Tesla's Q4 Earnings Call: Listen to Tesla's Q and A

By Not a Tesla App Staff
Tesla is holding its 2023 Q4 earnings call today
Tesla is holding its 2023 Q4 earnings call today
Not a Tesla App

Tesla is holding its 2023 Q4 earnings call today at 2:30 pm PT / 5:30 pm ET / 10:30 pm UTC. The earnings call will be followed by a Q&A session with some of Tesla's executives, which will likely include Elon Musk.

There are several recent exciting events that we may hear more about during the earnings call.

Tesla's upcoming next-gen vehicle is now expected to start production next year, potentially paving the way for an unveiling announcement later this year. Additionally, Tesla has begun testing FSD v12 with non-employees, so they may be willing to share additional details about a wide release.

Watch Replay

The event is expected to be livestreamed on X.com, YouTube and on Tesla's website. However, it has been audio only in the past and is expected to be the same this quarter.

You can watch the event live on YouTube below.

Start Time

Tesla's livestream starts at 2:30 pm PT, which is the following times around the world:

2:30 pm Pacific Time

5:30 pm Eastern Time

10:30 pm UTC

10:30 pm - London, England

11:30 pm - Berlin, Germany

9:30 am (Jan 25th) - Sydney, Australia

Look Back at Tesla's 2023 Q4

In Q4 Tesla delivered 484,507 vehicles, up 38% year over year. Production was also up 35% over Q4 in 2022, with Tesla producing 494,989 vehicles.

For the year Tesla produced 1.84 million vehicles and delivered about 1.8 million.

Q&A Questions

The questions that are asked during Q&A come directly from investors and are voted on by investors. These top questions may be asked and answered during Tesla's Q&A session.

Next-Gen Car

Given that you moved the start of the next generation compact vehicle production to Austin, has the timeline improved so that we might see next generation platform vehicles in 2025?

Batteries

What has been the barrier to ramping 4680 cells into the multi million cells per week rate and when do you expect to get there?

When will Tesla have sufficient North American battery production to support the $7500 EV tax credit for the Model 3?

Stock

Should retail shareholders be concerned that Elon has stated he is uncomfortable expanding AI and robotics at Tesla if he doesn’t have 25% of voting ?

FSD

Has there been any progress made with an FSD licensing agreement with another company?

Could management please rank the following corporate initiatives by priority level: 1. FSD level 5 autonomy/wide release 2. 3rd generation platform release 3. Optimus commercialization

Optimus

What is the timeline for Optimus first production off volume production line and what are the barriers to getting there?

Cybertruck

How many cybertruck orders are in the queue and when do you anticipate you will be able to fulfill all existing orders?

NHTSA to Streamline Approvals for Control-Free Vehicles Like Tesla’s Cybercab

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

In a letter to industry, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that it is overhauling its approvals process for vehicles designed without human controls.

The change addresses a regulatory bottleneck that has slowed down American companies like Tesla from deploying purpose-built Robotaxis, rather than relying on using traditional vehicles with steering wheels and pedals. The policy shift is outlined in a letter posted to the NHTSA’s website, which you can find here.

Reducing Approvals From Years to Months

Under the existing rules today, any vehicle that is built without a steering wheel or brake pedals must receive a special exemption from federal safety standards.

Obtaining exemptions for a particular vehicle was a time-consuming process for both the companies requesting exemptions and the NHTSA. The process was often a black box—nobody knew when an exemption might be granted, and approvals could take years.

The NHTSA, under the new administration’s guidelines for autonomous vehicle development, is now committed to streamlining this process. The agency will be implementing a new, faster approach immediately for receiving exemptions for autonomous vehicles without standard controls. The NHTSA expects decisions on exemption requests to be determined within months rather than years. 

Accelerating the Cybercab

This change has massive implications for Tesla, which is banking on the production of the simplified and easy-to-maintain purpose-built Cybercab. The Cybercab is developed from the ground up as an autonomous Robotaxi and will be one of the key beneficiaries of this move by the NHTSA.

Knowing that a final design won't be caught in a multi-year regulatory limbo provides a level of certainty that has been missing. It allows Tesla to confidently plan the manufacturing, development, and deployment processes without worrying whether the project will get stuck in regulatory approvals.

According to the letter, the agency will publish its improved instructions for the streamlined process "shortly." With Tesla already having begun Cybercab pre-production and the goals for its deployment as soon as late 2026, there’s still a lot to be done to make autonomy a part of Tesla’s new sustainable abundance mission statement.

You Can Now Track Tesla’s Robotaxi Deployment

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

Thanks to Tesla Yoda on X, we have found out that Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet is registered on the Texas Department of Transportation’s public-facing Automated Vehicle Deployment website. This makes the fleet’s movements publicly viewable and trackable, and marks a first for Tesla.

This isn’t just any old FSD test - this is the first officially acknowledged, government-tracked, and sanctioned deployment of a Tesla Model Y operating as a ride-share vehicle. But that’s not all - Texas DOT’s tracker notes that the Tesla does not have a safety driver.

View on the Map

Visitors to the Texas DOT website can filter for “Tesla”, and see, currently, a single active vehicle operating in the Austin Metro area. According to the state’s official data, here’s what we know:

Company: Tesla

Description: Ride-share service

Status in Texas: Testing

Safety Driver: No

The final point is definitely the most interesting here. While Tesla has been testing FSD with safety drivers for some time in Austin and LA for employee-only testing, this is the first time that a vehicle has been officially registered and deployed on public roads without a human behind the wheel for safety. 

The fact that there is no safety driver officially shifts the liability from the occupant of the driver’s seat to Tesla, for the first time in a public setting. That’s already pretty significant - we previously dove into how Tesla plans to insure its own vehicles, and potentially owner vehicles in the Robotaxi fleets. 

The status currently lists Tesla as “Testing,” confirming that the service isn’t available to the public, but this is expected to change in the coming weeks.

This testing phase is likely part of a short but crucial period that lets Tesla capture data on the safety levels of its current iteration of Unsupervised FSD without a driver supervising. Tesla already stated that they’d be avoiding difficult areas, so this testing can also expose additional areas Tesla may want to avoid, such as school zones or blind driveways.

Tesla will need to prove, both internally and externally, that FSD Unsupervised has the necessary performance to safely navigate the streets without any incidents.

Regulatory Milestone

For years, the concept of a Tesla Robotaxi has been a future promise. Now, it's a present-day reality, albeit in a testing capacity.

Having an official government body list a Tesla as an active, driverless vehicle shows that they’ve been able to clear regulatory hurdles, which Tesla has often pointed to as the issue. It demonstrates a level of confidence from both Tesla and Texas regulators in the system's capabilities.

While it's just a single vehicle for today, we’ll likely see this list slowly expand over time. Alongside being able to track Robotaxi incidents at the City of Austin’s website, we’ll be able to closely watch Tesla’s progress with its first Robotaxi deployments.

Latest Tesla Update

Confirmed by Elon

Take a look at features that Elon Musk has said will be coming soon.

More Tesla News

Tesla Videos

Latest Tesla Update

Confirmed by Elon

Take a look at features that Elon Musk has said will be coming soon.

Subscribe

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter