Tesla Q1 2024 财报与问答网络直播

Thanks, Martin. To recap, in Q1, we navigated several unforeseen challenges as well as the ramp of the updated Model 3 in Fremont. As we all have seen, the EV adoption rate globally is under pressure and a lot of other order manufacturers are pulling back on EVs and pursuing plug-in hybrids instead. We believe this is not the right strategy and electric vehicles will ultimately dominate the market. Despite these challenges, the Tesla team did a great job executing in a tough environment and energy storage deployments of Megapack, in particular, reached an all-time high in Q1 leading to record profitability for the energy business. And that looks likely to continue to increase in the quarters and years ahead. It will increase. We actually know it will, so significantly faster than the car business as we expected. We also continue to expand our AI training capacity in Q1 more than doubling our training compute sequentially. In terms of the new product road map, there's been a lot of talk about our upcoming vehicle line in the next -- in the past several weeks. We've updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models ahead, previously mentioned start of production in the second half of 2025. So, we expect it to be more like the early 2025, if not late this year. These new vehicles, including more affordable models, will use aspects of the next-generation platform as well as aspects of our current platforms, and we'll be able to produce on the same manufacturing lines as our current vehicle lineup. So, it's not contingent upon any new factory or massive new production line, it will be made on our current production lines much more efficiently. And we think this should allow us to get to over 3 million vehicles of capacity when realized to the full extent. Regarding FSD Version 12, which is the pure AI-based self-driving, if you haven't experienced this, I strongly urge you to try it out, it's profound. And the rate of improvement is rapid. And we've now turned that on for all cars with the cameras and inference computer everything from Hardware 3 on in North America. So, it's been pushed out to, I think, around 1.8 million vehicles, and we're seeing about half of people use it so far and that percentage is increasing with each passing week. So, we now have over 300 billion miles that have been driven with FSD V12 since the launch of full self-driving -- supervised full self-driving. It's become very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy. And it's really how humans drive. Our entire road network is designed for biological neural nets and eyes. So, naturally, cameras and digital neural nets are the solution to our current road system. To make it more accessible, we've reduced the subscription price to $99 a month, so it's easy to try out. And as we've announced, we will be showcasing our purpose-built robotaxi or Cybercab in August. Yeah. Regarding AI compute, over the past few months, we've been actively working on expanding Tesla's core AI infrastructure. For a while there, we were training constrained in our progress. We are, at this point, no longer training-constrained, and so we're making rapid progress. We've installed and commissioned, meaning they're actually working 35,000 H100 computers or GPUs. GPU is wrong word. They need a new word. I always feel like a wince when I say GPU because it's not. GPU stand -- G stands for graphics, and it doesn't do graphics. But you know, roughly 35,000 H100S are active, and we expect that to be probably 85,000 or thereabouts by the end of this year and training, just for training. We are making sure that we're being as efficient as possible in our training. It's not just about the number of H100s, but how efficiently they're used. So, in conclusion, we're super excited about our autonomy road map. I think it should be obvious to anyone who's driving Version 12 and it is only a matter of time before we exceed the reliability of humans in not much time with that. And we're really headed for an electric vehicle and autonomous future. And I go back to something I said several years ago that in the future, gasoline cars that are not autonomous will be like riding a horse and using a flip phone. And that will become very obvious in hindsight. We continue to make the necessary investments that will drive growth and profits for Tesla in the future, and I wanted to thank the Tesla team for incredible execution during this period and look forward to everything that we have planned ahead. Next.

We are able to do simple factory tasks or at least, I should say, factory tasks in the lab. We do think we will have Optimus in limited production in the natural factory itself, doing useful tasks before the end of this year. And then I think we may be able to sell it externally by the end of next year. These are just guesses. As I've said before, I think Optimus will be more valuable than everything else combined. Because if you've got a sentient humanoid robots that is able to navigate reality and do tasks at request, there is no meaningful limit to the size of the economy. So, that's what's going to happen. And I think Tesla is best positioned of any humanoid robot maker to be able to reach volume production with efficient inference on the robot itself. I mean, this, perhaps, is a point that is worth emphasizing Tesla's AI inference efficiency is vastly better than any other company. There's no company even close to the inference efficiency of Tesla. We've had to do that because we were constrained by the inference hardware in the car. We didn't have a choice. But that will pay dividends in many ways.

Yeah. It's actually been pretty helpful that the autonomous car companies have been cutting a path through the regulatory jungle. So, that's actually quite helpful. And they have obviously been operating in San Francisco for a while. I think they got approval for City of Vale. So, these approvals are happening rapidly. I think if you've got at scale, a statistically significant amount of data that shows conclusively that the autonomous car has, let's say, half the accident rate of a human-driven car, I think that's difficult to ignore because at that point, stopping autonomy means killing people. So, I actually do not think that there will be significant regulatory barriers provided, there was conclusive data that the autonomous car is safer than a human-driven car. And in my view, this will be much like elevators. Elevators used to be operated by a guy with relay switch. But sometimes, the guy would get tired or drunk or just make a mistake and send somebody in half between floors. So, we just get an elevator and press button, we don't think about it. In fact, it's kind of weird if somebody is standing there with a relay switch. And that will be how cars work. You just summon the car using your phone. You get in. It takes you to a destination. You get out.

You don't even think about it, just like an elevator. It takes you to your floor. That's it. Don't think about how the elevator is working or anything like that. And something I should clarify is that Tesla will be operating the fleet. So, you can think of like how Tesla, think of it as combination of Airbnb and Uber meaning that there will be some number of cars that Tesla owns itself and operates in the fleet. There will be some number of cars and then there'll be a bunch of cars where they're owned by the end user. That end user can add or subtract their car to the fleet whenever they want, and they can decide if they want to only let the car be used by friends and family or only buy five-star users or by anyone at any time they could have the car come back to them and be exclusively theirs like an Airbnb. You could rent out your guest room or not, any time you want. So, as our fleet grows, we have 7 million cars going -- 9 million cars going to eventually tens of millions of cars worldwide. With a constant feedback loop, every time something goes wrong, that gets added to the training data and you get this training flywheel happening in the same way that Google Search has the sort of flywheel, it's very difficult to compete with Google because people are constantly doing searches and clicking, and Google is getting that feedback loop. So, the same with Tesla. But at the scale that is maybe difficult to comprehend, but ultimately, it will be tens of millions. I think there's also some potential here for an AWS element down the road where if we've got very powerful inference because we've got a Hardware 3 in the cars, but now all cars are being made with Hardware 4. Hardware 5 is pretty much designed and should be in cars, hopefully toward the end of next year. And there's a potential to run -- when the car is not moving to actually run distributed inference. So, kind of like AWS, but distributed inference. Like it takes a lot of computers to train an AI model, but many orders of magnitude less compute to run it. So, if you can imagine future, perhaps where there's a fleet of 100 million Teslas, and on average, they've got like maybe a kilowatt of inference compute. That's 100 gigawatts of inference compute distributed all around the world. It's pretty hard to put together 100 gigawatts of AI compute. And even in an autonomous future where the car is, perhaps, used instead of being used 10 hours a week, it is used 50 hours a week. That still leaves over 100 hours a week where the car inference computer could be doing something else. And it seems like it will be a waste not to use it.

Yeah. And we do have some insight into how good the things will be in like, let's say, three or four months because we have advanced models that our far more capable than what is in the car, but have some issues with them that we need to fix. So, they are there'll be a step change improvement in the capabilities of the car, but it will have some quirks that are -- that need to be addressed in order to release it. As Ashok was saying, we have to be very careful in what we release the fleet or to customers in general. So, if we look at, say, 12.4 and 12.5, which are really -- could arguably even be Version 13, Version 14 because it's pretty close to a total retrain of the neural nets in each case are substantially different. So, we have good insight into where the model is, how well the car will perform in, say, three or four months.

Yeah. We'll talk about this more on August 8. But really, the way to think of Tesla is almost entirely in terms of solving autonomy and being able to turn on that autonomy for a gigantic fleet. And I think it might be the biggest asset value appreciation history when that day happens when you can do unsupervised full self-driving.

Yeah. It will be 7 million cars in a year or so and then 10 million, and then eventually, we're talking about tens of millions of cars -- not eventually, it's like before the end of this year. Yeah. But in the decade, it's several tens of million cars, I think.

We're in conversations with one major automaker regarding licensing FSD.

I think we've said we were on that front. So, what's your follow-up?

Well, as it constitutes a majority of my work time, and I work pretty much every day of the week, it's rare for me to take a Sunday afternoon off. I'm going to make sure Tesla is quite prosperous. And it is -- like it is prosperous, and it will be very much so in the future.

No, I think we'll have higher sales this year than last year.

I mean, I don't know what our competitors can do, except we've done relatively better than they have because if you look at the drop in our competitors in China sales versus our drop in sales, our drop was less than theirs. So, we're doing well. But I think Cathie Wood said it best. Like really, we should be thought of as an AI or robotics company. If you value Tesla as just like an auto company, you just have to -- fundamentally, it's just the wrong framework and if you ask the wrong question, then the right answer is impossible. So, I mean, if somebody doesn't believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company. Like that is, but we will and we are and then you have a car that goes from 10 hours of use a week, like an hour and a half a day to probably 50%, but it costs the same.

Yeah. If you've not tried the FSD 12.3, and like I said, 12.4 is going to be significantly better and 12.5 even better than that. And we have visibility into those things. Then you really don't understand what's going on. It's not possible.

Yeah. I mean, we're putting the actual auto in automobile. So, sort of we go like, well, sort of like tell us about future horse carriages you're making. I'm like, well, actually, it doesn't need a horse that's the whole point. That's really the whole point.

Well, I think no matter what Tesla -- even if I get kidnapped by aliens tomorrow, Tesla will solve autonomy, maybe a little slower, but it would solve autonomy for vehicles at least. I don't know if we would win on with respect to Optimus or with respect to future products, but it would that -- that there's enough momentum for Tesla to solve autonomy even if I disappeared for vehicles. Yes, there's a whole range of things we can do in the future beyond that. I'll be more reticent with respect to Optimus, if we have a super-sentient humanoid robot that can follow you indoors and that you can escape, we're talking terminator-level risk. And yes, I'd be uncomfortable with. If there's not some meaningful level of influence over how that is deployed. And there's shareholders have an opportunity to ratify or reratify the sort of competition because I can't say that. That is a fact. They have an opportunity. And yes, we'll see. If the company generates a lot of positive cash flow, we could obviously buy back shares.

Yeah. We're not giving up anything that is significant that I'm aware of. We've had a long period of prosperity from 2019 to now. And so, if a company sort of organizationally is 5% wrong per year, that accumulates to of inefficiency. We've made some corrections along the way. But it is time to reorganize the company for the next phase of growth and you really need to reorganize it, just like a human when we start off with one cell and kind of zygote, kind of blastocyst and you start growing arms and legs and briefly, you have a tail.

You shed the tail, hopefully. And then you're a baby, and basically, you have to be the organism -- a company is kind of like creature growing. And if you don't reorganize it for different phases of growth, it will fail. You can't have the same organizational structure if you're 10 cells versus 100 versus 1 million versus 1 billion versus 1 trillion. Humans are around 35 trillion cells, doesn't feel like it feels like one person. But you're basically a walking cell colony of roughly 35 trillion depending on your body mass and about three times that number in bacteria. So, anyway, you've got to reorganize the company for a new phase of growth or will fail to achieve that growth.

Well, I think we just need to -- it just needs to be obvious that our approach is the right approach. And I think it is. I think we've now with 12.3, if you just have the car drive you around, it is obvious that our solution with a relatively low-cost inference computer and standard cameras can achieve self-driving. No LiDARs, no radars, ultrasonic. Nothing.

Yeah. So, it really just be a case of having them use the same cameras and inference computer and licensing our software. Once it becomes obvious that if you don't have this in a car, nobody wants your car. It's a smart car. I still remember in fact, when Nokia was king of the hill, yeah, and the cellphone is crushing. And then I saw them come out with a smartphone that was basically a brick with limited functionality. And then the iPhone and Android, people still do not understand that all the phones are going to be that way. There's not going to be any flip phones. There will be a niche product or home phone. Yeah. Not even exactly. When's the last time you saw a whole book? That's like an idea. Yeah.

Yes, the hotels have them. The people don't understand all cars will need to be smart cars, or you will not sell, or the car will not -- nobody would buy it. Once that becomes obvious, I think licensing becomes not optional.

Yes, absolutely, it is. License it, or nobody will buy your car.

Yeah. I mean, really, a deal signed now would result in it being in a car probably three years.

That's like lightning, basically.

Yeah. So, I wouldn't be surprised if we do sign a deal. I think we have a good chance we do sign a deal this year, maybe more than one. But yes, it would be probably three years before it's integrated with a car. even though all you need is cameras and our inference computer. So, just talking about a massive design change.

Yeah. I think we can be free cash flow positive meaningfully.

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, like for any given company, if you sell a great product at a great price -- if you have a great product at a great price, the sales will be excellent. That's true of any area. So, over time, we do need to keep making sure that we're -- that it's a great product at a great price. And moreover, that price is accessible to people. So, it's not -- you have to solve both the value for money and the fundamental affordability question. The fundamental affordability question is sometimes overlooked. If somebody is earning several hundred thousand dollars a year, they don't think of a car from a fundamental affordability standpoint. But vast majority of people are living paycheck to paycheck. So, it actually makes a difference if the cost per month for lease refinancing is $10 one way or the other. It is important to keep improving the affordability and to keep making the price --

Yeah, exactly. Make the price more accessible, the value for money better, and to keep improving that over time.

Yeah. It's going to be a great product and at a great price. And the standards for what constitutes a great product at a great price keep increasing. So, there's like -- you can't just be static. You have to keep making the car better, improving the price but improving the cost of production, and that's what we're doing.

You mean like new markets? Yeah, we are -- there are a bunch of markets where we don't currently sell cars that we should be selling cars in. We'll see some acceleration of that.

Yeah. So, think about the end-to-end neural net-based autonomy is that just like a human, it actually works pretty well without modification in almost any market. So, we plan on -- with the approval of the regulators, releasing it as a supervised autonomy system in any market that -- where we can get regulatory approval for that, which we think includes China. So, yes, it's -- just like a human, you can go rent a car in a foreign country and you can drive pretty well. Obviously, if you live in that country, you'll drive better. And so, we'll make the car drive better in these other countries with country-specific training. But it can drive quite well almost everywhere.

It understands that it shouldn't hit things, no matter what the road rules are.

Yeah. We think Q2 will be a lot better. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. It's just -- if you've got cars that are sitting on ships, they obviously cannot delivered to people. And if you've got the excess demand for Model 3 and Model Y in one market, but you don't have it there. It's quite a -- it's extremely complex logistics situation. So, I'd say also the -- we did overcomplicate the sales process, which we've just in the past week or so have greatly simplified. So, it became far too complex to buy a Tesla, whereas it should just be you can buy the car in under a minute. So, we're getting back to the -- you can buy a Tesla in under a minute interface from what was quite complex.

Ashok, do you want to say something?

That's my guess, like a third of the hours of the week.

I think it's analogous to Amazon Web Services, where people didn't expect that AWS would be the most valuable part of Amazon when it started out as a bookstore. So, that was on nobody's radar. But they found that they had excess compute because the compute needs would spike to extreme levels for brief periods of the year and then they had idle compute for the rest of the year. So, then what should they do to pull that excess compute for the rest of the year. That's kind of -- yeah, monetize it. It seems like kind of a no-brainer to say, OK, if we've got millions and then tens of millions of vehicles out there where the computers are idle most of the time that we might well have them do something useful. And then I mean if you get like to the 100 million vehicle level, which I think we will, at some point, get to, then -- and you've got a kilowatt of useable compute and maybe your own Hardware 6 or 7 by that time. Then you really -- I think you could have on the order of 100 gigawatts of useful compute, which might be more than anyone, more than any company, probably more than any company.

We've already learned about deploying workloads to these compute nodes.

Well, you're just draining the battery on the phone, so like technically, I suppose like Apple would have the most amount of distributed compute, but you can't use it because you can't get the -- you can't just run the phone at full power and drain the battery. So, for the car, even if you're a kilowatt-level inference computer, which is crazy power compared to a phone. If you've got 50- or 60-kilowatt-hour pack, it's still not a big deal whether you plugged it or not. It could be plugged in or not like you could run for 10 hours and use 10 kilowatt hours of your kilowatt of compute power.

Exactly. It's distributed power generation -- distributed access to power and distributed cooling. That was already paid for.

Yeah.

You know, we're making good progress on that. But I don't think it's super important for at least in the near term. As Lars said, we think it will exceed the competitiveness of suppliers by the end of this year. And then we'll continue to improve.

Yeah. I mean, a big part of the 4680, Tesla doing internal cells was a hedge against what would happen with our suppliers because for a while they are it was very difficult because every big carmaker put in massive battery orders. And so, the price per kilowatt hour of lithium-ion batteries went to crazy numbers, crazy levels.

Yeah, just bonkers. So, like, OK, we've got to have some hedge here to deal with cost per kilowatt hours of numbers that were double what we anticipated. If we have an internal cell production, then we have that hedge against demand shocks, we have too much demand. That's really the way to think about it. It's not like we want to take on a whole bunch of problems just for the hell of it. We did the cell program in order to address the crazy increase in cost per kilowatt hour from our suppliers due to gigantic orders placed by every carmaker on Earth.

Well, I want to say again, we'd just like to strongly recommend that anyone who is, I guess, thinking about the Tesla stock should really drive 12.3. It really -- you can't -- it's impossible to understand the company if you do not do this.

Great. What seems to be happening is that the nets are missing something, the orders for batteries from other automakers have declined dramatically. So, we're seeing much more competitive prices for sales from our suppliers, dramatically more competitive than in the past. It is clear that a lot of our suppliers have excess capacity.

Yeah. No, I mean, this is going to wax and wane, obviously. So, there's going to be a boom and bust in battery cell production where production exceeds supply and then supply exceeds production and back and forth kind of like, I don't know, DRAM or something. But it's like what is true today will not be true in the future, there's going to be somewhat of a boom-and-bust cycle here. And then there are additional complications with government incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRA -- I always found it like a funny name or a comical name. Yeah, it is like Irish Republican Army, the Internet Research Agency from Russia.

Yeah, exactly. Roth IRA. It's like a Spider-Man situation, which IRA wins. But it is complicate the incentive structure. So, that is there's the stronger demand for cells that are produced in the U.S. than outside the U.S. But then how long does the IRA last, I don't know.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the reason I reached out to you was because I thought your analysis of Tesla was the best that I had seen. Yes, thank you for helping Tesla to get to where it is today over seven years. It's been a pleasure working with you.