Welcome to Electrified, it's your host, Dylan Loomis, quick shout out to my new or updated patrons, Jim and in Patrick G. Thank you for choosing to support the channel. Before we get into Tesla's P&D report, a group of Tesla shareholders have appealed Judge McCormick's decision on Elon's 2018 pay package. ARK Invest is part of this shareholder group, and not only that, but this notice is also targeting that $345 million award for attorney fees. In the filing, they said we want on this appeal to re-enfranchise Tesla shareholders and make their votes count. Just kno
w this appeal by this group of shareholders is separate from any official appeal that may or may not come from Tesla directly. Some people have asked me if this strengthens Tesla's case at all if they do decide to appeal this directly, which I think is likely at some point. I'm not a lawyer, but at the very least, the Delaware Supreme Court will now have to look at these arguments from multiple different perspectives. Plus, an underlying theme in this case has to do with shareholder rights and those two votes that didn't really go the shareholders way, so having this group of shareholders actually appeal on their own definitely doesn't hurt. We're stil
l likely looking at toward the end of 2025 before we get a resolution on this either way, but now the Delaware Supreme Court will have to potentially consider some new arguments from this group of shareholders. We got Tesla's Q4P and D report this morning. Deliveries came in at 495,570, missing Wall Street's expectations, which were about $506,000. That number specifically was the Tesla compiled consensus. So about 2% lower than expectations. Tesla's lease rates did jump up in quarter four the past few quarters it was trending between 2% and 3%. This time it came in overall at 5%. In part, thanks to the n
ew buyout option for Tesla leasing. This means that yes, year over year Tesla had negative delivery growth. For the year in 2024, Tesla delivered 1,789,226 vehicles. Compare that to 2023 when they delivered 1,808,581. Doing the math, the difference is only 1.1% or 19,355 vehicles less than 2024 than 2023. I have a few points to make on the automotive side. First for production for the entirety of 2024, the number came in at 1,773,443. Compared to production in 2023, which was 1,845,985. Which means Tesla produced 72,542 less vehicles in 2024 than 2023. In other words, down about 3.9%
year over year. Now when it comes to margins, I've seen some questionable takes out there, so I just want to add a few talking points. The truth is, nobody has any real insight as to what Tesla may have done for may cost of good sold reduction for the quarter. But data we do have on the quarter three call, Tesla said sustaining these margins in quarter four will be challenging given the current economic environment. And for context, the quarter three auto gross margin was 20.1% and X credits was 17.1%. So for quarter four, it's likely to be materially under those figures. And just to keep it simple, if you consider all o
f the global incentives in low APR offers, a higher portion of sales coming from China, where margins are likely lower, despite lower cost of good sold, the product mix shifting to more 3Y in Cybertruck sales and less Model S and X. And Tesla's warning on margins on the Q3 call, it feels like there's more downward pressure on auto margins for quarter four. Then just a quick learning opportunity, I've seen a few people say that because deliveries outpaced production by over 35,000 units in quarter four, that it would be a good thing for profit. But that's not necessarily the case. It will be
good for Tesla's cash flow, but again, not necessarily for profits, mainly because Tesla is converting cars from inventory into cash. And all else equal with lower production volume and fixed manufacturing costs, your economies of scale and overall efficiency decreases, which increases the per unit costs. This also means that Tesla's inventory is now down to between 12 and 14 days down from 19 days in quarter three. And this figure does not adjust for the vehicles that are currently in transit and technically going to inventory. It's just they haven't yet made it to their end customer. Now, CERNBasher does a great chart for this.
If you want to understand the calculation for the transport days, I'll have a link to this post below. But it does appear like this is the beginning of Tesla preparing for the new Model Y, just like it did for the new Model 3.
And before I say anything else about this chart, just know that these negative readings right here for the true inventory days in green are not just Tesla getting ready for a new model. Coming out of COVID had a big impact on these numbers too. However, the new Model 3 was released roughly where my red cursor is on the screen. So I'm just highlighting that in the months leading up to that Tesla did have lower true inventory than it's had historically, which obviously makes sense because if you have a new vehicle, you don't want old vehicles stuck in inventory. But zooming out, yes, we are certainly still in between growth waves on the automotive side. I do think it's worthwhile to recall what Elon said on the Q3 call. He said, I do want to give a rough estimate, which I think is 20 to 30% vehicle growth next year 2025, notwithstanding negative external events.
We can't overcome forced major events, but I think with our lower cost vehicles with the advent of autonomy, something like a 20 to 30% growth next year is my best guess. But the question is, will Wall Street believe Elon? Some people out there are giving him a hard time because in Q1 this year, Elon said no, I think we'll have higher sales this year than last year. That in response to being asked, if there's potential for lower sales year over year.
And much more recently, in Tesla's Q3 slide deck, they said we expect to achieve slight growth in vehicle deliveries in 2024. So to everyone with the pitch forks out, just remember they only missed by about 19,000 vehicles, which is a few days of production and a lot of those vehicles will be in transit. But my point with all of this is Tesla's heading into 2025 with very low inventory, lower production numbers than usual, and the tax credit in the US is likely to go away.
So for Tesla to grow 20 to 30% in 2025, we're going to need to hear about those more affordable models sooner rather than later. In case you missed it, the cyber truck is now officially qualifying for the tax credit for as long as it'll be around. Both the dual and the single motor variants are listed, the latter of which is of course not yet available. It is true though, this delivery figure was a new record for a quarter.
I do like this chart from Troy Tesla zooming out a bit looking at Tesla's deliveries by region year over year. These numbers won't be exact, but they'll give us a very good idea. In the US, sales were down 6.1% year over year. In Canada, down 2.1% in Europe, down 10.3% in China, up 8.5% and rest of world, up 5.9%. And lastly, on the automotive side, because I know a lot of people are trying to find cyber truck sales data, this is again from Troy Tesla.
In my opinion, his DMV methodology will get us as close as we can without something official from Tesla. But looking at this table of delivery figures for quarter 4, the cyber truck would be in the neighborhood of 11,400, which would actually be down from cyber truck sales in quarter 3, which were about 12,500. Now again, these numbers are not official, but as we talked about back in December, it's definitely time to keep an eye on cyber truck sales heading into quarter 1.
So no, I'm not ready to push the panic button on cyber truck sales, and given that it now qualifies for the tax credit that should definitely help for quarter 1. But ideally, cyber truck sales would have continued their ascension in quarter 4 even without the credit. So yeah, in between growth waves on the auto side, but on the energy side, we don't need to spend much time here because things are great.
Tesla deployed 11 gigawatt hours in quarter 4 alone for all of 2023, Tesla deployed 14.7 gigawatt hours. So looking at the entirety of 2024, Tesla deployed 31.4 gigawatt hours, a 113% increase year over year. The previous high watermark for deployments was quarter 2 of this year of 9.4 gigawatt hours. In that quarter, Tesla energy did $740 million in profit at a 24.6% gross margin. So once again, as I've been saying, Tesla energy is on track to start doing $1 billion in profit per quarter over the next 6 to 12 months, if not sooner.
So while we wait for the auto side to pick back up again, the energy side is squarely in one of its growth waves. Now look, obviously the market did not like Tesla's report, mainly though because a lot of the Wall Street models are heavily reliant on Tesla's auto business and future forecasts. But I'm pretty confident that the auto miss at least financially is going to be more than out weighed by the energy beat.
The expectation for Tesla energy was about 9.5 gigawatt hours deployed. So there's a good chance the energy beat financially will out weigh the auto miss when it comes to financials and profits. Partially because Tesla energy gross margins may come in over 30%, whereas on the automotive side, maybe they come in at 17%. We got some of the clearest spy shots of the upcoming project Juniper, the new Model Y. It's still covered pretty well, but there may be a few takeaways.
There's likely to be some material changes to the dashboard as this vehicle still had a cover over the entire dash. And then looking at this rear image, I know it's tough to tell now, but as I zoom in, you should be able to see the camera, which is now up a little bit higher, rather than being right in line with the license plate. And the black and white is likely just camouflage in case one of these covers were to fly off. And I'll be honest, it's tough to tell, but this is a shot of the front of the vehicle and right here where you would expect a front camera, there does appear to be something, but it's pretty tough to tell for sure.
And I have to say, even if that is a front bumper camera, remember when we saw Model 3 spy shots, they did have a front bumper camera, but the production version did not. Now on the Cybertruck explosion situation, I'm not going to get too far into this, it's already been covered at Nausea, and I just want to highlight a few things. Law enforcement officials were saying because the suspect used the Cybertruck in their attack, which has 1.4 millimeter body panels and 1.8 millimeter door panels, and I would add Tesla's custom stainless steel alloy developed in partnership with SpaceX, the explosion only caused minimal damage even with the windows of the hotel lobby, feet from the truck, not having been shattered.
Most of the blast was contained inside the vehicle. The fire initially, they covered it with a tarp to try to get it to go out. Once the fire went out through the suppression efforts of the fire department, you'll see some of the evidence in the back of the vehicle. So those are gasoline canisters, they are camp fuel canisters, and large firework mortars. But I also would like you to pay attention to on that video as you see that, it looks like the exterior of that truck is completely intact as it sits there. The fact that this was a Cybertruck really limited the damage that occurred inside of the valet because it had most of the blast go up through the truck and out.
In fact, if you look on that video, you'll see that the front glass doors at the Trump hotel were not even broken by that blast, which they were parked directly in front of. You can see that in the video there. Hobars used some language, but he said a bomb went off in the Cybertruck in the structural battery pack never caught fire, to which Elon said true. Pure speculation here on my part, but maybe the suspect that rented this vehicle off turbo had some misinformation about electric vehicles and the Cybertruck and thought that doing this maybe would lead to the Cybertruck battery catching on fire and making things worse. But clearly, that was not the case.
So the question is, are we able to recover the video from the Cybertruck? And many of you may know that those Cybertrucks contain a tremendous number of cameras. Again, Mr. Musk has sent out a number of his folks that will be arriving here this afternoon with the intent to try to capture the part of that that captured all of the video from inside of the truck. I'll tell you, it does appear that it was I just want to be careful with my language here, but the level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience. That most of that, the materials inside that Tesla were fuel to help fuel a greater explosion.
But it's too early to answer any question is, is if there was sophisticated connectivity to those components to make it ignite in the way that it did. Just sticking to the Tesla narratives here, the authorities were able to trace the car back to Colorado using video footage captured at charging stations. And for providing that information, law enforcement was quite thankful to Elon. Again, I want to be clear, there's a lot more to the story like what you see on the screen. I just don't think it's worth diving into it for purposes of this video. But responding to a post about the event Elon said I'm pretty sure we could get it running again too.
Elon said again, the battery pack never even caught fire and the tires are still inflated. Once we get this Cybertruck back to Tesla, we'll buff out the scratches and get it back on the road. The last thing I want to touch on here are all of the headlines out there about this story that are totally misleading. The man who died in a Tesla Cybertruck explosion was an active duty US Army soldier. This headline and many many others all make it seem like this is Tesla's fault and that the Cybertruck just randomly exploded and that this man was somehow a victim. When in reality that obviously was not the case at all but we know these publications are doing this intentionally to harm Tesla's brand.
Elon quote posted a bunch of other headlines saying you don't hate the legacy media enough. Robbie Starbucks suggested that Tesla should consider suing outlets who framed the story like that to which Elon said maybe it's time to do so. And as I said on X many people are headline readers only so no matter what truth comes out about this story in the days ahead there will be millions of people that just read those headlines and now think that the Cybertruck randomly exploded. I think it's past time that Tesla does something about this. Remember what Elon said in May 2022 Tesla's building a hardcore litigation department where we directly initiate and execute lawsuits.
I'm not a lawyer. I don't know what type of defamation case Tesla may or may not have against these mainstream media outlets. I don't know if a judgment in Tesla's favor would really do much from a long term perspective to stop these outlets reporting as they do. But based on the commentary on effectively all social media platforms outside of X it seems like it's definitely time for Tesla to do something because if they don't nothing's going to change and it'll probably get worse. No surprise the lovely Alexandra has put together a survey so if you're interested in Tesla pursuing legal action against these mainstream media outlets I'll have a link to her survey below. It'll be just that shareholders asking Tesla's board of directors to consider legal action against those news outlets that report inaccurately on Tesla.
For a long time to actually purchase parts from Tesla's electronic parts catalog you would have to be in approved collision center or an approved service repair shop. But as the Cybertruck guy pointed out Tesla is now making some parts in the catalog for direct purchase by consumers. For example this rear brake rotor has a cart icon now so it's great to see Tesla continually allowing more options for those people that like the DIY route. If you've been waiting for a Tesla stock dip you got what you asked for we're currently sitting at $379.28 it was down 6.08% on the day the NASDAQ was down 0.16% the volume was 31% higher than the average.
A very happy new year to all of you hopefully things settled down after the start that we had yesterday. I hope you have a wonderful day please like the video if you did you can find me on X-linked below and a huge thank you to all of my patreon supporters.