Tesla Talks Robotaxi Details, Hardware 5.0 and More - Complete Shareholder Meeting Recap and Notes

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

Did you miss the Shareholder Meeting? Want to know what Elon Musk said?

We’ve got an easy-to-read recap for you below, split by sections. We’ll be writing more in-depth about many of these topics over the upcoming days as we unpack all the awesome news!

Robotaxi

  • Fleet monetization planning is ongoing.

  • Owners will be able to send their cars to the Robotaxi fleet and summon them back when they need them.

  • Tesla will take a margin, but most of the income will go to owners.

  • Tesla has plans to solve driverless interventions in the future, but expects them to be edge cases of edge cases.

FSD

  • Headed towards Unsupervised FSD!

  • New subversions are essentially new full versions; 12.4 and 12.5 are massive updates.

  • Expect a 2-5x increase in performance between versions.

  • Major versions will include a 2-week free trial.

  • 10 thousand miles between interventions for some internal builds.

  • Hardware 4 training will begin later this year, Hardware 3 will continue to be developed.

  • Hardware 5 is 18 months from retail release.

Optimus

  • Optimus will be able to do many simple and difficult tasks:

    • Teaching

    • Companionship

    • Babysitting

    • Factory Work

  • Tesla expects 2 humanoid robots per person in the future.

  • Tesla expects 1000-2000 robots working in its factories by next year, with a limited production run.

  • 22 degrees of freedom in the next generation hand, one new major hardware revision coming this year.

Cybertruck

  • China and Europe-compliant Cybertruck coming after production is scaled and costs are reduced.

  • Foundation series ending soon, non-foundation series starting next quarter.

Semi

  • Semi is in low-volume production, high-volume production starting soon.

  • Companies are actively choosing Semi due to economic advantages.

  • Massive potential impact on carbon emissions

  • Big impact on the profitability.

Other New Products

  • New products are coming soon, and Tesla is working hard on them.

  • Possible 12-passenger van, added to the “To-do” list.

Supercharger

  • 58K global sites, and continuing to grow.

  • More superchargers deployed this year than the rest of the industry combined.

  • Tesla is providing adapters to other car companies and providing them with support for Supercharger access.

  • Tesla is moving to fill gaps and relieve congestion where possible.

Battery Production and Stationary Storage

  • New 4680 innovations, best cell from a manufacturing and efficiency standpoint.

  • 4680 will be a continuing focus to improve over time.

  • Tesla has made their battery supply chain stronger and is working on further vertical integration.

  • 2023 had 15GWh of Megapack production, 2024 is looking closer to 40GWh.

  • 100-200% growth rate in the energy storage market.

  • Tesla is constrained by Megapack and Powerwall 3 production, can’t keep up with demand, even as they scale rapidly.

AI and Compute

  • AI growth is on a weekly basis, with Tesla taking in video and training on decision-making faster than ever.

  • Tesla is not compute-limited for FSD, but scenario-limited.

  • There is an AWS-style opportunity for parked vehicles to run distributed inference and compute.

  • Tesla intends to introduce LLMs with customizable learning personalities to Optimus and its vehicle lineup.

Investor Facts

  • Elon Musk expects $5-10 Trillion valuation for autonomy, and $20 Trillion for Optimus.

  • Musk mentioned that Ark Invest has the closest scenario – with Robotaxi releasing in 2025 or 2026, for a 110x valuation increase.

  • Elon’s stock award isn’t cash, and he has no intent to cut-and-run and is with Tesla for the long haul to accomplish the mission.

Other Items

  • Tesla Home HVAC, with a built-in HEPA filter, humidity control, super-efficient, super-quiet, with Powerwall integration – one day.

  • Kids Factory Tour Event – for children under 12!

If you’d like to watch the shareholder meeting, you can view it here, along with all the stockholder vote results.

Is Tesla Removing Free Music Streaming (Streaming in North America and Spotify in Europe)?

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

Tesla currently offers free music streaming with every Tesla, although you’ll need Tesla’s Premium Connectivity package to stream over the vehicle’s cellular data or be on WiFi. In North America, Tesla includes what they used to call “Streaming,” and have just recently renamed to call LiveOne. However, in Europe, where LiveOne isn’t available, Tesla provides a free license for Spotify, which allows owners to stream the service for free without having to subscribe.

However, it looks like this may be coming to an end. We recently received an anonymous tip that Tesla would be ending this free benefit for its European customers. While we haven’t been able to confirm this just yet, it does seem likely. Let’s take a look at why we think this could be happening.

European Spotify Premium

Tesla’s European customers receive a free license of Spotify Premium right now – whether they’re subscribed to Spotify Premium or not. This means customers can listen to ad-free music, have unlimited skips, play music in any order, and be able to sort and queue songs for listening. However, the account is limited to listening in your Tesla, much like LiveOne in North America.

You’re also not given the credentials to the Spotify account, preventing you from using the same account on other devices. If a customer decides to subscribe to Spotify Premium on their own, they can still log in to their account in their Tesla and share the same Spotify account and playlists with other devices, just like you can in other regions.

Removal of Free Premium Benefits

Given the tip we received and some other recent information, we expect this change to happen. This appears in line with other changes to Tesla’s streaming services, including the changes to Slacker/LiveOne Radio in North America.

As Tesla adds additional music services like YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and SiriusXM in the future, it becomes more likely that Tesla vehicles have a music service someone may already subscribe to. This is especially true with the addition of Amazon Music, which is included with an Amazon Prime subscription. According to Statista, there are now over 180 million Amazon Prime members.

Subscribing to a music service has also become much more popular in recent years. In the United States alone, there are now more than 90 million music streaming subscriptions (Forbes), and that trend continues to grow year over year.

While Tesla likely only pays a small fraction of what a customer would pay for a Spotify Premium subscription, even if it’s just 50 cents per month, that amount would definitely add up with the more than 6 million Teslas on the road today.

Tesla certainly has the data to understand how many customers use the service that’s included in the vehicle and will use this to make the transition at the right time. At some point, it just doesn’t make sense to continue to pay for a service most customers don’t use.

Timeline

We were told that this change would happen this year, so it may not be much longer before we hear about this change officially from Tesla. What’s not clear is whether this would impact all customers or potentially only new customers. A lot may depend on their deal with Spotify and LiveOne and whether it’s based on a flat fee per vehicle or a monthly/yearly fee.

Based on industry changes alone, we would expect this to impact all customers. However, we’ll have to wait for official confirmation from Tesla, as until then, this should be considered a rumor.

Tesla Begins Winding Down Solar Installation Business

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

Tesla purchased SolarCity, a large solar and backup installer, back in 2016 and shortly thereafter began installing its unique Tesla Solar Roof, regular Tesla Solar panels, and Tesla Powerwalls for both commercial and residential customers.

However, as the years have passed, Tesla has lost its interest in the actual installation portion of the business. They’re more than happy to continue producing Solar Roofs and expanding Powerwall production, but for the most part, their in-house rate of installations has slowed drastically.

Since Q2 2020, Tesla has seen a 10% or greater drop per quarter in the number of in-house Solar Roof, Solar, and Powerwall installations every quarter.

Third-Party Certification

Tesla has instead begun to certify third-party installers throughout North America and Europe for Powerwall and solar panels and within the United States for Solar Roof.

Tesla launched the Certified Installer Program in 2020 and said it has approximately 2,000 certified installers in over 14 countries—and those certified installers have set up over 1 million installations. James Bickford, Tesla’s Director of Global Sales, Residential Energy Products, announced the expansion of the Certified Installer Program and its new push on LinkedIn.

The Certified Installer Program provides several things to get third parties ready to install and commission Tesla’s home energy ecosystem, including virtual and in-person training, on-site training, custom installation tools, and the Tesla One Software Platform.

In addition to those supports, Tesla’s Partner Platform offers marketing support resources and a dedicated access system for a personal Account Manager from Tesla.

Tesla One Dashboard

The Tesla One dashboard offers third-party installers a one-stop-shop platform for managing quotes, installations, and repairs in one mobile app.

It is a convenient-looking application that lets third-party installers see what tasks they need to perform for specific installations and also helps them scale particular installations to customer requirements.

While this isn’t a new direction for Tesla overall, we’re seeing a distinct move in the energy business from Tesla as a first-party installer of its products to a more hands-off approach where local electricians and contractors will install Tesla products under its auspices.

We’re interested to see where Tesla continues to go with this, as they’ve seen their Powerwall business expanding in the last few years, while Tesla Solar and Solar Roof have dropped off many people’s radars lately.

The Tesla One Dashboard for Installers
The Tesla One Dashboard for Installers
Not a Tesla App

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