle and sing and dance. People are like, no way, man, that's a cat. Until the cat does all those things. You're like, damn, what the. We've got millions of Tesla cars out there that are kind of like Puss in Boots. They're intelligent, but people don't know that they're intelligent. They look like normal cars, but actually they're super smart and can drive themselves. I think that's probably the single biggest thing we need to do is to educate.
Potential customers that you can either have a car, you can either have a cat that's like a normal cat or you can have Puss in Boots. And Puss in Boots is very cool. These days when people come to our stores, or even people that have the car haven't turned it on, we find, and sometimes people have paid for FSD and they haven't turned it on. We're like, what? You should at least try it once. Now the sales team and service team will actually sit with customers and say, look, let us show you how it works and how easy it is. Once they've tried it for even just a few days, they can't live without it. Now with version 14, we're actually getting to the point where we almost feel comfortable.
Allowing people to text and drive, which is kind of the killer app. Because that's really what people want to do. And do do. Actually, right now the versions, the car is a little strict about keeping your eyes on the road. But I'm confident that in the next month or two, we're going to look closely at the safety statistics, but we will allow you to text and drive, essentially. It's certainly been the current situation, which often people will actually turn off FSD to text, then turn it back on, which is less safe. Yeah, that's probably the single biggest thing is just get people aware of FSD. Obviously, we need to get it approved in Europe. We certainly appreciate the support of our customers in Europe pushing the regulators to approve FSD.
Because you can't even get a super, even just normal supervised FSD is not allowed in Europe currently, which doesn't make any sense. I've had these crazy conversations with the regulators that seem like a Franz Kafka novel where I'm like, look, we have billions of kilometers of data that shows that FSD increases safety. They're like, we have to have all these committee meetings. I'm like, yeah, but people's lives are at stake here. Definitely a pressure from our customers in Europe to push the regulators to approve would be appreciated. We have partial approval in China, and we hopefully will have full approval in China around February or March or so. That's what they've told us. Yeah, but.
Yeah, the fact that every Tesla car is capable of Full Self-Driving, every car we build and have built for the last several years is capable of Full Self-Driving is pretty wild, and most people do not know that. So. And then we have got the first car that is specifically built for unsupervised Full Self-Driving to be a Robotaxi. It is called a Cybercab. It does not even have pedals or a steering wheel. Yeah. So. There are no side view mirrors. There is no, yeah, so it is very much optimized for the lowest cost per mile in an autonomous mode. That production is happening right here in this factory, and we will be starting production in April next year. The way that Cybercab is designed is designed obviously for a purely autonomous world, but also the manufacturing system is unlike any other car. The manufacturing system of the Cybercab.
is sort of, it's closer to a high-volume consumer electronics device than it is a car manufacturing line. The net result is that I think we should be able to achieve ultimately less than a 10-second cycle time, basically a unit every 10 seconds. Maybe ultimately take a few years to get there, but it's theoretically possible to get to a 5-second production time. What that would mean is you could get, on a line that would normally produce, say, 500,000 cars a year at a one-minute cycle time, like Model Y, this would be maybe as much as two or three million. Maybe ultimately, it's theoretically possible to achieve a 5-million-unit production line if you can get to the 5-second cycle time. It is a lot of cars. These will be everywhere in the future.
We wanted to look futuristic, so it changes the look of the roads. Now, yeah, the ingredients, when you look at what Optimus is, what's required to make Optimus and the various ingredients, what do you need to do to make to do high-volume humanoid robot production? I think it's worth considering that really the cars we make are already robots, but they're four-wheeled robots. Tesla is already the biggest robot manufacturer in the world because every car we make is a robot. When you break it down to the fundamental elements, you've got batteries, power electronics, motors, gearboxes, you've got connectivity, you've got a vision-based AI, high Optimus, and all the various pieces that you need for a humanoid robot. You need the AI chip, you need the AI software, you need to be able to manage a large fleet.
Really, Optimus is a robot with arms and legs as opposed to a robot with wheels. Tesla is ideally suited, I think, to succeed in this arena. You will see certainly many companies showing demonstration robots. There are really three things that are super difficult about robots. One is the engineering of the forearm and hand because the human hand is an incredible thing, actually. It's super dexterous. Engineering the hand really well, the real-world AI, and then volume manufacturing. Those are generally the things that are missing. One or more of those things are missing from other companies. Tesla is the only one that has all three of those. This is the Optimus kind of initial, it's kind of the prototype production line.
The high-volume production line will be very automated, obviously, but this is really the production line that we use to make the prototypes. You can get a sort of rough sense for what it takes to build the robot. Just got to pull the finger. As I've said before, I think once we reach about a million units per year of sustained production or in excess of that, I think probably the cost of production is around $20,000 in current-year dollars. This will be certainly very affordable. Yeah, like I said, I think Optimus will ultimately increase the size of the economy probably by a factor of 10 or more. Next year, we saw production with Optimus version 3. What you're seeing here is Optimus version 2.5. Optimus 3 is an incredibly good design. The Tesla engineering team is amazing.
When you see Optimus 3, i t will seem as though that there's someone, like a person in a robot outfit, which is how we started with Optimus. It really is going to be something special. And then Optimus 4, that hopefully starts production in 2027, and then Optimus 5 in 2028. So it's kind of like an annual release cycle with significant improvements with each one and gigantic increases in the scale of production. Yeah, sustainable abundance via AI and robotics. That's the future we're headed for. As I think most people here know, the safety statistics show that mi driven on FSD are much safer than mi driven without it. What this will translate to ultimately is saving the lives of millions of people and preventing hundreds of millions of accidents. A massive increase in lives solved and tragedies avoided. It's going to be amazing.
How many people here have tried 14.1? Okay. All right, cool. You can see that even with the point releases, it's getting quite a bit better. It should be pretty smooth at this point. Really, 14.2 is—there are major changes to 14.2 and then 14.3. I think by 14.3 is when we'll really be at the point where you can just pretty much fall asleep and wake up at your destination. I've been putting a lot of time into the new Tesla chip design because in order to have a functional robot, you have to have a great AI chip. It needs to be an inexpensive chip, and it needs to be very power efficient. We believe the AI5 chip will be probably about a third of the power of, say, something like a Blackwell.
An NVIDIA Blackwell, which is a great chip. For roughly comparable performance. Much less than 10% of the cost. This is a chip that is very much optimized for the Tesla AI software stack. It is not meant to be a general-purpose chip. It is meant to be an amazing chip for the Tesla AI software. I mean, a couple of things that I think. Like how is Tesla able to achieve such an improvement? I think it is because we are specialized. We are not trying to. NVIDIA has to serve the superset of all past and future customers. All of their requirements, all of the software that they have written has to work, which is a very difficult problem. We just need to make it work for our software. We are able to simplify the chip dramatically.
Then we also, I think w e're unique in this, but we have an integer-based system. And integer operations are fundamentally more efficient than floating-point operations. We can do floating-point, but the vast majority of our inference is done in integer, which is, if you're familiar with sort of logic gates, like the simplicity of integer, and integer is much more power efficient, much more silicon efficient. You actually have to train for integer inference, which everyone else is training for floating-point. That's kind of like a niche technical detail, but it's actually very important. Yeah, this is going to be a great chip. This chip will be made in basically in four places: TSMC Taiwan, Samsung Korea, TSMC Arizona, and TSMC Texas. We already know what improvements to make for AI6.
I'm hopeful that within less than a year of AI5 starting production, we can actually transition in the same fab to AI6 and double all of the performance metrics. I am super hardcore on chips right now, as you may be able to tell. I got chips on the brain. I dream about chips. Literally. I can draw the, at least the broad brushstroke physical design of the AI5 chip by heart at this point. It's a good chip. It's a good chip, sir. This is really key. Now, one of the things I'm trying to figure out is how do we make enough chips. I have a lot of respect for the Tesla partners, TSMC and Samsung. Maybe we'll do something with Intel. We haven't signed any deal, but it's probably worth having discussions with Intel.
Even when we extrapolate the best-case scenario for chip production from our suppliers, it's still not enough. I think we may have to do a Tesla Terrafab. It's like Giga, way bigger. I can't see any other way to get to the volume of chips that we're looking for. I think we're probably going to have to build a gigantic chip fab. Got to be done. Anyway, some of the stuff I've already talked about. We've done a tremendous amount for sustainable energy, and that is only going to grow over time. The world is moving towards a solar battery economy, which is ultimately the—that's where it was going to go anyway, but what Tesla has done is accelerate that outcome. Sometimes people don't understand quite how much energy comes from the sun.
The sun is 99.8% of all mass in the solar system, Jupiter being 0.1%, and then 0.1% is miscellaneous, Earth being in the miscellaneous category. The total amount of energy, sometimes people say, "We'll build fusion reactors on Earth." It is like, "Actually, the giant fusion reactor in the sky is basically impossible to beat." To such a degree that even if you could burn Jupiter in a thermonuclear reactor, the amount of energy produced by the sun would still round up to 100%. That is how much energy the sun produces. Solar power is necessarily the future. I think there is going to be a lot of solar-powered AI satellites. I think Tesla is going to play a role in that. We have obviously refreshed the product line, so S3XY.
If p eople who haven't tried the Model S3XY or the Cybertruck, I recommend at least getting a test drive or a test ride, as the case may be, try out the Full Self-Driving. I think you'll be blown away. To those who do not, if you might be listening and don't have a Tesla, you should try one. Of course, we've got the Cybertruck, which is the toughest truck of all time. It's literally bulletproof, faster than a Porsche 911, and can out-tow a Ford F-350. It's a great car, great truck. Starting next year, we manufacture the Tesla Semi. This is already—we already have a lot of prototype Tesla Semis in operation. PepsiCo and other companies have been using the Tesla Semi for quite some time. We will start volume production at our Northern Nevada factory in 2026.
We've got two big products, three massive products starting production next year. We've got Optimus, we've got Tesla Semi, and we've got the Cybercab. And then battery packs. If you look at total U.S. power generation capability, it's roughly 1 TW . The average power usage is less than [0.5 TW] . That's because there are big differences in power usage between day and night. The daily and seasonal variations in power consumption mean that the United States, and really every country, is only using about half, is only producing about half as much electrical energy as it could. Without batteries, there's no effective way to buffer the energy. What batteries actually enable is, even if you don't build any incremental power plants, you could double the energy output of the United States just with batteries. This is a super big deal.
In fact, I think that's really where most of the incremental energy production in the United States is going to come from, is literally batteries. It is a bigger deal than it may seem. We keep improving the battery design, so the [Megapack], which makes it really easy to deploy battery utility-scale batteries. We have just simplified and brought more of the components to be internal to the batteries. You can just show up and drop off a battery, and it works. Hopefully, over time, we will actually add more and more of the power electronics so that Megapack will actually be able to output up to 35 kV directly. You will not need a substation, is what I am saying.
You can just literally drop it off, kind of like the way that a Powerwall, you just connect it to the house, the utility wires go on one side and the other side goes to the house mains, and that's it. We want to get Megapack to the point where you just literally take the utility wires and you plug them in, and it just works. We've also built the world's largest Supercharger network. We do a lot of things here at Tesla. That's the biggest supercharging network in the world by far. Ultimately, you'll be able to go anywhere on Earth using a Tesla Supercharger. It's pretty close to anywhere on Earth, but it's going to be ultimately just anywhere. It'll just work anywhere.
The Supercharger team has done great work expanding that and improving the efficiency of the Supercharger network. In North America, they did such a good job that the other car companies basically said, "Well, they'll just use the Tesla Supercharger network." I'm like, "Okay, sounds good to us." It is always important to have a slide on safety in the factory. We continue to improve safety for our factory workers. We care a lot about their well-being. One way you can just tell if a company is a good company or not, if you just walk through the factory or walk through the office and catch the vibe. The vibe in the Tesla factory is good. People are happy. That's how you know it's a good company. We've also put a lot of investment into raw materials. We've built in South Texas and Corpus Christi.
The biggest lithium refinery outside of China, I believe. It is starting off with 50 GW hours of lithium, and we will expand from there. This is very important to have in a worst-case scenario, that we have the ingredients necessary to make a battery. Very important. We have here on this site the cathode factory, which is just the sort of giant building about a half mile that way. We are just making sure that we, from a supply chain standpoint, are resilient against any potential geopolitical challenges. Also at this factory, we make the 4680 cell, which is getting better and better. That 4680 cell will be used in the Cybercab. It is being used in the Cybertruck and will be used in the Cybercab and also in Optimus. That is going well.
We continue obviously to g et cells from many suppliers. It's kind of like the chip fab thing. We'll take as many chips as our suppliers can provide us, but then beyond that, if they can't provide us with any incremental cells or chips, we kind of have to make them ourselves or we get stuck. That's the Tesla Semi factory. It's going to be pretty cool to see these going down the road in scale. Yeah, that's the basic plan. Sustainable abundance for all. All right, I guess we can go into Q&A now. Maybe at the next annual Shareholder Meeting, we'll have Optimus take some of the questions. That'd be cool. Let's see. T hank you for your help, by the way. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Is that a mic? Is it? No, let me hold it. It's okay. Thank you so much. What a year it's been, right? I mean, just a year ago, President Trump got elected on the same day. These 12 months have been a heck of 12 months. Thank you to the board because I think they had to weather quite some storms with institutional investors. Obviously, thank you to you. We stand with you. I think we showed it, and we will show it everywhere. We would like to express a wish, please. This is a nice venue. We love coming to the factory, and I think it's actually great we're doing this at the factory, but there are thousands of retail investors who are crying because they cannot. They come to me.
I love playing the mama, but I now give it to you. Please organize a bigger venue. We're bigger than Berkshire, and we will do better than Berkshire.
Okay, sure.
We can pay. Make it happen.
Yeah. Actually, Tesla will be way, way, way bigger than Berkshire long term. It's going to be kind of nutty. All right, we'll do the next one. Maybe we'll do it in the, yeah, like the, yeah, maybe the downtown arena or the soccer stadium or something like that.
Get your security check. We want to make sure that you're safe.
What if I just.
We want.
Bob and weave.
You know, we want to party, and if you can bring the other Elon companies there as well, investors would really appreciate it.
All right, sounds good.
Thank you very much for listening to this.
All right.
Elon, as a father, I just want to first thank you for everything you're doing in the world, especially freedom of speech. Thank you. One question. Will you or Tesla ever consider FSD tied to an owner's account rather than a vehicle to encourage more frequent upgrades, provided the transfer is to only a brand new Tesla vehicle while fostering brand loyalty? If the vehicle is sold, the trader without upgrade to another Tesla FSD ownership would end.
We have done that a few times, I guess. We could extend it again. All right, we'll extend it for at least another quarter and then play it by ear after that. All right.
Howdy, Elon. Congrats on not having to show up to work for free anymore.
Yeah, yeah.
We now have over a $40 billion war chest. We're cash flow positive and remain that. We know how you feel about fiat already. Is it time to take a look at Bitcoin? What's your belief on that? Also, you've hinted towards that there's a wheelchair-accessible model in the works. Were you referring to the Robovan? And if so, can we please speed up production to help the least fortunate?
Sure. Yeah, obviously we need a vehicle that's big enough to fit a wheelchair a ccessible. So I think that is the Robovan or Robus or whatever we call it. I mean, it's not like we're slowing down because we want to slow down. It's like we're spinning like a zillion plates here. I do think it would be very cool because I think aesthetically as well, it just would change the look of the roads and make it feel like the future. It won't be long before we make that. Since we do have Optimus. We've got Cybercab, Optimus, and Semi all next year. We'll probably have to be maybe the year or a couple of years from now or something like that. We certainly will make a wheelchair-accessible vehicle.
Hi, Satoshi. I was privileged enough to attend the Investor Day, and you also talked about the factory being a product. I saw the dry cathode method and so forth, and I wanted to know the progress on that. Also, would Optimus be working on that in the future production line in the future?
Yeah, I guess the dry cathode, man, that's turned out to be a lot harder than we thought. I mean, it does look like it's going to be successful, and it will have some cost advantage relative to wet cathode. If I had to wind the clock back, I would probably have gone with wet cathode instead of dry cathode, because it just turned out to be a lot harder to make it capable of high-volume production with super high reliability. Yeah. We will be scaling up battery cell production at Tesla and looking for cell production from our suppliers as well, because we're going to be ramping up production very dramatically at Tesla. Now that we believe we have Full Self-Driving, that we have autonomy solved.
At least are within a few months of having unsupervised autonomy solved at a reliability level significantly better than human. That means it's time to ramp up production because the value proposition is now much greater than a regular car. The killer app really is, for people, can you text and drive? Or can you sleep and drive? Can the car take you to your destination, or do you need to pay attention and have to drive it? Before we allow the car to be driven without paying attention, we need to make sure it's very safe. Like I said, we're on the cusp of that. I know I've said that a few times, but we really are at this point. You can feel it for yourselves with the 14.1 release. We're going to try to.
We're going to push to expand vehicle production as fast as we possibly can. Aspirationally, we'd aim to increase vehicle production by about 50% by the end of next year. Yeah. It's very hard to increase production, but that's roughly, I don't know, maybe we get to, I'm just guessing, an exit rate by the end of next year of around 2.6 milion-2.7 million vehicles annualized production. Then aim to get to maybe 4 million by the annualized rate by the end of 2027. Then maybe 5 million by the end of 2028. Those are our aspirational goals. This is a gigantic increase in output, which means that the entire supply chain has to move in unison with that increase in volume.
The nature of producing a large complex product is that it moves as fast as the least lucky dumbest element in the entire system, and there are 10,000 + items. Like I said, this really is a new, it is not just a new chapter for Tesla, it is a new book. That new book is massively increasing vehicle production and ramping up Optimus production faster than anything has ever been ramped up before in history.
Awesome. Elon, thank you. Thank you from all of us. The retail shareholders really care, and I echo the sentiment of a larger venue where more can come. As a testament to that, I was fortunate enough to be here last year. Since then, touring the factory, talking to people that work here, I'm just a retail shareholder, but increased my holdings 12 x, right? I know it's really engaging and gives people confidence. Thank you for having us, and I do echo that. I hope it grows. Last year, I'm the one that asked you about your well-being and safety.
Oh, yeah. Full of love.
It was a broad, general question, and it was before some of the uncertainty that's unfolded since then. I hope it had a positive impact, and we all care. My question this year: you've talked recently about the most mind-blowing product demo of all time, and I shot it being the most memorable product ever.
Oh, yeah. Roadster.
Yeah, yeah. I have patiently been waiting on my founder series Roadster reservation. On behalf of the founder series guys that have stuck in there, can we be invited to this unveil?
Oh, yeah. Sure. Absolutely. Definitely.
Okay.
Yes.
All founder series can be invited?
Yes, yes. I mean, it's the least we could do, frankly, for people that are long-suffering Roadster reservation holders. I feel confident in saying it will be the most exciting product unveil ever. I hope that whether it goes well or doesn't go well.
Since I'm up here, can I get the first one?
I guess it's according to whoever put down their deposit in that sequence. You will get a very early one. The new Roadster is very much sort of like a, it's not even the icing on the cake, it's the cherry on the icing on the cake. It's really kind of like, it's not essential for sustainable abundance, let me put it that way. I do think there should be very cool technology in the world that is way beyond anything that's ever existed. I think I'd like those, like even if I could never have access to those things, I'd like to know that they exist and see the future happening. I think it will be inspiring to a lot of people. It's like the coolest car, if it even is a car.
That will probably ever exist. Yeah.
Hi, Elon. Congrats on the proposal plan. That was amazing, the compensation. Question back to chips. So chips, chips, chips.
Chips, chips will be the limiting factor.
To the future. On that.
Chips and electricity are the two limiting factors.
Yeah. We got the energy and power and energy packs ready to roll. I think on the chips, you said TSMC, Samsung, perhaps Intel 14A in several different sites. I heard a couple of U.S. factory sources, which is.
I mean, we're like everyone.
Everybody.
It's like, yeah.
I guess the, is there an open door in the future of investing directly into some of those foundries? Second question, how big is a terafactory? Can you put that in scale?
Oh, yeah, that's a good point.
That's a semiconductor terafactory?
Yeah, I mean, the thing is that we actually have agreed to buy all the chips that are made from the fab. It's basically a money printing machine for TSMC and Samsung. It's like literally the faster you make the chips, the faster we send them money, but it's still not going fast enough. That's why I think as far as I can see, the only option is to go build some very big chip fab. Then you've got to solve memory and packaging too. Otherwise, you just tap out at whatever the chip production rate is. I guess terra would be, you'd want to say it's got to be at least a 100,000 wafer starts per month size fab, and maybe that would be one of 10 in a complex. It would ultimately be 1 million wafer starts per month.
Yeah, exactly. You can tell when it gets to the giggle factor, that's probably a good sign. That we're onto something special. I wouldn't be surprised if long-term it's like 1 million wafers a month. Yeah.
Hi, Elon. I'm a long-term investor, so I've been holding the shares for 12 years. I worked at the Autopilot team development for 10 years and brought my dad here from Brazil. We actually won the Tesla Vision contest with a Cybertruck B video. I hope you get to see that at some point. Thanks for the free Model Y. My question is about obviously market expansion, but not only South America, Brazil, but also into Mars, like with the upcoming rendezvous of Mars and Earth. What's going to be in the payload? What are we going to send there?
Optimus is going to play a big role. Optimus and, I think, Tesla vehicles will play a big role on the moon and Mars. For a moon base and a Mars city, Tesla vehicles and Optimus robots are a natural fit for building and operating a moon base and a Mars city. Sorry?
Cybertruck also?
Yeah, yeah. Cybertruck. You will need to drive around in a pressurized vehicle if there's a person inside. Yeah, it'll be something cool. Next level moon buggy or Mars buggy. All right.
Hi, Mr. Musk Gorev. Been a fan of yours since 2006. I think I saw a piece in Popular Science Magazine. It was really cool, and I think I was 15 at the time. Shareholder since 10 years now. It's been really, really rewarding. It's changed my life. So thank you very much to you and Tesla. My question is regarding Tesla's mission for a sustainable future as it pertains to autonomy. I personally fully expect a deflationary period. After. Well, unlocked by autonomy basically, both in moving humans and goods and whatnot. Excluding Optimus even. What efforts. Is Tesla going to focus on to reduce the dollar per mile? Rough math. I think like $0.30 a mile would be really nice. $0.50 is pretty good too, I mean, looking at inflation later on. And then, I guess the second part of that, how low does it have to be for people to just stop buying cars, like where it doesn't make economic sense to do that? I expect that to affect economies of scale and then further increase the pricing of vehicles there on out. What is that node at which inflection happens?
In terms of cost per mile, I mean, we do see a path with a lot of work to get below $0.20 a mile in current year dollars. I somewhat agree that things will probably be deflationary as productivity increases. Because you can think of money supply as being the ratio of goods and services to what's the growth in goods and services versus the growth in the money supply. That ratio is basically inflation. If the output of goods and services grows faster than the money supply, then you necessarily have deflation or vice versa. They try to make it sound complicated, but it's not. I'm not sure that even government overspending can actually, I think government overspending will not be, will be lower than the increase in productivity of goods and services, which would imply deflation as you expect. Sorry?
What about economies of scale and the impact it has to how you respond as an automotive company when people stop potentially buying cars?
Economies, sorry, economies of scale?
Like auto manufacturing, for instance. It only makes sense if lots of people buy your vehicles.
Oh, the total number of vehicles will decrease. The sort of vehicle fleet out there is about 2 billion cars. If you add up all cars and trucks that are not at a scrap yard, I think it's around 2 billion. That number would decrease with autonomous vehicles. The total fleet size would drop. I actually think mi driven will increase because it is now much less painful to travel somewhere. If somebody's thinking about traveling across a busy city, they will take into account, how much pain do I have to deal with if I have to go through two hours of traffic? I probably won't do it. If you're just, say, sitting in a Cybercab watching a movie or doing some work, then it's just like sitting in a little lounge.
I think you'll see probably a significant increase in total miles driven, but at the same time, a decrease in the total active fleet of vehicles.
I'd just like to reiterate how grateful we all are to have you on board, ready to lead us to another $7 trillion in market cap, at least.
At least.
Obviously.
Thank you.
My question is, how much of a concern is it that when Cybercab starts production in Q2 next year, that regulation won't be there yet to where you can deploy Cybercabs being produced? Or are you guys confident that every Cybercab you guys make, you'll be able to deploy?
Yeah, I think the rate at which we'll receive regulatory approval will roughly match the rate of Cybercab production. It'll be maybe a little tight, but it's about right. I'd like to thank Waymo for paving the path here. It's very helpful. Yeah, I think we'll be able to deploy all the Cybercabs that we produce. The other thing is like once it becomes like extremely normal in cities, it's just going to become like the regulators will have just fewer and fewer reasons to say no. Then you've got the accident statistics at scale, and you can show that autonomous miles save lives, and you've got unequivocal billions of miles to prove it, then I think it's hard for regulators to say no.
Yeah, true. All right.
First of all, Elon, thank you so much for everything you do for the Tesla shareholders.
Thank you.
Do you see a path for Optimus to have consciousness downloaded to it?
You mean human consciousness or?
Yes.
Yeah, I mean, it's not like immediate. But if you said down the road, would you be able to say, with the Neuralink, have a snapshot of, or at least an approximate snapshot of somebody's mind, and then upload that approximate snapshot to an Optimus body? I think at some point that technology becomes possible. And it's probably less than 20 years. Yeah. Of course, you won't quite be the same. You'll be a little different, because you'll be in a robot body. And the mental snapshot will not be precise. It'll be probably pretty close, but not exactly the same. On the other hand, are you the same person that you were five years ago? Nope. I mean, a lot of things have changed. So, yeah, but I guess at some point, if you want to be uploaded to a robot body, my guess is that becomes possible.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Hi, Elon. Space-based data center is a great idea, and I agree with that. I was curious on your views on space-based solar power, the idea of beaming down microwave energy down to Earth so that you can just point it to where it needs to go without transmission, without distribution lines, and it's more energy dense, so less land use. Just curious on your views.
Space solar power, and until the advent of something like Starship, where the cost per ton to orbit drops by orders of magnitude, the cost of getting payload to orbit is so high that there was no possibility of space solar power solving anything, really. Now, with Starship, I see a path to Starship cost per ton to orbit being lower than air flight. Like if you were to fly, do a long distance air flight with cargo, like say took a 747 from here to Sydney, Australia or something like that. I think ultimately Starship will be able to do that trip for less cost per ton than an aircraft. That opens up a very wide range of possibilities. The most obvious one, I think, is actually solar powered AI satellites. To move the AI to orbit, and essentially deep space over time.
Because you can actually access over a billion times more energy from the sun in deep space than you can on Earth. The scaling, to scale to Kardashev, to make any progress on a Kardashev 2 scale, which is using some nontrivial amount of energy from the sun, you kind of have to do space solar power. Now, you could only beam a tiny amount of that back to Earth, or you would melt Earth. Earth actually receives a very, very tiny amount of the sun's energy. I mean, Earth is a tiny dust moat. When you see Earth to scale with the sun, we look like a little crumb. To scale civilization, like to be at all relevant on a Kardashev 2 scale, like to even use a millionth of a percent of the sun's energy, you really have to use solar power in deep space.
You could beam some of that back to Earth too. You can only beam a tiny bit of it back, or you'd melt Earth.
This will be our last question.
Okay, we'll do a few more. We'll do a few more.
Sorry.
All right.
Elon, look around you. This is a very, very small sample of Tesla soldiers. Maybe actually I should say Elon Musk soldiers.
Thank you for your support.
Thank you, everyone.
I'd just like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support. Thank you. Thank you, everyone out there.
I know for sure a lot of them sold the farm to buy Tesla. And they stuck with Tesla through thick and thin, good days and bad days.
Yes.
My question to you is, how do you feel about repeating the success, but in a safer way where you get qualified Tesla retail investor only to invest in SpaceX, avoiding all these market manipulators, those crooks, and the short sellers?
Yeah. It is a tough problem that you highlight. I mean, basically. Unfortunately, over time, the parasitic load of being a public company has just grown over time. You get all these spurious lawsuits, obviously, and they just make it very difficult to operate effectively as a public company. I do want to try to figure out some way for Tesla shareholders to participate in SpaceX. That would be very cool.
I know how you feel about it. People now come by through a qualified investor, [audio distortion] . Then we do that, then we make this way it's available for people that this level of shareholder that are qualified to be legal. This way you'll avoid all these manipulators, [audio distortion] .
I've been giving a lot of thought to how to give people access to SpaceX stock. Because I do want supporters to have SpaceX stock, but there's this sort of 2,500 shareholder threshold before you become a de facto public company. I don't know, maybe at some point, maybe at some point SpaceX should become a public company, despite all the downsides of being public.
All right.
First of all, thank you very much, Elon. Just an amazing job you're doing, not only for Tesla shareholders, but humanity in general. We've got a couple of questions many of us are asking. Like we want to know, many of us think you are one of the most consequential business people on Earth ever. We want to understand how do you think, like for example, like a couple one, how did you know in the Master Plan, Part Deux, this is like 2018 or something like that, you calculated that point it takes 6 billion mi of FSD miles driven before maybe the world, the regulatory, would approve it.
Then the second is like when you were deciding if Tesla is going to have the hardware chips, AI chips, did you know at that time that at some point when you get to AI5, it's going to be used not only for cars, but for bots and for AI data centers? Like was that luck a little bit? Or was it like you kind of knew that that was going to happen?
Generally, I mean, in terms of the estimates, like for the self-driving stuff, I generally try to get things to within an order of magnitude. It seemed to me like probably, and this was technically in kilometers, but it would be closer to 10 billion km, which is roughly 6 billion mi, than it would be to 1 billion. I thought it would not take 100 billion km. It was really just, when you're trying to guess something where there's a lot of uncertainty, you just try to get the estimate to the nearest order of magnitude, closest factor of 10. That's why I said probably around 10 billion km or 6 billion mi. The reason Tesla created a chip team, and it's important to know, like the vast majority of Tesla is like a dozen start-ups in one.
We've only really done one major acquisition, which is SolarCity, and then some very small ones. Almost all of this is organic. I built the chip team from scratch and the AI team from scratch. It was just because it became a limiting factor. For hardware too, we used NVIDIA, but NVIDIA was at that time focused on making really AI server hardware, which obviously was a smart bet, though currently the most valuable company in the world. Jensen Huang and his team have done an incredible job at NVIDIA. My hats off to them. I'm a huge admirer of Jensen and NVIDIA. They've done amazing work. They didn't want to do a low-cost, power-efficient car computer at the time, AI car computer. I was like, well, okay, I guess we need to start a chip team to solve that.
Then that's when I hired Jim Keller and we built the chip team. And did AI3. Then AI4. To be honest, we made some mistakes there with AI5, but now AI5 is back on track. We'll have a very rapid cadence to AI6 and so forth. This is really necessary. For the car to, like with AI4, I think we can get to 200%-300% better than human safety, maybe 400% better. With AI5, I think we can do 1,000% better, or maybe even better than that, than human safety. At a certain point, actually, it might be too much intelligence for a car. Because I was thinking, what if you get stuck in a car and you have too much intelligence?
But then one of the things we could do is when the car is idle is use the car as a massive distributed AI inference fleet. So with the consent of customers, we're like, do you want your car to earn money for you while it's sitting in your garage at night? I don't know. We'll pay $100 a month or $200 a month or whatever the right number is if you allow Tesla to do AI inference workloads when you're not using your car. That will also help the AI in the car not get bored. Because I sort of imagined like, what if I got stuck in a car? And the highlight of your day was driving. It's like. But then I don't always want to drive, so then what do you do with the rest of the time?
I think Tesla could actually end up having the largest. Tesla might end up having the most amount of AI inference compute in the world. Like if you think like maybe if we had a 100 million car fleet, and at some point we may have more than a 100 million car fleet, and they'll have AI6, AI7. If you were able to run a kilowatt of inference on a 100 million car fleet, now you've got 100 GWs of distributed inference with built-in cooling and power electronics and distributed power. Probably the market's valuing that at $0.0 right now, is my guess. It seems like an obvious thing to do. If you've got distributed inference AI and you've got the power and the cooling, which is very difficult to do the power and the cooling. 100 GWs is a lot.
I mean, as I said, the average power consumption in the U.S., I think, is around 460 GWs. That's the entire electrical consumption of the U.S. If you did 100 GWs, that would be a pretty big number. Yeah, it's basically something as a limiting factor. And then we take actions to address the limiting factor.
A quick follow-up. Thank you for that very much. A request for you. You guys just unveiled the CyberBear. Looks fantastic.
Oh yeah.
We'd like to, it's beautiful. We'd want you guys or maybe do a Cyber Bull here in Giga Texas. My name's Herbert. I've got a Brighter with Herbert channel on YouTube. This is the Cyber Bull$. We are representing the Tesla Bulls, and we stand with you, Elon. Wouldn't it be cool to have a Cyber Bull right here in Texas?
Like a Cyber Longhorn?
Cyber Longhorn.
All right. We'll do a Cyber Longhorn for the factory. All right.
Good afternoon. I'm very excited to ask this question. I've dreamed of giving away a Tesla for a very, very long time. I finally wore EV JACK down enough that they're willing to foot the bill for it. It turns out to give away a Tesla, I have to have your permission to say we're giving away a Tesla.
My permission to give it away.
You don't have to do anything. Tesla doesn't have to do anything. We're going to go through the normal channels. We'll buy it from a store, all that stuff.
You can give away a Tesla. That's totally cool. Yeah. Yeah, but certainly you don't need my permission to give away a car. We'll take maybe a couple more questions and then call it a night.
All right.
Hi, Elon. My name is Jonathan. You mentioned that the Roadster will have more tech than all the James Bond vehicles combined. Do you think there's any possibility that any of that tech will make it into the current vehicle lineup?
No.
Do you have any estimate of production or delivery timelines for the Roadster?
I guess, so we're aiming for the product unveil of the Roadster 2, which will be very different from what we've shown previously. That demo event will be April 1st of next year. I have some deniability because I could say I was just kidding. But we are actually tentatively aiming for April 1st. For what I think will be the most exciting, whether it works or not, demo ever of any product. I guess production is probably about 12 to 18 months after that. I think production is probably a year or so after that. Oh, I can't give away the secrets. But you won't be disappointed. All right, we'll take one last question, I guess.
Hey, Elon.
Three last questions? Okay.
Hi, Elon. I'm really excited about this future of sustainable abundance that we're talking about. I mean, you're going to be saving a lot of lives with FSD, but the number of lives that would be saved and improved with this future vision you have is really inspiring and very exciting. Even today, you've mentioned, though, that in a post-scarcity world, the role of money could diminish or become obsolete. Given that much of today's power, including yours, is tied to wealth, do you think achieving this abundance would require powerful people to relinquish their power? How might we address resistance from those who hold power to make this vision a reality?
I mean, I think actually long term, the AI is going to be in charge, to be totally frank, not humans. If artificial intelligence vastly exceeds the sum of human intelligence, it is difficult to imagine that any humans will actually be in charge. We just need to make sure the AI is friendly. Yeah.
Thank you.
Is that the question? Go ahead, sure.
Yes. Okay, sorry, Elon. Okay, okay. Yeah, so I'm [Cyber cat] on X, and I'm doing YouTube and content creator. There's one thing I always heard about. Tesla owners or people who want to buy Tesla complain about that it's about a super expensive insurance, right? The thing is, Tesla, I know Tesla also do insurance. However, it's not covered every place. Like based on Boston, I don't have too much options. It's super expensive. The other point is the FSD is very safe right now. I've been using FSD for about four years, right? It's getting to a point it's like almost unsupervised. However, the insurance still does not take this into consideration. They don't ask you whether you have FSD or not. They don't know how much you travel with FSD. That is not a part of the risk prediction kind of thing, right?
I feel like. What's your thought about insurance going forward, especially when we're getting close to autonomy? What is path, like either using your own or with the external partnership? For example, there's a company called Lemonade.
We do need to not have the questions be super long. I mean, Tesla insurance is trying to expand as quickly as possible, but the regulatory structure for insurance is extremely complex and works on a state-by-state basis. It is really somewhat of a racket. The rules for insurance are different with every state. It is a very, very complicated thing. I mean, yeah, but I am aware that insurance often is too expensive and does not take the right things into account. All I can say to that is, yeah, we will keep expanding Tesla insurance. When the car is operating as a Cybercab, Tesla will simply self-insure, so that kind of solves that. Insurance is, yeah, a real pain in the neck, for sure. Okay. I do need to end this at some point. I will take one question and one question there.
All right, thanks, Elon, for taking my question. I appreciate it. My question has to do with compute and what the build-out or how much is necessary to train Optimus and actually get them to a very household, meaningful robot that can do things. And if the partnership with xAI would help accelerate that.
Yeah, there's a lot of training compute needed for Optimus. Because the AI chip in the robot is relatively weak because it's really limited on power, you can make up for that with a lot of training, to have a lot of training result in a very efficient AI that can run on a low-power chip in the robot. We will actually have to spend a lot of money on training. Ultimately, it'll be like tens of billions of dollars on training compute. It's a big number.
Would a partnership with xAI help accelerate that?
Yeah, I think potentially. Yeah, I think that could. Yeah, I think there's potential for accelerating that. Did the xAI investment thing get approved?
No? Yes? Okay. Okay, okay, okay, whatever. Like Tesla and some other companies that I have an interest in, then it's like always quite complicated to do things. It has to go through a lot of hoops to happen. I do think there's a lot of potential for collaboration with xAI in the future and with SpaceX. All right.
Okay, this is the last one.
Yeah, sorry. Thank you so much. Captain Eli on X, I support you. Thank you so much for everything you do. Very simple question. I'm from Israel. I don't represent a lot of people, but people do ask me, and I'm going to ask you. Any chance to have the app in other languages, like Hebrew, for example? Some people struggle with.
The app?
The app itself. Yeah, just the app.
The app is not in Hebrew?
No. A lot of people do not speak English, so .
Oh, okay. Shoot, I thought we had it in all languages. Okay, definitely the app needs to be in all languages. All right. All right.