Ron Baron Talks About Tesla 2024-04-25

What do you think right now? The stock came out. The earnings this week came out. It was a disappointment for the quarter. It was the worst cash flow quarter that the company's seen in its history. But the stock was up 12 percent because Elon started talking about what he sees in the future. And the idea of bringing out cheaper cars to go through these things. Where do you stand on the. what the company should be valued. So I know Joe's not a big believer in electric cars because he likes his Porsche. But I think all the cars are going to be electric. And I think this hybrid is just a holding off action so the automobile companies don't have to lose money on the electric cars. But the electric cars, I think it's going to be all the cars 10, 15 years from now. And I think hybrids, I know you love hybrids. That's not going to last either. They're too expensive to, and they're not effective enough and they're not going to be part of the mix either. So it'll be all electric. And so what I think is going to happen is that the reason the stock is down is not because of the quarter. The reason the stock is down. Well, it's stocks up because of the stuff that he says. Well, it's stocks down so much. Well, it's down 35 percent year to date. It's down 1 percent. Or it's up 1 percent over the course of the last year. Yeah, that's so exciting to be up 1 percent in a year when everything is, you know, every market is so strong. So, you know, I don't worry about short term, but I do look around all the time and see everyone getting rich and I'm not poor, but I'm not making. I haven't made a lot of progress in the last three years. So therefore, I think it's like a rubber band. I'm going to catch up again. But so what I think about the reason the stock is down is because people were concerned that he was going to abandon the idea of having a low cost car and go all into robo taxis. That's the reason stock is down. And then there was a report and Reuters said he's canceling this new factory that's going to make robo cars, this is going to make low cost cars, $25,000 cars, competition from China.

目前你有什么想法？股票出了。这周的收益出来了。这个季度令人失望。这是公司历史上最糟糕的现金流季度。但股票上涨了12％，因为埃隆开始谈论他对未来的看法。他提出了生产更便宜汽车的想法。你认为公司应该被估值多少？我知道乔不是电动车的忠实拥护者，因为他喜欢他的保时捷。但我认为所有的汽车都会是电动的。我认为混合动力只是一项暂时措施，让汽车公司不必在电动车上亏损。但我认为，未来10年、15年所有的车都会是电动的。我认为你喜欢混合动力车，但它们（混合动力车）不会长久。它们太昂贵，效果不足，将不再是主流。所以将会全面转向电动。股票下跌的原因不是因为一个季度。股票涨了是因为他所说的内容。股票下跌很多是因为人们担心他会放弃推出低成本汽车的想法，而全部转向无人出租车。这是股票下跌的原因。路透社报道他取消了新厂的计划，该厂将生产无人车和低价汽车，而中国的竞争也在加剧。

So there's only one company in China that's profitable, by the way. That's BYD, Warren's company, Buffett's company. And that's the company makes a billion dollars a quarter, and our company makes $4 billion a quarter. No one else makes money. Ford loses so much. General, everyone loses money on this. It's much more complicated to make this. You know, it's interesting. I was talking yesterday about motors. So motors in a car cost $5,000 a car. That's what the normal, these 100 year old companies cost them $5,000. We can make a motor for $1,000, cost $5,000. So they get.

所以中国只有一家公司是盈利的，顺便提一句。那就是比亚迪，沃伦的公司，巴菲特的公司。这家公司每个季度赚十亿美元，而我们的公司每个季度赚40亿美元。其他公司都赔钱。福特损失很多。通用，所有人都在亏钱。这要复杂得多。你知道，很有意思。昨天我在谈论发动机。汽车上的发动机每辆车成本5000美元。这是这些有百年历史的公司的成本5000美元。我们可以做一个发动机成本1000美元，但他们要5000美元。

But then you have to have a battery that's more expensive. Oh, no. I'm talking about if you're making the internal combustion engine cars, I'm just talking about how stagnant businesses become and how used they are to operating the way they've always operated, that they don't look for new things to do, new ways to operate, operating oriented toward making things cheaper. He can do things for $1,000, that other people cost $5,000. It's amazing. That's if you wanted to be a guest-alink car company. All I'm pointing out is that people get entrenched and they do things without trying to make them things better and cheaper and faster all the time. There's no incentive to do that.

但是你必须购买更昂贵的电池。哦，不。我说的是，如果你在制造内燃机汽车，我只是在谈论企业是如何陷入停滞状态的，他们习惯于按照他们一直运营的方式操作，他们不会寻找新的事情去做，也不会寻找新的运营方式，只关注于使产品更便宜。他可以做出一千美元的产品，而其他人要花费五千美元。这真是令人惊讶。如果你想成为一个成功的汽车公司的话。我想指出的是，人们很容易固步自封，他们做事情的时候并没有尝试去让事情变得更好更便宜更快。没有激励去这样做。

So a monger says, show me the incentives and I'll show you how people act. And that's the idea. The people, the incentives. What's the incentive for guys? Someone who's 55, we've got to get off of this. But the idea is that that's the reason it's knocked down. So what's the reason it's going to go up? Oh, it's going to go up huge. When? Now. I mean, now is the bottom. And so what you're doing is they're going into robo taxis and they're going to make the low-cost cars. So they're making the low-cost car, except they're making it, they have excess capacity right now. They have capacity to make 3 million cars a year. They're making a million eight. So the million two cars, they can make extra in an existing facility with no more capital.

所以一个零售商说，给我看看激励措施，我会告诉你人们如何行动。这就是观念。人们，激励。男人的动力是什么？55岁的人，我们必须改变这种情况。但观念是这样被推翻的原因。那么会上涨的原因呢？哦，会大幅上涨。何时？现在。我的意思是，现在是底部。所以他们会进入自动驾驶出租车，他们会制造低成本汽车。他们正在制造低成本汽车，但目前有过剩产能。他们有能力每年制造300万辆汽车。他们目前制造了180万辆。那么额外的120万辆汽车，他们可以在现有设施中制造，无需更多资本。

And they're not going to make the cars direct cost as cheaply as they did before, as they expected to. But overall, until they expect to do $5 million in these new cars. Can I say to your robo-taxi question? Because that is, I think, the future of this company. And a lot of the value is reliant on that. Questions, what do you think the genuine timing of a robo-taxi that's reliant on cameras only? And this has always been the question about, can you do it with just cameras relative to what Weimo and Cruz have done? And there's been even questions about that using the radar and the LiDAR and the whole rig that lives on those vehicles.

他们不打算像之前那样廉价地制造汽车，他们期望这样做。但总的来说，他们期望在这些新车上做到500万美元的销售。我可以回答你有关机器人出租车的问题吗？因为我认为这就是这家公司的未来。很大一部分价值依赖于此。问题是，你认为完全依赖于摄像头的无人出租车的真正推出时机是什么？关于这一点一直存在疑问，你认为相对于Weimo和Cruz所做的，仅使用摄像头能否做到？甚至有人质疑那些使用雷达和激光雷达以及整个设备的车辆。

Well, we have a small investment in Cruz, because I wanted to see what they're doing. And Weimo is, their cars are $250,000. Because of all of the sensors and all of the. And they're trying to take cost out. And for us, it's software. And so basically, the advantage that we have right now at Tesla is that they have they've sold 6 million cars and 3.5 or 4 million are collecting data. So the data is what's really valuable. They're doubling their amount of compute every every 90 days. I don't disagree through the questions. It's a timing question of how quickly you can actually put these things into the wild.

嗯，我们在克鲁兹投入了一点资金，因为我想看看他们在做什么。而微默公司，他们的汽车售价为25万美元。因为装有各种传感器。他们正试图降低成本。而对于我们来说，这是软件。所以基本上，特斯拉目前的优势是他们卖出了600万辆汽车，其中350万至400万辆正在收集数据。数据才是真正有价值的。他们每90天就会翻一番计算力。我不反对这些问题。问题在于你真正能有多快把这些东西投放到市场中。

I was just in California. I was on last Sunday. I was in Vail. Because I want to see what they're doing with AI and the mountain and capital spending. And then that was on Sunday. And then on Monday, I was in SpaceX and L.A. in the morning with some engineers and some finance people. And the afternoon I went to Tesla and I was with the autonomous driving people and also the compute people. And then afterwards, I said to me, Ron, would you like to see how much we made unbelievable advances? The first 11 versions were how to be designed so that they had code every single thing that happened. Now it's all AI. It was impossible. And so therefore, they weren't making progress for two or three years that were out of plateau. And now what's happened, they have version 12 to have all this enormous amounts of data.

我刚刚在加利福尼亚。我是上周日。我在瓦尔。因为我想看看他们是如何运用人工智能、山脉和资本支出的。然后那是在周日。然后周一，我在早上去了SpaceX和洛杉矶，与一些工程师和一些财务人员在一起。下午我去了特斯拉，并与自动驾驶人员以及计算人员在一起。然后之后，我对自己说，Ron，你想看看我们取得了多少惊人的进步吗？前11个版本是为了设计，以便他们能对每一件事情进行编码。现在一切都是依靠人工智能。那是不可能的。因此，他们在两三年内没能取得进展，一直处于停滞状态。现在发生的事情是，他们有第12个版本拥有大量的数据。

And now they have compute to figure out everything out. And so now you're in the verge with autonomous driving in your car. So I said, OK, show me. So we do the few hours, a couple, three hours. And then before I'm going to go back to New York, I said, OK, so I want to see how it works. So we go into the park a lot and we get into the car. And I have an analyst with me. And then they had the compute person and they had a investor person. And so we're sitting in the car. And so where do you want to go? I said, I want to see Steve Jobs house. And say, OK, they punch in the address. And we get into the car. The car drives around by itself. Didn't do it. All we did is punch it in. Drive around the parking lot goes to the road. There's traffic going both ways. It looks both ways, looking for an entry to get in. Gets an entry, pulls in, makes a left-hand turn, drives right behind cars in front of us. This is the stop sign. First car stops, goes. Second car stops, goes.

现在他们有计算机来计算一切。现在你的车几乎可以做到自动驾驶了。所以我说，好的，给我看看。于是我们花了几个小时，两三个小时。然后在我要回纽约之前，我说，好的，我想看看它是如何工作的。于是我们去了停车场，上了车。我带了一个分析师，然后有一个计算机专家和一个投资人。我们坐在车里。你想去哪里？我说，我想去看史蒂夫·乔布斯的家。他们说，好的，他们输入了地址。我们上了车。车自己开了起来。我们只是输入了地址。车在停车场里绕了一圈，到了路上。路上有来往的车辆。它左看右看，寻找入道。找到入道后，驶入，左转，跟在前面车辆后面。前面有个停车标志。第一辆车停下来，继续前行。第二辆车停下来，继续前行。

We pull up the stop sign. Car looks both directions. Makes the right hand turn. Just drives. And then all of a sudden, there's a pedestrian crossing the street. The car stops. So that the pedestrian crossed the street. The pedestrian, I don't know if I was going to set up on this, but the pedestrian waves. And then the car starts going again. Then it goes, then it pulls up, then it makes a left-hand turn. And then goes in front of Steve Jobs house. It's a nice house. It was just the house, though. I was detecting house. But it was a house. So stopped in front of Steve Jobs house. Then he has that house. And he doesn't. His wife does. He has next door. And then he had a, looks like three quarters of an acre for sale next door for $15 million. Then he goes back. But it drove all by itself. All the way. It took me to the stock somebody's house. It drove all by itself.

我们拔起停车标志。车子往两个方向看。向右转弯。然后继续前行。突然间，有一个行人要横穿马路。车子停下来。等待行人通过。行人，我不知道是否要树立这一点，但是行人挥手示意。车子继续前行。然后它驶过，然后向左拐弯。然后经过史蒂夫·乔布斯的房子。那是一个漂亮的房子。虽然我只是在检测房子。但是那确实是一座房子。车子停在史蒂夫·乔布斯家门口。然后他拥有那座房子。而他不拥有。他的妻子拥有。他拥有隔壁。然后他在隔壁有将近3/4英亩的土地出售，售价1500万美元。然后车子继续前行。但是它是完全自动的。一路上。它把我带到了某人的房子。它完全是自动驾驶。

So what's going to happen is that I thought the idea had been that you're going to sell a lot of cars. So as a result of that, once they have those cars out there, you'll sell autonomous driving. And he said the other day that he's negotiating to sell autonomous driving for some other cars too. No one has to compute. No one has to date. And that's the long-term thing. If Tesla's everywhere, just like the Tesla charging. If they're making cars, if they're making cars, they make $7,000 in profit a car for a car that's selling for $35,000 minus the $7,500 credit. But you're timing. But just give me the timing. That's the whole game. Now. Now. It's now. People think it's forever. But listen to how much you're going to make. So they're making $7,000 in profit a car for a car that they sell for. Do I have time? How much time we got here? We're running short on time.

所以，我的想法是，你们打算要卖很多车。因此，一旦他们把这些车卖出去了，你们将开始售卖自动驾驶汽车。他前几天说过，他正在谈判要为其他汽车售卖自动驾驶技术。没人需要计算。没人需要日期。这是长期的事情。如果特斯拉无处不在，就像特斯拉充电站一样。如果他们在生产汽车，如果他们生产汽车，每辆卖价为35,000美元的车可以赚取7,000美元的利润，减去7500美元的抵扣。但是你要掌握时间。但告诉我时间。这是整个游戏。现在。现在。就是现在。人们可能认为这会持续很久。但听听你们会挣多少。他们每辆卖价为多少的汽车可以挣7,000美元的利润。我还有时间吗？我们时间不多了。

We've got about four minutes a time. When I say now, you believe on August 8th. They're going to make that they're going to announce robot taxis that will be available now. For $20,000, well, they're going to talk about it in August. Oh, eight. Oh, eight. $20,000 car. They're going to make $40,000 or $50,000 a car a year. And if they have a million cars, too many cars, five million, they're going to make hundreds of cars. I believe that's the promise of the company. And I think it's amazing.

我们每次有大约四分钟时间。我说现在时，你们相信八月八日。他们将宣布即将推出的机器人出租车。售价为20000美元，他们将在八月讨论这个话题。售价为20000美元的汽车。他们将每年生产4-5万辆汽车。如果他们拥有100万辆汽车，太多汽车了，那他们将赚取数百辆汽车。我相信这是公司的承诺。我觉得这非常了不起。

The reason I'm asking the question about this timing is I think there's a view that those vehicles are not comparable yet to what we are or the other guys are doing. And by the way, those guys can't even do it in some cities, most cities. You will be amazed at how quickly they come. I mean, maybe it's not this moment in robo, but it certainly is Roman, this moment in autonomous. And for the government approval that would come with that? Well, it takes a while for all those things to happen. Two or three years for everything. But that's, you're going to make hundreds of millions of dollars a year on that business. Hundreds of billions, not including the batteries, not including the E.A.I., not including, you know, robots, robots. I'm really glad it stopped for that pedestrian. I mean, that was big when you told me it did that because it did. Now, if it hadn't, that'd be a problem. Ron, right? I mean, you were surprised to stop for the, yeah, I was, I was. Did you have your foot on the break covering? Nothing. Nothing. So you're a total believer. I'm sitting next to the guy. And it's just driving. Oh, okay. I was, I got to give a couple minutes to space. No, no.

我提出这个时间问题的原因是我觉得有人认为这些车辆与我们或其他人所做的还不可比较。而且顺便说一句，这些人甚至在大多数城市都做不到。你会惊讶于它们会多快出现。我的意思是，也许现在不是自动驾驶车的时刻，但肯定是罗马的时刻，是自主的时刻。而获得政府批准呢？那需要一段时间才能发生。所有这些事情要花两三年的时间。但是，你将从那项业务中每年赚数亿美元。数千亿，不包括电池，不包括人工智能，不包括你知道的，机器人，机器人。我真的很高兴它停下来让行人过。我的意思是，当你告诉我它做到了时，我觉得这很重要。现在，如果它没有停下来，那就成问题了。对吧，罗恩？我是说，你对停下来让行人通过感到惊讶，对吧？是的，我是的。你当时是不是一直踩着刹车？没有，没有。所以你是完全相信的。我就坐在那个人旁边。它就是在开车。哦，好吧。我是说，我有几分钟的空间给它。不，没有。

But before you get to SpaceX very quickly, Tesla's pay package for Elon Musk has been a huge center of controversy. A Delaware court overrode it. There's this idea that you can vote on it in their shareholders. But I saw another article that I just read that said, even if you vote on it again, it could be brought back to Delaware. The only way it was to live is because of this guy. So how would you resolve it? Well, I think that the class action lawsuit for someone who had 10 shares or something. Yeah. And the lawyer's wanting $5 billion. That's crazy. And so the way it seems to me is there was a contract that was arranged and arrived at and agreed to. And how do you go back in a contract? This isn't fair. And the only reason the company is surviving, because the guy slept on the floor, run under his desk for, so let me go SpaceX.

但在你迅速谈到SpaceX之前，特斯拉给埃隆·马斯克的薪酬包被深受争议。特拉华法院对此进行了裁决。有人认为股东可以投票决定。但我看到另一则文章，即使再次投票，仍可能被交回给特拉华进行裁决。唯一能存活的方式就是依靠这个人。那你觉得应该如何解决呢？我认为应该对那些持有10股股票的人提起集体诉讼。是的，律师要求50亿美元，这太疯狂了。在我看来，双方曾达成协议并同意了一份合同。回头修改合同如何公平？这并不公平。而公司能够存活下来的唯一原因是因为这个人曾在地板上睡觉、在桌子下跑动，所以让我来谈谈SpaceX吧。

Let's do it because we're running real short space. SpaceX, we've been investing in, so 2014 to 16 with Tesla 2017 on. We've invested $900 billion now in space X. It's now worth $2 billion. We have a partnership that's $650 million of that. I think that we're going to make a double in 2027 when they go public. 2030, I think we'll make another double. And in the 2030s, I think we can make five times again. So I'm thinking about 20 to 30 times your money. What they have is that they have the only way you can get the space for nothing. Because, well, for not for nothing. It's $20 million to cost us right now. It's about to cost us $6 million to get to space. It costs other people $100 or $200 million. So we get to space cheaply because we use the rockets over and over and over again, like an airplane.

让我们做这件事，因为我们的空间确实很紧张。我们一直在投资SpaceX，从2014年到16年是特斯拉，2017年至今。我们现在在SpaceX投资了9亿美元，现在价值20亿美元。我们的合作伙伴在其中投资了6.5亿美元。我认为他们在2027年上市时我们会翻倍赚钱，2030年会再翻一番。在2030年代，我认为我们可以再次增加五倍。所以我认为你可以赚取20到30倍的利润。他们的优势在于他们是唯一可以免费进入太空的方式，因为我们现在只需花费2000万美元，而其他人需花费1亿至2亿美元。我们之所以可以便宜进入太空，是因为我们可以反复使用火箭，就像飞机一样。

And then what happens is that we have the internet for the entire planet from space. So Elon owns 48%. Google owns 7%. We don't want to know 1.25%. We buy more. So most people have partnerships that charge 2.20. We charge 1% on the way to 0.5% in no carry. And the reason for that is this is a customer acquisition tool. I want people to know that we're doing them a favor. This is the way I want to make sure all of my mutual funds are on this customer acquisition for me. I want to know that all of my, that I want to be on all the platforms for all these brokerage firms. That's what we're doing for that. And the opportunity here is that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley think that the internet opportunity is $1.2 trillion in revenues a year. Elon thinks he's going to get it 50% of those revenues in the next 15 years. And that's for a company you're valuing today for $180 billion last year, $150 billion. And I'm so excited about this.

接下来发生的是，我们可以通过太空为整个地球提供互联网。所以埃隆拥有48%的股份。谷歌拥有7%。我们不想知道1.25%。我们购买更多。所以大多数人都与收取2.20的合作伙伴合作。我们的收费是1%，逐渐降至0.5%。原因是这是一种客户获取工具。我希望人们知道我们在帮助他们。这是我想要确保所有我的共同基金都为我进行客户获取的方式。我想确保我在所有这些券商的所有平台上都有所参与。这就是我们为此所做的。这里的机会是高盛和摩根士丹利认为互联网机会每年可创造1.2万亿美元的收入。埃隆认为在接下来的15年内能获得这些收入的50%。而现在你对这家公司的估值是1800亿美元，去年是1500亿美元。我对此感到非常兴奋。

So I was reading about Sam Altman, who doesn't get along very well with Elon, of course. And he said that the way you become really successful is by doing things, you just think different from everyone else. And everything you do makes everything you've done before just a footnote to what you're going to do next. I think SpaceX has that opportunity. Anyway. It's mind boggling. We can't even get our minds around what the potential of cheap travel into, sub-over to our even. It's the internet.

所以我在读关于萨姆·奥特曼的资料，他和埃隆相处不太好，当然。他说，要想真正成功就要做一些与其他人不同的事情。你所做的每件事都会让之前的一切成为你接下来要做的事情的注脚。我觉得SpaceX有这个机会。总之，这太让人难以置信了。我们甚至无法想象廉价旅行带来的潜力，它将改变我们的生活。这就像互联网一样。

So if you want to have equal distribution of wealth, you have to have everyone in knowledge, or you have to have education. The only way you get it is with the internet. And so basically, there's 8 billion people on the planet. 30% don't have the internet. And in order for us to make a quadruple by 2030, means it will have 50 million customers and $60 billion of revenues. We're now growing about 30, 40% a year. And we have now, it's $12 billion of annual revenues, $75 billion in cash, no debt, and growing.

因此，如果你想要实现财富的平等分配，你必须让每个人都接受教育，或者你必须提供教育。唯一可以实现这一目标的方式就是通过互联网。基本上，全球有80亿人口，其中有30%的人没有互联网。为了在2030年之前使我们的业务增长四倍，意味着我们将拥有5亿客户和600亿美元的收入。我们目前每年增长约30%至40%。我们如今拥有120亿美元的年收入，750亿美元现金，没有债务，并且在持续增长。

And everyone, they do offerings of $750 million twice a year for employees, the company, and Elon buys, he owns 48%. It's not quite enough. He still adds. And so my feeling is that this is a business that when people start seeing financials about it, they're going to be so excited. There are three or four times oversubscribed every one of these offerings with no investment banker in five days. Five days. The biggest buyers are the biggest fidelity, GIC, the biggest buyers and backstone.

然后每年两次，每次都为员工、公司和埃隆购买总额为7.5亿美元的股票。他拥有48%的股份。这还不够。他还在增加。所以我的感觉是，当人们开始看到有关它的财务数据时，他们会非常兴奋。每次这些发行都有三到四倍的超额认购，而且在短短五天内就没有投资银行家。这里最大的买家是 fidelity、GIC、backstone。