Hey everybody Rob Mayward here and today we're going to go through some highlights from Elon Musk's discussion with Kathy Wood of ARK Invest on X spaces today. We've also got a couple updates on the Cybertruck including a report on 4680 battery production and reports on our updates on Toyota, Ford and a few other items as well.
Right looking at the stock, nice day but Tesla up 3% to $254.50. Nasdaq also with a strong day today bouncing back up 1.25% so Tesla kind of following a little bit better than its normal beta but mostly probably macro driven performance today. I believe after market close we did get an update from wedbushes Dan Ives and also covering Tesla says they're raising their target price for Tesla from $310 per share to $350 per share based on their increasingly bullish view of further EV share gains and margin stabilization in 2024. We believe Tesla will reach the $1 trillion market cap in 2024 as the next phase of growth story underway with Musk and company. So I like this, obviously it's nice to see a price target increase but I like his comment just about margin stabilization and further EV share gains, especially in the context of what we've seen announcements from other automakers particularly in the US dialing back their EV growth plans a little bit.
As Tesla continues to take more of that market share if margin does stabilize that will mean eventually earnings per share growth returns. We haven't really seen that for Tesla for a while it's been a period of obviously margin contraction in terms of profitability or gross margins at least. So at some point those things will stabilize at some point that will change and that's kind of what Dan Ives is saying here. So hopefully we do see that for 2024 but of course that remains to be seen.
One quick update on yesterday's episode I do have to apologize. The two deliveries that we talked about one here from I think Zach and Ella hopefully I didn't get the name wrong but this one and then from Ryan Torres. Unfortunately upon further review both of these people are employees which good for them however we were talking more about the expansion of orders yesterday going to more normal type of customers but these are two employees it looks like so. I do apologize for that. Definitely a mistake on my part. I did actually do a fair amount of investigating to make the assumption that they were not employees. Unfortunately that assumption ended up being correct though so apologies for that. Still exciting to see it go to more employees and hopefully at some point soon we'll see it expand further to non-employees as well. So again my apologies on that point.
Alright getting into the must discussion with Kathy Wood today. It was about an hour and a half discussion. I'm sure you can find recordings of it out there. We'll hit the highlights though. Unfortunately even though our investments are very familiar with Elon and stuff like that there was a lot that was repetitive for what we've heard Elon talk many times about before. So I try to just hit highlights that most of us would not have maybe heard before or something that it was at least a little bit new and divided those up to the sections here.
So on Tesla Elon of course recapped the funding secured saga back in 2018-2019-2019. He did say funding was secured going private would have been a distraction for Tesla at that time. Would have left some investors behind so he said those were the two main reasons that they eventually opted not to do that. For more present day type of stuff though they had a fair amount of time discussing AI again. Stuff that we've heard a lot about but Elon reiterating that in terms of real world AI Tesla is by far the leader still has opinion there.
He also talked about for FSD you really need to have a baby AGI in the car. For an example that he gave of that he said the car has to be able to read street signs in every language as an example. So of course street signs come in all shapes and sizes. There can even be occasions where those are variable with digital signs and things like that and the car needs to be able to understand and interpret those things for true robot taxi light capability. So that was an example of Elon giving that there's a little bit of convergence happening in AI spaces whether it's a large language model or something like FSD version 11 moving into version 12. A lot of the technologies are converging in a way but still viewing Tesla as by far the real world leader in AI and real world AI because of largely the data collection set that they have and the capabilities that they have on that end.
So again not anything too new that we've heard there but nice to hear him extrapolate a little bit on his or expound a little bit on his thoughts there.
所以,我们并没有听到什么新鲜事,但很高兴听到他在那里稍微推断和阐述一下自己的想法。
And they also talked about NHTSA of course this has been a conversation for the Tesla community recently in the last week or so since this recall. Elon did say though that he has a lot of respect for the enforcement division at NHTSA said quote in my experience thus far they have been really quite sensible. So nice to see that he is feeling that way that they're coming to reasonable conclusions don't always agree which you gave an example of here but he said they do care about the safety statistics and they do recognize that there's always going to be some risk with cars even if those cars are autonomous vehicles.
So good to see Elon you know still feeling relatively favorable even though even in the NHTSA recall Tesla stated that they didn't necessarily agree with the action being recommended and being taken but nevertheless something that they had to implement. So good to see that agreement or alignments in general from Elon and then he did note that they do obviously disagree in some occasions he brought up the instances of having to do full stops at stop signs and how no one really drives that way especially if there's no complicating factors around. So Tesla had to specifically as he has noted before find very rare scenarios where that did happen to help sort of adjust the model to drive in that way. So create some frustration I think whenever you're training something in a way that is not human like it of course opens up opportunities for humans to be either confused or annoyed by those actions which I think anyone that has FSD beta can probably have has experienced at stop signs before if you really let it wait people just don't expect that they don't like it it gets frustrating so hopefully at some point in the future that will change but obviously a point of disagreement right now.
So those were kind of the main Tesla things they did talk a fair amount about X especially at the beginning couple of interesting updates though as we know X is working on getting money transmitter licenses and all states said they're just waiting for final approval on some of those. He said he thinks they already have the majority of states approved but it's relevant until they have California and New York just because of obviously the scale and the size of those but he said it would be he'd be surprised if it takes us longer than the middle of next year to roll payments out. So obviously that would be an exciting next step for X which will keep an eye out for next year. We're not going to go through all these on some of the other companies and just some general thoughts I did just want to put my notes here in case anyone was curious and doesn't want to listen to the full X space so feel free to pause the pause the video and read through these but again probably a little bit beyond the scope of what we're going to talk about here today.
All right moving into some cyber truck updates Tesla has again done another wave of order invitations for cyber truck order holders. If we look at the cyber truck owners club order tracking sheet there have now been 249 people that have ordered through this invitation process. If you remember we were stuck at you know 170 or so for a while then we had another small wave taking that up to maybe 180. This new wave has now the combination of that and this new one has now brought us up to 250 so nice to see those orders continuing to be confirmable from Tesla. And although like we talked like we had thought yesterday we're not seeing these orders go to non-employees yet. Hopefully this is a good sign again of Tesla's progress with the production ramp in general. So we'll continue to monitor that and again check your accounts because sometimes those emails maybe aren't getting to everybody. Some people have reported that they can actually go into their accounts and configure without having received that.
All right next up on cyber truck this is more related to 4680 battery production. We've got another Reuters article report here. They say the Tesla cyber truck deliveries are hostage to battery production hell.
My thought on this headline is I wish this were the case. This would be excellent news if this were true but I do not think that this headline is true. Let me explain.
So if we look through the article they talk about first the production rate targets for the cyber truck. They say that CEO Elon Musk said in October that Tesla would probably hit an annual production rate of a quarter of a million vehicles at some point during 2025. But Tesla is still a long way off that kind of production pace.
One of the main bottlenecks is the speed of the 4680 batteries used in the cyber truck and its new dry battery, dry coating, like truck. Dry coating technology, nine people familiar with the matter said.
I had to laugh when I was reading this because did they not also realize that 2025 at some point in 2025 is also a long way off? I mean we're still in 2023. I know we're changing the calendar here pretty soon but that is still almost two years away. So they should still be a long way off that pace at this point in time. And of course, plenty of times ramp that up.
They say that according to some information that they have reviewed as well as calculations based on some public data that Tesla has shared. They think that the current 4680 production rate is sufficient for about 24,000 cyber trucks per year.
So going back to what I said at the beginning, I wish this were the bottleneck because this would mean that cyber truck production rate would already be at about 500 vehicles per week. If the 4680 battery constraints were the, or if the 4680s were the constraint, then you know, that would be excellent for the rest of the cyber truck production process. I don't think Tesla is producing 500 per week yet. So unfortunately, you know, we're not, we're not quite there yet. But that would also then mean that the 4680 batteries are not the current constraint, which completely makes this headline inaccurate. So those are my thoughts on it. Again, I don't think that this is true.
They did share a little bit more information according to these people that they spoke with. The people said that the dry coating in the anode portion of the 4680 cells was not problematic, but Tesla was still struggling with the cathode portion of dry coating technology. And then they also said, which I think is again humorous, although they continue to struggle a little bit with that. One of the people that they spoke with acknowledged that once you crack the code and established stability, it is like an exponential speed would pick up. There's already a lot of traction in dry coating.
So again, if they're talking about the potential for this to be a limiting factor, got a factor in that this is something that Tesla has been ramping up now for a couple of years. We seem to be close to a point where this 4680 battery production is taking that next step up. Of course, Drew has talked on the earnings calls recently about the progress quarter to quarter. He mentioned that they are in the process of introducing new 4680 battery production lines. So I think it's four times the amount of battery production equipment that they'll have up and running here pretty soon. So when you both improve yields and pay some production and then multiply your lines by 4x, as long as you can do that before 2025, which you get a lot of the time to do, then potentially not a limiting factor at that point.
So of course, things are going to have been flow throughout the production process on what is the constraints point being right now. It does not seem to be 4680s, even according to Reuters information here. Of course, that could change in a month or two months or whenever, but Tesla will continue to make progress over that time. One of the issues that they acknowledged was that two people that they spoke with said that as Tesla tried to scale this up, a lot of heat was generated and melted the binder. A little bit of a specifics in terms of what could be one of the constraining factors on getting that production pace up right now.
So I think all of us are aware, 4680, it's a work in progress in terms of where Tesla's at. I don't think anyone assumed that this was producing hundreds of gigawatt hours a year or anything like that. So nothing too new in this report unless this were true, which of course, I think would be relatively positive for the rest of the cyber truck production process, but I do not think that it is.
So Tesla today posted a cyber truck light show kind of cool. They timed out each of these vehicles to work sort of in combination with each other. So not just the exact same identical light show, but working in concert and kind of shows just a cool feature for the daytime running lights on the cyber truck and just some of the variability that they have with that.
Other than that, nothing nice to see, nothing too crazy though.
除此之外,没有什么值得一看的,但也没有太过疯狂的东西。
We've got an update from Tesla, Tesla Europe on X saying that the Model Y just broke the record for most cars sold in Denmark in a single year. This may sound familiar because we actually talked about this a couple months ago when we thought that this record was broken, but as Tesla says here, there was actually a higher record that was previously, you know, previously people were not thinking about or were not aware of from 1986 that was higher than I think the VW up from 2013. But now the Model Y has surpassed that as well. So unless there is another one deeper in the archives, this should be a record for the Model Y for best selling vehicle ever in Denmark. So pretty cool to see that.
And then just a couple of sort of energy related updates here, Tesla Energy on X shared a just kind of an example of utility from Tesla Energy products. They say that biodiagnostics, which is a sort of medical testing company and things like that. They have blood test medicines, vaccines that of course need to stay at particular temperatures. They had significant losses on these because of a power outage from a storm. Now they have prepared a little bit better by installing solar and power wall to avoid anything like that. It's kind of surprising they didn't have a backup generator before, obviously, I'm sure they wish they did. But now they do through solar and power wall. So nice to see an example of that.
And then just another nice example here, Tesla's also sharing a video of the Cybertruck hauling some Christmas equipment, some holiday decor around for the Golden Gate Park. I think they've got a festival there, a holiday festival, and just kind of showed the Cybertruck helping to set some of these things up. So fun to see a couple examples of that.
We've got update on Toyota today. We talked yesterday about their recall for a million vehicles. Things continue to get a little bit worse for Toyota this week. One of their subsidiaries, Dehatsu. I'm not sure exactly what the pronunciation is, but they have it's been determined that they have been rigging safety tests in their vehicles. This was found to be a pretty extensive issue. And because of this, this business unit has paused production of their vehicles. So potentially pretty significant for Toyota. This is about 7% of their unit sales. It's on the lower end. This is your kind of entry level vehicles primarily produced and I think solely produced in Asia and probably primarily exported within Asia as well. But nevertheless, this is something that Toyota is now having to investigate a little bit further. They talked about how they're going to have to put a lot of time and energy and resources into sort of reorganizing the company to make sure that stuff like this does not occur in the future. But with the recall, you know, that's I don't think is big of a deal, but you know, a couple of pretty negative headlines for Toyota this week.
And then lastly for today, update on Ford. This is from the Detroit Free Press. They are reporting that only about 50% of Ford's dealers have decided to move forward with sort of an organization or a deal with Ford to sell electric vehicles at the dealerships. So only about half. This is temporary though. So they will have another opportunity to opt in in the future. Just want to make that clear because I know a lot of people just seeing the headlines that only half of dealers are opting in. There is going to be another opportunity. It sounds like in 2027. So it's still a ways out. But nevertheless, this number, this percentage could change in the future. And then alongside the sideline for Ford, there was a report that Buick, their dealers, a little bit different context. About 50% of them had taken a buyout from GM to not sell electric vehicles. So a little bit different there as those dealers would potentially not be coming back in versus for Ford. They could. So we'll see. I don't think Ford's probably too disappointed in that. I would imagine that if dealerships do opt out, that potentially opens up some possibilities for Ford to move into a more direct type of a sales model. But we'll see how Ford approaches that.
All right, that'll wrap it up for today then. As always, thank you for listening. Make sure you're subscribed and signed up for notifications. You can also find me on X at Tesla podcast. And we'll see you tomorrow for the Friday, December 22 episode of Tesla Daily. Thank you. Thank you.