Good afternoon, everyone, welcome to Tesla's 2023 Annual Shareholder Meeting in Austin, Texas. My name is Martin Viecha. I'm vice president of Investor Relations, and I will be the chair of today's meeting. First of all, I really wanted to thank everyone who continues to do this trip on annual basis and shows up every time. It's really quite something that we have a following as dedicated as this, so thank you very much for that. I also wanted to thank our first-time visitors. I know that many of you won a lottery to come for the first time to a Tesla shareholder meeting. You'll probably notice that unlike many other shareholder meetings of other companies, this one tends to be a bit more fun. Hope you enjoy that.
The last thing I really wanted to say is that just thank you so much for all your support over the years. We really feel like you're part of our mission, you know, part of our, you know, story, and it's something we truly value, so thank you so much for that. There will be two parts of today's meeting. First, the formal part of the meeting, where we will cover items that stockholders have been asked to vote on, as well as any other matters that are properly presented. After the voting, I will introduce Tesla's co-founder and CEO, and Technoking, Elon Musk. Who will give a presentation about Tesla's year in review. At this time, I'd like to thank the members of the Tesla team and the board who are here with us here today.
A representative from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tesla's independent auditor, are present with us as well. Before we begin, I'd like to introduce you to Tesla's Chair, Robyn Denholm, who would like to say a few words.
I'm a little bit shorter. Hello, everyone. On behalf of the Board, I am really honored to welcome you all here today to the 2023 Annual Shareholder Meeting. It's wonderful for me to see everyone in the room today and also the many investors that have joined us today via the virtual live stream. It's our third straight year of having the annual meeting here in Austin. At the first meeting, the factory was still in the early stages of development, with equipment being installed and commissioned. During the 2022 meeting, production had started to ramp as we produced about 1,600 vehicles that week. Now, less than a year later, we have more than tripled the amount, having achieved production of 5,000 cars in a single week. A huge congratulations to the Texas team.
On top of that, we are getting ready to roll out our first Cybertrucks. This exponential trajectory of the Gigafactory here in Texas is a reflection of Tesla as a whole. 2022 was another record-breaking year for us, with deliveries growing by 40% year-over-year, that trend has continued in the first quarter of 2023. We would not be able to achieve this growth without the dedication of our amazing employees. I've been fortunate enough over the years to actually travel to many of our locations, all of the Gigafactories around the world, I can tell you that I've witnessed firsthand how our exceptional employees in our global talent across the world has together achieved our mission or furthered our mission of accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy. Huge round of applause, please.
This year, here in Texas, we also had our very first Investor Day, where we introduced our company leaders from design to engineering to supply chain, manufacturing, energy, and charging. They each spoke about the role of their teams in making our mission come to life. I was thrilled that investors were able to hear directly from this outstanding leadership team that Elon has been able to put together over many, many years. It is on the strength of their leadership and the hard work of our dedicated employees around the world that I believe we are not only weather the macroeconomic environment that we've seen this year, but also continue to be in the strongest position ever to advance Tesla's mission. As a startup, Tesla proved that electric vehicles could be fun with the Roadster.
They could even be better than gas-powered vehicles in every single way with the S and X and could be all of these things, as well as affordable with the Model 3 and Model Y, which last quarter became the best-selling vehicle of any kind in Europe and the best-selling non-pickup vehicle in the United States. Today, as one of the companies, we plan to change the paradigm again by forging the path to achieving a global sustainable energy economy, as set out at our Investor Day in our Master Plan Three. As Tesla grows, so do our customers' positive impact on carbon emissions. When I stood here last year, I proudly announced that in 2021, our customers avoided emitting 8.4 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of over 20 billion miles driven by internal combustion engine vehicles.
Today, I can tell you that in 2022, our customers avoided releasing over 13.4 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the equivalent of over 33 billion miles of driving of internal combustion vehicles. That's an almost 60% increase in total emission savings year-over-year. Putting more of our products in customers' hands helps grow that number, and our goals of making our products greener over time and further decarbonizing the electric grid will help multiply that effect. As part of that goal, I am delighted to say that as described in our recent impact report, our global Supercharging network was again 100% renewable in 2022. We've been able to achieve all of this while maintaining industry-leading margins and generating strong cash flows over the last several years.
Going forward, we will continue our focus on capital investment plans to support our future growth with investments in batteries, in vehicle production, including the next-generation platform, in the building of our lithium refinery that we recently broke ground on, in the energy storage factories, in our sales and service footprint, and in our charging network, among other things. Before I hand it back to Martin, I would also like to thank Hiro Mizuno for his dedicated service to the Tesla shareholders and the board these past 3 years. I would also like to express our enthusiasm on behalf of my fellow directors at the prospect of JB Straubel joining our board. I don't have to tell you that his passion for Tesla and green tech will make him an important asset in our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.
Again, on behalf of our full board, thank you for your tremendous support, and welcome to your 2023 shareholder meeting. With that, I'll hand it back to Martin.
Thank you, Robyn. I will now call the meeting to order. Please refer to the meeting agenda that has been provided to you and posted on the virtual meeting site. The time is now 3:10 P.M. Central Time, and I declare the polls are now open. We have already received over the last few weeks voting proxies from stockholders, meaning that almost all the votes that will be counted were already submitted before today. However, if you wish to vote your shares or change your prior vote, you may do so through the virtual meeting site. For those who are in person here today, ballots and ballot boxes were available to you at the check-in. Tesla's Board of Directors has appointed Computershare Trust Company to serve as Inspector of Elections.
Computershare has taken and signed an oath as inspector and has certified that starting on April 6, 2023, the proxy materials or a notice of Internet availability of proxy materials were mailed or provided to all Tesla stockholders of record March 20, 2023. We have majority of outstanding shares represented at the meeting, so I declare that there's a quorum present at the meeting, and we may proceed with the meeting. The items on the agenda are as follows. Number 1, the election of Class 1 directors, Elon Musk, Robyn Denholm, and JB Straubel, to serve for a term of 3 years or until their respective successors are duly elected and qualified. Number two, to approve executive compensation on a non-binding advisory basis. Number three, to approve the frequency of future votes on executive compensation on a non-binding advisory basis.
Number four, to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as Tesla's independent public registered accounting firm for the 2023 fiscal year. Number five, to vote on a stockholder proposal included in our proxy statement, which relates to the reporting of key person risk. Number six, to vote on a stockholder proposal which the stockholders did not seek to have included in our proxy statement. Tesla's board has recommended that our stockholders vote for each of the director nominees for the approval by non-binding advisory vote of executive compensation, and the ratification of appointment of PwC as an independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2023. Every three years for non-binding advisory vote for the frequency of future votes on executive compensation.
With respect to stockholder proposal included in our proxy statement, which relates to the reporting on the keyman risk, Karen Roberts Do-Dauter on behalf of Sumtris is here to present this proposal. Ms. Roberts Dauter, can you please identify yourself? I would like to invite you to speak. You will have 3 minutes.
Hold it for me.
I got it. Hello. Thank you for having me here today. Under discussion is a shareholder proposal concerning key person risk at Tesla, requiring Tesla's board to draft a report covering the steps taken to ameliorate the potential impacts of loss of key persons in the company. Before I begin, I would first like to say thank you to Mr. Musk. For so many of us, you stepped into fields where we had so desperately wanted to see change, and through bringing in a talented team willing to put in long hours, you dragged reluctant industries kicking and screaming into a better future, and for that, thank you. Building up this juggernaut around us, which, as you largely put it, runs itself these days. Thank you for that. Now here we are today.
At a time when Tesla's technological leadership should be on display, the investment community largely sees us as adrift, with management focused on all the matters not Tesla. Watching as Tesla's brand favorability dropped by 15 points last year, something that costs us margins. We have such a spectacular product pipeline and a team that knows how to execute at scale with low cost of goods sold, something that we are not being properly recognized for. It should go without saying, but apparently bears repeating, that if you cannot produce with low COGS, you have no future. When I look around the auto industry these days, I see a lot of companies that have no future, and that's a success on behalf of an incredible team here at Tesla that deserves recognition. When people look at this company, that's not what they see.
They see the company as a synonym for its CEO, the discussion turns to everything except for where it should be focused. It's my sincere hope that by introducing this proposal, we can not only accelerate the development of management at Tesla, but also increase its visibility. The fact that this company is so much more than its key persons is something that the public and the investment community should see. A founder often finds their greatest success in ensuring the future of the company and the development of the management talent who can come after them. Think Tim Cook at Apple, Steve Ballmer at Microsoft, and so forth, people who are ready from day one to execute without controversy, without distraction, and build a future for the company.
I encourage the board should embrace this opportunity in the most public manner possible to showcase the future being built right here so that the discussion among the public and the investment community revolves around that and not around every public statement on every other topic made by the leadership. I strongly encourage the board, the shareholders to support this proposal and for the board to embrace it. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ms. Roberts Dauter. The board is recommended that our stockholders vote against this proposal for the reasons as set forth in our statement of opposition in our proxy statement. Finally, As You Sow and Investor Advocates for Social Justice would like to raise a proposal from the floor. The proponents did not seek to have their proposal included in the proxy statement. The board recommends that our stockholders who are entitled to vote on this proposal vote against it. As a reminder, as is disclosed in a proxy statement, I've been advised by the proxy holders that they intend to vote all shares of stock over which they have discretionary authority against this proposal. Only shareholders who are shareholders of record or have obtained a legal proxy may vote for this proposal after it is presented.
Courtney Wicks, representing Investor Advocates for Social Justice, is here to present the proposal. Ms. Wicks, I would like you to speak. You will have 3 minutes.
Thank you. Good afternoon, Tesla board members, management, employees, and shareholders. My name is Courtney Wicks, I am the Executive Director for Investor Advocates for Social Justice, I'm here on behalf of As You Sow and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, who have filed shareholder proposals in the past on child labor and human rights abuses in Tesla's supply chain. I stand here today to call on shareholders to vote yes on requesting Tesla to conduct a third-party report detailing the company's efforts to eradicate child and forced labor in its supply chain. The human rights risks that permeate throughout Tesla's value chain, when not adequately addressed, harm shareholder value and undermine Tesla's ability to lead the just transition.
Growing attention and concern have been placed on child labor in cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as on forced labor in China's Xinjiang region. 70% of the world's cobalt needed for EV batteries are sourced in the DRC. Over 40,000 children work in artisanal and small-scale mining, often without protective equipment and in dangerous spaces that frequently collapse. Many children are seriously injured or killed in the mining process. In Tesla's latest sustainability report, it claims to have audited 80% of the miners and refiners in their cobalt supply chain against responsible production standards. However, there are many industry-backed standards, some of which are weak, and it isn't clear what percentage of audits were conducted by which initiatives.
It is also unclear how the company's due diligence ensures cobalt sourced from child labor is not intermingled in the industrial cobalt supply chain. Subsequently, an estimated 1.8 million people have been subject to state imposed genocide, detention in internment camps, and forced labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Region. A recent study concluded that automakers cannot conduct meaningful audits in this region. The recent Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and a United States Senate inquiry into Tesla's supply chain highlights the regulatory risk Tesla faces. We believe a third-party audit would provide greater transparency into how Tesla plans to eradicate child and forced labor from its supply chain. One of Tesla's competitive advantages is its sustainable leadership. Tesla, its board of directors, and management team have a moral obligation to pursue ethical sourcing practices that do not rely on the lives of children or enslaved people.
Tesla can continue to make a true leadership difference that forges a sustainable economic future that is anchored by innovation, empathy, human development, and shareholder value. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Wicks. We will now accept votes for, against, or to abstain for this proposal. Again, only for record holders or legal proxy holders. Please note this is the final opportunity to submit proxies in order for them to be counted. I declare the polls are now closed. Based on proxies we have previously received, I'd like to announce on preliminary basis that our stockholders have approved the recommendations of the Tesla Board on all agenda items, except that shareholders have recommended one year for non-binding advisory vote on the frequency of future votes on executive compensation. This means that I would like to officially announce our new addition to the Tesla Board, JB Straubel. After the final tabulation is completed, we will announce specific vote tallies filing in the filing Form 8-K within four business days of this meeting.
That concludes the official business of today's shareholder meeting, which is now adjourned. During the course of the following session, we may discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. Such statements are predictions based on current expectations. Actual events could result, could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those disclosed in our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filings with the SEC. Such forward-looking statements represent our views as of today, should not be relied on thereafter, and we disclaim from any obligation to update them after today. With that, please welcome Elon Musk.
I just wanna say I love you guys. Well, we've got a lot of great news to talk about today. The Tesla team has done an incredible job of executing over the past year, and we have many exciting years ahead of us. Yeah. With the Tesla Master Plan Part 3, which admittedly was, you know, quite technical, we wanted to go into a lot of technical depth, you know, it was clear that what we were saying were not merely assertions, but that they were backed up with physics and with real data, that it's realistic.
With the Master Plan Part Three, we want to basically. The goal is to give people hope, realistic hope, and maybe hope's even the wrong word, but simply to say that there is a path to a fully sustainable, global economy, that we are on that path, that we are accelerating that path, and thus, and that so long as we don't get complacent about it will happen. I'll just... I'll kinda rush through a recap of the Master Plan Part Three. The, you know, some of the salient points are that it will actually take less energy-To go to go sustainable, not more energy.
It's, it's actually more and some of these things may sound very obvious, but it's more energy efficient to go sustainable, not less. There's less mining that is required for a sustainable energy economy, not more. Also very important, I heard a question raised about cobalt mining, you know what? We will do a third-party audit. In fact, we'll put a webcam on the mine. If anybody sees any children, please let us know. It's, I mean, I don't want to go off on a tangent too much on that front, it's very important to appreciate that most of our battery packs are iron-based. A majority of our battery packs are iron-based, not cobalt.
Our other battery packs are nickel-based, not cobalt. The nickel batteries use a little bit of cobalt as a binder, only a tiny amount. In contrast, your phones all use 100% cobalt. I recommend complaining to the phone manufacturers. Even for the small amount of cobalt that we do use, we will make sure six ways to Sunday that no child labor is being exploited. Obviously, we're a company that cares a lot about doing the right thing, we don't want to delude ourselves or delude anyone else. Yeah. Carry on. Again, just recapping Master Plan Part III, really the point is to say that it is very, very doable. It is happening. We need a threefold increase in solar and wind.
We need to, really some of these are high, 29-fold increase in vehicle stationary and thermal battery production. Actually, in a nutshell, the way to think about sustainability is the faster we can make battery packs, the faster we can move to a sustainable energy economy. That's the fundamental limiting factor. I'll just grab some water here.
Yeah.
Yeah, this I can't emphasize that point enough. The rate of lithium-ion battery production fundamentally decides the rate at which the world transitions to sustainability because the batteries are needed for all forms of transport and for stationary storage given the intermittent nature of solar and wind power. And we do invite people to critique our analysis, because you know, any given analysis is gonna be to some degree wrong. We, that's why we put it out there looking for critical feedback to say, "Well, perhaps we got some things wrong, perhaps some things need to be adjusted." But, generally, the feedback we've gotten is that actually our analysis is quite accurate.
We've not seen any rebuttals thus far that would cause us to change our assumptions. It means roughly 240 terawatt-hours of battery pack or 240,000 gigawatt-hours of battery need to be produced, it'll only take 0.2% of land area for solar and wind. It's not like we need to carpet the Earth with solar and wind. It's just literally a fraction of a percent. Roughly a $10 trillion manufacturing investment, which relative to the global economy is actually a small number. Roughly 10% of the world economy. I think, obviously, 10% of the world economy is a small price to pay for a sustainable energy future.
It's also true that even when factoring in the cost or the emissions required to produce an electric vehicle, which for now are a little higher than gasoline vehicles, when you look at the emissions over time, electric vehicles absolutely win by a long shot. As we're seeing, the cost and the emissions required to produce an electric vehicle are dropping rapidly over time. We're gonna get to the point where an electric vehicle is lower, is cheaper than a gasoline vehicle. In 2022, we avoided releasing about 13 million tons of CO2, reduced manufacturing GHG per vehicle by 30% and reduced water usage by 15% despite massive increases in output. We also made our factory safer, which is really important.
We track the injuries per person, and we believe at this point we are best in industry or have the lowest injuries per person. We're now actually quite a big company from a headcount standpoint. This is our direct employment number. This does not count contractors. And for every manufacturing job, depending on how you count it, there are at least five, sometimes up to 10 jobs created, because you gotta look at the total supply chain, as well as all of the support functions. You know, when you create a factory like this, you actually create jobs for teachers, lawyers, carpenters, electricians, and restaurants and everything that's required to support a person at a factory.
This is why countries and states are so interested in having manufacturing facilities in their location. Anyways, it's a lot of people gainfully employed doing very useful things. We received 3.6 million job applications last year. Once again, the top two most desired companies for engineers on Earth were SpaceX and Tesla. You know, at the end of the day, the competitiveness of any given company is a function of where are the most talented people interested in working? That is the team that's gonna win. In fact, I'd say this is generally the case.
If you look at any given company and say, "Where are the most smartest, most driven people going to work?" That company is gonna win. Whether it's Tesla or any other company. We're also excited to announce our next-gen drive unit, which is a big reduction in silicon carbide. It's half the factory space. Notably, there are zero rare earth elements required. Yeah. We're also changing to a 48 volt low voltage architecture in the car. Yeah, this is a big deal, actually. The cars have been operating with 12 volt batteries for basically about a century.
For the first time in, I think, over 100 years, we're actually gonna change from a 12 volt voltage of, you know, outside of the drivetrain to a 48 volt architecture. To first approximation, that means we need only about a quarter as much copper for in the, in the car as would be needed for a 12 volt battery. That's a big deal 'cause people are often worried about, you know, is there enough copper? Yes, there is. FSD Beta is growing hyper-exponentially. That chart is gonna look like a wall, basically. Just a question for those in the room. How many people have tried out FSD Beta? Okay, great. What do you think of the latest build? Great.
It's really getting to the point where it's at least for me when I drive around, it's several days between interventions. I think we're getting to the point where that there's really just one last piece of the system that needs to be a neural net, which is the planning and control function. We expect to have that last piece become neural net, so it'll be end-to-end from video in to control out as a neural net. Yeah, the thing to appreciate is it's not that Full Self-Driving will be as good as a person. It will be much, much better, like a lot, like over time, 10x safer than a person.
It's not even gonna be a contest, frankly. This is a really big deal. I think some people realize it, I think you guys probably realize it, but being able to do a software update and have several million cars suddenly go from manual driving to autonomous, I think will be the single biggest asset value increase in history. The normal usage of a passenger car is roughly 10-12 hours per week, call it an, maybe an hour and a half per day. When you drive around, you see lots of cars just parked in parking lots because out of the 168 hours in a week, they're using less than 10%, maybe 7% of the hours of the week a car is in use.
Once it is autonomous, it can be used probably, I don't know, 50 hours a week, maybe more. It is effectively a 5-fold increase in the value of a car overnight. As I'm actually surprised that so few people realize this or maybe they just don't believe it's real. It is. This is really an insanely big deal. We're also the largest EV maker in the world. Yeah. I think that will continue. While at the same time being the highest margin of any car maker in the world. Now, making electric vehicles profitably is hard, as illustrated by the difficulty of our competitors.
A number of our competitors are making EVs at a significant loss. We are not. We are actually making EVs profitably, almost no one else is. This is hard. I'd say for this, it's a massive credit to the Tesla team for. I can't tell you how hard manufacturing is. Like, you've probably heard me say that prototypes are easy, manufacturing is hard. Manufacturing at scale with positive cash flow is excruciating. It's mega pain. The Tesla team has done it. As you can see, our free cash flow per year has been increasing steadily. You know, we're making good progress.
I mean, it should be said that and I've made some of these comments, that interest rates make a very big, have a very big effect on the affordability of cars. The vast majority of people buy cars based on the monthly payment. It's like, how much money, how much is the monthly payment? It's not a question of value for money. It's just do they actually have enough money? Can they afford it? For the vast majority of people, it's just can they afford to pay the payment?
As the interest rates increase, and credit tightens, like it's safe to say that the, you know, these various banks that have died are probably somewhat distracted from handing out auto loans. You know, it's like if they're on their way to the cemetery, increasing their auto loan portfolio is not the first thing on their mind. This is gonna be a challenging, I'd say a challenging 12 months. I wanna be sort of realistic about it, that Tesla is not immune to the global economic environment. I expect things to be just at a macroeconomic level, difficult for at least the next 12 months. Like Tesla will get through it, and we'll do well, and I think we'll see a lot of companies actually go bankrupt.
I wanna make sure that this is not just the good news parade. It's important to understand that no company is immune to the macroeconomic environment. That said, it won't be darkness forever. I expect probably a year of difficulty globally for everyone. My best guess is that the global economy turns around in roughly 12 months. Then Tesla will be in an extremely good position. Anyone who is a long-term investor, I think will do extremely well. Here I wanna give a big shout-out to the Tesla internal software team. It's actually a really big deal that Tesla has such a powerful internal software team.
I mean, that software team is responsible for handling the entire customer experience from buying the car, delivering the car, operating the factories, service and support. We internally wrote all of the insurance and financial software. The, it's, or the supply chain and logistics stuff, the data centers, the infrastructure, and the analytics insight. This is all internally written Tesla software. I think there are almost no companies in the world can do this because they do not have a very talented internal software team. They're generally reliant on third-party Enterprise resource planning software. Tesla is not. This is a hidden strength of the company that often doesn't get a lot of attention, but is incredibly powerful.
Once again, I'd like to thank them for all their work. As predicted, we are highly confident that Model Y will be the number 1 best-selling car on Earth this year. In fact, in Europe, the best-selling car of any kind, whatsoever. It's already was that in Q1, I should say. It's not like will be, it was that in Q1. China, the best-selling SUV, the United States, the best-selling non-pickup vehicle in the United States in Q1. You know, it's going well. I don't know if this is, like, the optimal picture, the Tesla cars are actually the safest cars in the world. We put immense effort into vehicle safety, we keep updating the safety.
We keep improving the automatic emergency braking system just with a software update. We keep improving the airbag deployment with software updates. We close the feedback loop on, like, when we see an accident, we analyze the accident, and we say, "What can we do from a software standpoint?" 'Cause there's actually quite a lot you can do to first of all avoid the accident, 'cause the best accident is no accident. If the accident occurs, how do we deploy the airbags and the sort of the seatbelt pretensioners to minimize the probability of injury? Even for cars that people have owned for many years, we are behind the scenes continuously improving the safety of your car.
There are even some things that I think a lot of people aren't aware of that we actually have automatic cabin overheat protection. Never in the history of the company has a child or a pet died in a Tesla. It's one of those, like, little-known features, but because we have a large battery and we're monitoring things all the time, we can make sure that the cabin temperature never gets to lethal levels. I think that's a, you know, big deal. Oh, yeah. While lots of cars will say they've got, like, you know, 5 stars or whatever, there's nuance to that.
When we did the Euro NCAP sort of active safety tests, we got the highest scores that they've ever seen. Yeah. We have got a 98% score on the active safety system, which obviously isn't good enough. We have got a game plan for getting rid of the last 2%. It's worth noting things like the total cost of ownership of a Model 3 is now comparable to that of a Toyota Corolla. Superchargers, we're making good progress. Our Supercharger uptime is now 99.95%. Yeah. We have Superchargers practically everywhere at this point.
Going to Megapack, because this is stationary storage is an important part of solving the sustainable energy problem. The Tesla Megapack is now more competitive than a natural gas peaker plant. We have very strong demand for the Tesla Megapack, and we're gonna make a lot of them. Yeah. A while back, I predicted that the Tesla stationary battery pack business would actually grow faster than the automotive side of things, and that's exactly what has happened. You can see it's an exponential curve, growing at a rate that is even faster than our vehicle sales. Yeah, sorry. We're expanding Gigafactory Nevada for the Tesla Semi production line and for the 4680 in-house cell production.
Yeah, some Megafactory stuff. This is. We're aiming for 40 gigawatt-hours a year, both in California and in China, but I think, long term, this will be much, much greater than this. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if long term, the stationary battery pack activity went well in excess of 500 gigawatt-hours per year. The demand is like quite quasi-infinite here. As we look ahead to tackle what we see as the choke points in the supply chain, one of them is lithium refining. I mean, there've been a few times on Tesla earnings calls where I've said, "Can someone please just do lithium refining?" because there's just a shortage of it.
We really see very little activity that's outside of China for lithium refining. It's not that we wish to take on extra problems, but since nobody else was doing it, we felt we had to do this. We've just broken ground on a lithium refinery in Corpus Christi, which will be more lithium refining than I think probably everything outside of China. Yeah. We've signed a deal for our next Gigafactory in Mexico, Giga Mexico. I think that's gonna be a fantastic factory. We're laying the groundwork for ultimately getting to 20 million vehicles a year. Cybertruck is a hard car to make.
Because it's such a radically new design, it actually, you can't just use conventional methods of manufacturing. We had to invent a whole new set of manufacturing techniques in order to build an exoskeleton-based car instead of an endoskeleton-based car. It's extremely non-trivial to build the Cybertruck. But we're making good progress on that. We have the. Yes, that's the thing when I in the factory, I tour the Cybertruck line to see how we're doing there and, sorry for the delay, but we're finally going to start delivering production Cybertrucks later this year. I think the product, if anything, is better than expectations.
I mean, Cybertruck is the car I will be driving on a day-to-day basis. You know, people always wanna know what our next product is. This is not the time to... We obviously need to have a, you know, a proper dedicated product launch. I just wanna emphasize that we are actually building a new product. We are actually designing a new product. We're not sitting on our hands here. There are two new products that I think you will be very excited about. Both the design of the products and the manufacturing techniques are head and shoulders above anything else that is present in industry. Yeah, anyways.
If I were to guess, I would say of these two new products, just these two new products alone, I would say we will probably make, obviously this is just, you know, Elon's guess, so, you know, don't sue me. I, you know, Elon's guess is that we'll probably make in excess of 5 million units a year of these two models combined, so. These are all real, by the way. The I think the thing, perhaps most notable is if you look at the difference between the last time we showed Optimus, and this was a video that was taken basically yesterday. The Optimus team was up all night, making this video. The Optimus team has done an incredible job. Just, yeah.
It's the motors, the controllers, the electronics, and everything you see in the Optimus robot is a Tesla-designed system. This is... We actually tried to find actuators and whatnot that were off the shelf. We found that there weren't any. In order to make an effective humanoid robot, you actually have to design the motors and gearboxes and the electronics from scratch because it's a very different application from anything else that exists. We took our world-class motor and power electronics team and said, "Okay, we need to design several actuators that don't exist in the world." And they did. Optimus is working quite well.
For Full Self-Driving, as Full Self-Driving gets closer and closer to generalized real-world AI, that same software is transferable to a humanoid robot. Just like, you know, we, you know, humans can obviously walk around with their arms and legs, but we can drive a car, fly a plane, steer a boat, ride a horse. If you have a generalized understanding or if you have generalized real-world AI, which is what we are developing for Full Self-Driving, it can be transferred to basically anything. So Optimus will use the same FSD computer as the car. The Optimus stuff is, I think somewhat, not somewhat, extremely underrated because the people just cannot comprehend the consequences.
Obviously, we need to make sure that we don't have a Terminator scenario. That's very important. It's all fun and games until a Terminator shows up. If you say like if you have had a generalized humanoid robot, what would be the effective ratio of humanoid robots to humans? 'Cause I think basically everyone would want one, and maybe people would want more than one, which means the actual demand for something like Optimus, if it really works, which it will, is, I don't know, I mean, 10 billion units? It's some crazy number. It might be 20 billion units if the ratio is, say, two to one on people, you know, humanoid robots versus people. It might actually be...
It's some very big number is what I'm saying, and a number vastly in excess of the number of cars. My prediction is that Tesla's long-term value will be, a majority of long-term value will be Optimus. That prediction I'm very confident of. Anyway. Let's see. I think with that, we can do questions perhaps.
Oh, sure.
What is it? Yeah, we also want to make sure, retail investors, please vote. Normally retail investors for most companies don't vote, but we really care about your vote of small investors, not just large investors. Please do register to vote. Your vote is very important. And, yeah, I think that's... Yeah, that's it. Yeah. With that, we can go to ad hoc questions from the audience. Okay, definitely the person in the Optimus outfit with the red cowboy hat. Great outfit. Sure. We'll try to get through as many questions as possible and, you know, you hit me with your toughest questions. Fine. The topic has to be about Tesla.
Okay. It is. Hey, Dad. It's your son, Optimus.
Hey, kid.
I wanted to, do you see it more likely that you guys will have an RV first or a CyberCamper?
Well, we don't have any plans to build an RV quite yet, although I can certainly see how Cybertruck could be converted into an RV. We are adding a lot of sort of attach points to Cybertruck, so others can build things. You know, other, you know, somebody could have a startup or other companies can build things that are attachments that enhance the Cybertruck and turn it into a camper essentially. 'Cause I think it'd be really cool to have all these, like, third-party things available for Cybertruck.
Awesome. Thank you.
All right. I mean, you can also probably just... You're that close, you can just say it or something. I don't know.
Actually, we'd like you guys to queue up behind us.
Okay.
There's three mics.
All right. All right. Yeah, so just yeah, go up.
Go ahead and grab a mic. Thank you.
Try to make the question short, so we can get through a lot of questions.
An Optimus podcast?
Maybe.
Will you do one?
Oh, oh, you mean just like a Tesla team doing a podcast about Optimus?
You mentioned you were investigating it. You might share the results.
Oh, yeah, sure.
Share the results.
Yeah, you know, I wonder if, maybe we could add, have a sort of like a, an addendum after the earnings call which is like a, you know, 30 minutes podcast on Optimus or something, like for those who are interested. Okay. I think we'll do that. Anyway.
Great.
All right.
Hey, Elon. Thanks for doing this today. It's an awesome event. Thank you.
Welcome. Thanks for coming. Hope you guys are having a good time.
Yeah, having a great time. Woo!
I'm pretty confident we have the funnest shareholders meeting by a long shot.
Undoubtedly, yeah. It's amazing.
So-
I'm really excited about a lot of things with Tesla. It's hard to pick a good question that is gonna cover everything. With the energy side of the business, I think it's hugely underrated. I mean, we've got tons of problems as, I mean, California with rolling blackouts.
Sure.
How do you think you can incentivize people, you know, more for solar, battery backup? We've got the referral program's been beefed up as well. You know, what are your thoughts there how we can get people on board?
Actually one of the challenges in California and a few other places is that in order to have the Powerwall be like an uninterruptible power supply for the house, we have to actually have a switch that disconnects you from the utility. Otherwise, you just, you know, send energy into the grid, and it doesn't do anything. That's actually been quite difficult with utilities. I'd like to thank PG&E for recently helping us get approval for installing the backup switch for Powerwall in California so that people can have uninterrupted power in California, and we're working on that in every jurisdiction. I'm confident that's gonna be a great long-term situation.
As mentioned, Megapack is growing very rapidly. Yeah. I mean, things are really growing like ridiculously fast on the energy storage front. Yeah, I feel good about that situation. All right, next question.
Asking about.
Uh.
Oh. Hey.
Okay.
Elon, a lot of people have just kind of been wondering, how are you doing? I'm just wondering what's up? How you doing? How you feeling? We saw you were partying in Cabo recently. just wondering.
What, me? Must've been someone else.
Yeah, how are you doing? Just human to human, how you doing?
Well, I have to say it's been of a, you know, rollercoaster situation. You know, like it's actually pretty rare for me to be at a, at a party. So that's like the, you know, first party I've been at in a while. Actually I wasn't even gonna go to it, then my brother talked me into it. Thanks, Kimbal. Yeah, I have to say like the, sometimes the work pain level is quite excruciating. Then on top of that, I get dumped on in the press. It's like, you know, it's not exactly super fun.
You know, there was a, you know, a short-term distraction 'cause I had to do like some major open heart surgery on Twitter to ensure the company's survival. I think Twitter is now in a stable place. Obviously very excited to have Linda Yaccarino join and I think Linda's gonna do a great job running Twitter. I'll provide obviously guidance on, you know, technology development. As you can see, I think Twitter at this point has released more new features in the last six months than it has in the last six years.
You know, obviously this is not a Twitter meeting, but the larger point is that I feel at this point I don't need to devote incremental time. The amount of time that Twitter will take going forward is relatively small compared to the last six months. Yeah. You know, I, you know, apart from like the, there's like some macroeconomic things that we can't do anything about, overall I feel very good about the health of the companies and I'm increasingly optimistic about the future. Thanks for asking. It's kind of you to ask.
Have you guys considered stretching out the financing terms on your auto business? You talked about earlier, consumers don't necessarily look at the sticker price they're paying. All they're concerned about is monthly payment.
Right.
One of the fundamental advantages of an EV is that it's substantially more durable. Would you guys ever consider stretching terms out to 10 years? Especially in this rate environment, given the shape of the yield curve, you know, extending the terms out that farther, you'd actually be capturing a lower cost of funds.
Yeah, I mean, the important thing to appreciate is that like that the vast majority of the financing is from banks. It's kinda whatever the banks are prepared to do. I mean, this year I guess we'll do on the order of $100 billion of sales, and we don't have $100 billion in cash to finance that. The vast majority of it has gotta come from, you know, from banks. It's really the banks' choice of what they're willing to do. It's. It has been tricky with banks recently because as I mentioned earlier, it's.
If you're a bank and you're not sure whether you're gonna be alive or not, that's, it's a pretty big distraction, and increasing your auto loan portfolio is very much a secondary priority. It's just important to appreciate it's not up to Tesla, it's up to the banks. There's not some easy solution where you can, say, have a captive financing arm, et cetera, 'cause you have to securitize those loans, and the market for securitizing them is weak. There is no. Just I wish there was an easy path, but there isn't. You know, I think just important to remember that the economy moves in cycles, and we've had a very long period of up cycle.
The next 12 months will be, I think, difficult for everyone, I think, you know, when Berkshire Hathaway had their annual meeting, Warren and Charlie actually said, like: "Hey, this year the Berkshire companies are going to make less money." You know, they're very well-run organizations, and I think that's just generally true for the economy. You know, but if... It's also important to remember that, you know, there are good times and there are dark times, the good times follow the dark times. My advice would be don't look at the markets for the next 12 months. If there's a dip, buy the dip.
I think you will not be sorry because the, you know, there's just generally a sort of a... There's an economic cycle to things, but things come back up. My guess is tough times for 1 year. Like I said, just my guess. Tesla will emerge stronger than ever, and the long term, if you say, like, net present value of future cash flows will be incredible in my opinion. All right.
Hey, Elon. Meet Kevin here.
Hey, how's it going?
Good, thanks. Tesla is the largest position in my ETF, ticker PP, that's for pricing power.
Right.
I'm curious, I really think that some of the features that you highlighted here, like the over-the-air airbag deployments of improving-
Yeah.
The features, the safety features, are great things that we could be advertising for. I know you've heard this many times before. I know you have.
Sure.
But-
No, no.
Five.
Sorry. Go ahead, yeah.
$525 off every car this year is half of Netflix's advertising budget. $1,000 is the entire Netflix advertising budget, and I see their ads everywhere. Why not advertise these things that you told us here? I feel like nobody else knows about this.
Sure.
I just talked to Gordo, the Tesla bear. He's still talking about 2016 New York Times pieces. These people are in the past, man.
I mean, that's like 7 years ago at this point.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Yeah. Actually, I talk to a lot of people, and they still think that, like, Teslas are, like, super expensive. I'm like: "No, actually, the starting price for a Tesla is below the average auto price in the U.S." It's like, that's a good thing.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's good that it's that way, you know? Like our goal was always to make cars that are affordable to the general public. So I hear you. I mean, I think. It's indeed ironic that, you know, Twitter is, like, highly dependent on advertising, so, you know, here I am, it's like, you know, not never used advertising really before and now have a company that's highly dependent on advertising, so, I guess I should say advertising is awesome and everyone should do it. But I think. I hear your, the, your sort of larger point, which is that there are amazing features and functionality about Teslas that people just don't know about.
and,
Whoo.
Yeah. Although there's obviously a lot of people that follow, like, say, the Tesla account and the, you know, my account, whatever, on Twitter, to some degree it is preaching to the choir, and the choir is already convinced. I think what you're saying, does have some merit and, you know what? I believe in taking suggestions, so, we'll try a little advertising and see how it goes. Okay. Okay. All right. I wasn't expecting that level of enthusiasm. Okay. It sounds like our shareholders, if I read between the lines, subtle as it is, are saying we should probably do some advertising. Okay. Very well. All right.
Hi, Elon. Hi, Tesla. Thank you for everything. My question is regarding you recently add Steam to the car. That's great. We can play video games. Is Tesla currently developing the ability for other parties to develop apps for the car? For example, if we can buy actually customizable themes for the operating system of the car, I think you can make some revenue there, like that space themes for the car or Lord of the Rings or stuff like that. Do you have any interest in that right now?
Well, I mean, important, so I think the notion of having entertainment apps and whatnot becomes increasingly important as the cars achieve self-driving. Because otherwise you can only really watch, play games or watch movies or whatever when the car is stationary. You know, which, you know, if it's charging or whatever, then you can use it. At the point at which it's Full Self-Driving, I think it's very much about entertainment and productivity. So I think that is something that might make sense in the future. Overwhelmingly, the focus right now for Tesla software, apart from improving safety, is achieving Full Self-Driving and then getting Full Self-Driving to be much safer than human driving.
Once we achieve Full Self-Driving, I think there could be a lot of opportunity for apps and whatnot. You know, even in the car as it is today, for a Model S and X, we've made a sort of a full Steam integration. You can actually just literally log on with a Model S or X with your Steam account and play any game that is on Steam, which is a lot of games. Which is pretty wild. I think a lot of people don't know that. You can play with a keyboard or mouse, you can play with a joystick or controller. You can also play Netflix, YouTube, or anything else.
I mean, for my little son, X, he loves watching, you know. Actually, he loves watching rocket videos, in the rear screen of the Model S and X. Yeah, so it is something that we will do, long term. One of the things, we already have a lot of stuff there and we'll do more as, self-driving becomes a reality, so.
Hey, Elon. I'm John or Doctor Know It All on YouTube.
Okay.
Anyway, my question is, as you guys move completely or finish the transition in Full Self-Driving from version 1.0 of the software to 2.0, what do you perceive of as the, like, potential stumbling blocks after that? It seems like that's the major, you know, kind of step change that needed to happen. You're almost done with that, what happens after that? Also, please let me interview about you about Full Self-Driving. Like, I'll spend two hours talking about just that. Thank you.
Well, there's the... One can really think about Full Self-Driving as a sort of a march of nines of reliability. You, we need to get to the point where the probability of injury is lower than that of the average human driver, and then ultimately, probability of injury is much lower. Even at the point at which the car is capable of driving itself, there's still a lot of work to do. 'Cause, you know, every year there's 1 million people that die in auto accidents, and I think probably everyone in this audience has friends and family that have died or been seriously injured in auto accidents. And for every...
There's like 1 million people that die, there's 10 million people roughly that are seriously, like, permanently injured. It matters that we, you know, if we can get that down by an order of magnitude, you know, there's like 900,000 lives saved per year, maybe 9 million severe injuries prevented per year. That really, I think morally, has to be our primary goal. I guess I'm open to an interview on FSD. 2 hours is a long time, but-
I can make time.
Okay. Okay. All right. I'll do an interview. It's gotta be on Twitter, but sure. All right.
Hi. Hi, Elon. I'm Josh Phillips, longtime retail investor. My question's about battery-grade lithium supply in the next 10 years. You know, lithium experts all agree that mines are just not coming online fast enough to meet battery supply. Actually, Drew Baglino pointed this out recently, some mines take 10 years plus to be permitted, and even GM has actually announced, like, huge lithium deals that will, like, secure away supply from the rest of the industry. What's Tesla's plans to get more supply of lithium at the mine level outside of refining, but also at a deeper level than a traditional offtake? Because as we know, he who controls the spice controls the universe.
Sure. I actually think that the industry analysis is incorrect, and the constraint is fundamentally that of processing. Now our refinery in Corpus Christi that we're building is, you know, primarily oriented towards refining spodumene, of which there is a truly vast amount in the world. I think about three quarters of our lithium comes from Australia. Frankly, you could increase the rate at which the mines are operating, and the limiting factor is not how fast can you mine, but how fast can you process. The mines are only gonna produce ore at the rate at which refineries can handle the ore, or they'll... it's pointless.
I think my opinion, and obviously I could be wrong about this, but is that it's really not about the lithium ore. Lithium is extremely common. Lithium is everywhere. In every country's got lithium. It's not like oil. Lithium is one of the most common elements on Earth. Taking the lithium ore and refining it to battery grade is extremely difficult because the purity levels required for a battery are extremely high. If you have even a small impurity, then you will degrade the life of the cell dramatically. You need ultra-pure battery grade lithium, and that's why our focus is on refining as opposed to mining. Thank you.
Hi, Elon. Thanks, it's a great time here. You spoke about safety in your presentation of the vehicles, and I just wanna say, I'm thankful to you for building such a safe vehicle 'cause I'm here today with my son. We drove in his Model 3 over here, that he replaced with the one that he got rear-ended significantly in, and it destroyed the car, but we're able to be here today, so-
Great.
Thank you very much.
Absolutely. Not sure where to look. There? Okay.
Hey, how's it going? My name's Austin Gregory. I'll ask about this because I don't think it gets near enough love. I was wondering if there are any updates on the next gen Roadster, actually. Yeah. I know it's sort of like the cherry on top and all that stuff.
Yeah.
You guys have a lot on your plate, as you've said before, but if there's any updates on, like, the release timeline, all that stuff, the SpaceX package maybe?
Yeah, yeah.
That'd be amazing. Thanks.
Totally fair and reasonable question. Where is that thing? We expect to complete the engineering and design of the next gen Tesla Roadster this year. Hopefully start production, this is not a commitment, but hopefully start production next year. I. It is like, as you alluded to, it's not even the icing on the cake, it's the cherry on the icing on the cake. I would, I wouldn't expect it to be, like, it's definitely not gonna be a huge contributor to revenue. It will be a modest contributor to profitability, but it will be sick.
You know, there's some value to me running 2 companies because the next gen Roadster will have the SpaceX option package. That'll make it truly next level.
Hey, Elon. Eva McMillan here. First of all, I wanna thank you for making the absolute best, safest, and most fun cars in the whole world. Cars in Florida, we are seeing many, many more cars in Florida than a year ago.
Yeah.
Matter of fact, cars are doubled. The question is, we all want Tesla insurance.
Oh, yeah.
Is it coming?
Oh, yeah. Actually, that's a great question.
Later this year.
Okay, Zach says it's coming later this year. I have to tell you, like, the one of the thorniest things in the United States is car insurance, or insurance in general because it's a state by state, and every state's got different rules and regulations. That, that's why it's not, like, rolled out nationwide. I think really there should be one national standard for insurance, especially car insurance. It, I think it would improve the cost effectiveness of car insurance. Our intent is to roll out nationwide and ultimately internationally. There is a staggering amount of paperwork that is needed to get it done.
As Zach said, we expect to offer Tesla insurance in Florida later this year. Thank you.
Thank you, Elon. Thank you, Elon. Alexandra Merz. I am Tesla Boomer Mama. Very happy to be here.
All right.
Thank you. very grateful to the Tesla team and you, of course. Just want you to know we love the emotions every day, joy and less joy, but we're there. Shareholders, it's not easy. We're here not because it's easy, but because it's hard. My question initially was on in-house financing. You already answered that, and I want to congratulate you to the double investment grade rating. I asked my Twitter subscribers, I'm sure you're gonna appreciate, what they wanted to bring forward...
Sure.
That question made the cut. Here we go. Automotive, including SGA peak margin, the same for energy. What number and by when do you have the best Elon guess that we get there?
Sorry, I'm not sure I fully understand the question.
This is the peak margin for automobile.
Oh, yeah.
including SGA and energy, and by when will we get there? Your guess. I know nobody will sue you.
Sorry, what's SGA?
Well, software as a service.
Oh, oh, okay. You mean Full Self-Driving?
Including FSD.
Yeah, yeah.
What's gonna be the top automobile margin?
Oh, yeah. I mean, that, what I was saying earlier is that at the point at which you have a truly autonomous vehicle that can drive around with no one in it, the utility of the vehicle, I think as a rough guess, is probably 5x what it is today. Because, you know, people will drive an average of an hour and a half a day perhaps, so 10 hours a week. If the car is autonomous, it can probably... This is just speculation, but it probably can operate for a third of the hours in the week, which would mean 50 or more hours, thus a five-fold increase. The car costs the same.
Sure, I understand, what is gonna be the margin for Tesla then? Because you're obviously thinking you're gonna sell much more FSD then, right? You may have a system in place of Robotaxis, you may have a cut with fleets. Did you do any projections what the automotive peak margin for Tesla could be in 2 years, 5 years, and the same for energy?
I mean, this is definitely. We're in sort of highly speculative territory here. Obviously if you've got a car that costs the same and has, say, I don't know, a 20% or 25% margin and suddenly is able to be used 5x as much, then you might have 80% margins, and the revenue would increase several fold. That's why I say it's probably gonna be the biggest asset value step change in the history of Earth. Yeah.
And, and, and-
Energy just simply does not have such an increase in asset utilization, so I would expect energy to remain at sort of a 20%, 25%-ish to 30% margin.
All right. You said ask the tough questions. You're still good, right?
Yeah.
All right, cool. First of all, though, as a family man, I just wanna say there's a couple of things like a loop for tether of a car seat going through the headrest, which would be super helpful. There's a couple other things that would be really nice. The Model Y is the only one you can do that in today. Maybe we could fix that. When we're thinking about 4680 battery cells, should we be thinking about the efficiency and the performance we're getting today? Is there some updated timeline path that we could see closer to Battery Day presented efficiency, performance that we can look to in the future?
Well, I think, first of all, it's really important to express the difficulty of, you know, like for Tesla to go from nothing to making a battery cell that we aspire to be better than any other battery cell on Earth, even when compared to companies where the only thing they do is make a battery cell, is obviously not a trivial exercise. That said, we do see a path to, you know, high, very high energy density and higher energy density and lower cost than anything else out there. It's a hard path. It's a very hard path.
Normally this, it would be absurd for companies to attempt such a thing. No other car company is really attempting to do anything like this, in a serious way. I guess technically BYD 'cause they started out as a battery company. Yeah, it's a very difficult thing to do. I think we are tracking to success in that regard.
Hey, Elon. First of all, thank you for undoubtedly making the world a better place for my son to live in.
Thank you. It's kind of you to say.
Once Cybertruck is fully ramped in Austin, what is the target production? Also, there's some rumors that you're thinking about stepping down as CEO. Please say it ain't so.
It ain't so. Yeah. I think Tesla's gonna play an important role in AI and AGI, and I think I need to oversee that to make sure it's good. Because that's a thorny problem if there ever was one. You know, like, I think generally people do not, or very few people, even in the AI community, do not appreciate just how much capability Tesla has in AI. It's by far the most advanced real world AI. There's no one even close. And reality has the most degrees of freedom, so I gotta make sure that's good. Sorry, and you were saying something?
When Cybertruck fully ramps here in Austin...
Oh, yeah.
what's the target production?
As said, yeah, we'll start production later this year. We'll start handing over cars later this year. There will be an S curve of production, so it'll be slow at first and then ramping up. I guess we'll see what the demand is like. I mean, I think we're likely to do probably a quarter million a year, I think, maybe more. Again, very much dependent on what the demand is like and it's You know, we don't just need to ramp up production, but we also need to improve the production cost efficiency. Which is gonna be also a very, very hard thing.
But I'd say it's, you know, a quarter million a year is a reasonable guess, and it might be $500,000. I don't know. We'll make as many as people want and can afford. Then like I said, it's gonna be hard to make the cost affordable because it is a new car, new manufacturing method. In the grand scheme of things, relative to the production rate of all the other cars we make, it will be small. Still very cool. Yeah. Thanks.
Elon, maybe three more questions.
Sure.
Thank you. Good day, Mr. Musk. Hello, my name is Delia Archer. This question aims to address Tesla's efforts in developing skilled workforce, attracting diverse talent, and promoting career opportunities within the company. When I look around, I see a lot of young faces, and I think about internships and apprenticeships for students in high school and beyond. My question is, are there any plans to expand existing partnerships and explore new avenues for collaborations with educational institutions and nonprofit organizations to attract the next generation in varied career pathways?
Yeah, actually, with all of our gigafactories, we work with the local schools, actually from the high school level, community college, and university, because it's incredibly important to foster the talent for the factories. As you saw from the employment numbers, we actually need a lot of people. Even though we've got a lot of automation, we still need a lot of people to operate the factories, and it really matters that they have the right training. We're big believers in reaching out to educational institutions, and because, frankly, it's in our interest to do so. Thank you for asking the question. All right.
Elon, Josh Fuller. I had originally thought of asking about the fun police and pushing back on the boombox and allowing us to screech at people with goats again. After seeing Optimus, I was inspired to ask, has anybody asked Optimus' opinion of Mars and does he have a ticket yet?
Well, you know, Optimus is not a deep thinker at this point. Optimus is still, you know, figuring out how to do basic stuff. Like, it couldn't make, you know, cook some eggs or something quite yet. We need to get Optimus to the point where it has reasonable agility and can do basic things. You know, we're aiming for it to start off doing simple tasks that are sort of boring and repetitive or dangerous. Basically jobs people don't wanna do. That's our goal, it, I'm confident we'll achieve that goal.
We gotta figure out how to make it at scale, make sure that the robot is safe. I think it's gonna be very important to have a local means of turning it off, so safety is gonna be extremely important. I can't emphasize that enough. Right now, it is not at an intelligence level where it's pondering questions like Mars. it will be one day, so.
Thank you.
Hi, good afternoon, Elon. My name is Luke Arsenal. I just wanna start off by saying a big thank you to you and the team of Tesla for all you guys do. It's been great to see, and I'm so happy for you guys. My question is, with the rise in cybersecurity threats to operational technology and Internet of Things, what steps is Tesla taking to protect the company itself and its products from these threats? Also, as a suggestion, 'cause I know you like suggestions, for the navigation, do you think we could do something on the UI that adds in when you're about to take the off-ramp to show a picture of that exit, kinda like other map systems do? also-
Oh, man, this is a lot of questions.
One of my friends wanted to get a shaka from you, if that's possible.
Okay. Well, we are constantly improving the navigation system, and being robust to hacking is incredibly important. In fact, we conduct a lot of sort of third-party hacking contests to try to get the best hackers in the world to break into our cars. Actually, no one has yet actually broken into a Tesla in a way that would allow you to really control the car in a significant way. They have gotten to where they can, like, honk the horn and mess with the infotainment system, and I'd like to thank them for their efforts. We take information security extremely seriously.
For navigation, yeah, there's definitely things we can improve there. Really, down the road, navigation visuals are not gonna matter very much because the car is gonna take you wherever you wanna go. Yeah, as for pictures, I have to decline, unfortunately. Otherwise if I say... I actually hate being rude to people. If I say yes to one person, then it's like selfies for a zillion. You know, it gets kinda, it gets kinda crazy. Thanks for asking. Maybe we'll take one or two more questions, actually. Sure. I know.
Okay.
Sorry. Hello. I had a question on the efficiency. I don't know if you've been paying attention to Aptera, and I was curious if you thought that was a space that you could see Tesla getting into as far as not just an efficient manufacturing process, but also the actual car itself and range?
I-
just buy-
I'm not super familiar with them, but we have a lot of products to get done. It's not like It's never a shortage of ideas. Ideas, frankly, I find ideas to be somewhat trivial. The execution of the idea is extremely difficult. As I said, like, prototypes are easy, production is hard. Production at and cash flow positive is excruciating pain like at a level you cannot believe. It's not product ideas, they're irrelevant. Tough, right? That's what I think of them. It's sort of like the idea of going to the moon. That's irrelevant. Getting to the moon is the hard part. Okay. Maybe one last question. Yeah.
Elon, John Lopez from Orlando here. I've got two things for you real quick. The first one is, with rideshare being a growing thing, especially with Tesla owners, are we gonna get a guest mode option available for that? The second thing is, as an X Plaid owner, I would really love to get Track Mode.
As a what, sorry?
X Plaid.
Well, Plaid has Track Mode.
The Model X Plaid does not, though.
Oh, oh, Model X. Yeah, we can probably add that, sure. Yeah, no problem. Rideshare. A bunch of these things will really not be relevant in a self-driving world. You can summon the car and take you somewhere, and if you wanna add someone to that ride, you can if you want to. Overwhelmingly, it is about achieving self-driving, full self-driving. You know, I think we're really getting to the final stages of full self-driving where. I mean, I drove for several days around Austin just dropping pins in random locations, and I had 0 safety interventions. It's really. Even in the city of San Francisco, which is very complex, I haven't had a safety intervention in a long time.
I think it's really, it's getting to the point where, you know, admittedly, I have been optimistic about this in the past. I think.
Don't say it!
All right, I won't say it. All right, fair enough. All right. Okay, I think it'll happen, you know? All right. You want one last question? Sure.
First, congratulations on your decision to try advertising. We all want Tesla to pass Apple in market cap.
I didn't realize people wanted it that much.
I know.
Okay.
It's good that a lot of people agree. Earlier this year, you cut prices on everything 15%, 20%. More recently, you've been raising prices on Model Y, Model S, Model X. Can you just talk about the pricing strategy on Model Y going forward, and keep it separate from the decision to bring out the next-gen vehicles that we all agree is gonna, you know, blow the doors off on volume. Just on Model Y, it's the best-selling product in the world. Can you just talk about strategy pricing going forward on that? Thank you.
I mean, it's pretty straightforward. I mean, we see what the demand is. Then we adjust pricing to meet the demand. Now, the thing is that, what is, you know, what happens with other car makers is that they're actually constantly adjusting pricing on cars. It's just not obvious. In the case of Tesla, you can see immediately when there's a price change that occurs because we don't have any intermediaries, don't have any dealers. There's no manufacturer's suggested retail price. The reality is actually at car dealers, the prices are changing radically. I mean, last year there were significant premiums above MSRP at sort of the conventional car dealer, you know, like, you'd pay above MSRP last year.
Then, this year, I think things are below MSRP or close to it. Then the manufacturers will then also offer incentives. What's actually happening is very big price shifts by other car makers. They're just not obvious. Whereas with Tesla it's obvious. And this is necessary because demand fluctuates a lot, so something's gotta be done to achieve a supply-demand clearing point for volume. Just people are reacting to something that's obvious as opposed to saying, "Oh, yes, every car company does this all the time." Tesla is no exception. That's the actual reality. All right.
Last question.
I'll be really quick.
Okay.
I will say I have been driving FSD, my wife drives FSD. There's a term called the wife test. My wife will only drive our kids on FSD.
Okay.
It's incredible.
That is a great. I mean, the sort of significant other test is a very good test because there for a while there was like, you know, friends or significant others would be like, "Please don't put it on." "It's too scary." It's getting to the point where, I mean, it's gonna be just smooth as silk. In fact, you'll be able to visually tell, perhaps even now you can, visually tell if the car is being driven on FSD or manually, because if it's being driven on FSD, it's smooth and precise. If you look at if you actually closely observe cars going down the highway, the people are constantly moving in their lanes.
The cars are, like, doing this all the time when they're manually driven. If it's actually on FSD, it's dead center in the lane. It will actually get to the point where it is not merely, and maybe is at that point, not merely safer than a person, but actually way smoother than manual driving. I really can't say enough about the profundity of Full Self-Driving. It is just one of the biggest changes in history that will occur. It's not some feature. It's like a profound. It's really as profound as electrification.
We have already have millions of the cars on the road that will literally achieve this with a software update. I mean, that's like head exploding emoji, you know? I think probably a lot of people in this room realize it, but the rest, most of the rest of the world doesn't. Yeah, so.
Given how incredible FSD is and how much, you know, merit you're giving to potential future margins of the car, as well as how much impact on society, given that they didn't even want you to say if it's gonna happen this year, just, you know, not to jinx it.
Sure.
Would it be possible to have just for some type of public-facing, investor-facing kind of timeline? That way, you know, you mentioned V12 is coming, and that's, you know, AI front end. Could we just see kind of a timeline on this is the version we're at, these are the things we're working on, and this is when we're, you know, ETA? We can kind of see that in real-time instead of maybe Elon time.
No, so the thing that's been, you know, really difficult with Full Self-Driving is that it's very often seems like it's about to happen until you realize that you're actually at a local maximum and that you need to re-architect elements of the software to get out of the local maximum to then a higher local maximum. It's been this sort of series of logarithmic curves. That's why it's been like, it seemed like, oh, if you just extrapolate this on a straight line, it gets to self-driving, except that it's not a straight line, it's a logarithmic curve, and it sort of. You start hitting these, like, local maximums where you'll sort of asymptote to a certain capability and then have to re-architect things.
I think we're finally at a high enough local maximum or will be this year, where to the point where it is, I think, probably safer than a person, meaning the probability of injury on average, will be better than a person, even if the, even if someone pays no attention to the car. It is worth saying that right now, for human-supervised Tesla's Full Self-Driving, it is dramatically safer than manual driving. It's like, I think like 4x safer, maybe more. It is already a massive safety improvement to have human-supervised FSD right now.
I think we will get to the point where we're always gonna be in some amount of local maximum, but I think that we'll be in a local maximum that exceeds human human-level safety this year. Yeah. I guess we'll see. Anyway, I wanna thank you all for coming and just wanna say, like, you know, your support is super appreciated. You know, as they say, a friend in need is a friend indeed, and supporting Tesla when the chips are down, that those are the real friends, and you're them, so thank you.