Tesla 2021 Financial Call

 2021 Breakthrough year.  

90% volume growth 

14% GAAP operating margin (best in industry) 

Accumulated profitability since the inception of the company is positive "this makes us a real company"

Texas and Berlin have both begun production. Customer deliveries and volume production are still pending 

Model Y from Austin has 4680 cell and structural battery pack. Delivery will start soon.

New factory locations will be announced toward end of this year.

Chip shortage is still an issue. Supply chain issues could be a limiting factor. 

2022 will have significant growth.

FSB will be Tesla's most important source of revenue at some future point. Musk thinks it will happen "this year". Safety step function. Asset increase will be significant. 

Focus this year is scaling output. New vehicle introduction would have reduced output in 2021. Supply chain was not ready for a new product introduction. This year is similar. No new vehicles coming in 2022. Engineering work will continue on all the announced products. Optimus included. It has potential to be bigger than the vehicle business eventually. 

Drew Baglino - CTO
Cell manufacturing. Cell's from suppliers are not a limiting factor. 4680s are being put into vehicles in Austin. Cell factory in Austin is incredible. 

Expect battery cells to become the limiting factor in 2023. 

Zackery Kirkhorh - CFO
Regulatory credits are reducing and trending lower. 

Two CEO tranches were paid out in 2021. 

Continuing to retire debit. 

With just Fremont and Shanghai, they expect greater than 50% growth. 

SW will become a profit center in 2022. 

$25k Car - No update! 

Home - HVAC, this is inline with Tesla's mission. Removing natural gas from homes (water heating and HVAC) would have a big impact. They plan to work on it "some day". Doing this in a vehicle is "way harder". Too much on the plate right now. If someone else wants to do it sooner, please do. 

FSD package - would you consider making a person life time license or fleet charge for this? No.

Dojo - Planned for summer this year. GPU cluster keeps getting better, so it's a moving target for Dojo. Dojo is not a requirement. The team will use whatever gets the job done best. Dojo will be offered as a service if it can beat the GPU clusters. Success is not guaranteed. Please join and help it. 

Optimus Sub-prime - "If we can't find a use for it, we shouldn't expect others to.

Insurance - offered in 5 states. CA does not allow rates based on individualized data. Giving drivers feedback encourages safer driving. Goal: 80% of US Tesla drivers have Tesla Insurance as an option. Europe market is next target. (sorry Canada)

Factory capacity - Musk "you should look at the big picture" you can squeeze the balloon, but that's not the point. Output will continue to increase in all locations. An announcement by the end of the year. 

Cybertruck limiting factors? Battery are not the limiting factor. The new tech still needs to be worked out. Desirability vs cost - 250k vehicles per year goal. 

Model Y capacity increases are priority (more profitable than 3) 
Localization helps margin. 
Model S/X new roll-out will help margin as well. 
Inflation and supply chain costs have increased and launching 2 factories have a cost. 
FSB roll-out will continue and could increase take rate. 

Level 4? Will it roll out this year. Is Dojo needed. No. The march of 9s. Being safer than a human is not that hard. It's remarkable that we don't have more crashes. The goal is to be 1 thousand or 10 thousand times better. Interventions per mile is trending the right way and more FSD stack improvements are coming. "I would be shocked if FSD does not drive better than a human this year," Musk. 

Megapack - all stationary energy systems are moving to Iron based batteries. Fe is formed as a star goes supernova. The energy biz was short changed on cells last year as vehicles took priority. Terawatt-hour energy business will happen. 2022 will see 40-50% growth, but it could be 300% if they were not as constrained. This business will grow faster than vehicles. 

How are things organized for R&D? No research centers, labs, or incubators. It is all about improving the products and improving the manufacturability. "one fuck and go" - Tesla does not place value on the idea, the value is on the execution - ideas are easy, taking something to volume production is the hard part - so there's no need for a Research Center to come up with ideas. 

FSD attach rate and deferred income - Musk warned not to look at today to determine tomorrow. FSD's future value will be huge. Asset utilization will be much better with FSD. A robotaxi cost will be cheap and more people will use them, this will increase traffic. Door-to-door is hard to compete with in public transportation. 

25K car - is this needed for Tesla future volume predictions. No! Today's vehicles are enough to continue to sell every car they make. 

Will other suppliers make 4680? Yes, partners and suppliers are working on it. It is a good way to drive down costs. This form factor is a good one from cost... It could find other customers/markets and that's good for costs. The Iron cells are not expected to use/need this form factor. 

The chip shortage was a lot like the TP shortage. There was no increase in ass-wiping at the start of covid, yet there was a TP shortage. It was similar with chips. Many of the shortages were in boring chips like oscillators or chips to move the seat.