Tesla's 2022 shareholders' meeting recap & video

Tesla

Tesla held its 2022 shareholders' meeting yesterday. At the event, Tesla discussed a variety of products and features including FSD Beta 10.13, the Cybertruck, Tesla Superchargers, and a new Tesla factory.

You can watch the entire event below (starts at the 2 minute mark), or read Dan Burkland's recap, which was originally posted on dburkland.com.

Part 1 - Formal Shareholder Items

• Martin - Intro

Robyn Denholm

• Global fleet of cars and vehicles to avoid 8.4M metric tons of green house gas emissions

• Avoided emissions that were equivalent to ICE vehicles driving 20B miles

• By 2030 Tesla plans to sell 20M vehicles / year

• In June 2022 Tesla achieved the highest vehicle production month in their history

• Tesla continues to make an impact w/ Solar & Energy Storage business

• Tesla sold 4 GWH of energy storage products in 2021, enough to power 3M homes

• Solar demand has increased 4x

• Goal is for all factories to be carbon neutral

• Tesla already uses less water per vehicle than any other automaker

• Sustainability drives everything Tesla does

Stockholder Proposals

• Proxy Statement: document

Part 2 - Elon's Presentation / Q & A Session

• Attempting to achieve a 2M vehicle / year run rate by end of 2022

• Tesla just recently produced their 3 millionth vehicle

• Looking back 10 years ago, Tesla only made 2500 Roadsters and maybe a couple hundred Model S (August 2012)

• “Cleanest exponentials” -Elon Musk

• $TSLA shareholders have approved the 3-for-1 stock split

Tesla

• Important to note the increase in strong free cash flow is occurring before autonomy

FSD Beta 10.13

• “This year I swear” (FSD being released to public)

• “Made some significant architectural improvements with FSD Beta 10.13 release, might qualify for 10.69” -Elon Musk

• “It's gotta earn that” -Elon Musk

• “We are going to solve Chuck's turn” -Elon Musk

• “Roughly 90% success rate w/ Chuck's turn”

• “Might be next week” -Elon Musk

• “It's working well for me” -Elon Musk

• FSD will save lives by driving an order of magnitudes safer than people

• Tesla has the highest operating margin in the entire industry

Tesla

• Every time a competitor advertises for EVs Tesla notices an increase in sales

• Model Y is tracking to be highest vehicle by revenue by end of 2022 and highest by unit by end of 2023

Gigafactories

• Tesla will soon be ready to announce another factory location by end of 2022

• Tesla plans to eventually have 10-12 Giga Factories 

• Each factory will have the capacity to produce 1.5-2M vehicles per year

• Fremont factory is highest output car factory in North America

• Elon thinks it's going to be a friendly competition between Berlin, Fremont, and Texas (Shanghai hard to beat)

• Tesla has produced more energy than it consumes (includes vehicle charging)

Tesla

• Tesla battery recycling is already happening at a rate of 50 packs per week in Nevada

• Continues to scale

• Not that many batteries to recycle since their longevity has been really good so far (more of a longterm play)

Master Plan: Part 3

• Will be focused on scaling

• “What are all the things needed to achieve a fully sustainable global economy”

• Cathode materials

• Aluminum, Etc.

• Goal is to reiterate this is absolutely doable and that we want it to be done as fast as possible

Tesla

Vehicle Structure

• Lighter

• Stiffer

• Better NVH

• Better in pretty much every way when compared to stamped underbody construction

Manufacturing

• Model Y requires only 30% of robots needed to produce vehicles as required by the Model 3

• Improved layout of factory where it is now a signal monolithic factory

Tesla

• Eventually all cars will be self driving but it will be hard to replicate Tesla's manufacturing capabilities

Working at Tesla

• Employees are free to switch between SpaceX & Tesla

• Factory safety has dramatically improved, Elon believes they now have the safest factories in the business

• Tesla has encouraged employees to submit suggestions on improving factory safety with a goal of 3 suggestions per employee (They have since met that goal and safety has increased as a result)

• 3M job applicants over last year

Supercharger Network

• 99.96% uptime

• Continue to deploy V3 Superchargers, V4 set to be deployed next year

• Elon mentioned that more good news regarding the Supercharger network is coming

Safety

• Tesla has a very detailed feedback loop when it comes to vehicle crashes

• Auto seat belt tensioning is an example of how Tesla continues to improve safety via OTA updates

• Activated via Autopilot AI when a crash is 99.99%+ sure to happen

FSD Beta

Tesla

• Tracking to well over 100M miles by end of 2022

• Wide spread release by end of 2022, will be available to anybody who requests it

AI Day: Part 2

• September 30th, 2022

• Elon believes Optimus will turn the notion of what an economy is on its head

Next Decade

• 10 years ago they had less than 3000 cars, now its more than 3M

• Elon thinks vehicle production should be able to exceed over 100M 10 years from now

Questions

Plans for Cash

• Tesla has used a small amount of its available cash for acquisitions and that will continue to be the case unless the right opportunity arrises (automation, software, manufacturing, etc.)

• Spending CapEx and R&D money as fast as they can without wasting it

• Share buyback may be in the cards as long as there isn't another force majeure event

Factories

• 12 factories seems to be the perfect number with a maximum production rate of 2M vehicles per factory

Cybertruck

• Specs and pricing will be different (a lot has changed since 2019)

• Inflation and various issues are to blame

• Production equipment & tooling will begin getting installed in Giga Texas, volume production still targeted by mid-2023

US & China Tension

• Elon hopes for peace and respect between the US & China

Supercharger Locations

• Permits are extremely hard to obtain in some areas (ex. Malibu)

• Tesla continues to prioritize new Supercharger locations by busiest locations

• Elon mentioned there will be an online poll where people can vote where they want new Supercharger locations built

• Trying to do more fun things when it comes to Supercharger locations (ex. Futuristic Diner in Hollywood)

4680 Output

• Tesla is making a decent number of 4680 cells each week and Elon projects that they'll be in high volume production by end of 2022

• 4680 production does not yet impact vehicle output however it will in 2023

Master Plan

• New master plan not yet ready, plan to finish it by end of August 2022

Supply Chain

• Most of commodities that go into Tesla vehicles are trending down (cost) over next 6 months which suggests that we are past peak inflation

• Elon thinks we will have a relatively mild recession for 18 months (just a guess) and that inflation should drop rapidly

Autonomy

• AI is going to increase utility of passenger vehicles by 4-5x

• Vehicles will still cost the same to produce so gross margins are expected to rapidly increase

• Elon still believes folks will have the option to own a car, rent it out when they aren't using it, or simply rent somebody else's vehicle (ex. Uber)

• “Optimus will bring the future to now”

Media

• Elon annoyed that most analysts don't drive Teslas which prevents them from having a good understanding of the Tesla customer experience

Succession

• Elon believes in strong product roadmap that will lead to success for quite some time

• Elon intends to stay with Tesla as long as he is useful, plans to continue to closely focus on factory & product design 

• Tesla would continue to do well even if he was kidnapped by aliens (or returned to his own planet haha)

• The only publicly traded securities Elon owns are $TSLA and $TWTR

• Believes he has a good sense of where to point the engineering team at $TWTR to make it radically better

• Thinks Twitter would accelerate his original vision of x.com by 3-5 years and be something that is very useful to the world

Tunnels

• Elon wanted to clarify he is pro-train

• Elon believes tunnels could solve virtually any traffic problems around the world and allow above ground road space to be reclaimed for parks

Dojo & Tesla Communicating w/ Each Other

• Goal #1 is to be really good at video training

• Approaching at being the 3rd most powerful super computer in the world (geared for AI training)

• Fundamentally focused on NN training which has never been done before

• Some merit with Teslas communicating with each other but not needed for FSD (traffic, accidents, pot holes, etc.)

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Tesla Updates Santa Mode & Rainbow Road to Use Ambient Lighting and Updates SteamOS [VIDEO]

Flo / Roberto Bonato

While Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update brought many new features, including Apple Watch Support, Cross Traffic Alerts, Weather Overlays, Search Along Route, and others, there are also several smaller items in this update that didn’t get much attention.

Ambient Lighting Now Affects Easter Eggs

The 2024+ Model 3 and Cybertruck both come equipped with ambient lighting, and Tesla is now taking advantage of this custom lighting feature by incorporating it into several easter eggs.

Rainbow Road: If you head over to Apps > ToyBox > Rainbow Road, you’ll find a new option available that allows the ambient lighting in the vehicle to also change shades while Rainbow Road is active. The Rainbow Road easter egg is a tribute to the iconic course course in Nintendo’s Mario Kart.

Check out the feature in action below:

🇮🇹 Con l’aggiornamento di Natale, quando attiviamo la pista arcobaleno, anche i LED interni diventeranno arcobaleno. Questa è una novità non documentata, scovata da un utente di TESLERS (chiaramente riguarda le Model 3 Highland)

🇺🇸 UNDOCUMENTED CHANGE: With the Holiday update,… pic.twitter.com/xyocOIrWfX

— 𝗧𝗘𝗦𝗟𝗘𝗥𝗦 (@TeslersOfficial) December 8, 2024

Santa Mode: Just in time for Christmas, Tesla has improved Santa Mode by cycling the ambient lighting between Christmas colors. Similar to Rainbow Road, the use of ambient lighting for the easter egg is optional and can be enabled under Apps > ToyBox > Santa Mode.

When using Santa Mode with ambient lighting turned on, the lights will cycle just between Christmas colors, red, green and white, instead of the full rainbow. There’s a video of the feature below:

Yup and in Santa Mode it cycles between red white and green pic.twitter.com/HVQUlfUyze

— Roberto Bonato (@BonatoRoberto) December 9, 2024

Update: It looks like it affects other Easter eggs as well, such as turning orange when using Romance mode.

SteamOS (Beta) Update

The Model S and Model X vehicles that support Steam gaming are receiving a Steam app update in the holiday update as well. This update could end up being very interesting, but for now Tesla says that the SteamOS, which also runs on Valve’s Steam Deck has been updated to version 3.6.

Valve outlines a wide range of fixes and improvements in their release notes for version 3.6, but Tesla simply states that the OS update includes performance enhancements and improved game compatibility.

The SteamOS hasn’t been updated on the Model S and X for quite a while, so we believe there may be more to this besides performance improvements and fixes. We’ll be looking to share some insights into this in the near future.

So, there you have it—three new features in the Holiday update that have mostly gone under the radar. While they may not apply to everyone, there are plenty of other cool features in the Holiday Update, like the arrival of Dynamic Road Closure Routing and Nearby Parking, that are coming to every vehicle, so go check out the full release notes.

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New Report Offers Specs & Price for Tesla's Upcoming Next-Gen Model

A concept of Tesla's 'Model Q'

@DominicBRNKMN on X

At the 2023 Q3 Earnings Call, Tesla provided an update on its next-generation model, what many are referring to as the “Model 2” or “Model Q.” Although the actual model name is yet to be determined, it is known internally as Redwood.

During the 2024 Shareholder Meeting, Musk again mentioned the upcoming model, saying that Tesla is working on new products, including a more affordable vehicle and a larger SUV.

While we know the next-gen vehicle is aimed at the $25k to $30k USD market, we now have some new information thanks to a new report out of China.

Launch & Price

According to the Chinese outlet CNMO Technology News (Sina Finance), Travis Axelrod, Tesla’s Head of Investor Relations, announced plans to launch a new model. Axelrod shared this update while addressing senior corporate investors at an investor conference hosted by Deutsche Bank on December 5, 2024.

The goal of Project Redwood, internally dubbed “Model Q” by Deutsche Bank, is to achieve a post-subsidy price of under $30,000 USD. With the Federal EV Rebate potentially expiring next year, this suggests that the Model Q’s starting price will be around $30,000 USD. For comparison, the Model 3 currently starts at $42,490 in the U.S.

We previously reported that Tesla has already been speaking to suppliers and is looking to begin volume production of the vehicle sometime around June 2025. Of course, prototyping is still necessary, but we haven’t seen any signs of Tesla testing a new vehicle since spotting the Cybercab on the streets ahead of We, Robot.

Specs

The Model Q will supposedly be about 15% smaller and 30% lighter than the Model 3, with an approximate length of 3,988mm, or 157 inches. For scale, the Mini is 157 inches, while the Model 3 is 185 inches, so it’s fairly compact.

The battery will also be smaller to match the vehicle’s smaller size as Tesla tries to reduce the vehicle’s price while maintaining a similar range as its other vehicles. Tesla is expected to offer two models—a single-motor RWD model and a Long-Range Dual-Motor AWD variant.

The lower trim level will include a 53 kWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, while the AWD version is expected to include a 75 kWh LFP battery. The report says that the vehicle will be able to travel up to 500 km (310 miles) on a single charge, but it’s not clear whether this will be for the more efficient RWD version or the AWD variant.

Given the vehicle’s weight reduction compared to the Model 3, this type of range is likely for the lower trim level.

There’s no news yet on the price of the AWD version, but we expect it to be about $5,000 more expensive than the RWD variant.

Once the vehicle ramps up in production, Tesla intends to produce about 10,000 of these per week globally or about 500,000 per year. As Tesla mentioned during one of their previous earnings calls, this next-gen vehicle will be built using Tesla’s current assembly lines with minimal changes. This should allow for a smoother and more predictable production ramp. While Tesla still plans to use its new unboxed assembly process, it’s now saving it for the robotaxi.

Project Juniper

One of the items that came up during the investor conference was Tesla’s Project Juniper—the Model Y refresh. Juniper has already had a few leaks, including some images and information that mention a return to the 7-seat, 3-row format—at least in China. 

We’re expecting Juniper to launch early next year, as production has supposedly already begun at Giga Shanghai, at least on a limited prototyping basis. If the rollout matches the Model 3 Highland refresh, we’ll see Juniper arrive in China first and then make its way to North America and Europe by the end of 2025. The performance variants should launch in early 2026, after the standard models.

If you’re excited about Juniper, so are we! Check out our wishlist of features for Tesla’s Model Y refresh, and see everything we know so far.

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