Hey everybody Rob now we're here and today we're going to be talking about Tesla shareholder meeting yesterday. We'll go through some of the major topics that came up, obviously advertising being one of those. Also talk about Elon Musk's interview with David Faber and a few other items, including some news on a report rather on Tesla possibly proposing a factory in India.
All right, so looking at the stock, nice reaction today after the shareholder meeting up 4.4% to close at $173.86, while the NASDAQ was up 1.3%. So giving a nice boost to the overall markets today, or rather the overall markets giving a nice boost to Tesla probably today as well, following the shareholder meeting.
So getting into kind of what we heard, hopefully everyone went into this with relatively low expectations, right? We have just had investor day less than two months ago or around two months ago. We had our Q1 earnings call, you know, a handful of weeks ago. So hopefully going into this, no one should have been expecting anything groundbreaking or anything too new. Other than there was a little bit of that rumor that maybe Elon was going to step down and CEO, which he rejected, obviously, and is going to be continuing and had a lot of good things to say about his involvement of Tesla and just kind of freeing up time from Twitter.
So I think in general, I mean, I've paused the video here at a very specific point because this was kind of the vibe I got overall from the meeting, right? Like Elon was in really good spirits. I think he was was very calm and relaxed, also very positive and optimistic, despite feeling like this is a very difficult time for the macro environment and for Tesla to work through some of the challenges that that presents. Still very confident in the long term vision.
And I think feeling like Tesla is in a really good spot and probably feeling a little bit of weight off, a little bit of relief off now that Twitter also seems to be in a much better spot as well. So I think really good to see that and just, you know, for Elon to express that confidence and just in general, I think there were a lot of, you know, positive vibes from the shareholder meeting, which, you know, one of the bigger takeaways since we didn't necessarily have all that much in terms of really new things.
Obviously they talked a little bit about the next gen vehicle teasing that talking about maybe five million or so in terms of volume. Hopefully numbers like that aren't too surprising given Tesla's plans to eventually go to 20 million a year. So for them to kind of go from where they're at with Model 3 and Model Y now up to sort of that next level, I think completely makes sense. So good to see that the little teaser image that they showed, you know, looks a little bit like a Model 3 outline. Some people are thinking it might even be a Model 3 outline. So not really anything groundbreaking for us to see with that teaser image, but hopefully Tesla have more to share on that in the coming months and years.
So outside of that, I mean, there was a couple things on Optimus, we'll talk about, but I think probably the overwhelming thing from the shareholder meeting was really the comments on advertising, right? Kevin got up there asking about, you know, a lot of people just aren't informed on Tesla and just advertising a possible way to help people get a little bit more informed.
I think he presented the question really well and in a way that Elon was kind of receptive to and, you know, responded, oh, yeah, like everyone does know some of these great things about the company, which I think has been, you know, that kind of the argument for a long time is really just help inform people and there are probably good ways that Tesla can go about doing that.
So not to sound like I'm just jumping on the bandwagon here, I do have to give some of my history here. This is back in, you know, 2021. I think it's worth testing out at least here back in April this year, Tesla should be advertising in Oregon because there were even incentives at that point that were really strong. So this is something I've been kind of wanting Tesla to try out at least and learn about, right?
It's a tool on the toolbox and it feels a little bit silly to not at least evaluate that what that tool can do for the company. So my thoughts have really not changed too much since then. I didn't episode back in, again, 2021, just kind of walking through my thoughts and I'll post the link on that down in the description. I was doing a little bit more of an updated episode on that. It looks like I can spare some of those comments now with these, you know, with this update from Elon.
But in general, you know, I'm happy to see their receptivity of, you know, the question that Kevin asked you, I'm glad that Tesla is going to try this out. The way that I think about it is sort of twofold.
I think part of how Elon has presented it in the past is saying that every dollar that Tesla has should go to making the product better and advertising doesn't necessarily do that. And if they can not have a budget for advertising, that allows them to save a lot of money that they can then use to bring the price of vehicles down.
And I think that is an extremely valid way to look at it, but when you kind of separate out how Tesla brings cost of vehicles down from advertising as a component of the cost, I think it gets a little bit more complicated because if you don't advertise in perpetuity, if you're not just advertising constantly forever, then there's nothing fundamentally tying the cost of advertising to the cost of the vehicle and therefore the price of the vehicle.
So if you separate those and you view advertising as something that you maybe do on occasion or something that the budget changes for over time, then it really doesn't have anything to do with the cost of the vehicle and it doesn't have anything to do with affordability. And you can then use advertising as a lever for profitability, which is something that has been a little bit of a pressure point for Tesla during this period.
So when there are periods like that, where let's say the macro environment is more challenging, interest rates are going up. Maybe it's a good tool to utilize during a period of time like that to be supportive of profitability, again, not potentially forever, but during that period where it is a little bit more difficult for Tesla to hit, maybe the margins that they want to be operating at, which generally seems to be more in the mid 20% range, which we're falling a little bit short of right now.
So it's kind of like peaks and valleys in demand. We talk about that like demand pockets, demand peaks and how that can vary over time, how that can vary over regions, advertising I think can just be a tool where when you're in those pockets, you can utilize that tool to help make those pockets a little bit less deep and hopefully improve profitability again during those periods of time.
So that's kind of how I view it. And I'm glad to see Tesla, you know, being willing to test it out, I think they're going to find ways to make this successful.
这就是我对此的看法。我很高兴看到特斯拉愿意尝试,我认为他们会找到使这个项目成功的方法。
Again, this isn't a company that's been around forever that's, you know, running the same ads that they've been running for the last two decades. And Tesla should be able to find really high ROI advertising avenues right now because again, it is new for them. They're in the earliest stage picking the lowest hanging fruit and using that to be able to inform people about a lot of awesome things that the company does that the products are able to do that other products can't.
And that's a great position to be in when you're trying to advertise because you actually have something that's interesting that's informative that's educational to tell people about that maybe they'll be excited to learn. So I think it's exciting to see Tesla go down this path and I'm glad to see the willingness to try it out and just see what happens because Tesla is a very data driven company and they've got its own data but they're missing a little bit here because they haven't tried it.
So with that it should help at least understand if it's the right move or not. Glad to see that. Again, I'll post my prior thoughts on that in the description today.
But kind of the other thing, it was really exciting to see an update on Optimus. Obviously Tesla did that little one minute, one to two minute video, demonstrated the progress for Optimus and I think it's really exciting to see how that progress seems to be happening very quickly.
So a lot of the demonstrations focusing on what the bot's able to do now from a sort of dexterity perspective with the hands. They showed a number of things with interacting with eggs. Maybe just one but they're kind of always in the background and all these scenes you can kind of see it there. So just kind of showing how quickly they're progressing from really the Tesla bot sort of walking on stage at AIDA2 that's too long ago.
Aside from kind of the advertising thing, I think Optimus was actually one of the bigger parts of the annual meeting and just kind of seeing the update on that. Anyone did say maybe they'll they've tossed around the idea of maybe doing like an update Optimus podcast.
He said maybe after the earnings calls they can just spend 30 minutes or something like that just giving kind of an update on how that project is going. And obviously Elon continues to believe that, you know, not that that's the entire future of Tesla as a company, but it's going to be potentially the most dominant aspect of the company some day. So exciting to see that progress.
And then after the shareholder meeting, Elon did have an interview with David Faber, CNBC.
在股东会后,埃隆接受了CNBC的戴维·费伯的采访。
So this was an interesting interview. I had to laugh here at how Verge described it. They said it was a very weird interview.
这是一次有趣的访谈。Verge形容它是一次非常奇怪的访谈,这让我笑了。
And I don't really agree with that. I think it was a very good interview. I think David Faber did a great job.
我并不完全同意那种看法。我认为这场访谈非常好。我认为David Faber做得非常出色。
They covered a lot of different topics from Tesla to Twitter to AI and, you know, interesting questions.
他们讨论了很多不同的议题,从特斯拉到推特,再到人工智能等等。可以说是非常有趣的讨论话题。
Some of them a little bit higher level like things that Tesla people that fall closely are going to know.
其中有些稍微高一些的东西,像一些特斯拉粉丝会密切关注的事情。
But they did get into some interesting points of discussion.
但是他们确实进入了一些有趣的讨论点。意思是他们讨论的话题很有意思。
Obviously, you know, just kind of rounding out the advertising conversation, Elon did say, you know, the goal there would be for the advertisements to be informative, to be entertaining.
显然,你们知道,为了完善广告谈话,埃隆曾经说过,广告的目标是要具有信息性和娱乐性。
So I think, you know, good to see his perspective on that. It's kind of remained consistent.
所以我认为,你知道的,在这个问题上能看到他的观点是很好的。他一直保持了一致性。
On Tesla, he did talk about China a little bit. They kind of broached the topic.
关于特斯拉,他确实谈到了中国。他们有点谈到了这个话题。
And he you on did mention that there are some constraints on our ability to expand in China.
他提到过在中国扩展的能力存在一些限制。
Said we're making as many cars as we can. It's not a demand issue. But just mentioning that those constraints and it was kind of in the context of just, you know, geopolitical potential tensions sort of mixed in with, okay, what's demand like there?
Are you worried about competition? So I don't really know exactly what Elon is sort of referring to there when he's talking about constraints, but it was interesting to see him kind of bring that up with, you know, a little bit of prompting, but not too much prompting from David Faper.
So I don't know what, again, I don't know what those constraints are, but it is something definitely worth keeping an eye on and maybe considering in terms of how we think about Tesla's growth and where that might come from.
所以我不知道什么是限制,但这绝对值得关注,或许考虑一下如何思考特斯拉的增长以及可能来自哪里。
In terms of just, you know, the situation right now with, with balance of time and allocation of time with Twitter and things like that, Elon did say that, you know, with Linda being appointed as CEO of Twitter, he's going to be able to devote a lot more time to Tesla, especially on AI development and new product development.
So I think, you know, good to hear that should be reassuring for people. Obviously, it's been a painful period here, both with the stock and just for Elon with having to get Twitter sort of, you know, self sufficient to an extent.
And I think now it seems that way. And again, going back to just Elon's demeanor, it kind of feels like he's feeling that way, which I think is great to see.
我认为现在看来是这样的。再次回到埃隆的态度,他似乎感觉到了这一点,我认为这是很好的表现。
And then on kind of like the AI front, you know, Elon did say he thinks Tesla is going to have a chat GPT moment with FSD here not too far away.
So hopefully we're not too far off from that for Tesla.
希望特斯拉不会与这个目标相差太远。意思是希望特斯拉不太远就能达到那个目标。
The other thing that really got a lot of attention from the interview was Elon basically saying, I'll go to the verge thing because it's got the quote here, but Elon basically, or David Faber asked Elon about his just positions that he takes on Twitter and how that could potentially be damaging to Tesla, could be damaging to Twitter and their ability to, you know, sell their products essentially.
So Elon kind of paused and thought about that for a second and quoted Princess Brighter. You know, he says, you can offer me money, you can offer me power. I don't care.
If I'll that up by saying, I'll say what I want to say. And if the consequences are losing money, so be it.
如果我因为这样说而把事情搞砸了,那么我就说出我想说的话。如果结果是失去金钱,那就这样吧。
So you can take that as Elon saying, hey, I'm going to be a wild card. I just don't really care what the repercussions of that are.
因此,你可以认为这是埃隆在说,“嘿,我会是一个不按牌理出牌的人。我并不在乎这可能带来的后果。”
Or I think a more favorable interpretation. And probably, although I do think that's true to a small extent, I think a more favorable interpretation would be that, you know, Elon isn't going to sacrifice what he believes in and the things he believes for the sake of money or power or something like that.
How many times over the years, as he said, the stock price is too high.
多少年来,他说了多少次股票价格太高了。
It's, you know, being applied in different ways now. But Elon is always has always and will always continue to say what he believes in.
这个词现在被用在不同的方式上。但是埃隆一直都会说出自己的信仰,而且他将继续这么做。
And I don't think it's, it's not something that Elon views is like, I don't care what happens from it. It's just something that he believes is the right way to do things. And in the long, long term, doing things the right way, even if there is some pain in the short term, will ultimately be a more successful path. So I think it's, you know, a little bit more complicated than you're saying, oh, like, I don't care about any of that stuff. I think it's more of like Elon feels that that is sort of the right path. But obviously, those are just my thoughts on how Elon responded to that question, which again, just got a lot of attention following that interview.
The other thing from the shareholder meeting, the cyber truck was out there. I don't know if this came from the shareholder meeting, but probably did just based on the timing. So on the cyber truck owners club forum, a look at the tow hitch for the cyber truck truck. So just wanted to kind of throw that on screen in case people hadn't come across that and were curious what it looks like.
All right, moving on, we do have an update from Reuters or a report on a rumor from Reuters. They say that Tesla is in talks with India on a possible factory. They say that Tesla's proposed setting up a factory in India for both domestic sale and export. Apparently, they told government officials this according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. They told government officials that they had proposed it. It seems a little bit weird. I don't know exactly how Reuters is reporting this, but they did say that this proposal came without specifying a location or a really investment amount. So perhaps a very early stage proposal, which proposal can be contingent on a lot of different things.
So it doesn't necessarily mean that Tesla wants to sort of immediately move forward with something like that. Could be part of negotiations for other things as well. But it is interesting to see that it could be a possibility, certainly at some point. So I'm sure we'll hear more about that as we have for many years on Tesla and India.
And then we've got an interesting update from Tesla Europe on Twitter. They show that there's been an ADAC testing or reliability testing study that has been published. That now includes electric vehicles for, I think, the first time. One of the problems with reliability studies is that electric vehicles as newer vehicles, just hasn't been in some of them out there for a long time. It's more difficult to evaluate their reliability.
This organization does very extensive research on reliability. They say for the first time in the 45 year history of the ADAC breakdown statistics, electric cars are now included. And Tesla, the Model 3 has scored really well on reliability for the first couple of model years here. So you can see all these different vehicles looking at Model years 2020 and 2019. This is far back as they go for the history for Tesla. But the score here, 1.1, 0.9, falls into the very low category in terms of basically reliability type of issues. You can see how that compares with folks wagon kind of along the bottom a couple of models there. And then if we scroll up, some of the other cars falling in that bucket are armor CDs, BMW, doing pretty well Audi, doing pretty well on those reliability scores in those early years.
Really good to have some really extensive third party validation of the Model 3's reliability in Europe. I think that's something that gets questions on a lot. And again, there's not necessarily all that much data. We've talked about this with consumer reports going back many years now, but good to have a little bit of another voice kind of joining that and talking about reliability from the data that they're seeing. So good to see that. Got to Tesla for the high scores on that.
And then the last couple of things here, Eidra has posted an update on LinkedIn that says that another automaker has acquired a gigapress, a legacy global US OEM. So they say this is a first for them. Who that would be? I think your choices would be Ford's Delanters and Ford or Ford's Delanters and GM. But we might as well list Ford, I guess, twice because that's probably who it would be just based on how they seem to be pursuing electric vehicles a little bit more aggressively and a little bit more thoughtfully than maybe what we're seeing from Stellantis and from GM. So that would be my guess, but who knows. But nevertheless, interesting to see that update from Eidra.
And then the last thing, just a quick correction, as I mentioned, I wanted to correct on this in case I messed something up because I hadn't had time to fully review it. Turns out I did mess something up.
When we talked about the California market share statistics, I thought that maybe this lower bar was last year numbers should have scrolled down. It's US. So this is US market share versus California market share.
So again, I'll need a little bit more time to go back and compare how this is coming in quarter to quarter and you're in stuff like that, but I just wanted to make that correction, which I did put in the pinned comment, which I tried to do if I make errors, but I just wanted to pass that along as well.
All right, that will wrap it up for today. So as always, thank you for listening. Make sure you're subscribed and signed up for notifications. You can also find me on Twitter at Tesla Podcast. And hopefully we'll see you tomorrow.
好了,今天的节目就到这里。感谢大家一如既往的收听。请确保已订阅并开启了通知。你也可以在 Twitter 上找到我,我的账号是 Tesla Podcast。希望明天能再见到你。
I am still digging out of a hole here a little bit, but hopefully we'll see you tomorrow for the, I believe. Let's make sure I don't get my date wrong here Thursday, May 18th episode of Tesla Daily.