I'm getting a lot of people telling me that Elon should stop his political work because its impacting the Tesla share price. I'm letting them all know...I don't give a fig about the impact on the share price: if the Trump administration (and DOGE) does not fix the deficit, my Tesla shares - and everyone's US stocks and bonds will be worthless. We are, as a country, in an existential crisis. Our 237 year old constitution is under enormous strain, threatened two dynamically reinforcing, but grave threats: profligate spending and the bureaucratic state that encourages it. In my judgement these are more serious challenges to our nation than was even the Civil War.

In 2020 Tesla delivered 353 cars short of the 500,000 goal they had set for themselves in 2014, a goal considered impossible by critics and analysts alike. With this milestone behind them, they set themselves a new, and equally challenging goal 🧵

As a Jew who grew up in a country governed by an extreme right wing party - replete with anti-semitic remnants of a wartime Nazi party - I am very sensitive to extreme right wing rhetoric. So when Elon Musk endorsed the AfD, I was puzzled, even alarmed. Wasn't the AfD practially a Nazi party? That's what I had been assured was the case, in multiple MSM pieces - and I failed to fact check. accepting this trope blindly. Then I read the AfD "Manifesto for Germany" (Link to the manifesto, provided by @alojoh - thanks, AJ! - posted below). I read it end-to-end. Frankly, I was stunned! This manifesto absolutely accorded with my upbringing, which I describe traditional western liberalism. I strongly urge all thinking people to AND to read Elon Musk's own reasons for backing the AfD (see thread posted below). After reading these pieces, let me know your honest take. If you simply respond negatively from the gut, I will know, and you will be challenged! AfD manifesto posted here by @alojoh - nitter.app/alojoh/status/18… Elon's article published below, with sources fully attributed.

In 78 years of an extremely eventful life, I have never eye-witnessed anything as awesome as this!!!!! So pleased I made the trip here.

Elon Musk is not a Trillionaire...he is merely a Billionaire employing about 140,000 people, providing jobs in one way or another to about 350,000 people, and enriching 100,000s of stock holders...and paying the highest taxes ever paid by any single American (and possibly any single person on earth.) If he becomes a trillionaire over the next decade, can you imagine how many people he will employ and enrich, and can you imagine how much tax he will pay? He will undoubtebly significantly move the needle on the US GDP (he has already!) How much, "Senator" Gutierrez have you contributed to the US GDP? How many 100s of thousand people do you employ? How many billions of dollars of taxes have you paid?

@RalphNader I challenge you to provide proof of your statement "Musk (@elonmusk) started Tesla with a huge U.S. government welfare grant". I dont believe you can. Further, I believe you are aware that it is a lie. Shame on you.

Her highness - sorry, the Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery - deemed Elon Musk's incentive package for a mere $400+ billion dollar too much for the "Richest man in the world". Elon: "Hold my beer!" His $trillion package has passed! Sorry your highness, not sorry.

I'll follow Sawyer...with all my family's accounts. Been with Schwab for 20 years. Will be sorry to leave...but not sorry.

I listened to the entire All-hands meeting that Elon held, and came away with one over-riding impression - Elon looked relaxed, happy, and my word - younger! How does he do it? I loved "sustainable abundance". I know the troops were very happy. As to progress...all happening to plan as far as I could tell. More to come on the earnings call.

Introduction to the Next Tesla Revolution What are the revolutionary aspects of the Cybertruck? Stainless-Steel exoskeleton? The unexpected design language? 4680 V2 Batteries? Massive front and rear castings? Massive windscreen wiper? One or another of these may make the cut. But I think history will choose a different, and rather surprising one. Cybertruck may be memorialized as the vehicle that began the revolution that ended the worldwide, 70-year reign of the 12-volt electrical system in over-the-road vehicles, and the 100-plus year long reign of the lead-acid battery. This is a very big deal, one that will ultimately have a profound effect on the design, and even on the functionality, of all future trucks and autos, and ushers us into the true digital age of transport. For the Tesla investor, it may initiate another major milestone: the launch of Tesla’s role as a key supplier of intellectual property to a rejuvenated Auto industry. This important finding is just another breadcrumb trail I found in the 2023 Investor Day Presentation. Since then, statements by Elon, and the 171-slide deck, the recording of the presentation of the deck on investor day, and the accompanying Master Plan Part 3 document are together an amazing source of information. It’s surprising how little they have been studied, even by Tesla cognoscenti. For readability, I have divided this discussion into multiple parts: This, the intro Part 1: A (brief) history of the Auto battery (Skip this part if you wish, but I found it fascinating, and it informs the future.) Part 2: The advantages of the 48 Volt battery, and Tesla’s role in its adoption Part 3: The Tesla revolution in vehicle E/E (electrical/electronic) architecture Part 4: Tesla supporting a digital auto revolution (and establish a new stream of income)

I have restrained myself from criticizing Gary's less intelligent remarks in the past several weeks...but this so far exceeds the dumb level that I simply must. Clearly Gary has never introduced a safety critical product during his marketing career selling soap. WTF do you think it's for, idiot? And we haven't commented because it's entirely self evident.

Lighten up! We can laugh and be serious.

So, to make my point about the ability of Tesla to meet the Supercharging challenge, Let me tell you a story from the roadtrip from which I just returned home. After the Starship launch on Thursday, I hit the road before as soon as I could...to try to get ahead of what I thought would be a huge crunch on Superchargers on the roads out of Brownsville. I was relatively low on charge, and saw that I would have to recharge in Kingsville, TX in order to make Beaumont, TX by evening. I was a little worried, knowing that there was a concentration of Teslas on the road out of Brownsville after the launch. Watching the map, I could see the chargers were pretty full, and I resigned myself to a wait. Imaging my suprise when I arrived to discover that Tesla had figured it out! They brought the portable charging truck with its Megapack, and not only was there no wait, but I had the Tesla guy there give me practically white glove treatment getting me into a charging port the moment I arrived, explaining that his charger was faster than the installed V2 Chargers! Great job, Tesla! That's why I have confidence Tesla will deliver a great charging experience to drivers of non-Tesla EVs, AND Tesla owners

Ross Gerber is unlikely soon, or ever, to be trusted by the Tesla retail community. He attempted to get himself appointed a director of Tesla, and when ignored, essayed a childish tantrum against the board and Elon, followed by an attempt to sway the vote against Elon's package. He can't get his ego out of the way. I believe he would be less likely to be accepted into the community than an honest, up front Tesla bear. Elon is the critical magneto of Tesla, and an Elon hater who does not understand or respect that is not helpful to the mission.

It is now abundantly clear that the political head of the FAA, without the slightest clue as to the facts of the case, issued instructions to his agency to block the launch of Starship. The excuses are as flimsy as cheap toilet paper. I dont know whether the purpose is to delay until after the elections, or after the first launch of New Glenn, or perhaps after the next launch of Artemis, but the fact is that this Administration has thrown down the gauntlet to SpaceX. I do hope there will be a public outcry, but I fear it will not deter the Administration. They have shown that they are above the law in this situation, so it would seem that a little bit of public outcry would mean little to nothing as far as they are concerned. Where do we go from here?

If anyone had any doubts about the Tesla policy of accumulating a cash war chest, the news of Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Microsoft et al pouring $675m at a $2b valuation into a Humanoid Robotics startup (see the details in the quoted post below) should put to rest their doubts about Tesla buying back shares. It's not going to happen any time soon. Tesla has far too many new businesses spooling up, any of which can soak up the excess liquidity in a hurry. Currently Tesla is developing and/or ramping Optimus, FSD + Robotaxi, NextGen car, Cybertruck, Semi, Roadster, Megapack, and (possibly) Dojo - each multi-billion dollar investments with some of these lines of business having the potential of a multi-trillion dollar TAMs. @garyblack00 makes an excellent point that Tesla provides no information that allows us to model the possible revenue or profit for each of these businesses. As a result, most Wall Street analysts do not allocate value to any, or many, of these potential businesses. Also none of them appear to factor in a potential call on Tesla's cash hoard. The greater the success of these emerging ventures, the greater will be the call on Tesla's cash reserves as the working capital for each spools up. That's the key to investing in Tesla, and the retail investors' edge (if they have the patience, risk tolerance & conviction - and remember this is not investment advice!) Tesla is a well established and leading EV business earning industry leading margins in an emerging market. Wall Street is valuing that, and only that business, albeit at a fairly high multiple to current profits because of Tesla's stunning execution in the launch of the 3 and the Y. But Tesla is also on the leading edge of the sustainability and AI revolutions, and is being guided by a CEO absolutely committed to being independent of fickle capital markets and market timing that such dependency enforces. So Tesla will guard, preserve and amass it's cash hoard as it actively pursues every one of these opportunities. Unlike Google's "moonshots", these are not lazy, thoughtless "side ventures" - these are thematic, logical extensions to the mission, and to the technology, engineering skills and developments within the core of the company. They are also evolved by, and driven by, the genius of the Founder, CEO, and - aptly named - Technoking. I have written - at length - on the Valuers Dilemma (arising from the innovators Dilemma), and why it is so difficult to value Tesla. Those that believe in Tesla succeeding in some or many of these ventures have a call on that potential. Others that do not have that level of conviction, or risk tolerance, will view Tesla as being fully or over valued. Below is news about the Robotics startup: nitter.app/wallstengine/sta…

About that Cybertruck... My friends know me as a cautious investor. However, I am re-evaluating my Tesla thesis as a result of the Cybertruck launch. More is being revealed every day. It's been coming like a firehose from the likes of Sandy Munro, Jay Leno, Jason Cammisa, Marques Brownlee, Jack Rix and many others, not to mention the tours of the production line, and revealing interviews of Elon, Lars Moravy and Franz von Holzhausen and other key execs. One key fact we learnt was that our community’s crowdsourced analysis of two million advanced orders for the truck was very accurate. This is important, as it gives us confidence that we will be able to gauge demand as these reservations are converted to actual orders, and in future will help us track actual deliveries. The early response to the vehicle has been extremely positive, despite the increased pricing, and the additional very significant Founders Edition premium. Quite apart from the enthusiasm of the reviewers, It appears that a large proportion of those very early reservations holders that have been invited to convert their reservation into confirmed order, perhaps close to 75%, have followed through positively. This isn’t yet determinative of the likely number of total reservation holders likely to take their truck. The very low deposit - $100 - for the reservation meant that many were made relatively thoughtlessly, and some people ordered a very significant number, well above that of which they are likely to take. A very conservative view of the number likely to convert is 25%, while a more optimistic view may be 50%. Either way, it’s going to be – what’s the technical term? – a sh*tload of trucks. Considering the rabidly wild reception by the critics and car analysts alike, and the sheer value for money, I believe this truck is going to become the single most popular vehicle in the United States, ahead of the Ford F150. I may be overreaching, but the potential sales numbers are crazy. So, what are sales going to look like in 2024, and in the out years? I’ll take a stab. Having seen the production facilities in the videos shown to date, the line is clearly capable of far more than the 250K trucks per annum (the number we were sandbagged with.) I believe the line, as it is now constituted, has the capacity of 500K units per annum (on three shifts), and that there is both space and plans for a doubling of capacity. Production will be ramping up in year one, and I accept it will take time. However, in the back half of the year, I think the plant has the potential to reach significant numbers. 100k is within reach in 2024, and 250K in 2025. If Tesla is proactive in building for expansion early enough these numbers could grow by 50% in 2026 and reach 500K or more in 2027. Before the end of the decade Tesla could be delivering over 1m Cybertruck a year. That’s a $40+b business. And the margins, I believe, are crazy high. I may have underestimated Tesla’s potential.

In my 50+ years of building software systems, I have never before come across anyone foolish enough to claim zero errors in a complex piece of software. No serious engineer would make such a blunder, regardless of pride of authorship. The man can't be taken seriously.

How do you know who are women?

I never advise people whether or not to buy or sell shares. I'm not qualified to do that. I can only tell people what I am going to do for myself, given my situation and my point of view.

Home safe! This truck drives better than my X! It's amazing!

Cannot believe they made it!!!! I take everything back. OMG.

Every single person owning a Tesla has just seen the value of his or her car leap multifold. As Elon Musk predicted...this is the "greatest asset value appreciation in history."

Please provide evidence of these quotes and their context. For years we were told that Trump called White Supremacists "fine people", and like a fool I believed that he said that. Then I listened to the whole speech and heard for myself that he said nothing of the sort - in fact the precise opposite. Then I started to listen to many more of his speeches in which I was told he said terrible things...and discovered, upon listening, that he hadn't. Now I dont agree with all his policies - but do I prefer him to the alternative? Without a single doubt (and I was a never-Trumper!) So, apologies, but I do need the facts, not to be told to believe these are terrible people. Not that I doubt that there are Trump supporters with whom I disagree strongly - many of them have called me terrible names. There is a fringe of the party that are indeed terrible. I expect this is so in any part, right or left. There are Democrats who wish me, as a Jew, to be slaughtered - this is a fact. Doesn't mean that I consider the Democrats to be anti-semites, or terrible people as a group. I imagine this is the same with the AfD. So what matters is what the people really said, and the positions of power these people hold in the Party. So let me have the facts, not the accusations. I have learned not to trust any generalizations, particularly from the so called "free press".

Anyone realize what is happening? $TSLA announce a 200K Q, vs the almighty $F 475K quarter. At current growth rates (120% YOY), $TSLA will overtake $F in TOTAL VEHICLE SALES (with just 4 models!!!!) in 2022. Wow. @bradsferguson @ValueAnalyst1 @Gfilche @garyblack00 @robmaurer

Confirmed on excellent authority that the Cybercab is 48 volt architecture. We also saw the now motor engineered for the Cybercab and it is next level in terms of economics and performance! Target: less than 30c per mile cost of operation. Aligns closely with @TashaARK analysis.

No, they are not, Ross. A few lone democrats are lobbying for this nonsense. As usual, you are spinning a wisp into a shining, glittering ball gown for your dance.

So this was my first Robotaxi ride...I rode with @bradsferguson and we were interrogating Grok about In-N-Out Burger, our destination. So uneventful, I kinda lost attention on the ride. A great improvement on human drivers.

My granddaughter came with me to collect the CT!

Elon Musk could care less what his personal net worth may be. AOC demonstrates that she has no idea who Elon is.

WTF??? I write a post. ZeroHedge copies it VERBATIM then this guy copies it and attributes it to ZeroHedge???? @MarioNawfal get your act together.

This is no way to run a company. You do not gamble or speculate with your capital; you focus on product and operations, and you always ensure that you have the capital necessary to execute. Shares could have easily cratered to $100, and even further, leaving the company with no capital to execute. Tesla is not in the business of speculation.

Well, had my first morning with V12.3. Right now we ask ourselves..."will FSD be able to drive as well as humans?"...now it looks to me as it will not be very long before we ask the question "will any human ever be able to drive as well as FSD?" Let me be clear...FSD is till far from perfect in several respects...there are specific manouevres that it has yet to perfect, and it sometimes - not often in most circumstances - makes errors. And, it is frustrating that it isnt yet driving on highways, where we have to use the old stack. But taken all in all, it's a step change, the kind of step change which we sought. The MOST important takeaway for me is that I can now get in and out of my neighbourhood! There are only 4 routes in and out, and in each case all FSD versions prior to 12.3 stumbled on the complex lane manouvres necessary to navigate the way out or in. No longer. With only one stumble out of many, many repeats V12.3 aced it. In addition, it handled a lot of city and suburban drives with ease. There is a lot to be done yet. Parking, of course, and ASS; Highway driving. Mounds of corner cases. However, in a post I made a year ago I assessed that we were 1-3 years away from true FSD. Now I feel confident that some time between late 2024 and mid-2025 we should see a general release, and Tesla seeking license to operate vehicles autonomously. Great job FSD + Tesla team!

Looking to 2023, Tesla faces a stern test with the uncertainty of renewed pandemic in China, war in Eastern Europe, and apparent global recession. Auto sales retreat dramatically in uncertain times, But I remain confident that yet again Tesla will outperform guidance. By a lot.

Cybertruck...Foundation Model! Delivery scheduled Jan-Mar 2024!!! SO HAPPY! Thanks, Tesla.

Give it up Ross. The Tesla community has absolutely rejected your PoV. We embrace the Robotics future for Tesla, and reject your view that "the robot future is a fantasy". You'll never be on the board of Tesla. Nothing left but for you to exit the position.

Traveled 1550 miles from North Carolina to Starbase, arriving yesterday, for the Starship's 5th flight (and hopefully first booster landing...er, catch.) Every single mile on FSD (I would have bolded this but @elonmusk has intimidated me!) Exactly two critical interventions, both caused by Freeway construction with NO MARKINGS!!! (Bloody dangerous for ANY driver!) I elected to intervene because I just didnt know if FSD would catch it. FSD is spooky, spooky good. One more update incoming - 2024.32.20.1 - but right now my confidence level is SOARING! Even if FSD has a way to go (not far in my book, I think it's really just cleanup at this point) the product is worth a lot more than Tesla is currently charging for it just for the difference it makes to road trips. It's a completely different experience - much more fun, far less tiring, and dramatically changes the equation between flying and driving.

That time has come!!!! So happy. What a week this has been. Thanks Tesla.

Two ladies of power. Respect.

The extraordinary fact of this terrible faux pas is that the accounting issue that tripped up the FT was about as simple an issue as accounting gets. No reasonably educated reporter, back in the day, would have jumped on this bogus "issue". And even if they had misread the numbers, editors would have immediately had an accounting person check the outlandish claim. But the FT is no longer the FT. And reporters are no longer reporters. They are propagandists. Nothing sheds a light more clearly on the bias of the publications that, like the FT, jumped triumphantly on this nonsense. @fredlambert - looking at you.

We can construct a table comparing the consistent company guidance with the 2021 actual, 2022 estimated and 2023 consensus expectations. The table shows that Tesla are way ahead of their guidance:

"To save Business Insider, Linette Lopez has to go!" This woman has been wrong so often its incredible. How does she still earn a living?????

I have read a LOT of posts, some from pretty senior govt. officials, charging X with "disseminating disinformation" (and some have added "illegal content".) However, what has been paramount to me is that X was the sole source of up to date, minute by minute information on the Hamas attacks that I was able to find in the early hours, in fact in the entire first day of the action. Even now, I get minute by minute updates, clarifications as they are disseminated. Some are wrong, and are almost immediately corrected or updated. This is as it should be. The news services provide - at best - a spotty, perhaps even a shoddy, service compared to X. It's my goto news service from now on.

WSJ’s “Heard on the Street” claims the "Tesla’s cool factor won’t take the Semi very far". This thread exposes the columnist’s willful blindness as the uncool factor. A🧵 in 2 parts. Heard on the Street: Tesla’s 500-mile Semi truck may be too expensive bit.ly/3BLnEJx

So why are many, including highly respected industry and investment analysts, and even knowledgeable Tesla community members, saying that the current expectation of about 1.31m cars would represent a miss, when the numbers clearly show it as beat of 200,000 vehicles (>15%)?

Finally, adding a Model Y to the fleet! BTW, none in stock in Raleigh rn, my new car is still in the production line. Quite bullish.

You idiots...and you wonder why the world rejects you.

In 2021 Tesla beat the 50% by 37%. Suddenly, the 2022 count became the “new” baseline, so now the 50% is applied to 936K instead of the correct 750K (50% above 2021) per guidance. Result: in 2022 the 50% expectation has become 1,400K, instead of the correct 1,125K (750K + 50%).

A Delaware Court judge decided that Elon Musk's pay package damaged Tesla shareholders, the vast majority of whom were dramatically - and many beyond their wildest dreams - enriched as a result of that same pay package (for which they voluntarily, and with full knowledge of Elon Musk's board relationships, which were anything but secret, enthusiastically voted.) Now she is to decide just how much money these same shareholders should be directly damaged by the lawyers who brought the case.

My neighbor (i'm in the Raleigh area of NC) was threatened with arrest when returning from flying the wife of a stranded husband and wife team to safety in his helicopter. He had come back to get the husband to safety. The air space was open at the time. The Fire Chief in the local town, which was devastated and without supplies, forbade my neighbor to take the husband in his felicopter, and threated him with arrest. And then called for the Air Space to be closed. He had to abandon the husband to an uncertain fate. SO it isnt just FEMA officials (though the stories I am hearing about them from my friends are not any better), officials from many areas are, in their officiousness, causing a helluva lot more problems than they seem able to solve. Not all of them. Other friends had local police help them distribute the Starlink terminals we had acquired. But in general there is no leadership in the chaos.

I have re-evaluated my staunch opposition to Trump. His grace under fire allowed me to see a different version of the man. That, and Melania's letter, the Lex Fridman interview of Jared and Melania (showing them to be very, very different people to those depicted in the press) and the lawfare tactics of the US and State prosecutors have done it for me. Not to mention the difference in treatment of President Biden for a similar "offence" to one that they continue to pursue against Trump. All this has driven me, once a very strong "never Trumper" to the same conclusion, by a slightly different route, as @BillAckman A few more words about politics, and my deepest concern: Though I was not at the time a Trump supporter I was nevertheless horrified at the actions of the Justice Department and the FBI during Trump's last presidency. The Attorney General bowed to Justice Department lawyers, appointing a Special Prosecutor, allowing the hoax Russian case to proceed. Democratic Congressmen lied repeatedly to the American people, knowing all the time the entire Russian affair was a Clinton campaign disinformation operation. The Department of Justice and it's enforcement division, the FBI, will be the single major impediment to Donald Trump's next term. More than that, they have lost the confidence of a huge proportion of the American population, and this is a real threat to our democracy.

This is shameful. Right now tens of thousands of people are stranded in North Carolina without the means of contacting anyone...because of political shenanigans. We have a couple of citizens trying to help with their Starlink terminals.

...FSD...FSD... First day with 13.2.8 in the Cybertruck. I'm returning from Austin to RDU, North Carolina. My trip there was done with 13.2.7, the only problem of which was its prediliction to drive on the very edge, even over the edge, of the lane on the freeway. What was maddening about it was that it only seemed to occur sporadically (particularly when NOT following another car, but perhaps that was my imagination.) Other than that...and that it didnt park at the termination of the drive as the same version appears to do on my Model 3. Howevr, 13.2.8 does appear to have solved this problem, and generally appears a little more polished. I am about 1/3 home (started around mid-day) and have had an error free, intervention free drive for about 500 miles to my layover tonight. It's really getting good, folks.

Well I read the 13,406 words of Tesla's request to the Delaware Court of Chancery, requesting that, in the light of the 70%+ vote by independent shareholders of Tesla, the Court revise their opinion and re-instate the Elon Musk 2018 agreement. It's a very strong brief, in the view of this non-lawyer. It cites many Delaware specific examples as well as from many other States, including New York, Pennsylvania and other heavy-hitter coprorate domiciles, where a stockholder vote post-event provides unique stockholder protections and statutory ratification. It goes to lengths to show that stockholders were well-informed with the benefit of a judicial record and complete (some would say remarkably so) hindsight. It details the independence of the review conducted by the special committee, and the extraordinarily wide and detailed extent of disclosure to shareholders of the Court's criticisms of the original process and disclosures in submitting the plan to a second vote. It points out that "It is no exaggeration to say the June 2024 Tesla ratification vote was one of the most extensively covered and widely debated stockholder votes in memory." It completes the argument in favor of the healing nature of the re-vote by pointing out: "With a record turnout of over 80% of outstanding shares present (in person or by proxy), 72% of the disinterested voting shares were voted in favor of ratification—similar to the 73% that voted for the original compensation plan in 2018.... Among others, Tesla’s largest institutional stockholder, Vanguard, disclosed that it voted for ratification of the 2018 Agreement despite having previously voted against the award in 2018, explaining that “the unique circumstance of evaluating the plan retroactively eliminated our concerns that significant pay could be earned without company outperformance relative to the market or peers.” I wont try to summarize all 52 pages. It is, however, worth the reading. What do I think will happen? Well, I think this judge would like to rule against Elon, and may well do, despite the weight of evidence and law being against her. However, and here's the important fact: before the vote, the chance of winning the appeal against the Judge was low, probably no higher than the average rate of appeal success - about 25% - and perhaps even lower given this Judge's standing. Now, however, based on the law and the facts, I do believe the appeal will uphold Tesla's position.

January ‘21 Tesla guidance: “over a multi-year horizon, we expect to achieve 50% average annual growth in vehicle deliveries. In some years we may grow faster…The rate…will depend on our equipment capacity, operational efficiency and capacity and stability of the supply chain.”

I'm just another Tesla BOT. I BOT so many Tesla shares that I cant keep my happiness BOTttled up! That's aBOT it.

It is because of a simplistic, but very flawed understanding of the clear guidance that Tesla has given repeatedly, most recently in the 3rd Q earnings report. It seems that the pundits re-set the baseline for the 50% growth with each beat of the target!

Those of us who trust Elon, rely on his good sense to treat his companies fairly. It has been good for us to date, and we trust it will be great in the future. Those that hate Elon will find every reason, in every decision taken by the company, to beat up on him. We are quite used to it, and believe it will continue to do well for us. Since the IPO, just over 14 years ago, the stock is up over 100 fold. We feel confident of the continuing good performance of the company in the coming decade under Elon's leadership. For those who don't share the same confidence, just move on. Just move on. You're just making unnecessary noise.

A good friend, in a DM to me, said that he feels that Tesla, with these discounts and pricing action, seem to want to intentionally "drive the share price down". Here was my reply: "When model refreshes happen with large OEMs, there is a spate of dealer discounting on existing stock, and revenue on that model drops for a period before it picks up again, and hopefully, if the refresh is succesful, it exceeds previous revenues for that model. In Tesla's case, it's not as easy for two key reasons: 1. They only have 4 models in their range, most OEMS have between a dozen and 5 dozen. Thus a model refresh has a much greater impact on a particular Q revenue for Tesla as for a traditional OEM. 2. Tesla sales are direct, they cant work on "dealer discounts" to hide pricing action. Their pricing is transparent, and applies to everyone, not on a dealer discount basis (or even on a single dealer by dealer basis.) So it just feels "different" to the shareholders. Advertising would not be likely to shift the needle on this. We, and the market as a whole, are unduly sensitive to these "news" snippets, which in a classic auto business would be business as usual (and would not become evident or be reported). SO no, it's NOT intentional, and consider it an opportunity. I do."

Lot of folks urging Tesla to spend $50m on an advertising campaign to stave of a $1,000 price reduction. Seriously? Who can recall the last time they saw a Subaru commercial? Yup, and they spend north of $400m a year to not be noticed! GM spends $2.7b. $50m doesnt get you national coverage, my friends.

FSD... FSD... Arrived home yesterday lunch time, returning from my 3,000 mile trip to Austin in the Cybertruck. All on FSD. ZERO safety interventions. Zero. This was a first, after six trips (three in the X, three in the CT). V13.2.6 on way out, and V13.2.8 on the return. This version is close to perfect on the open road, handled detours and lane closures with grace, even those that were improperly marked or setup. Did not stray over the yellow boundaries into the (sometimes extremely narrow) shoulders of the freeway, though sometimes getting very close, even touching the rumble strips on a few occasions. (This was a little nerve-racking due to earlier versions straying wildly into dangerous territory.) So still some minor improvements are necessary. I did the whole trip on "Hurry", so my average speed was high (FSD drove at a consistent 85MPH on the highway, which was most of the distance), and consistently energy consumption was high - about 530 Wh/mi. The journey was a snap...most of it was catching up on my reading (or, in this case, my listening). The driving was so good that I was really able to concentrate on the book quite deeply. All that remains for FSD on the CT is parking and navigating in the parking lots. A little polishing on the highway.

Wow! ELON...

Back in March I made a claim that Tesla Energy would ultimately exceed the Auto business. I may have underestimated the picture. Tesla have already exceeded, by Q2, my entire year 2024 projection. The Tesla Energy story is becoming very exciting. I believe revenue contribution to gross profit this quarter, based on today's 9.4 (corrected from the 9.1 in the original post) GWh reported installs (and recovery from reserve), will be over $900m, an increase of 120% Q over Q!!!! I believe that by 2026 Energy will contribute more gross profit than the auto business (excluding FSD and Robotaxi earnings, of course!) I am reposting the entire thread below, but will be updating the revenue/earnings graph in that thread due course with updated revenue projections. It's a huge acceleration of my previous projection. When reading the old post, concentrate particularly on the revenue reserves...it's an amazing, unheralded story. The reserve stood at $3.9b in Q1 (to be recognized over 12-15 months, thus contributing to profits over the following 4-5 quarters.) This Q2 the reserve will grow to $5b!

This is a long 🧵TL/DR: it replaces my usual projection format for Q4 (which is summarized in the next tweet). However, it does contains my personal analysis as to why $TSLA is better poised today than any other time in its history. (Not investment advice!)

Here is a graphical view of the guidance vs actual and anticipated deliveries:

Read the $TSLA Structural Battery Patent Application published yesterday (filed Nov 20, 2020). The original date of the related provision filing - Nov. 2019! Considering that date, they must have started this work 5 years ago! Can you imagine what they must be working on now?

When Tesla has a million Robotaxis out earning big money, this guy will explain to us why they're not real robotaxis.

The rank stupidity of this beggars the imagination.

My neighbor's reaction

...and we are so lucky to have @jamesdouma in our community!

I have to disagree with my idol, @DivesTech in this one: Ross clearly has not read the 443 page 2024 Proxy statement that details the scrupulous, thoughtful and comprehensive process conducted by the Special Committee of the Board, Kathleen Wilson-Thomas, and her advisers, Sidley LLP, Abrams and Bayliss of Delaware, and Houlihan Lokey Capital, Inc. Regardless of the criticism Ross may have leveled at the board in the past, this particular critique is entirely without merit, and is wrong on the facts. The board's process in this case was scrupulous, comprehensive and thoughtful. It is excruciatingly detailed in this document. Exactly the opposite of Ross' meritless charge that the board simply said "let's just have a do over" without giving it a thought. Ross may disagree with the Board's decision, but his criticism of the methods are groundless and show a studied disregard of the facts so readily available. His criticism reflects on him, not the Board, and highlights the very reason why he is not fit to serve on a public company board. @DivesTech I beg you to read the Proxy statement to determine the facts for yourself. nitter.app/DivesTech/status…

Honestly, it's boring...the damn car will simply do nothing wrong.

Elon looks even younger than ever! He's so energized.

If deliveries hit, say 1,300K in 2022 (current expectations), then in 2023 the expectation will suddenly become 1,950K in 2023, instead of the 1,686K which properly represent an average of 50% growth as provided by the consistent Tesla guidance.

Elon Musk's reputation is anchored in his ability to create by imagination and engineering entire new fields of endeavor, and then conjure them into giant enterprises. What few understand is that he has also developed, from bitter experience, the ability to aggressively manage costs even while pursuing world-changing technology development. I am not talking about his laser focus on reducing costs by brilliant design of product and process. I wrote about that in great detail in a long post on June 29 (nitter.app/TeslaLarry/statu…) Instead I want to highlight on Elon's focus on operating costs. Unlike other Silicon Valley companies, his companies aggressively control their sales, marketing, management and general expenses. For example, Tesla has consistently trimmed its SG&A (and sometimes it's manufacturing staff) - here is a record of that over the years; • 2017: 2% of headcount • 2018: 9% of headcount • 2019: 7% of headcount • 2022: 10% of salaried workers (3% of global headcount) • 2024: ~10% of headcount And here is the driver: The point is operating leverage: growing gross profits at a higher rate than SG&A, achieving higher net margins. While Tesla has a pretty good record, it is clearly from the graph that 2021 and 2023 were outliers in that operating costs reversed the downward trend Tesla achieved since the launch of its mass market cars. Each one of these reversals was the trigger for an Elon reaction in '22 and '24, slimming the company's SG&A by issuing a general edict to reduce headcount in order to rebalance the company. If we look at the operating cost on a monthly basis, we can see that the Q1 '24 was the proximate trigger to force the layoffs as the SG&A climbed back to '21 levels. My projected Q2 2024 figure of 6.79% (which excludes the one-time re-org costs) would bring Tesla back to the trend line of constant reducing SG&A. This is achieved not only by the downsizing, but even more appropriately by the dramatic expansion of Energy revenue, demonstrating Tesla's potential. Once the new range of vehicles, FSD, Robotaxi, and ultimately Optimus add their bounty to gross profits, we can be sure that Elon will be controlling costs, ensuring that operating margins continue to grow. It's the best kept secret of the Musk method.

There is a great deal of angst in the Tesla community around xAI and it boils down to three questions: 1. Is xAI likely to become profitable – aren’t there too many AI companies already? 2. Why did Elon not simply start an AI project within Tesla, just like Optimus? 3. Should Tesla become an investor in xAI? I’ve given this a great deal of thought in the past week, and I’m going to present my conclusions here. They are my opinions, and I’m sure that there are many other, equally valid thoughts out there. Feel free to give yours. The answers, IMHO, are somewhat entangled, one with the other, but I’ll try to separate them as best I can. Let’s begin by talking about the business proposition. Is xAI likely to be successful? LLMs are highly varied; one is not like the other, even from the same vendor. Each has a unique architecture, and maybe trained on a different set of data selections, with the result that each has unique attributes. But in my view, that isn't the point: LLMs are not likely to be the ultimate product of AI companies, they will instead be the foundation (or an essential component) of new and unique architectures and applications to be built on the LLM and associated/related AI platforms. Combining LLMs in unique ways with a wide range of AI and Coding techniques is going to produce a Cambrian explosion of many new platforms that are outgrowths of LLMs, often driving specialization and differentiation of the LLMs themselves. These requirements may ultimately be as important as the data, reflecting the target use of the platform. This brings us to xAI. We can imagine that a large component of the differentiation will be that the LLM will largely be based on X.com data and will be in support of X (particularly as X expands its role into "The Everything App"). This helps clarify the equity involvement of X in xAI. Beyond the obvious role on X, Grok will no doubt have enormous roles in other Musk companies. Obviously, Grok will provide information and in-vehicle utility to passengers of Robotaxis and Tesla vehicles (including those in the Boring co. tunnels), language and general knowledge to Optimus, and will also play many roles for SpaceX and Neuralink. I can expand at great lengths about the use of AI in each of these companies, but I'm sure readers can conjure these up for themselves. Now to the claim that Tesla has AI experts and that they could "just do AI’. We begin with the proposition that building a general, symbolic-based model AI versus building FSD, or “real world AI”, requires an entirely new, dedicated hardware platform and team. Why a dedicated hardware platform? Because creating a foundation model requires a functionally limitless amount of training (as does FSD). In an excellent series of posts on July 26th, @_LouiePeters details the extraordinary amount of training required by the leading foundation models, and points to the training clusters already installed and planned by xAI. He estimates $4b for the current xAI 100k H100 training cluster (of which 32k have already been installed, the rest being installed this summer), and “@elonmusk noted plans for a 300k, B200 cluster next summer… ~$15bn Capex” In summary, the hardware platform, in the next year or so, will require $19b of Capex, before the cost of energy, general operating expenses, and AI Engineers. Having established the size and scope of the dedicated AI hardware platform, we consider the people part of the equation. We know that these are currently the most sought-after engineers in the world today; we also know that their focus is not as much the salary they will command (which will be high), but the ability to profit directly from their work. As Elon has pointed out at length, they would not be attracted to equity in Tesla, because their earnings would be intermingled with those of the other Tesla businesses. While these may be good, even stellar, they would not be fully reflective of and geared to the direct AI bet. Parenthetically, we may ask why has Tesla attracted such great talent to its FSD team, if not able to attract AI engineers to a Foundation Model team? The answer is simple and clear – because in the immediate term, a huge component of Tesla’s earnings (and therefore share price potential) is geared directly to the success of FSD. But returning to the question of xAI – we have outlined that there is need for $19b of Capex in the next year or so, as well as the need to hire a team of the leading AI experts in the world. In short, an investment of at least around $20b, and probably significantly more until revenue and profit. Is this a bet that Tesla wishes to make right now, or indeed can make, given Tesla’s own ambitious capex plans for its current projects? These include the multiple new vehicle models, FSD development, Robotaxi, the Semi, Megapack Factories, and above all, Optimus? Tesla has a Capex plan that exceeds $10b in 2024 and be between $8 to $10b in each of the following two fiscal years, or a total of around $28b, compared to the approximately $30b of cash on hand (see Q2 10k filing, page 28.) Even more important than the question of the use of cash is that of near-term profitability. Until the maturing of the many projects detailed above, Robotaxi above all, Tesla’s current earnings and cash generation will remain constrained. Is this the time to launch a new, $30b startup project? This is a project: (1) On which Tesla’s other projects, while they may benefit, are not critically dependent (2) Would consume all of Tesla’s current cash reserves (3) The success of which, at best, is several years distant IMHO the answer to this question, given the facts, is “No, Tesla should not commit $30b to this venture right now." On the other hand, would it make sense for Tesla, like X, to make a judicious investment, say $5b, in xAI at this time? IMHO the answer to this question, given the facts, is “Yes”. It would give Tesla a meaningful stake in one of Elon's biggest bets, and one which could benefit Tesla particularly, and all his companies in general, and which could be of great value in a future. By taking a minority stake we are betting a relatively small proportion of our overall cash position, a reasonable bet given our financial position and risk profile. This is why I voted "Yes" in Elon’s poll, and why I didn't think Tesla should be the major, or even sole shareholder in Xai. Apparently the 1m or so voters who joined me overwhelmingly agreed. Now let’s get the board to get it done! We need @TeslaBoomerMama to get on the case! Here are the posts from @_LouiePeters: nitter.app/_LouiePeters/sta… and nitter.app/_LouiePeters/sta…

In 8 consecutive quarterly guidance since, Tesla reiterated, adding in Q4-21 and Q1-22 the following rider: “Our own factories have been running below capacity for several quarters as supply chain became the main limiting factor, which is likely to continue through...2022”

Tesla Energy is Going to be a Earnings Monster! I missed the Tesla earnings several times in a row in 2023, because I constantly anticipated significant contribution from Lathrop, only to be dissapointed by miniscule margins. I scaled back my assumptions on energy drastically in Q4. However, what I suspected was confirmed by @CernBasher in his analysis of the Tesla 2024 10K - reported revenue is lagging actual deliveries by a significant and growing amount due to Revenue Deferral and Unsatisfied Performance Obligations. I will put a link to Cern's at thenend of the thread below so you can read in greater detail about these reserves. But what the accounting taketh away, time restores. So to determine how this may play out, I did an analysis of likely future revenue impact of the deferral's due to these reserves against Megapack deliveries both from Lathrop and China. It's eye-opening! Let's begin at the end - with my conclusions (detailed explanation in the thread that follows): a graph of estimated revenue and margin contributions from the Lathrop and China Megapacktories in the forthcoming three years: 🧵

Can you point to where I mention Democrats or Republicans?

Ordered my wife's Model 3 replacement. We'll pick it up on Friday next.

If the @elonmusk & Tesla haters can't accept what Jensen Huang of Nvidia says of Tesla being "far ahead" in self-driving, then they should seriously reconsider their biases. Jensen's acknowledgement is the more remarkable as Tesla designed and built their own in-car inference chips to replace Nvidia hardware.

I am a Tesla Model 3 driver. Quality is there. I have owned Rolls Royce, BMW, Jaguar, Honda, Toyota, Fiat (original 124 Sport) and Ferrari. I would put my 2020 Model 3 up against any of them. Paint, panel gaps, interior, sound, drive experience. Unbeatable.

I traded in two Teslas in the last 3 months...for two Teslas. I LOVE 'EM.

Yesterday I had two 40 min trips through the driving rain in peak hour traffic with 12.5.4, city streets, freeway transitions, passing two separate freeway severe accidents with attendant snarl-ups, alarmingly low visibility at times. The drive was effortless, tension-less, smooth and confident. Amazingly life like.

I see this and other TSLAQ accounts hysterical over Drew Baglino selling his stock. What nonsense - it's desperation, looking for any possible liferaft from the short squeeze they find themselves in. Fact is, the Stock Options held by executives have to be disposed of with 90 days of leaving the company, or they expire worthless. It is absolutely normal and expected that once an executive retires, they immediately seek to dispose of their stock. Here is the actual wording of the stock grant from the Tesla S-8 filing: "This Option will be exercisable for three (3) months after the Participant ceases to be a Service Provider, unless such termination is due to participant’s death or Disability, in which case this Option will be exercisable for twelve (12) months after the Participant ceases to be a Service Provider. Notwithstanding the forgoing, in no event may this Option be exercised after the Term/expiration date as provided above and may be subject to earlier termination as provided in Section 13 of the Plan."

FSD...FSD... Drive after drive after drive without intervention. Both in the CT and M3. M3 a little more elegant than the CT, which is still a little clumsy around corners, but does the job. My word, we are close.

Elon Musk is known for seemingly outlandish goals he sets. However, not many investors appreciate the quality of guidance that Tesla provides to its investors. This 🧵compares the company’s forecasts and guidance over a period of almost a decade to illustrate the point. 1/7

I respectfully disagree with @DivesTech - I believe Tesla's future is detrmined not by how Elon Musk handles the next 90 days...it is determined by how Elon manages the next 9 years and beyond. Tesla's future is managed by Elon and his team: our fondest hope is that he continues to manage the company and the team now and into the future for many years to come.

Zach stated “we're on track for the 50% annual growth…” clearly referencing the standard guidance. Elon was at pains to stress the average rate of 50% of compound growth, and fluctuations from one year to the next.

Supercharging. Is it profitable? What will the Ford deal impact be? TL:DR: A small, profitable, and rapidly growing corner of the Tesla empire that has a significant future. The Ford deal gives us a clue to the huge potential of this business.🧵

A friend whose judgement I trust wrote to me recently that he was getting concerned about Elon stretching himself too thin across all the companies in which he was involved. I gave this some thought, particularly as many have expressed this concern on X. Here are the thoughts that I put into my reply (TL/DR: Elon is not likely "stretched too thin" across his multiple companies due to his hiring practices and operating methods): On the matter of Elon, your concern about him stretching himself thin is shared by many. There are, I would suggest, many mitigating factors you should consider. I will detail those that come to mind. Firstly, and this may be among the most important, he has a very strong track record for hiring outstanding people. This is partly explained by the enormous talent pool he has available - his companies attract many, many millions of applicants - each of the Elon companies are perennially at the top of the list of companies receiving the most engineering/science based applications every year. He, and his companies have proved amazingly adept at choosing from among those the best of the best in terms of not only skill but temperament (i.e. the ability to work under the pressure which his methods impose!) If you watched last year's Investor Day presentation, you will have seen twenty of the top Tesla managers present their operations, and you would have understood the quality and depth of which I speak. Secondly, his management, engineering and design approach is to set the methods, the design, the parameters, and then measure results, and this scales very significantly. You should read Walter Isaacson's biography of Musk to understand just how simple are his methods: Elon sums them up in 5 points: 1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. He adds the following corollaries: 1. All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. 2. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. 3. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. 4. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. 5. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. 6. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. 7. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. 8. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation. The result is that his companies have an amazing depth of talent, and the people have incredible commitment to success, are generally entirely self-motivated, and extremely productive. It is also true that there is a consistent turnover of people, driven by Musk’s maniacal cost cutting as well as employee burn-out. The methods and consistent turnover conspire to maintain a rhythm, a counterpoint of experience and fresh re-thinking. The 20 execs that presented on Investor Day had been with the company for 9 years on average. Since that day, 15 months ago, several of those execs have left the company and been replaced (by other experienced people). But to understand the employees outlook at Elon companies, I will append a post that was made this morning:. It is written by a US Army vet., who is in charge of “Booster Integration” at the Boca Chica Texas factory/launch site for the giant new rocket SpaceX are developing. He ends the post with this: “We are on the brink of something monumental, and together, we will make history.” It’s the kind of refrain I hear everywhere I go in visiting Musk companies. Few Investment Analysts understand the power of this passion. That’s why I am sanguine about Musk “stretching himself thin”. Currently he employs, across all his companies, about 110,000 people, across 5 principal business entities. On the other hand, Amazon, for example, employs 1.5m, Berkshire Hathaway 396,000. Both have many more businesses than the 5 Elon covers, and the diversity of those two behemoths is much greater – to an extreme degree – than the diversity of Elon’s businesses. Other than Boring Company, there is a very strong relationship between the companies, and their core competencies are in compute and AI dependence, automated manufacturing design and build skills. I Hope that gives you hope. nitter.app/_DylanSmall_/sta….

Some pundits point to Zach Kirkhorn and Elon Musk’s statements during the ’22 Q3 Earnings Call, claiming that they affirmed guidance of 50% above 2021 deliveries. But a careful listening to the call shows that they instead confirmed the standard guidance.

FSD 14.1.7 Cybertruck...WOW.

How can unrealized gains be a "source of income"? What part of unrealized do these dopes not understand?

Who voted for Jill Biden to run the federal government?

X is abuzz with the latest Optimus video, and I get it…progress has been amazing. A long thread on expectations... I will probably get criticized by many of my good friends for this perspective, but here goes: assumptions about Optimus working in factories soon, even Tesla factories, are way, way too premature. In fact, most of the Tesla commentators are being far too optimistic about the Optimus timeline. To date, the evidence we have seen is principally around the hardware improvements: form factor, two degrees of freedom in neck movements, dramatically improved hands, heel-toe walking, loss of 20 Kilograms of weight. Huge improvements. Clearly to be celebrated. But the challenge of the intelligent robot was never about the hardware: we always knew Tesla were going to design a beautiful, elegantly simple but effective humanoid robot that can be manufactured at scale. Progress in this direction has reinforced this conviction. No, the giant problem is real world functionality: the ability of the robot to learn and do the myriad of tasks that we expect of it. And in this domain, we have a long, long way to go. Simply because Tesla may have solved, or are solving, FSD does not mean that Optimus has solved, or perhaps even will solve the ability to learn or emulate useful tasks in the factory or in home from vision or video, let alone voice command. The number of degrees of freedom demanded to achieve such a level of function is an order, or perhaps even several orders, of magnitude more difficult than FSD (even if it may be less risky from a safety perspective.) FSD is dealing with a specific domain, with a large body of general rules, modified localized special rules. The spatial problems are also limited in dimensionality, and the travel is always two-dimensional, with four consistently placed tires. Every single vehicle using FSD solves the exact same problem: in the simplest of terms, it solves a single use case with a very large number of complexities. Optimus’ movements have many, many more degrees of freedom, its problem set, and movements vary greatly from use case to use case. In contra-distinction to FSD it is targeted to solve a very large number of use cases, each with its own range of complexities, from very simple to very complex. Think of each potential task, whether in a factory or home environment, as a new use case, each with a unique set of training challenges. Many of these use cases will be completely unique, and new to the software. With FSD, the software can learn from the fleet. With Optimus, this is far more complex because of this variability of use case. Over time the software will be able to accrue a functional history, and an ever-growing knowledge of commands, movements, responses, to facilitate the rapid learning of a new use case: but this is going to take a significant amount of time. We will be not able to beta test Optimus in the home; the first commercial iterations of the ‘bot will need to be in the Tesla factories, under the engineer’s close supervision, focused on limited use cases, and expanded as rapidly as the vision, learning, and software evolve, enabling the ‘bot to progress from the simplest possible use case to ever more complex and useful cases. Unlike the prognostications of many futurists, this isn’t going to be an assault by an army of mass produced ‘bots, nor even hundreds of humanoids. There may be tens, more likely a handful, of Optimus’ in the first useful implementation to test the software, and the learning process on very limited use cases. Progress will not depend on evolving the number of ‘bots and tasks – it will be in the small, teaching the humans how to train the ‘bots, and assessing the opportunities on a production line to improve production and improve the ‘bot. From those early beginnings – not too far away now – Tesla will learn how to proceed, and thus define a project to expand the use of Optimus in the factory. I see this possibly happening in the latter half of 2024, early 2025. My view is that it will be 2026 before Optimus has a real impact on Tesla costs, and/or prospects for sale into the marketplace, and only then will we start seeing meaningful contributions to costs in the Tesla factories, relatively small at first but ultimately with a huge, almost incalculable impact. So, while I share in the excitement around Optimus, I would counsel my colleagues in the Tesla community to be a lot more cautious in their pronouncements: Optimus will come, ultimately with enormous - almost incalculable force - but it will not be here overnight, nor in 2024 as many are predicting.

Elon - I do get it. I am in violent agreement with you: what is happening in politics IS an existential threat to our company, our nation and our civilization. Where we disagree is your role in reversing that drift to insanity. You have rescued X, have built a robust eco system of peerless companies, each playing an important, if not irreplaceable, role for our nation, civilization and indeed, humanity. All this is not nothing in this important struggle. But further, I think there is a compelling argument that you can achieve our goals at X, and beyond, without entering into the political fray yourself. By remaining in the background politically, you may be even more effective in this endeavor.

If you think about it, my good friend @farzyness missed, in his take aways (see below) from last night's Tesla quarterly meeting, the big one! Tesla announced the initiation of a new Tesla business, ride hailing. This pre-empts 8/8! Also unsaid, but a very clear message, Elon is back! nitter.app/farzyness/status/17829…

Most important post this year to date...