Elon's New Pay Package, Q3 Sales, Model Updates, & Optimus | Tesla Motors Club Podcast #76

Hey there, welcome to another Tesla Motors Club podcast.

My name is Lewis.

I'm Doug.

I'm Mike.

Today's episode we'll talk about Tesla's Q3 sales numbers.

We'll go over all the new updates for the refreshed and updated models.

And of course, we have to talk about Elon's new crazy pay package.

All that and more when episode number 76 starts now.

Gentlemen, we're here.

How's everyone doing?

It's been a couple months.

It's been a while.

We're here though.

We're still kicking.

Interestingly enough, though, I got the audio version of the previous episode out yesterday.

So hey, right on time.

And on time.

Oh man.

Hopefully we'll get this one out sooner.

Why don't we just jump right in?

Q3 sales numbers.

I was a bit surprised when I saw them.

It was somewhat shocking to me.

Mike, can you give us some of the details, some of the breakdown of what we saw there?

Yeah, so I was shocked too, although not probably a shock to some, because I thought the dropping of the tax incentive would push the numbers up, and it did.

They delivered 497,099 cars.

They delivered that many cars.

What they actually made was 447,000 cars.

So the rest of that delta right there is from cars in inventory that they were able to clear out.

Before the show, we were discussing that we have all seen cars piling up in various places.

And uh there's less cars piled up now.

I'll say that.

Whatever episode it was I did my cyber truck test drive right down the street, there was a lot that had a ton of cyber trucks, but there were also a ton of what we called then the new Model Y, the Gipper.

Yeah.

So we had just shy of 500,000 units sold.

How did that compare to last year for this quarter?

That's about 7.4%.

So increase.

So 74%.

That's somewhat shocking to me, especially with seems to be a lot of public animosity towards Tesla in some of its bigger markets, say the US and Europe.

Sure.

The tax incentive going away, that's only a US thing, but it was a big deal.

It was a prime mover.

I feel like it's fading the anti-Elon sentiment.

It's still there.

There's still protests going on.

Let's look at another number.

Out of that, we'll call it 500,000 just to round up a little bit.

The Model S, the X, and the Cybertruck combined, because Tesla doesn't break it out, was 15,900 for the quarter.

And the best guess is out of that 15,000, 5,000 were cyber trucks.

That's significantly lower than what it has been in Q2 and Q1.

So either people are tired of them or there's still an anti-Elon bias.

Well, it's probably both.

The Cybertruck is an unmitigated failure, right?

It's not a mass market appeal vehicle.

You don't want to drive your apocalypse now vehicle every day?

Yes.

It kind of fails at being a good pickup truck.

It fails at most people's sensibilities of styling and it's expensive.

And then you have the political baggage.

Like if they're going to be anti-Elon people, the maximized judgment is the cyber truck because that is the symbol of excess and hubris because no one could say no to him apparently with that thing.

The three in the Model Y are so ubiquitous at this point that people don't even see you anymore to speak of.

They dropped the cheap Cybertruck.

You can't get the cheap one anymore.

That's off the books as far as ordering it.

They took out so many things and then barely dropped the price.

The cost savings wasn't worth the features that you lost.

So right now, their sales are up of this quarter.

They are.

The leading guess as to the cause is basically tax incentive going away.

So what does that mean for Q4 and into next year?

Everybody is holding their breath.

The Wall Street folks, the analysts are all kind of looking around saying, well, it's going to depend on the profit margins available and how many they can sell.

Nobody's really jumping on the bandwagon saying it's going to be another record breaker.

Everyone's just kind of taking a wait and see attitude.

It's multifaceted in the U.S.

because not only did you lose the tax credit, not only did you lose the ZEV credits, the other thing that was lost is the HOV benefit.

Like, oh, I have an EV and I can drive in the carpool lane.

Yeah, that's gone.

California famously does that, but many other states do it too.

California used to be able to set its own rules, but they managed to that's a federal thing now.

The Trump administration managed to kill that.

So nowhere in the country do you get that HOV lane benefit for driving an EV.

And that for a lot of people, especially people with complicated commutes, I mean that really drove sales of Prius's back when that was a thing.

And it probably helped for EVs.

For that to be gone, sure.

That's probably a big deal for a lot of people.

How do we think this is going to affect offers or prices?

Do you think they're going to start dropping prices again?

I know I've gotten tons of notices in the last year about free supercharging and all kinds of other offers.

They'll transfer my self-driving if I get a new car, things like that.

You think those types of incentives are going to continue or they're going to be more common?

You think they'll do another big price drop?

They got a few levers they can pull.

I think the simplest lever that they pulled last time that I think they'll probably try again is low interest rate.

They can subsidize the car purchase for lack of a better word.

When I picked up my Y, I got 0.99%.

I haven't seen it offered that low since then, but if they wanted to, they could.

Sure.

And that would certainly incentivize people to buy the Y or the three.

At that low of interest rate, it doesn't matter you didn't get the tax credit.

Well, it does, but not nearly as much.

Sure.

Looking internationally, also in Germany, the Tesla sales are still gonna be down.

In China, supposedly that Mana Y L that they introduced there is selling well, even though the OED is outselling Tesla.

Not just in China, but worldwide.

Apparently, a lot of sales in Norway for some reason.

But yeah, China doesn't care about Elon politics stuff, at least not right now.

But Europe does.

Yeah, they were saying there was a small rebound in Europe for September, like just short of three percent.

So they ticked up slightly.

Yeah, but I think I don't remember the exact numbers were, but they were down for the year in Europe by a fair bit.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

They were very specific calling that September is the first uptick in quite some time.

Gotcha.

Okay, well, we'll have to see where it goes.

And then I guess we can get into some of the other levers and some of the other things that Tesla's working towards.

New models, updates to models.

Some of the features I think sound pretty cool.

I wish I had on my car or some of the older cars.

Let's start with Model Y.

Mike, you want to talk about the Model Y performance?

The Model Y performance is really the one everybody's talking about.

It's got 618 horsepower and a 360-mile range.

They do admit to an upgraded battery pack on it.

But one thing that I wish my Y had is what they call an adaptive suspension that's got magnetic dampeners and you can select your performance settings from the dash.

That would be very appealing.

Like a true sport mode.

It's like they lifted a page from the X in a way that you could kind of tune your car, much like the Rivian can be tuned when you drive it.

So Model Y performance has some nice changes, some new features.

I guess one of the things I was surprised to see is what do they call?

V2X?

V2L, which is vehicle to load.

Which means you can plug something into it.

Yes.

I know for a long time Tesla was against this.

There's various arguments as to why they didn't want to offer it.

Vehemently against it.

So kind of surprising to see them change their two.

In fact, I don't know if you remember, but there was some number of shows back we talked about the adapter you can buy that will actually do this function on your current Tesla.

But we were discussing that's in the warranty that if you do something like that with your current Tesla, it will avoid your manufacturer's warranty.

I mean, they were dead set against you doing this.

So when JB Strawbull was still at the company, he was, and he still is, given what he's doing now, is focused on the battery.

He always gave a pretty good answer about that, saying that here's this very expensive thing in your car, and it has a certain cycle life, except maybe an emergency.

Why would you really sacrifice cycle life of your car?

And your car goes away from your house, right?

So I think the main thing is that Tesla had a different product, right?

They're gonna sell you a powerwall and that's what they want you to buy for that feature.

Thing is, though, there are a lot of competitors now that will sell you a battery backup system for your home much cheaper than Tesla will.

And I'm not sure how people feel about Tesla service right now, but there was certainly a time when people were not very happy at all with Tesla service in terms of the integration of their solar and the powerwall, that sort of thing.

I think even Lewis, didn't you have some issues?

Uh I sure did.

If Reddit's any indication, it's still an issue.

Yeah.

The other thing is that look, Tesla as a brand, it's supposed to be the most high-tech vehicle, right?

And yet they're like Hyundai's or something.

There's some relatively low-end cars that have this feature and have had it for a while.

It's like, okay, you're supposed to be the most technologically advanced car.

Why isn't this feature available?

It's like the nose camera, you know, everybody's had it for years, and you're just finally getting around to doing it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that's kind of interesting.

Excited to see that.

So with the Model Y performance coming out, or is there another model?

Okay.

Model Y standard, where they've stripped out a bunch of bits and pieces and then they drop the price to a more entry level.

Are you saying they should have called it the Model Y substandard?

Well, you know, in my mind, I would consider it substandard.

I mean, they're taking away the glass roof, they're taking away ambient lighting, they're taking away uh a good portion of the audio.

I mean, they're taking away a lot of the things that make it a Model Y.

Yeah, but who needs that stuff?

Certainly the audio, something I care about is good audio.

In the summer months, a lot of people I know with Y they get these things to cover the top because it's too hot in the sunny climate.

I have one, yeah.

So that makes some sense.

If Tesla can save some money getting rid of that, fine.

The ambient lighting thing was a gimmick people can buy aftermarket anyway.

Well, so apparently the standard loses the full light bar across the front.

That's something I wouldn't cry over.

Yeah, the previous version from 2024 didn't have that.

That's something we needed.

I thought the reflective light in the back was kind of neat, but they got rid of that too, right?

For the standard.

Since I just got the audio version out just yesterday, I it's fresh in your mind.

We were talking about it in the previous episode, but it was all speculation then and kind of leaks from China, whatever.

The one thing that's been flagged is the 18-inch wheels and tires, not 19s.

They're dialing back quite a few things.

Not just the body, not just the interior.

As long as the brakes fit, that's probably fine.

Well, most of the people I've talked to who kind of follow Tesla because they haven't made the commitment one way or the other yet, they would really, really, really prefer to see the model Y L over here in the States, not the stripped out version.

And for those that don't know what the L is, it's a lengthened Y that's available in China.

My complaint about the Model Y L or long is that instead of the fastback on the Model Y, give it a more squared off rear like the Rivian R2, so that someone like me can sit in the back without crouching down.

The Y and the three are on the same production lines.

So I wouldn't be surprised if they start stripping stuff from the three.

Three with the textile seats, three with fewer speakers, the rear screen.

If you don't have kids, yeah, who cares?

That serves next to no purpose.

And even if you do, it's a tiny little screen.

No one really wants to watch stuff there.

Everyone has their little iPads in their hands.

Right.

On my Y, I couldn't have the screen there even if I wanted to.

I actually put an aftermarket cup holder, which was infinitely more usable than the screen is.

Fair.

Talking about the Model 3 in the comparisons, we're finally getting some nice upgrades to the Model 3.

A few of them I'm really excited about, as if I had a Model 3, which I don't, but like turn signal stock, been complaining about that forever, right?

Ever since they brought out Highland, yeah.

Putting the turn signals on the steering wheel, terrible design decision.

Turn signal stock coming back, I think, is great.

Front bumper camera.

Oh my goodness, we've all complained about that forever.

Yes.

Well, it's just that it's so cheap and easy and they haven't done it.

It's like, what's the problem here?

It made a little bit more sense in the generation of my car because I still have ultrasonic sensors.

But when they nixed ultrasonic sensors and you're trying to park, it's a challenge.

Yeah, like what the heck?

You don't know where the nose is.

Is the car really remembering what's in front of it based on the camera that's behind the rearview mirror?

So come on, that's an obvious thing.

And the stock, we've had whole episodes about the stock and how silly it is to get rid of that.

It's a very natural user interface, it's right by hand.

Just reach your pinky out and click it.

When we bought our Y in 24, my wife and I sat down and we talked about that.

And I explained, they're coming up with a juniper, it's got all these other cool features.

The trade-off is you lose the stocks, and that stopped the conversation right there.

She was not interested in a car that didn't have turn signal stocks.

The shifter she could stomach, but she was not interested in a vehicle without turn signal stocks.

I suspect she wasn't alone.

I don't miss the drive shift at all, but the turn signal stocks.

In fact, before I bought mine, I explicitly made sure I had an alternative.

Basically, I looked up how I could modify the car myself and put it in if I needed to.

So I was ready to do that if I needed it to be a problem.

Honestly, I don't drive my car enough for it to matter.

So I haven't bothered.

It's such a dumb thing to lose sales over, right?

Yes, it's definitely a mistake.

So that's really exciting.

If you like the Model 3, next year, it's gonna have the TurnSQL stock come back.

It's got a new display.

Um, hello persons in the chat is already listing them out.

QHD display, blacked-out emblems, front bumper cameras again.

Every Tesla should have a front bumper camera, and I guess eventually they will.

They started with the Cybertruck.

They showed Highland, yeah, you know, the refresh model three in early renderings of it.

There was a front camera and with hardware four, but there's a port for it for that camera.

For some reason, they just didn't do it.

I don't know why.

I guess saving some money as they get rid of stuff.

There's no plan really for being able to wash that off.

I mean, the first vehicle that they introduced it on was the Cybertruck, and the Cybertruck has a nice wash jet that will clean that front camera.

And that makes sense if they're trying to say, Oh, you might go off-road on your Cybertruck, but that's something that should be on the flagship luxury vehicles.

Like it should be on the NAS, it should be on the X.

And the reservoir is right there.

Just add a little valve on the pump.

One of my biggest complaints in America is that bidets are not standard in all toilets and hotel rooms and everything else.

It's a bidet for the front camera on the car.

Every Tesla should have a little water jet right there to just clean the cameras.

Come on.

All right.

Well, hella persons agrees with Doug.

Yeah.

Well, back when I went to Vietnam a couple years ago and I saw the cool stuff that they were doing, Ven Fast, and they had a really neat little camera right on the nose that saw everything 175 degrees, especially for self-driving type things.

You're at that four-way stop where you can't really see around the corner so well.

It's a good few feet in front of you and is able to see more with just that one camera.

Tesla.

I don't think the nose camera is it's currently being integrated in the FSD stuff, but it should be because it can see.

Like right now, you have multiple stops for a stop sign, right?

It'll stop at the line and then it's got to creep forward so it can actually see what's going on.

It'd be nice to not have to do that.

I don't think mine stops at stop signs.

I'm pretty sure I've trained it well enough.

Stop signs are optional.

Yes.

Awesome.

So I guess going back to the previous topic, we'll have to see where these new models adding a little bit of product diversity, a few different options, some improvements, how that'll affect sales going forward, especially with the expectation that sales are going to dip again next quarter.

So by sense of the weak sauce, you know, like these really minor changes.

So the cyber cab is supposed to be what, next year or something?

Or something.

I really wish that they had stuck to the original plan, which was mentioned, I guess, in the Isaacson book that they're gonna have a lower cost vehicle that you could buy that would be sort of based on the cyber cab, but it's not waiting for actual self-driving to be solved.

So we've got cyber cab that may be sold to people.

We've got the Model Y L in China, we've got the new refresh model Y standard, maybe a Model 3 standard.

Do you think there's any room in the pipeline for the talked-about smaller cyber truck that's kind of been bandied about in a few press releases and talks that they're coming out with a smaller version that's a little more consumer friendly?

I think that's a stupid idea.

What a smaller version of something that didn't like if it looks like the Cybertruck, I think that'd be dumb.

Someday Doug will tell us how he really feels.

You know, when I see a cyber truck, I go, if only it was a little bit smaller, that car would have done really well.

But it has nothing to do with it.

Yeah, all you can do is really lean into what it is, but dude, the pedestrian safety is so low on that vehicle, right?

Yeah.

And if they're gonna spend any time on the thing, it should have the home legation, however you pronounce that word.

So that'll work in other places in the world.

And also, they know the stainless steel panels are pointless.

That was a bad idea.

Uh, because they fall off.

It's not actually structural to the cars, but it's glued on to the frame instead of being this exoskeleton thing that they promised.

No, actually, that's an interesting point, Doug.

So, what if you take a cyber truck with those glued-on panels and reskin it like they used to do with the Saturn with all the plastic panels?

Sure.

Whatever.

People haven't gravitated how it looks.

I don't think people are clamoring for that.

See, we've just equated the cyber truck with the Saturn.

To me, a smaller cyber truck, that makes no sense.

What could make sense is use the platform and make a proper pickup truck or make a van or something.

They would sell every van they could put out there.

Hyundai has just done that.

We just saw one for real yesterday coming back from Vegas.

It's a fully electric van that's a little smaller than the Chrysler Pacifica, kind of more similar to the Honda minivan, but it's fully electric.

Sliding doors, everything you want, and a little soccer van.

I think Tesla's missing the mark on not providing something like that.

Yeah.

So instead of a smaller cyber truck, make a bigger Model Y.

Like it can be the same platform, but just change the shape a little bit.

Expand it in the back.

Yeah.

A little more headroom.

So there's headroom in the rear.

Yeah.

If you're going to actually use those rear seats, or you take the Cybertruck platform and make a cargo van type thing or a pickup truck where you can actually load stuff from the side.

There were a lot of ideas tried in the Cybertruck.

Yes, there were some of them they were praised for, some of them people were questioning.

It seems like the stainless steel panel thing didn't end up working because originally it was supposed to be structural, and for whatever reason, they ended up not being able to do that.

What about some of the other changes they made?

The drive-by-wire, the 48-volt electrical system.

Do you want to see those brought over to the other cars in the fleet?

Sure.

Okay.

All that should be filtering through.

That's what a new S or X should have gotten.

If they get it right and they can start scaling it right, that should lower their costs eventually in terms of manufacturing, in terms of offering right hand drive versions of vehicles, if they get that to steer by wire and it's reliable enough.

Yeah.

They should definitely do all that.

So you may Mentioned the smaller cyber truck, and I just want to jump on to Tesla vehicles that are never going to come out.

Have we heard anything yet about the roadster?

Other than it's still coming out someday soon.

MKBHD.

I'm sure most of you out there know him or know of him.

Don't know him personally.

He made a video about canceling a roadster order that I found kind of surprising because I will be honest, I have a plaid.

I considered getting a roaster.

I talked about it with my wife.

Basically, what I settled on was I'm gonna get the plaid because I can get it now.

And the roadster, maybe I'll get that when it comes out.

After seeing this video, I was really glad I did not fork Tesla 50 grand as a down payment for a roadster.

Doug, can you jump in a little bit about the details of what happened here?

Because it was kind of crazy.

What's funny is we've talked about this a few times.

The roadster.

Elon in recent years has called it not just the icing on the cake, but the cherry on the icing on the cake.

It should be a low priority.

And I've said things like the semi should be a higher priority in terms of environmental impact if Tesla cares about those things as a company anymore, right?

But it's funny.

I watched that video from MKBHD, and YouTube has their algorithm, and it offered the other videos he'd made over the years.

And so you can sort of watch them in sequence.

Like, okay, here's the one back in 2017.

It was the Tesla semi event.

They dropped the trailer open and out came this roadster, and it looked amazing, something everybody wanted because the roadster is what started Tesla.

That's right.

Back when Martin ever harvested with the company, it wasn't built from the ground up necessarily.

It was based on a Lotus chassis.

Now, here's the roadster, the way it should be done.

It looked really cool, and they promised crazy stuff.

It turned out the most crazy thing they offered was that they'd be delivering it in 2020.

But the other things were kind of nutty.

They said it would have a 200 kilowatt hour battery, a 600-mile range.

It would have a zero to 60 at like 1.9

seconds.

So it sounded all amazing and crazy.

And I have to guess what happened is that the battery technology didn't advance as quickly as Tesla was hoping.

What they ended up doing is the Model S.

That's what the Model S plaid really is.

It's it's the roadster, slightly bigger brother.

It's the motor stuff going into the Model S, making that available sooner.

Okay, the years go by.

You can watch later videos of MKBHD, and he's like, Oh, is this thing coming?

You know?

And then finally he announced that he's canceling.

Now, don't feel bad for this guy.

I've complained that Tesla had this referral program that I got screwed over because I hadn't gotten my Tesla yet.

So I couldn't take advantage of these referral credits.

But they used to have an amazing referral program.

And one was if you got so many referrals, you got a free roadster.

So that's what he had.

He actually had two on order because he had a free roadster and then he had enough referral credits that he had an additional roadster for half-off.

So the one that he canceled was the additional roadster.

The cost of the thing is $250,000.

And back then, if you paid the whole $250 up front, you would get one of these founder series vehicles and they're going to make a thousand of them.

What he did was he was going to have his referral roadster and then he put down a 50k deposit to pay for the other one that was going to be half on referral credits.

And so that's when he canceled.

But what's interesting about the story, and you should watch the video, is how much trouble he had to go through to cancel the thing.

Because it's like Tesla's not even set up to cancel it.

And then this team on his podcast, they did the calculation.

If he had invested that 50K just in Tesla, that 50K would have been worth over $700,000.

You know, I can understand, okay, you have a deposit that you put down to reserve this car, but there's some agreement there, right?

Like, okay, it's going to be a deposit on a car you never get.

How long is he supposed to wait?

A decade?

Or you missed the delivery by several years.

What the heck?

I've always thought it never makes sense to put down a deposit on these cars, on any Tesla, unless you think it's going to have some collector value by being an early one, which you know isn't really a thing.

Because those first cars, whenever they come out, you might get it a few months earlier than you would if you just bought it.

You're paying extra, you're giving them an interest-free loan, and then you're getting the crappiest version because Tesla is always figuring stuff out.

The first few cars, I don't know, thousands of cars, are gonna have issues.

A little twitchy.

Yeah.

So you're better off waiting a couple months and what you could have done with that money.

Now, of course, the specs that Elon is talking about now are even more insane.

Zero to 60 in one second, which strains physics unless you supply some extra down force because you're not gonna have enough friction from the tires.

And at what cost?

There are so many other vehicles, yeah, electric vehicles that are doing amazingly cool things now that you would think Tesla could do, but they're like it also ran on that stuff.

And again, the Tesla brand should be we're at the cutting edge, we have the most tech, but they're doing amazing things in China.

Oh, yeah.

Yes, there's a car that would jump over potholes.

It's the Yang Wang U9 track edition, it's 3,000 horsepower.

It set a top speed record of 294 miles an hour in Germany on the track.

I would buy that car, and guess what?

It's cheap.

Okay, that model is probably not cheaper than the roadster.

Their base model is cheaper than the roadster.

The base model is like 230,000 US if you do the exchange, but that track addition will probably be around low 300,000.

But like it's way more powerful and it exists, it's actually a car, right?

And to do that, an ice car over a million bucks easily to get that kind of performance.

Oh, yeah.

So, hey, that's cool.

I don't need that.

I drove a Miata for many years.

That car was so cool in terms of handling and joy per unit cost, and that's what I want.

I want an electric roaster, doesn't need to have the highest top speed, but it needs good steering.

150 miles range would be fine.

Give me that for like 50k or something.

I want someone to make the electric Miata, maybe Mazda will do it.

I don't know, but that's what I want.

Eventually it'll exist because every car will eventually get there.

But um, but yeah, anyway.

Stefan asks, if we checked out the Rimak Nivera, I have looked at it, it looks really cool.

Four-motor EV sports car.

That's the car that the Yang Wang's U9 just beat.

So they had the best record for the EV high-end hypercar and BYD just passed them.

You know, if you're one of those guys that did the $250,000 to Tesla, if the math is the same for MphiBHD's 50k, that's what, three and a half million dollars.

Yeah, I was shocked.

I'm really glad I was smart enough to not give them that kind of money.

I would have been so mad.

Yeah, it's got to sting a bit, right?

It's definitely got to sting.

The opportunity cost is very high on that one.

There should be stipulation that you're going to deliver within half a decade, right?

Right.

There may be a lawsuit in their future.

But yeah, hopefully the car actually comes out someday.

We'll see.

So, other than car stuff, obviously, Elon for Tesla has been pushing this narrative of Optimus is the future, FSD is the future, all that kind of stuff.

There's been some really cool updates in the robot front.

Optimus, they released a video that I thought was really neat, a sparring demo, although it was also kind of cheesy compared to some of the competitors.

And I'm curious, I know Doug, you've done a lot of martial arts, so you probably have a strong opinion about some of this.

Yeah, so Elon put out a video.

It shows the Optimus doing some moves.

Honestly, I can't say I'm very impressed with this.

These look like pre-recorded moves, kind of like forms in Japanese, the Kalam Kata's and Taekwondo is called a Funsei.

And I don't know if this is supposed to be kung fu, whatever they call it in Chinese, but it's just doing some basic motions, you know, little pre-core graph dance, even the way the human that's interacting, you can tell he's expecting certain moves.

For sure.

It would be impressive if we hadn't seen all the stuff that the Unitry robot's been doing.

So it's kind of cool.

It's nice to see some progress, but Tesla is not the leader in this, not by quite a large margin.

To me, the main benefit that Tesla had was that I think they'll actually sell it and they'll design it for manufacturability.

But you know what?

I think the Chinese are pretty good about manufacturing things and making stuff at scale.

Yeah, I think I saw a statement recently.

It said something like, There are more robots in Chinese factories than there are globally combined, like throughout the rest of the world.

The scale of China's manufacturing and factories is just you it doesn't even compare.

So yeah, wow, look at this.

This is Unitree's demo of them beating up this poor robot.

He's gotta remember.

This is how Skynet wakes up, right?

That's right.

And the previous episode we're talking about the Unitree that thought it was fallen over and it started like it was trying to kill anybody near it.

Now they're giving it the motivation to kill.

But yeah, the way it reacts, it pops up pretty quick.

Super impressive by comparison.

Yeah, that's pretty impressive.

So now it's doing some acrobatics, essentially a pre-recorded motions, but it's so much more impressive than what we saw on that Tesla of sitting on the harness and moving really slowly.

This thing is doing flips and whatnot.

So I think Tesla has a ways to go there.

Now, if you think about what Tesla has been working on, they're spending a lot of time on the hands to have a very complicated, very intricate hand.

Tesla has been doing the human anatomy-based version is that we have these tendons where the actual actuators, you know, the muscles for most of what's going on is in your forearm.

There are some muscles in your hand too, but most of the grasping, the contracting of your fingers is going on through tendons that go through your wrist.

And to do this with a robot, it's kind of complicated because you have to have essentially cabling and you have to have cable management for all these cables to go through to make sure they don't interfere with each other.

A video that we saw a couple of weeks ago from a different company.

They're calling this the Wuji hand.

This hand, instead of that tendon model, it's got really small actuators in the fingers themselves.

Humanoid robots in general, right?

You're sort of modeling it after humans, but it doesn't mean mechanically you have to do it the same way biology has done it.

And if they can miniaturize these motors, that gives you a lot more control.

Now, on the balance, is how much force can they exert with these motors?

But it looks pretty impressive to me.

That's amazing.

Like, I mean, obviously it's teleoperated, so it's mimic a human's movement, but the fact that it can replicate it at that speed, it's it's very impressive.

The motion looks amazingly natural, and that's because yeah, it's being teleoperated.

But of course, it doesn't need to be limited to human motion.

The range of motion in the hand might as well flex all the way backwards, like somebody double jointed or whatever.

Now it's kind of funny to look at because I think each finger is probably identical.

So it's like our pinky is much shorter than our middle finger, right?

These all look like the same, so the balance of the thing looks a little odd.

And it has some kind of glove on.

I'm gonna guess that whatever sensors are in the glove, measuring things like what kind of contact am I making.

But yeah, it looks amazing.

It looks like a disembodied human hand, like thing from the Atmos family or something.

You know, I was thinking that looking at Unitry.

Yeah, I honestly feel like the hardware, because it's already off of a harness, able to do those complicated acrobatic moves, like they could be making money with that right now in Hollywood, for example, instead of having to do CGI, they could literally have the robot actually performing stunts because it's like already that capable.

So it's kind of interesting.

Yeah, and if you look around on YouTube, there are plenty of people that have them because you can buy them.

Sweet.

Yeah.

Well, once they trained it to fold my laundry, I'll probably order one.

Unitry might be able to do it.

That's the thing, though.

So Tesla is putting so much of the company, the whole future of the company is Optimus.

Yeah.

Again, there are other people doing it better, I think.

Tesla, the way they spin it is that all the stuff they're doing for FSD translates somehow.

The car is a robot.

Yeah, there's something to that, but I'm not convinced that a focused effort wouldn't do better.

Yeah.

The company that's just doing this.

I don't know that there's that much useful transfer from the autopilot FSD team, except that they're sharing some hardware there.

The actual training is pretty different.

Sure.

So the future of the company, as you said, they're putting a lot of it behind Optimus.

Elon makes these big arguments around how they're sharing resources, they're benefiting from this technology.

There's even been talk of X and what XAI did and Twitter and all that merging and how much that would benefit.

Part of this is now around Elon's commitment to Tesla and doubling down and focusing on the company and the growth and how it's going to get there.

And we have a new pay package, which there's a bunch of debate about.

So, Mike, give us the details on the numbers on Elon's new pay package.

The only number you really want to worry about is the fact it's worth about one trillion dollars.

The argument from Elon is what?

That he's so important to the company, you need to give him more money, more control to motivate him.

Ultimately, yeah, if you go through all the noise, that is the argument he makes.

Now, they did put some hooks, some markers he has to hit.

In order to earn the full payout, the full $1 trillion, Tesla market value has to be $8.5

trillion.

He has to commercialize 1 million robotaxis, he has to deploy 1 million bots, and he has to deliver 20 million vehicles.

And there is a measurement for EBITA that they want to see 400 billion in annual earnings before taxes and other expenses.

That's the EBIDA number.

Pretty aggressive, he seems to think he can do it, and so is the board.

The thing is, where would you like to start?

Why does he need this motivation?

If all that stuff happened, he'd already be a trillionaire.

Right now, he's a half trillionaire.

But look at the timing.

This all came up when Elon was at the peak of anti-Elon sediment.

He'd already crashed the stock.

He was busy in the political arena, not paying attention to his job.

Jobs plural.

And they had already had the big blowout about the original Delaware pay package that went up in smoke.

And there are people saying that he needed to leave the company.

So okay.

I mean, the guy has complete control over the board.

He does.

So they're basically doing what he wants.

But it's just that you think about it, he's already gonna be a trillionaire if any of this stuff happens because he owns so much of Tesla.

Yeah, to give folks an idea of this, just I just want to throw out the numbers.

Tesla right now market caps around 1.35

trillion.

So if they're to 8 trillion, it's almost a 6x.

He's already now worth about half a trillion dollars.

Okay, not all of his net worth is in Tesla, but a fair bit of it is.

So let's just say his net worth goes up four or five X, he will already be worth several trillion dollars.

Does he really need another trillion?

But this is Tesla specific.

Okay, so if it's just Tesla, maybe he'll only be worth a measly trillion dollars.

So with this pay package, he'll get an extra trillion.

Well, what can you buy with two trillion dollars that you couldn't get with one trillion?

I don't think it's the buy.

I think Tesla as an organization is afraid they won't make it without him.

So they're trying to pin him to the Tesla company.

Because he's distracted by SpaceX, he's distracted by boring, he's distracted by politics, he's distracted by everything that's new and shiny.

Well, the main thing that ties him to Tesla is that Tesla, like I said, is the piggy bank.

Yeah, it's a cash cow.

The majority of his net worth is Tesla's, probably a good deal is SpaceX, also.

Well, X is also now on paper a bunch of money for him.

But yes.

Well, XAI that bought X, so that was a great maneuver for him.

Yes.

And that's what he wants to spend time on.

He doesn't seem to care about cars so much.

But as a company, if you didn't have such a stranglehold on the board, I mean it's like this is the point of Tesla.

The point of Tesla isn't to make cars, it isn't to make Optimus, it isn't to make FSD.

The point of Tesla is Elon.

The point of Tesla is to make Elon a multi-trillionaire.

That's what it seems to be right now.

That's their goal.

That seems to be more important than all these other things.

Like selling cars is just a side effect.

Sure.

The means to an end of making Elon a Trillion.

That seems to be the actual point of the company, is what it feels like.

Is he that important?

He's not sitting down designing any of this stuff himself.

I just don't quite get it.

Yeah, Stephon N.

The stock is the product, and the means of maintaining that stock price is the cachet that people assign to Elon.

Like he must be some kind of genius or something.

He's an ambitious guy.

I would say he's pretty smart too.

But, you know, come on.

I've known people that I think are actual geniuses, and Elon, the sense I you know, not to be disparaging, but the sense I get from him is like some people that I would run into in certain circles.

It's the type of person that wants you to think they're smart as opposed to actually being smart.

They're still pretty smart, but they want you to think they're really smart.

And it's just like, okay, whatever.

Indeed.

Oh yeah.

Oh, yeah.

No, um, so we'll see.

Is the vote happening at the next at the shareholder meeting, yeah.

Shareholder meeting.

The shareholder meeting, which for some reason has been greatly delayed.

Typically, it happens in June or so, early summer.

It's happening November 6th, I think.

Sixth.

November 6th.

Yeah.

We'll know then.

And person listening to the audio version will know.

It happened a few months ago.

They'll be eating their Thanksgiving dinner.

Sorry, running joke.

It'll be interesting to watch because there is some opposition and concerns about this whole thing.

Some of the investors, in particular, the SOC investment group in New York City pension, have told shareholders publicly, don't vote for it.

Sure.

Their concern is, as they phrase it, poor corporate governance, i.e.,

the board being in the pocket of Elon.

It's terrible corporate governance.

He'll already be a trillionaire.

And gee, as a company, maybe they could use that revenue somewhere else, yeah, and actually do things like a real new model Tesla, not something that's just reskinned and packaged.

So yeah, it's terrible, but it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what any of these investment groups say or think.

It will be a show.

Because it's kind of a meme stock in a way, right?

So the majority of the retail investors and also all the board are completely on board with all this stuff.

Like, you know, he's the leader.

I guess they are the collection of leader beans.

They're beans that look like the leader.

The argument, I think, is for it to go through, there's a ton of ridiculously hard to hit milestones.

Yeah.

Do you think the expectation is there'll be enough people that vote in favor of it?

Going, well, there's no way he'll hit the milestones, and if he does, I'll be so happy that I don't care.

And then they'll come up with a way where he gets the pay package even without hitting the milestones, or do you think it's not that sinister and like manipulative?

I don't think they care about their pay package.

I think all they care about is pinning his butt to the company right now to keep the stock price up.

Okay, let's just eliminate that disillusion.

Okay.

Elon is the people behind the pay package offer.

So nobody else is trying to manipulate Elon in anything to give him this pay package offer.

This is what Elon wants.

And he'll get it.

So you think it's gonna go through?

Yeah, the vote will go through, and I think they'll manipulate things afterwards to make sure he gets it.

Because he is still pissed off about Delaware.

No, no, he'll definitely get the package.

Will he reach the goals?

Probably.

No, seriously.

If we look in the past, how did Tesla reach their goals before?

He will do whatever it takes for those things to happen.

A million robotaxis and a Million Optimus robots deployed.

Doesn't mean they're working.

Look at what Tesla has already done, right?

So for him to get that 50 billion or whatever it was.

Yeah.

At one point, they literally decimated the company, fired a bunch of people without cause, but no real reason.

I remember that.

And what did it do?

It juiced the stock price because people like that for some reason.

And that got them over the hump.

The other thing is that they redefined FSD.

So FSD, I was told the story before, they used to call it autopilot.

They came up with this term FSD as that's the full self-driving.

That's the real thing.

And what they did, they turned it into well, FSD is the label that we have for these set of features that don't actually mean full self-driving, they mean things like enhanced driving.

Well, they had that too, right?

Like navigation on autopilot and all this other stuff.

They redefined FSD as a product of things that they were already delivering.

And they called it FSD beta.

And by doing that, instead of it being money that they owed down the line, it's like, oh, this is money we can count on our books now.

People were paying for FSD.

That was money that people had paid for, something that had yet to be delivered.

But they redefined it as okay, we're delivering it now.

So they did all these accounting tricks basically for them to increase the stock price and so that he got that payout.

So who knows what can be done.

Sure.

But I'm sure there are things to do that they'll probably do it.

I mean, it's maybe a 10-year project, but I think they'll do it.

And that's fair because as Stefan N points out, it's tiered over 10 years.

It is.

Even if he doesn't get the full package by the end of the 10 years, hitting certain milestones along the way will enable him to get more influence and more control over the company and payouts.

So maybe it doesn't even matter if he never hits the end goal.

And some of those goals are just going to happen based on time.

As Stefan said, for example, the market cap, $2 trillion.

The market cap of all these companies just goes up over time as long as there's nothing major and catastrophic.

Currency gets devalued, the number goes up, things happen, right?

It's going to hit that target again, barring no catastrophic black swan type event.

So eventually it'll happen anyway.

More cars on the road.

Unless all the Teslas start failing and people stop buying them, eventually there will be more Teslas.

So I guess he's gonna get at least a bunch of these to go through without even doing any craziness.

So both of you are pretty sure on you think it's gonna get voted through.

You think the shareholders are gonna go for it.

I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, I would bet a dollar at least.

You'd bet a dollar.

Well, that's interesting.

I guess we'll see how it goes.

Probably in our next episode.

Yeah, we'll talk about it some more when see what happens there.

All right.

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