Home / Research / Research for investing / Tesla facts edit
Try Documentalist, my app that offers fast, offline access to 190+ programmer API docs.

  • Q2 2019 conference call (July 24 2019)
    • improving service
    • order pacing in Q3 is ahead of where it was in Q2
    • guides profitability next q
    • JB Straubel transitioning to senior adviser
    • expect gross margin to increase; asp to stay stable; increase FSD revenue
    • battery day: in 6 months, going for 1 TWh production
    • battery capacity now at ~29 GWh; not cell constrai
    • Lathrop is a distribution facility
    • reduced labor hours per car and other costs
  • 2019 shareholder meeting (June 11 2019)
    • best selling car by revenue, outselling luxury cars, a chance for best quarter
    • 63% trade-ins are from non-premium cars
    • re-iterating timeline for autonomy
    • model y possibly better drag coefficient
    • gf1 is half of global battery production
    • kind of announced gf in europe (decision of where by end of year)
    • doubling energy storage business by 2x
    • v3 of solar roof
    • talking about mobile repair service, moving body repair in-house
    • product roadmap: model y, truck (unveil in summer), semi (production end of 2020)
    • battery & powertrain investor day (maybe in summer, by end of year)
    • shutting down the idea of starlink antennas on cars
  • Q3 2018 conference call (Oct 24 2018)
    • v9 of software, talking about AutoPilot (Navigate On AutoPilot)
    • Steve Bannon talks about AutoPilot HW progress (validation, production line), ready by end Q1 2019; same cost as old hw but 10x improvement in frame rate
    • removed Full Self Driving from ordering flow because it was confusing to user
    • Karpathy says they trained larger NN that require new hw to work
    • Q: cell supply constraints. A: they are expanding Panasonic cell supply, have 3rd party suppliers as well. They made half world-wide car batteries (20 GWh).
    • Q: why better margins on Model 3. A: improvements all over the place
    • Q: plan for total M3 production A: hoping for 1 million Model 3 world-wide
    • Q: what are trade-ins for M3. A: all over the place but many upgrade from much cheaper car
    • working on reducing time car build → delivered to 10 days (from 30 days in August, 20 days now). Terms with suppliers: over 60 days on average.
  • Q3 2018 earnings report (Oct 24 2018)
    • average 4.3 k cars per week
    • sold 56k Model 3, 70k all cars
    • 20% gross margin on Model 3, targeting 25%
    • ended up with 364 k (out of 455) reservations, less than 20% cancelled
    • Going to Europe early 2019
    • 4 new stores and service locations, 351 locations worldwide
    • mobile service fleet: 373 cars
    • opened several body shops in US, planning dozens more in next few quarters
    • 44 new supercharger locations, total 1352 stations, 11k connectors and over 20k Destination Chargers globally
    • energy storage: 239 MWh (18% from Q2, 118% from Q3 2017), on track to 3x 2017 numbers, 17.2% gross margin (up from 11.8% Q2)
    • Solar Roof delayed, targeting first half 2019 to increase production
    • lowered cost of user acquisition costs for solar leads to better profitability
    • $52m ZEV credits (was 0 in Q2)
  • Shareholders meeting 2018-06-05 (June 5)
    • 500 cars a day (3.5k a week, 15k a month)
    • prediction: 5k/week end of June
    • model 3 outsells mercedes c-class, bmw 3-series, audi a4, https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/1004118655230078977
    • prediction: base model end of 2018
    • reliability of model 3 improved 5x
    • worker safety 6% below industry average, shooting for 50% below industry average
    • ~10k superchargers world-wide
    • prediction: supercharger v3 starts deploying end of 2018
    • will accelerate supercharger expansion when v3 is ready
    • installed 1GW of energy storage in Tesla lifetime
    • prediction: plans to install 1GW next year
    • prediction: plans to double installations every year
    • prediction: next quarter plans to build more car batteries than all other factories combined (including china)
    • prediction: exponential growth of solar roofs
    • prediction: expect positive GAAP income and cash flow in Q3 and Q4
    • no plans to raise money
    • prediction: unveil Model Y March 2019, production: June 2020
    • doubling-down on manufacturing as competitive strength
    • prediction: on cell level less than $100 kWh by end 2018 (depends on commodity prices)
    • prediction: less than $100 kWh on a battery pack level in 2 years (by June 2020)
    • plans to build out gigafactory for 4-5 years
    • close to announcing china gigafactory which will combine car/battery/powertrain production, in Shanghai
    • will announce European factory by end of 2018, 10-12 factories world-wide in the future
    • will improve Tesla Semi design
    • will recycle batteries
    • works with insurance companies to get insurance 20-30% lower than BWM 3, working on improving repair cost
    • free trial for Autopilot
    • making rapid progress on Autopilot software (including new release this week); expects exponential improvements
    • model 3 test drives starting end of 07 2018
    • doubling service centers every year
    • creating Tesla body shop repairs locations; top 10 metro location by end of month
    • compact car in less than 5 years
    • lease on Model 3 end of 2018 / beginning of 2019
    • talking about virtual plant in Australia that uses 50k PowerPacks; about projects in Puerto Rico
    • prediction: can improve charging time 3-4x (that would be 150kW*4 ~= 600kW)
    • prediction: 30-40% improvement in battery density in 2-3 year, 6-8 years to double
    • all-wheel drive production starting this month, scale up in July-August, high-volume production in September
    • defends not using lidar
    • plans to have the same profit margin in storage business as in car business, ~20-30%
    • no motorcycles (because Musk almost got killed once)
  • Q2 2018 earnings conference call 2008-08-01 (August 1)
    Autopilot: Stuart: autopilot v9 (auto on-ramp, off-ramp), integrated with navigation. More safety features. Karpathy: leads vision team, neural networks. Pete Bannon: hardware v3 is working to speed up running neural networks. Claims 10x speed improvement over previous hardware (2000 fps vs. 200 fps at the same cost).
    Q: what improved gross margins? A: spinning up production lines has issues and it takes time to debug and optimize production process.
    Unexpectedly more orders for high-perf version.
    Most frequent trade-ins for Model 3: Toyota Prius, BMW 3, Honda Accord, Honda Civic, Nissan Leaf.
    Q: gigafactory 3 in China, how much will it cost? A: less than half of Giga 1 capex, $2 billion for ~200k. They are finding ways to improve production and make more with same capex.
    Q: capital spending, how will fund? A: will not be raising equity. For china loan from local banks. There is no notice from regulators that prevent them raising equity.
    Q: self-driving can be used as military-grade weapon. Concerns about regulation in China? Didn't come up.
    Q: who is bigger competitor: BMW or Amazon? Not Amazon. Praising BMW.
    Q: detailed question about margins. A: somewhat generic answer.
    Q: what's holding back coast-to-coast fully autonomous ride. A: could do it in a limited fashion. Focusing on safety and improving basics like recognizing traffic lights etc.
    Q: how to better sell Autopilot. A: agrees it would be good.
    Q: Is GA4 permanent, is it a model for the future? A: permanent for now. Good because flexible. Also talks about simplifying manufacturing and Model Y.
    Q: what average transaction in the future? A: Reiterating target of 25% margin on Model 3
    Q: another question about manufacturing. A: a lot of manufacturing is software and Tesla is better at software. Anti-outsourcing lesson.
    Q: how close to cash positive. A: re-iterating cash-flow positive and GAAP positive in Q3.
    Q: still planning 1 million in 2020. A: aiming for a million, somewhere between 500k and 1 million, maybe 750k.
    Q: where will they make Model Y A: not made a decision yet, maybe will announce this year. Hoping to announce European Gigafactory.
    Q: how much Model 3 sales pull from other cars? A: no details other the above top 5. Expects battery production to be limiting factor. Not enough cells for PowerWall production.
    Q: will have reservations for Model Y? A: no decision yet.
    Q: technical details on production. A: Currently body production is a bottleneck.
    Q: will Giga 1 produce cars? Technology in Semi. A: No comment about production. Semi will re-use some Model 3 production.
    Q: car vs. energy production allocation. A: Makes sense to prioritize Model 3. Still, growth in storage is 300% this year, going for 3-4x in 2019.
    Q: comment about new strategy of being profitable A: getting to scale that can't spend money efficiently.
Tesla watch
Written on Jun 5 2018.
home
Found a mistake, have a comment? Let me know.

Feedback about page:

Feedback:
Optional: your email if you want me to get back to you:

Share on        

Need fast, offline access to 190+ programmer API docs? Try my app Documentalist for Windows