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Last night, I discussed two extremes that could be the future of Tesla depending on how the company’s current “big bet” turns out. It’s been no secret that Tesla’s #1 focus is now AI and robotics, and that’s now where it will either massively succeed or fail. However, there were also several highlights from the presentation that seemed worth pulling out and discussing. Below are 10 key slides and some short comments about them.
This first one is one that probably deserves its own article, since battery degradation and replacement costs are such concerns for non-EV owners. It’s a big part of anti-EV hype to claim that you’re going to have to spend thousands of dollars on a new battery after a few years, and people are accustomed to having to replace 12V batteries, so it’s easy to believe. However, as Tesla points out, its batteries typically last longer than its cars. Good news, and a fact worth sharing.
We saw this shared with the last quarter’s shareholder report, but it’s worth highlighting again. Tesla’s AI compute infrastructure has skyrocketed. Much more compute power is helping Tesla FSD to drive much better. But does the chart continue spiking upward from there? For how long? At what cost? I’d love to have a more detailed explanation and discussion on this. Maybe at the next Autonomy Day? Are those still happening? Well, we’ll have the big presentation on August 8 — perhaps we’ll learn much more about these things there.
This is one I think Tesla could have discussed much more, especially considering the history of claims that Tesla factories are not safe. Clearly, Tesla has been making good progress in regard to worker safety, and much of that may well be from employee-provided improvement suggestions. However, Musk quickly skipped past this slide and it’s minimalist in the details provided. It would be really nice to see more of the underlying details and data. It would also be nice to get some insight into how much improvement suggestions have increased factory efficiency, as well as safety.
There’s the slide showing the three Tesla models under development. I feel like we’ve seen almost the same slide before. Waiting for the details, but it’s at least evidence that Tesla is still working on other models (think everyone knew that, though).
This is one of the more exciting slides. It shows rapid growth of Tesla’s energy storage deployments in the past few years, and it shows the Megafactory where these storage systems are produced has enough capacity to produce about 2.5× more of them each year.
And, unsurprisingly, those energy storage systems are bringing in more gross profit!
Another exciting and fascinating chart was this one comparing “total cost of ownership” of a Tesla Model Y and a BMW X3. Though, again, I’d love to see details somewhere. I’ve done dozens of total cost of ownership analyses, and they depend heavily on a variety of assumptions, including some very personalized assumptions. So, it’s exhilarating to see how much cheaper a Model Y can be than one of its closest competitors. But let’s see the data and assumptions!
I love the look of this new Tesla Supercharger map. It is without a doubt impressive how much Tesla has built out these networks around the world. Of course, the dots for the Superchargers here are probably larger than cities, but it’s a great visualization nonetheless!
It’s clearly impressive how much Tesla’s gross profit from “services and other” have risen.
This one will get its own article, because Elon Musk’s words about Tesla’s lithium refining, vertical integration, and battery production costs were really interesting. Just consider this slide a placeholder for a fun article to come. Let’s just say that the story looks much more promising and positive hearing Musk’s statements on this in the annual shareholder meeting than in the Q1 shareholder meeting.
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