Tesla Shareholder Meeting 2021
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (2)
Transcript
0:09Elon MuskWelcome to the annual shareholder meeting, coming to you live from Austin, Texas. So we've had a fantastic year thanks to the great work of the Tesla team. I'd just like to start off by just thanking Tesla team for the incredible work over the past year to get where we are.
0:27Elon MuskWell done.
0:37Elon MuskSo we have record vehicle deliveries as we've already reported this, but you can see that there's a pretty. I mean, I think this might be the fastest that any large manufactured object has grown.
0:53Elon MuskLike, yeah, certainly one of the fastest, perhaps the fastest. And it looks like we have a good chance of maintaining that into the future. Really dependent on supplier challenges.
1:09Elon MuskSo basically, if we can get the chips, we can do it. So hopefully this chip shortage will alleviate soon. But I feel confident of being able to maintain something like this at least above 50% for quite a while.
1:27Elon MuskThe Model 3 became the best selling premium vehicle globally, so if any premium vehicle.
1:42Elon MuskI almost got arrested at one point for clients claiming that we'd do 5,000 a week. Literally.
1:53Elon MuskYou're laughing now. Anyway, this is great. We think the Model Y will be the best selling vehicle of any kind globally. So I think it will exceed the Model 3.
2:10Elon MuskI think we've got a good chance of it being the best selling vehicle by revenue next year and then I think quite likely to be the best selling vehicle in just of any kind numerically in 23 and 2023.
2:26Elon MuskSo basically we need OSIN to get online and Berlin to get online and reach volume production and then I think that's going to happen.
2:38Elon MuskIn terms of free cash flow generation. Obviously we had some tough years back then. Things were looking a little dicey to say the least in 2017 and 2018.
2:54Elon MuskDon't want to go back there again, but we got through that and now things are looking really good. So I think we'll see continued strong cash flow generation and especially as you multiply unit volume times autonomy and increased efficiency in the factories.
3:19Elon MuskBecause I think over time you'll see all manufacturers will make electric vehicles and eventually all manufacturers will make autonomous vehicles. And I think Tesla's open to licensing Autonomy because I think Autonomy will be such a significant lifesaver and preventer of injuries that it is not a technology we want to keep to ourselves.
3:43Elon MuskSo I think it will be morally right to license it to other manufacturers if they would like to use it. So.
4:01Elon MuskAnd of course we made a lot of progress on, on cost reduction. And so despite our average selling price actually going down significantly, because with the introduction of the Model 3 and Model Y, These were much lower priced cars.
4:17Elon MuskWe've managed to still do decently well on, on gross margin. So this is, you know, getting the average price down and, and gross margin up is very difficult, but we've managed to, to do that.
4:32Elon MuskSo yeah, it's good. Our goal really is to make the cars as affordable as possible. We are seeing significant cost pressure in our supply chain and so we've had to increase vehicle prices at least temporarily, but we do hope to actually reduce the prices over time and make them more affordable.
4:56Elon MuskSo yeah, unfortunately we've just expedite like, I mean the sheer amount of money we're spending on flying parts around the world is just not great, but hopefully temporary. So.
5:09Elon MuskAnd we need a lot of batteries, hence battery day is what this shirt means. Very obtuse, but we are going to need a lot of batteries. This is going to be a combination of batteries from our suppliers.
5:24Elon MuskAnd in supplier discussions, you know, some of us players have just asked me outright, are we going to just, you know, put them out of business or something? I'm like, not at all.
5:33Elon MuskAs many sales as you want to make and supply to us at an affordable price, we will buy, no limit. I'm like, oh, okay. So like, do you want to have.
5:42Elon MuskYeah, increase by 100% Sounds good to me. So the basic plan is we're really going to order a lot and we have ordered a lot of batteries from suppliers, basically telling suppliers literally as much as you can make will take.
6:02Elon MuskAnd we'll prioritize batteries for vehicles, but then use any excess cells that we have in the powerwall and megapack. Because over time we think the demand for stationary storage is going to be at least as high as the demand for vehicles.
6:21Elon MuskSo sustainable energy, primarily solar and wind, is intermittent. And so the wind is blow all the time. The sun doesn't shine all the time, obviously. And so you need batteries to buffer that power.
6:33Elon MuskSo the fundamental pillars of a sustainable energy future are basically solar and wind. Those are the primary stationary batteries and electric transport. And if you have those three, then you have a sustainable energy future as long as the sun is shining.
6:48Elon MuskYou know, so sometimes people ask me about fusion and I like it as an idea and by the way, I think it's totally doable. But there's a giant fusion reactor in the sky that shows up every morning and zero maintenance.
7:02Elon MuskSo I'm like, sounds like a good deal. You know, catch a little bit of that sunlight and power Earth. A shockingly small amount of land is needed to power Earth.
7:13Elon MuskIt's like, you know, a couple hundred miles by a couple hundred miles of solar panels will power the entire United States. So it's like, okay, it's not that hard.
7:24Elon MuskAnd then I believe we calculated you only needed one square mile of batteries. So you may think like, wow, a lot of batteries. One square mile of batteries. It's not that crazy.
7:35Elon MuskSo anyway, so we've got a plan to reduce the cost per kilowatt hour of batteries. And, and our suppliers, you know, have similar plans. So this is really supplemental to our suppliers.
7:56Elon MuskWe'll make some cells, they'll make cells, we'll use them all. The fundamental good of Tesla I think is by how many years did we accelerate sustainable energy? This is the fundamental, I think way to think of the value of Tesla.
8:16Elon MuskAnd so if we are able to accelerate sustainable energy by more years, that is good. Hence the need to grow quickly. We've got three new factories. Giga Shanghai has done an incredible job and Giga Shanghai now exceeds Fremont in production.
8:38Elon MuskSo actually I'd like to just give a special hand to Tesla China team.
8:50Elon MuskSo it's the best quality, lowest cost and also low drama. So it's great. And that said, we are continuing to expand our Fremont operations and expect to hopefully increase fremont output by 50%.
9:14Elon MuskAnd that's still where we make all Model S and X's are made in Fremont. But it kind of makes sense especially for the high volume vehicles to have production that's at least on the continent where the consumers are.
9:26Elon MuskOtherwise it's just, it's also not good for the environment to be shipping cars, you know, several thousand miles. So the basic idea is have the high volume vehicles be where the customers are approximately at least.
9:39Elon MuskAnd then also great progress with building Giga Texas, which is where we are right now, and Giga Berlin Brandenburg. So just hand for those teams as well.
9:56Elon MuskAnd these factories will have cell production in them as well. So this will be really kind of raw materials in cars out. So really, really big. Yeah, I mean these things will be in like units of Pentagon basically.
10:19Elon MuskLet's see. So impact report. There's a lot of, I think interesting stuff in our impact report. We go into quite a lot of detail on all things we're doing.
10:32Elon MuskAnd you know, Tesla is a company that tries very hard to do the right thing in all respects. We try very hard to do the right thing in all respects.
10:44Elon MuskWe don't always succeed. But if you're looking for a company where you say, is that company really trying to do the right thing? That is Tesla, okay. We really try.
10:58Elon MuskOkay. I mean, anyway, so.
11:08Elon MuskAs I was mentioning, we've got the, you know, three parts of a sustainable energy future, solar and wind. But I think primarily solar will be the main source of energy of sustainable energy and energy in general.
11:23Elon MuskAnd then you need to store that energy with stationary battery packs and then you need electric vehicles and electric airplanes and boats and whatnot. So yeah, great. Yeah. And then the average life cycle emissions in the US this is only going to get better as, as we move to a sustainable energy grid and electric vehicles, then obviously we move to a fully sustainable energy economy, which, which is where we want to get to as quickly as possible.
11:57Elon MuskThe sooner the better. And can there be a carbon tax? I mean, what the hell, you know? So people sometimes say like oh, carbon tax that would benefit Tesla.
12:10Elon MuskI'm like, yeah, but it would hurt SpaceX. So how about the carbon tax which really needed. So see, battery materials are definitely encyclopable and gas is not. CO2 is an extremely stable molecule.
12:30Elon MuskMars atmosphere has been primarily CO2 for billions of years. It's extremely stable. So sometimes people worry about methane. Do not worry too much about methane. Methane quickly breaks down into CO2.
12:44Elon MuskMethane is not a stable molecule. CO2 is extremely stable. So, and of course you can recycle battery materials. So you can think of batteries as essentially high grade ore.
12:57Elon MuskSo you can either get your lithium and your nickel and the various constituents of the battery from rocks or from batteries. It's much better to get them from batteries.
13:08Elon MuskSo batteries are basically high grade ore. And Tesla is already start recycling. And there are electric companies are going to do recycling because it basically pays to do recycling for batteries.
13:24Elon MuskSo we're seeing, you know, increased extreme weather events and there's like wildfires and here in Austin there was a massive snowstorm that turned the power off. I was actually in Austin for that snowstorm in a house with no electric, no lights, no power, no heating, no Internet.
13:47Elon MuskCouldn't actually even get to a food store. If you could get to a food store, there was no food there as went on for several days. However, if we had the solar plus powerwall, the car would have had lights and electricity.
14:02Elon MuskAnd actually if you had a Starlink Internet, you'd have Internet too. So all the things you need for a prepper, basically doomsday comes can be helpful. So in factory safety we've done, we've made huge improvements on factory safety.
14:21Elon MuskSo we're now 18% better than the industry average. So this is a, this is great. It's always Tough with safety as you ramp production lines and as you start up factories.
14:34Elon MuskBut then as, as once it's in steady state then the injuries naturally, naturally decline because people get used to it and you iron out the issues. And so we're seeing excellent factory safety at Tesla and our goal is to have the safest factory on earth.
14:53Elon MuskAnd then AI day. I think it was important to change the fundamental conception of, of Tesla because people do, they sort of think of Tesla as a car company and yes, we made cars but, but, but the AI portion part of Tesla was not well understood.
15:10Elon MuskTesla is as much a software company as it is a hardware company. And, and, and we also do the, the chips. So we designed the full self driving inference computer.
15:26Elon MuskWe're designing a training computer that's going to be able to we think be the most efficient neural net training computer in the world by far. And, and we're seeing a tremendous response.
15:38Elon MuskSo daily applicants by role. As you can see it's basically you know, on the Y axis there. And then after AI day, that's the AI applicants increased dramatically. So I thought that was a very successful day team, did a great job.
15:59Elon MuskAnd yeah, AI is going to be a very important part of the future. Self driving is obviously one of the functions and I obviously have mixed thoughts about AI and we got to watch out for AI being a danger but it's happening either way.
16:19Elon MuskSo I guess if we do it we can try our best to make sure it is positive, you know. Good, good AI hopefully, yeah. And then I'm excited to announce that we're moving our headquarters to Austin, Tex.
17:01Elon MuskSo just to be clear though, we will be continuing to expand our activities in California. So this is not a matter of sort of Tesla leaving California. As I said, our intention is to actually increase output from Fremont and from Giga, Nevada by 50%.
17:20Elon MuskSo but we're just, we're just hitting the sides of the bowl, you know, I mean if you go to our Fremont factory, it is jammed. I mean it jam.
17:30Elon MuskIt's like whoa. When we first went in there it was, it was like, you know, we're like a kid in his parents shoes. It was ridiculous. Like tiny S and Giant factory and now we're like spam in a can here.
17:43Elon MuskLike how do we put more stuff? And it's, it's, it's tough for people to afford houses and a lot of people have to come in from far away and so it's, we'll take, you know, taking it as far as possible, but it's there's limit to how, how big you can scale in the Bay Area.
18:01Elon MuskSo here in Austin, and, you know, factory is like five minutes from the airport, 15 minutes from downtown, and we're going to create an ecological paradise here on the car because we're right on the Colorado River.
18:15Elon MuskIt's going to be great. So to emphasize gain continuing to expand in California significantly, but even more so here in Texas,