Episode 534: Tesla Q3 Earnings Call Highlights and Analysis

On this week's episode of Ride the Lightning, the Tesla and EV podcast, Tesla held its Q3

earnings call and as always, I've got a recap, highlight clips, and analysis of everything

the Tesla executives talked about on the call. Plus, Model S and X returned to Europe, Cybercab

gets a production start window, and more.

What's happening friends, Ryan McCaffrey joining you here for episode 534 of Ride the Lightning,

your weekly Tesla and EV podcast. I am surrounded by dogs, Daisy the Boxer to my left, Lily

the Silly Labrador puppy at my feet and just out of my view is mine of the future service dog.

It has been a very busy week in the world of Tesla because we had the earnings call

which I'll be digging deep into as I always do every quarter here in just a few minutes.

First a few housekeeping notes. First, I hope all of you enjoyed the interview with Frans von

Hulshausen last week. It is always a pleasure, always a privilege and a treat to get to go down

there and chat with him. Second, a little less happier than the Frans interview was the brief

shiver that I got sent up my spine which thankfully did not prove to be for the reason that I was

worried it was going to be and that was if you go to tesla.com right now you will see right at the top

that there is a Model 3 and Model Y when you're looking at those images for those cars it says a

price increase coming in November. Now at first I thought oh they're raising the prices of the cars

and that stinks that's no good the tax credit just went away now they're gonna get even more expensive

fortunately it as I looked further into it it actually turns out that it's not going to be a

price increase on the cars it is a price increase on the leasing prices so that's what's going up

next month not the car prices I mean either way I guess it's nice that they warn people but thankfully

it's not the bottom line MSRP purchase price it is the lease pricing so if you are considering

leasing a new tesla before the quarter ends just bear that in mind if you're able to move a little

bit more quickly and do so in the next week or so here certainly you can save a bit of money doing

that now I realize that not everybody can just move their timeline up on a big deal like leasing

a new car but I certainly wanted to mention it right here at the top of the podcast just in case

that information is helpful to anybody indefinite good news this week in Europe the Model S and

Model X are back the refreshed 2026 model year SNX are finally available in Europe the cars of

course hadn't been available there at all for a good number of months so this is fantastic to see

there is a downside to this and that is it's left hand drive only so teslas still not choosing to

make right hand drive versions of them which I know rules out a number of territories including at

least a couple in Europe I can't rule out the possibility that they won't do right hand drive

at some point but for now it is left hand drive only on the new S and the new X speaking of Europe

by the way this is some definite good news with no downside the Model Y has reclaimed its top spot

as the best selling car overall in Europe and yes that's car overall not SUV not EV not EV SUV

just best selling new car period in Europe I saw this reposted on Tesla's X account and the article

comes courtesy of AutoNews.com who writes the Tesla Model Y was Europe's best selling car in

September returning to the number one slot for the first time in nine months even though sales

fell 8% excuse me 8.6% to 25,938 units compared with the same month last year so year over year

it's down but it's still the number one car overall in Europe for the month of September

getting back to the auto news story it has been a year of dramatic swings for the full electric

mid-size SUV which slipped to number 60 in sales in July from second place in June

which right I mean that's just the Model Y changeover right there also they mentioned that

in August the Model Y finished 17th so it was climbing back after falling off because of course

of the the lag in deliveries of the new one once they went into into production on the new one

the Model Y let's see is the fourth model to finish a month at number one this year the others

are the Dacia Sandero which has been on top four times the Renault Clio which has won three

monthly titles and the Volkswagen T-Rock which was first in August quick aside I find it just

kind of interesting that none of those three cars are available in the United States just sort of

interesting I guess they're the European market clearly likes them though which which still which

almost makes it weirder that they're not here because well if Europe likes them a lot wouldn't

there be a market forum in the US but anyway that's neither here nor there for this podcast

autonews.com concludes by saying the Clio was Europe's number two seller in September

and then the top three rounding out the top three was the Sandero which was up slightly

so of course again the new Model Y just wasn't in full production for a lot of the last nine months

that's definitely a piece of it and yes there were some other shall we say extracurricular factors

affecting things at parts of this year as well kind of at the same moment coincidentally

as the new Model Y was debuting and ramping up in production but here we are with the fantastic

new Model Y back atop the charts as completely irrelevant to this story because this story is

about Europe and what I'm about to say is hyper focused on where I live here in the San Francisco

Bay area but I am seeing so so so many of the new Model Y now like it is proliferated just

everywhere here still seeing plenty of the generation one Model Y of course because that

was the number one selling car in the world the last couple years but the new one is no longer

a rare sight it is just every day many of them a day out on the roads at least in my neck of the

woods but you know if we look ahead to next year well actually let's finish up this year so I think

it's certainly unlikely for the Model Y to be the best selling car in the world not just Europe

but in the entire world for the third year in a row this year on account of the production change

over and probably the extracurricular stuff a little bit too but next year next year I think

the Model Y has a good chance because it will have a full year of full throttle production

from January to December including the Model Y L in China which has been selling extremely well

thus far and I hope that the Model Y L ends up being sold globally as well I tried to get Frans

to to give us something on that it didn't really uh didn't seem like I was very successful on that

one but the Model Y L which is selling great in China that's going to factor in to next year's sales

and thus the chances of the Model Y being the number one selling car in the world again next year

and of course the Model Y standard is going to be available all of 2026 as well the deliveries will

begin here in Q4 they're actually they've already started just a little bit but most of the deliveries

are going to be happening in the towards the end of this fourth quarter and thus end of the year

so again next year is looking like a really big one for the Model Y even if this one was a bit

down overall so we'll see if it reclaims the top spot in the world next year assuming that

I'm correct and it's it's going to fall from the top spot this year real quick before I dive

into the shareholder letter and then the earnings call itself I wanted to mention this week's Patreon

Lightning Round mini episode which I do exclusively every week for the very generous folks supporting

me over on Patreon this is a free podcast that always has been always will be but if you'd

like to support what I'm doing here you like what I'm doing week in and week out you can do so over

on my Patreon page found at patreon.com slash Tesla podcast or just click the link in the episode

description this week's lightning round mini episode was about celebrity Tesla owners just

had some fun with this one they're they're actually quite a number of celebrity Tesla owners so I

ran through a bunch of them in that one there are over 160 of those lightning round mini episodes

almost all of them 90 something percent of them are evergreen they're not topical so

if you join the patreon right now you'll have a ton a ton of extra content that you can dive into

at your leisure so again head on over to the patreon page to get all the information

patreon.com slash Tesla podcast the lightning round mini episodes that I'm talking about here

those are available at the ten dollar per month tier or higher that's the most popular tier but

at the five dollar tier the the base level tier you still get early access to each week's episode

and an ad-free version of each week's episode you also get those things at the ten dollar

tier all the perks stack so the higher you go the more stuff and rewards that you get so visit

the patreon page if you see it in your heart to do so time to dive into the shareholder letter

we start as always right here and here is the opening summary from that shareholder letter

Tesla writing in q3 the Tesla team achieved record vehicle deliveries globally showing

strength and growth across all regions while also achieving record energy storage deployments

across the residential industrial and utility sectors this strong performance resulted in both

record revenue and free cash flow generation in the quarter we continue to launch new products

that excite our customers across automotive and energy we launched the model yl and model y

performance and further expanded our vehicle offering with the model 3 and model y standard

our most affordable vehicles we also unveiled the mega pack 3 and mega block which will further

simplify large battery installations by reducing cost and time to deploy we believe our scale and

cost structure will enable us to navigate the shifting market dynamics across the globe more

effectively than our peers with advances in ai making our products the most compelling in the

market our focus remains on scaling our core hardware business by maximizing our deliveries

and deployments as these products will deliver increasing value to our customers over time

via services powered by ai every tesla vehicle delivered today is designed for autonomy while

every tesla energy storage product is capable of being enhanced and optimized by our virtual power

plant or auto bidder functionality we continue to deliver a fleet of products that brings ai into

the real world as we pursue a future of sustainable abundance as outlined in our master plan part 4

while we face a near term well excuse me while we face near term uncertainty from shifting trade

tariff and fiscal policy we are focused on long-term growth and value creation we are prudently

making the necessary investments in our business including future business lines

that we believe will drive incredible value for tesla and the world across transport energy

and robotics and you know all i really have to say about that opening statement is reading

we launched the model yl stung a little bit it really did i just let's get that car here in

america i just i know you've heard me say it before so i don't want to linger on it but

i really believe that it would check a lot of the same boxes for families who want a tesla minivan

because it's got a lot of those features and functions so maybe sometime next year if we're

lucky oh and from the same page in the letter by the way teslas cash reserve i always like to make

the scrooge mcduck silo of gold coins joke about this but teslas cash reserve went up another

4.9 billion dollars this quarter to 41.6 billion dollars plenty for a rainy day i would say

moving along in the shareholder letter total production is down five percent year over year

which is kind of a shame considering that a year ago the cybertruck first went into general

production at the very beginning of q3 2024 and as we all know every other tesla vehicle launch

has moved the needle in the upward direction as it goes you know the first year in production

so i think the question now becomes at least for me what's the future of the cybertruck i don't mean

to pick on it specifically here but the fact that their their total productions down five percent

year over year i think a lot of that is attributable to the cybertruck and the underperformance of that

vehicle yes the model y did change over that's certainly a root cause as well but with regard

to the cybertruck i just i can't help but wonder what is its future now i'm not at all suggesting

that tesla would kill it anything that drastic but until they can significantly lower the price

i have to ask are they happy with selling 20 to 25 000 units per year and if you're thinking wait

it's gotta be more than that that's kind of where it is right now the at least that's the

estimated number because i'll just segue real quick quick tangent but it's related so last week

while i had franz on and i was the one making the tesla news instead of reporting on it

there was a story that made its way around the ev community about ev pickup truck sales in the

us for q3 and while yes cybertruck i acknowledge was sold in canada and mexico in q3 those numbers

are not likely to materially add to the numbers that i'm about to read to you so real quick

here are the q3 ev pickup truck numbers i saw these courtesy of our tesla tipster friend soyer

merit who is reporting them from the source at cox automotive which is a data company that i've

mentioned here on the podcast plenty of times before so the number one selling ev pickup truck

in q3 was the ford f150 lightning at 1005 units is the again estimate from cox automotive that

number is up 39 percent year over year that's pretty good the lightning has been on the market

longer than cybertruck so the lightning being up 39 percent year over year is pretty good then you

have in second place the cybertruck at 5385 units so almost half just over half of the lightning

and that number is down 62 percent year over year in third the chevy silverado ev at 3940

units that's up 97 percent year over year but the silverado is new so i'm not going to put too

much stock in that i'm not trying to say anything disrespectful to chevy or gm here but that's i think

the silverado is new so the year over year number is a little less material than it is with say

the cybertruck or the f150 lightning same thing with the gmc sierra ev which of course is a sibling

a cousin or maybe however you want to whatever family analogy you want to use a sibling slash

cousin of the hopefully not both of the silverado ev so the sierra ev was at 3374 units up 771 percent

so again see you can't really put a ton of stock in that and then the rivian this number matters

because the rivian's been on the market longest of all of the ev pickup trucks the rivian r1 t came

in fifth place in the ev pickup truck category for q3 uh in the us specifically just to remind

in the us 2378 units of the r1 t that is up 13 percent year over year so as you can see

every other ev pickup besides the cybertruck was up and the cybertruck wasn't just down

it was way down and not just quarter over quarter but again that year over year number

which is honestly really surprising and unfortunately in quite an unpleasant surprising

kind of way 5385 units in q3 if you just multiplied that by four which i know that's not how quarters

work q4 tends to be the biggest and q1 the smallest but just for a rough sake of argument here

that is a pace of roughly 20 to 25 000 cybertrucks per year that is an order of magnitude less than

what elan musk had originally said when i when i first asked him i was the first person to ask him

what do you foresee as the the maximum annual production rate of the cybertruck now that was

back at gosh battery day 2020 i got to ask that question and he said 250 000 units so

they are uh an order of magnitude off of that right now which can't be anything but disappointing

which it's just too bad because it's especially those of you that own it or if you've at least

driven it but especially those of you that own it you know that is such it's such a great truck

it is just so unbelievably good and to see the numbers down where they are is uh is just a shame

so that's what i mean when i wonder aloud if tesla is okay with those numbers or if they might

have a strategy change in mind coming up to try and reverse that decline and get those numbers

coming up in the northward direction in better news energy storage deployed as mentioned in that

opening statement from the shareholder letter is up 81 percent year over year that is bonkers

in the best of ways supercharger connectors meanwhile continue to be up as well this time

18 percent year over year and just to put that into a little bit more of real world terms

tesla is adding around 3000 supercharger stalls per quarter not not entire stations but actual

individual stalls you know each station's got anywhere from eight to eighty stalls depending

on where it is but they're adding three about 3000 of them every quarter and in q3 it was actually

about 3500 of them that they added no changes this quarter at all in my beloved installed

annual vehicle capacity chart everything is still the same way it was before but we move now to what's

going on on the hardware side sort of the the region by region part of the shareholder letter

and in the us which of course is california nevada and texas they say in october we launched the

model 3 and model y standard each with over 300 miles of range and starting at 37 and 40k respectively

making our products more accessible to customers in the wake of the expiration of the eb tax credit

in the us even with their affordable starting price these models come standard with what makes

tesla so appealing including active safety features a 15.4 inch center touchscreen and heated first

row seats and steering wheel we also launched the model y performance zero to 16 3.3 seconds

and began offering leasing for certified pre-owned model threes and model y's

then in the apac region for shanghai they wrote we launched the model y l in china a longer wheel

based version of the model y with six seats and three rows expanding our product portfolio in

this critical market we achieved record deliveries in south korea taiwan japan and singapore and began

deliveries of the model y in india south korea is now our third largest market behind only the us

in china serving as validation of our competitive positioning in a robust ev market we launched

fsd supervised in australia and new zealand and continue to prepare for a broader launch in china

pending regulatory approval then for europe and the middle east they write model y is the best

selling vehicle in norway switzerland and iceland year to date in finland for q3 and in the netherlands

and denmark in september at giga factory berlin we produced the 100 000th refreshed model y

and started production of the model y performance we continue to pursue the launch of fsd supervised

in europe pending regulatory approval so the reason the really the thing that jumped out at me there

was the fun new bit of tesla trivia that if you had if you had posed this question to me i

absolutely do not think i would have gotten it right even if you gave me three or four guesses

so tesla's third largest market is now south korea again i would definitely not have guessed

that that's super interesting then in the battery powertrain and manufacturing section tesla writes

both model three and model y standard feature a new battery pack and powertrain designed for

energy and cost efficiency offering compelling range 321 miles at an attractive price point

we continue to localize and de-risk our battery and powertrain supply chains across regions

including progress on raw material intermediate and final assembly processes in the us and europe

for both the lfp and nickel supply chains we expect our lithium refinery in texas to begin

production in q4 of 2025 and our lfp lines in nevada to begin production in q1 of 2026

so on this one it's that last bit there that piqued my interest lfp lines in nevada

in q1 of 2026 so does that mean that those batteries are for the tesla semi since that's

where the semi is being built there at the semi factory right at giga nevada or are those lfp

cells for the cyber cab or perhaps both perhaps neither i mean if i recall correctly lfp batteries

have a lower energy density and a lower c rate so i think they probably wouldn't make sense for the

tesla semi where in that vehicle they need to cram as much energy into the space that they have as

possible in order to maximize range on the tesla semi but i think the lfp would make a ton of sense

for the cyber cab where you'd want to charge it to a hundred percent all the time and the charge

rate probably wouldn't matter as much because it typically charge overnight or when its quote

unquote shift is over and then finally before we get to the shareholder or the earnings call

pardon me at the end of the letter in the outlook section here's the product outlook which i always

look forward to reading and it reads we continue to evolve and augment our product lineup with a

focus on cost scale and future monetization opportunities via services powered by our

ai software we remain focused on growing our sales volumes through a differentiated and

efficiently managed product portfolio which includes leveraging and optimizing our existing

production capacity before building new factories and production lines cyber cab tesla semi and

mega pack 3 are on schedule for volume production starting in 2026 first generation product

production lines for optimists are being installed in anticipation of volume production so where does

this leave us in my opinion plenty to be optimistic about with tesla for sure i mean in terms of

vehicle launches tesla hit it more generally there but you've got the semi is already technically

launched so i don't even necessarily have to count that one but in 2026 we will see the launch

of the cyber cab 2027 based on what france told me in the interview last week is hopefully going

to see the next gen roadster finally start delivering although there won't be volume production of

that it's going to be low volume then as for 2028 as we look a little more long term with tesla

well if there aren't any new other vehicles there there aren't that's the thing it's not

an if there aren't any other new vehicles currently on the public roadmap unless maybe if tesla is

serious about actually putting the robovan or the robo van depending on how you want to say it i

guess the official tesla pronunciation is robovan but if they're actually serious about putting that

into production then maybe that could be in 2028 now if i do allow myself to to finish this thought

exercise presumably 2028 might be when the next model three refresh happens as well it'll be four

years since the gen two version so four or five years is about what it's probably going to be

from one refresh to the next so we'll see but anyway still plenty to be optimistic about like

i mentioned even if i do very much wish that the vehicle roadmap had more cars on it before i get

to the earnings call first a quick word climate exchange the raffle yes the raffle for charity

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time for your main course on this week's episode that is the earnings call recap highlights and

analysis we start as always with ceo elan musk's opening statement it is eight minutes and five

seconds long take a listen we're at a critical inflection point for tesla and our strategy

going forward as we bring ai into the real world i think it's important to emphasize that tesla

really is the leader in real world ai no one can do what we can do with real world ai i have pretty

good insight into ai in general i think that tesla has the highest intelligence density of any ai out

there in the car and that is only going to get better and we're really just at the beginning

of scaling at a quite massively full self-driving and robotaxi and fundamentally changing the

nature of transport i think people just don't don't quite appreciate the degree to which this will

take off um where the it's honestly it's going to be like a shockwave um so

it's it's a

because the cars are all out there they're you know millions of cars out there that with a

software update become um full self-driving cars and um and you know we're making a couple million

a year um and in fact with the advent of with what we see now as a clarity on achieving full

self-driving unsupervised full self-driving i should say um i feel confident in expanding tesla's

production um so that is that is our intent to expand as quickly as we can our future production

um so i was i was ready to do that until we had clarity on on uh achieving unsupervised full

self-driving but at this point i feel like we've got clarity and it makes sense to

um expand production as as fast as we reasonably can uh we're also making huge uh

um

making huge impact impact on the energy sector with uh with battery storage so with both the

power wall and especially with the mega pack uh we are dramatically improving the ability to

um generate more energy from the grid so let me sort of talk a little bit about that which is

if you look at total us energy um capability for example there's roughly a terawatt of

continuous power available in the u.s but the average usage over 24 cycles only half a terawatt

because of the big difference between day and night usage um if you buffer the buffer the energy

with batteries you can effectively double the energy output in the united states just with

batteries building no incremental power plants um and it's very difficult to build power plants so

that take a long time there's a lot of permitting and it's not an industry that's used to moving

fast so we see the potential therefore tesla battery packs uh to greatly improve the um the

energy output per year for any given grid u.s or otherwise we're also on the cusp of of something

really tremendous with optimus um which i think uh is likely to be or has potential to be the biggest

product of all time um and uh it's it's a difficult project um and it's worth noting that it's not

like it's it's just automatic um i'm unaware of any robot program by uh forward or gm or you know

in if i use kind of sort of car companies people like i think maybe think of tesla as as a car

company we mostly make cars um and battery packs uh but uh so it's not like it's not just like an

obvious full of a log thing to make optimus but but we do have the ingredients um with of real

world ai um and exceptional electrical mechanical engineering capabilities um and the ability to

scale production which i don't think anyone else has all of those ingredients um so uh yeah with

with version 14 of the uh of self-driving which people you can see the reactions of people online

um they're quite amazed um and actually anyone in the u.s can get uh version 14 if they just

go and select uh i want the advanced software in their car so if you're listening right now and

you'd like to try it out just go in um in settings and say i want the advanced software

and you will get version 14 um and uh yeah so on the mega pack front we we unveiled mega block

mega pack three um we also have exciting plans for mega pack four mega pack four will incorporate

a lot of the um a lot of what is normally in a substation uh and be able to output uh at

probably 35 kilovolts uh directly so this this greatly improves our ability to deploy mega pack

because it's not dependent on building a substation up through 35 kb for mega pack four so that that'll

be next that's the that's the engineering priority for mega pack um and uh we look forward to unveiling

optimus v3 um you know probably in q1 i think it'll be ready for uh to show off and uh that

that i think is going to be quite remarkable um if you it won't even seem like a robot it'll seem

like a person in a robot suit which is kind of how we started off with optimus um but it it'll

seem so real that you'll need to like poke it i think to believe that it's actually a robot

um and and obviously like the the real world intelligence we developed we've developed for

the car um most of that transfers to optimus so it's a it's a very good starting point

in conclusion uh we're excited about the you know updated mission of tesla which is sustainable

abundance um so going beyond sustainable energy to say sustainable abundance is the mission where

we believe with uh with optimus and self-driving um that uh you can actually create a world where

there is no poverty uh where everyone has access to the finest medical care um

optimus will be an incredible surgeon for example um and imagine if everyone had access to an

incredible surgeon um so so i think there's you know of course we make sure optimus is safe

and everything but but i do think we're headed for a world of sustainable abundance

and that i'm excited to work with tesla team to make that happen

elon addresses this later in the earnings call and i will play you that clip but when he said

that he thinks it's time to expand production as quickly as they reasonably can my first thought was

yes that's what i'm talking about but then my second thought was wait is there demand for that

particularly in the post tax credit era and i'm again i'm not trying to throw shade here it's just

it is a genuine question the sx and cybertruck are not selling super well i mean we just got

numbers to confirm that and as i mentioned at the top of the podcast tesla is uh raising leasing

prices so you know that's pulling a lever in one direction or another that does affect things

now certainly the side if you're thinking well if you're just yelling at your speaker right now

the cyber cab yes the cyber cab will certainly be part of this production level increase

but i also have to fairly wonder where the rest of the extra demand to crank up production is

going to come from unless tesla sees the order numbers so far on the standard three and the

standard y and they are incredible so maybe that's the case the energy side of the business

meanwhile continues to just crush as i went over before just tesla seems to be miles ahead of

their competitors there and they simply have a great product well products plural that make a

lot of sense for grid scale uses so i am glad to see that the energy numbers continue to be awesome

i was also struck in his opening statement there by his comment about being able to get fsd version

14 by just going into your car and setting your preference to advanced in the software menu well

unless tesla is going to be changing something that changing the behavior of that soon meaning

they haven't already done this by the time you hear this episode that doesn't work i've tried

it each of the last three days since this was said and it doesn't work so i i wish it did i wish

it did i mean i've been i my car has been set to advanced since forever and i know many of you

have had your car set to advanced for a while too and for the moment that doesn't seem to be getting

anybody the version 14 download any sooner uh my final comment on elon's opening remarks there

i love the idea of optimus ushering in a world with no poverty and great medical care for everyone but

that sounds about as realistic as the cars becoming appreciating assets when fsd unsupervised

rolls out i mean that's it's a it's a little much so all in all i would say and again plenty

more clips to play you here this wasn't the most newsworthy opening statement from elon on an

earnings call but nevertheless an interesting one it's always nice to hear from him and he

did keep it to a reasonable time this time as well he'd been making these longer and longer

and this one was only eight minutes so uh for the next clip here i'm going to skip the six

minute opening statement from tesla's cfo except to note that he did say that the fsd take rate

meaning people who have purchased it is currently at least i think it was just purchases and not

also including monthly subscriptions that take rates currently sitting at 12 percent so still a lot

of room to grow right there uh as such i would not expect the price on fsd to go up for quite

some time nor in my humble opinion should it so there we go let's move on now to the most

upvoted retail shareholder questions starting with one about the latest metrics on the robo taxi

service i'll start off with that and then shark can elaborate um but uh we are expecting to

i have uh no safety drivers in uh at least um large parts of austin by the end of this year so

within a few months uh we expect to have no safety drivers um at all um at least in parts

of austin we're obviously being very cautious about the deployment so um so our goal is to be

actually paranoid about deployment because obviously even one accident will be front page

headline news worldwide so um it's better for us to take a cautious approach here but we do expect

to have no no safety drivers in the car um in austin uh within a few months i think that's perhaps

the most important data point and then we do expect to be operating robo taxi in i think about

eight to ten metro areas by the end of the year um you know it depends on various regulatory

approvals um and um but you can actually i think most of our regulatory applications are online you

can kind of see them uh because they're public information um but we expect to be operating

in nevada and florida and and arizona um by the end of the year um shark we continue to operate our

fleet in austin without anyone in the driver's seat and we have covered more than a quarter

million miles um with that and then in the bay area where we still have a person in the driver's

seat plus other regulations we uh cross more than a million miles um so and we continue to see that

the fleet um robo taxi fleet works really well customers are really happy um and there's no

notable issues on the customer uh side we have customers have used fsd supervised for a total of

six billion miles um as of yesterday um so that's like a big milestone uh and overall the safety

continues to be very good and as ilan mentioned we are on um on track to remove the person from

inside the car all together starting with austin well ilan is absolutely right that even a single

accident will absolutely be front page headline news everywhere globally now has wemo had incidents

yeah do they get covered in the media sometimes but if and when and let's be honest it's when

because it's just math it's inevitable someday so when tesla has some kind of autonomous accident

with a robo taxi it is going to be blasted across every headline in every blog and media outlet on

earth unfortunately but it'll be exciting once the safety monitor does come out of the car in

austin that i'll tell you that is truly going to be a big moment in tesla's history like you do the

thing that i like to do of zooming out to that 10 000 foot view that will be a big big moment

in tesla's history because they've been working towards that for about a decade now i mean even

if you can argue that the cars are already going all doing all of the driving without any

interventions from the safety monitors now which is true still going totally driverless

when you can actually be in the car by yourself not in the driver's seat that is going to be a

really cool milestone in tesla's history all right our next clip is about solar panels from the

energy side of the business thanks demand for mega pack and powerwall continues to be really strong

into next year we received very strong positive customer feedback on our mega black mega block

product which will begin shipping next year out of houston and we're seeing remarkable growth in

the demand for ai and data center applications as hyperscalers and utilities have seen the versatility

of the mega pack product to increase reliability and receive and relieve grid constraints as elon

was talking about we we've also seen a surge in residential solar demand in the us due to policy

changes which we expect to continue into the first half of 2026 as we introduced a new solar

lease product and we also began production of our tesla residential solar panel in our buffalo

factory and we will be shipping that to customers starting q1 the panel has industry leading

aesthetics and shade performance and demonstrates our continued commitment to us manufacturing

the reason that i wanted to play you that clip was that very last part the new consumer solar

panel that is awesome i feel like we almost never hear about the residential solar business

at tesla anymore so this is just nice to hear about i'll be curious what this panel looks like

and how much juice that it can produce next up here is a long answer from elon about what the

challenges are in bringing optimus to market take a listen to this yeah i mean bringing officer

optimus to market is is an incredibly difficult task to be clear it's it's not like some walk in

the park um at some point i mean at this actually technically optimus can walk in the park right

now um and we do have optimus robots that walk around our offices uh at our engineering headquarters

in palo Alto california uh basically 24 hours a day seven days a week um so any visitors that come

by you actually um you can you can stop to stop one of the optimus robots and ask it to take you

somewhere and it'll literally take you to that meeting room or that location in the building

so um i don't want to downplay the difficulty of optimus it's uh it's an incredibly difficult thing

especially it's difficult to create a um a hand that is as dexterous and capable as the human hand

which is an incredible the human hand is an incredible thing um that the more you study the

human hand the more incredible you realize the human hand is and and why you need five you know

four fingers in the thumb why the why the fingers have certain degrees of freedom um you know why

the the various muscles are of different strengths um the fingers are of different lengths um and uh

it turns out actually that that all that those are all there for a reason um and uh

so making making a that the hand and forearm because most of the most of the actuator just

like the human hand the the muscles of that control your hand are actually primarily your forearm

the optimus hand and forearm is an incredibly difficult engineering challenge um it's i'd say

it's more difficult than the rest of from an electromechanical standpoint the forearm and hand

is more difficult than the entire rest of the robot um so but really in order to have a useful

generalized robot you you do need this you do need an incredible hand and and then you need the real

world AI um and you need to be able to scale up that production um to have it be relevant because

it's not relevant if it's just a few hundred robots um but so you need to be able to make

optimus robots at volumes comparable to vehicles um if not significantly higher um so

if you're trying to make a million or something per year a million a turn to make a million

optimus robots per year that manufacturing challenge is immense considering that the

supply chain doesn't exist so with with cars you've got an existing supply chain with computers

you've got an existing supply chain with uh with a humanoid robot there is no supply chain um

so in order to to manufacture that Tesla actually has to be very botically integrated and manufacture

um very deep into the supply chain manufacture the parts internally because there just is no

supply chain um so uh this is this is the kind of thing where i'm like if i put myself in the

position of a startup trying to make an off a humanoid robot i'm like i don't know how to do it

without um an immense amount of manufacturing technology um so that's that's why i think like

Tesla's in somewhat almost a unique i think i think unique position when you consider manufacturing

technology scaling um real world ai and the and a truly dexterous hand uh those are the generally

the things that are missing when you read about um other robots that they just don't have those three

things um so no i think we can achieve all those things those those three things with an immense

amount of work um and um and that is that is the game plan so um you know i like like my you know

fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control i have in tesla is if i go ahead and build

this enormous robot army can i just be ousted at some point in the future um that's my biggest

concern if i that's that that is that is really the only thing i'm trying to address with with this

so it's called compensation but it's not like i'm going to go spend the money it's just

if we build this robot army um do i have at least a strong influence over that robot only

not control but a strong influence that's that's what it comes down to in a nutshell um

like i don't feel comfortable building that robot army if i don't have at least a strong influence

well he's absolutely right the tesla is uniquely positioned to do a humanoid robot

i imagine that his repeated use of the phrase robot army might freak some people out though

and that he wants substantial influence over that robot army uh hopefully we're not about

to turn elan into an actual marvel comics super villain but anyway um yes we will see how all of

that shakes out very soon in fact on a related note from that clip you just heard this week's

patreon poll which is free for anybody to vote in you don't have to be giving me a dime on patreon

this week's patreon poll was about the big upcoming shareholder vote on elan musk's

proposed pay package i asked you simply do you think elan musk's compensation package will be

approved by shareholders so regardless of how you're voting i just asked do you think it will

pass do you think it will be approved and it was quite overwhelming 85 percent of the 325 votes

said yes that do you think it will pass and for what it's worth i agree i think it's going to

cruise easily in fact i like to the point where i'm honestly a little bit surprised at how much of a

full court press tesla's been putting on they've been doing ads on x ads on google they've been

sending out emails like they've been really hitting this pretty hard trying to get shareholders to vote

and i i don't know i think it's probably gonna pass easily but either they

they don't feel that way or maybe more likely as they just want to be sure like if there's

you know they think there's so much on the line of retaining elan potentially versus

potentially not retaining elan they just decided to to go all out with it but anyway

i'm in agreement with all of you i think it's going to cruise to a vote regardless of of how

any individual one of us votes so the next clip another pretty long one a fair warning six and

a half minutes from elan here this is him speaking to the ai five and ai six chips that are in

development with samsung take a listen to this one okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna give quite a

long answer to this question because it's because i have to unpack this question and then and then

answer the unpacked version so first of all i have nothing but great things to say about samsung

they're an amazing company and samsung is worth noting does manufacture our ai4 computer and does

make a point of clarification relative to some comments i've made publicly before which is

we're actually going to focus both tsmc and samsung initially on ai5 so the the ai5 chip

design by tesla is i think it's an amazing design i have spent almost every weekend for last

last few months uh with the chip design team working on ai5 and i don't hand out praise

easily but i have to say that i think i think the tesla chip team is is really

designing an incredible chip here this is by some metrics the ai5 chip will be 40 times better

than the ai4 chip not 40 40 times because we have a detailed understanding of the entire

software and hardware stack so we're designing the hardware to address all of the pain points

and software so i don't think there really isn't anyone that's doing this i think the entire stack

all the way through real world you know calibrating against the real world where you've got cars and

robots in real world that like we we know what the chip needs to do and we know what just as

importantly we know what the chip doesn't doesn't need to do um you know to sort of give you some

examples here um with the ai5 we we deleted the um the legacy gpu or that or the traditional gpu

which is it it's in ai4 um but ai5 does not have um we just just deleted the legacy gpu because

basically is a gpu um so we also deleted the image signal processor and

there's this like a long list of actually of deletions that are very important

as a result of these deletions we can actually fit ai5 in a half reticle

um and with with with good margin for the traces from the memory to

the the the trip the tesla trip accelerators um the arm the arm cpu course um and um and the pcix

sort of uh the pc i blocks so uh this this is a beautiful chip um

uh i've i've poured so much life energy into this chip personally um and i'm i'm confident this will

be this is going to be a winner next level um so it makes sense to have uh both samsung tsmc

focus on ai5 um and so even like the technically the samsung fab has slightly more advanced

equipment than the tsmc fab these will be both be made in um in the us that in one tsmc in arizona

samsung in texas um and uh but but it's uh it we're gonna make starting off just to be

confident of having our goal explicit goal is to have an oversupply of ai5 chips

because if we have too many ai5 chips for the cars and and and robots we can always

put them in the data center so we already use ai4 uh for for training in our data

center so we use a combination of ai4 and uh invidia hardware um so um we're not about to

replace invidia to be clear but but but we do use both in combination um ai4 and invidia hardware

and the ai5 access production we can always put in in our data centers um you know invidia keeps

keeps improving um that the challenge that they have is that they've got to satisfy a large range

a lot of requirements from a lot of customers but tesla only has to satisfy requirements from

one customer but tesla that that makes the design job radically easier and means we we can delete

a lot of complexity from the chip like i can't emphasize how important this is

so like when you look at the various logic blocks in the chip um as you increase the

number of logic blocks you also increase the interconnections between the logic blocks so

you can think of it like um there's highways like how many highways do you need to connect

the various parts of the chip um and especially if you're not sure how much data is going to go

between uh each uh you know logic block on the chip then you kind of end up having giant highways

going all over the place um it's a very it like it becomes an almost impossibly difficult design

problem and invidia's done an amazing job of dealing with almost an impossibly difficult

set of requirements um but in our case we we're going for radical simplicity

and the net effect is that i i i think ai5 will be the best performance per watt

maybe by a factor of two or three um and the best performance per dollar for ai maybe by a factor of 10

so you know that's uh you know what we'll have to the proofs in the pudding so

obviously we need to actually get this chip made um animated scale uh but that's what it looks like

i admit that i don't quite know enough about chip design to fully grasp everything that he

just said there but i know that i'm not surprised that tesla found a way to delete things it is

their way it is the tesla way this to delete stuff though i do know i think enough about chips to

know that deleting things off of them means that you can pack more onto one silicon wafer which

increases your yield which means your cost per chip goes down and thus hopefully helps keep the cost

of each car down well definitely the cost for tesla and if we're lucky it helps keep the cars

more reasonably priced for us as customers at the end of the line next up here is tesla's cfo

and a member of the ai team throwing a bit of a lifeline to my fellow hardware three owners take

a listen to this yeah we've not completely given up on hardware three however over the last year

we've offered the customers the option to transfer fsd to their new vehicle which at times we've

been running some promotions if if they got fsd they can get better preferential rates so we've been

definitely taking care of this but we do want to solve autonomy first and then we'll come back with

a way to take care of these customers these customers are very important they were the early

adapters for what it's worth my daily commuter is a hardware three car which i use fsd on a

daily basis so we will definitely take care of you guys great thank you addition once the v14

release series is fully done we are planning on working on a v14 light version for hardware three

probably expected in q2 next year i can't help but think of the money python movie

you've got hardware three saying i'm not dead yet i'm i'm glad that there will be at least

one more presumably notable upgrade on the fsd side for hardware three owners though it sounds

like we won't get it for at least six to nine months it's going to be a minute i sure hope that

hardware three owners in australia and new zealan get version 12.6 first in the very near future

and don't have to wait for this this v14 light all the way until next spring i don't think that

will be the case i think that they are going to get 12.6 since you know i'd already shared that

report with you a couple of episodes ago about tesla working on v12 for hardware three owners

in australia otherwise we heard the same thing there that we heard last quarter that tesla will

upgrade those of us with hardware three cars who've paid for fsd once tesla has successfully

delivered full self-driving unsupervised and then figures out exactly what our older cars need

in order to also be capable of full self-driving unsupervised but it is really nice to hear tesla

acknowledge that hey we're early adopters we deserve to be taken care of because it's true

we are and we do next up here is an admittedly small update from friend of the podcast and

engineering vp larz mary v on the tesla semis progress as well as fsd for the tesla semi

yeah so i guess i'll start with that in terms of the semi uh production plan and schedule so the

factory is going on schedule we've you know completed the building and are installing the

equipment now we've got our fleet of validation trucks driving on the road we'll have larger

builds towards the end of this year and then our first online builds in the first part of next year

ramping into you know the q2 timing with real volume coming in the back half of the year

so that's going quite well and that's the first step obviously getting autonomous trucks on the

road in terms of trains you know they're really great for long point-to-point deliveries they're

super efficient but you know that last mile the load unload can be better served for shorter

distances with autonomous semis and that would be great and so we do expect that to probably shift

in as we you know really as elon said change the way transportation is considered and so we're

looking forward to that timeline and ashok i know you can can take the the full self-driving part

currently the team is like super focused on uh solving for passenger vehicle autonomy

that said the same technology will uh externally quite easily to the semi truck once we have a

little bit of data from the semi trucks boy just just picture it in your head for a moment fsd for

the tesla semi that is going to be something really awesome to behold isn't it i mean in fairness

it sounds like it's not even really being worked on yet from that comment at the end by the uh the

person on the ai team which okay honestly makes sense that's not a criticism i can't blame them

there they are currently in a huge push with the cars and they are on the cusp of pulling off

unsupervised with the robo taxis and then after that unsupervised in our personal cars the semi

can wait especially considering that a it's not what tesla semi buyers are purchasing them for

first and foremost i mean sure it'll be a big selling point down the road on the tesla semi

but for now the first thing that people buying tesla semis are looking for is that total cost

of ownership and then b there are a total of what maybe a couple hundred semis on the roads right

now maybe less than that so again it's gonna be awesome to see that someday see a fully autonomous

tesla semi truck but for now it's definitely i can i can understand that it's not the priority

anyway let's move now to the analyst questions remember earlier when i said that we would

come back to the point about tesla increasing production capacity well is that number going to

be three million here's answers here's elan's answer to that well our capacity isn't quite

three million but it will be three million at some point you know aspirationally you know it

could be three million within we could probably hit an annualized rate of three million within 24

months i think maybe less than 24 months it bearing in mind like this like there's an

entire like supply chain like a vast supply chain that's got to also move in tandem with that

so i think we're gonna we're gonna expand production as fast as as as we can and as

fast as our supplies can can can sort of keep up with it and then we're going to think about

where do we build incremental factories beyond that like this the single biggest expansion

production will be the the cybercap which starts production in q2 next year that's

that's really a vehicle that's optimized for full autonomy it in fact does not have a steering

wheel or pedals and is really an engineering optimization on minimizing cost per mile for

like fully considered cost per mile of operation so that's you know for the for the for our other

vehicles there's still they still have a little bit of the horseless carriage thing going on where

you know obviously you've got if you've still if you've got steering wheels and pedals and

and you're designing a car that people might want to go you know very do right fast acceleration

and tight cornering like high performance car you know cars then you're going to design a different

car than one that is optimized for a comfortable ride but doesn't expect to go you know past sort

of 85 or 90 miles an hour and it's just aiming for a gentle ride the whole time that's what

cybercap is so yeah so so it's i do i think we'll sacrifice margins i don't think so i think the

demand will be pretty nutty like here's the here's the killer app really what it comes down to is

can you text it can you text while you're in the car and if you tell someone yes that the car is

now so good you can you can you can be on your phone uh and text the entire time while you're in

the car it's anyone who can buy the car will buy the car and it's in a story um so um that's what

everybody wants to do in fact not everyone wants to they do do that and that's why in fact the reason

you've seen like this there's been an uptick in accidents pretty much worldwide is because people

are texting and driving so autopilot actually dramatically improves the safety here because

if somebody's looking down at their phone they're not driving very well so that's that's really the

the game changer um and uh you know we do see like at this point i feel

you know essentially 100 confident i say not essentially 100 confident that we can set that

we can solve unsupervised full strut full self-driving at a safety level much greater than human

um so we've released 14.1 we've got a technology roadmap that's i think pretty amazing we'll

be adding reasoning to the car uh our world simulator for similar for reinforcement learning is

it's pretty incredible like our like our when you see that the tesla reality simulator

um it's you can't tell it on the screen the video that's generated by the tesla reality simulator

and the actual video looks exactly the same um so that that allows us to um you have a very

powerful reinforcement learning loop to further improve the tesla ai we're going to be increasing

the parameter count by an order of magnitude um that's not in 14.1 um there are also a number

of other improvements to the ai just um that that are that are quite radical um

so it's uh this this car will feel like it is a living creature that's how good the ai will get

with the ai4 computer before ai5 and then and then ai5 like i said is by some metrics 40 40 times

better um let's just say safely it's a 10x improvement um so it might almost be too much

intelligence for a car i do wonder like how much intelligence should you have in a car it might get

bored um actually um and then one of the things i thought like well if we got all these cars that

maybe are bored well while they're while they're sort of if they are bored we could actually have

a giant distributed influence fleet and say like well if they're not actively driving let's just

have a giant distributed inference fleet um you know at some point if you've got like tens of millions

of cars in the fleet or maybe at some point 100 million cars in the fleet um and um let's say they

had at that point you know um like i don't know uh a kilowatt of inference capability of you know

high performance inference capability that's 100 gigawatts of inference

distributed with with power and cooling taking with with cooling and power conversion taken care of

so that seems like a pretty significant asset first of all here is it news that cyber cab production

will be starting in q2 forgive me if that's been stated somewhere before but i believe that's the

first time we've heard that now as for demand being pretty nutty quote unquote for the cyber cab

i again i have to very politely wonder exactly where one million of them per year are gonna come

from that's basically model y that's almost model y production numbers for cyber cab because

i'm just not sure that a two passenger driverless car is going to be hugely appealing to a lot of

people at least at first now are fleet companies gonna buy them well maybe that's where a million

orders per year are gonna come from large quantities of orders from fleet customers

so we'll see on that and then the bit near the end there about the ai five cars getting bored

come on come on again like we're getting a little silly again let's let's bring it back

to real life let's bring it on back up next now uh still several more clips to play for you

up next was a good question about whether the safety monitor in the robo taxis is a

regulatory requirement or tesla's choice or as it turns out perhaps both well it's i think i think

even if the regulators weren't making us do it we'd still do that as the as the sort of right

sort of cautious cautious approach to a new market so just to make sure that we're being

you know paranoid about safety uh i think it makes sense to have a sort of a sort of either

safety driver or safety occupant in the car um when we first go to new markets to just to confirm

that there's not something we're missing um because all it takes is like one in 10 000

trips to go wrong and and you've got you've got an issue so um it's just to make sure like is there

some peculiarity about a city like a very difficult intersection um or i don't know something

that's that's an unexpected challenge uh in in a city uh for that one in 10 000 situation um so

i think we probably could just let loose and in the in these cities but we're just don't

we don't want to take a chance and and like you know what we're talking about here is um

you know maybe three months of safety driver in a new metro to confirm that it's good and then

we take the safety driver out that that kind of thing as a specific micro example i'm really

curious if the robo taxis are reading and correctly interpreting no right on red signs

and i bring that up because i know that version 14 still isn't doing that some of the influencers

that got it early have posted evidence of that and it's something that i've run into on version 13 but

anyway i do completely agree with the approach no matter whose decision it is to have a safety

monitor because you you just can't mess around with cars right i mean tesla might be the safest

car out there but we're still talking about 4 000 pound objects moving at speed so the old phrase

better safe than sorry is the right call for sure even though i do very much look forward to the

day when i can take a robo taxi somewhere as i was talking about a few minutes ago in which i am the

sole occupant of the vehicle and there's nobody in the driver's seat sounds like we'll have that

maybe in the spring uh of next year if austin ends up removing meaning here in the san francisco

bay area pardon me if austin removes them at about the end of the year all right i've got just two

more clips for you the pen ultimate clip here is the answer to a question about how version 14 has

a different feel like literally the question is how does it feel different now the first priority

when we release a major new software architecture for autopilot is safety so so it starts off with

safety obviously safety prioritized and then we've and then we solve comfort thereafter

which is why i don't recommend people take the the the initial version like like that's why i say

like you know most people should wait until 14.2 for before they actually download version 14

because by 14.2 we will have addressed many of the comfort issues the priority is is very much

safety first and then thereafter the comfort issues that's why most people are like yeah

i probably it'll be a little like it'll be safe but jerky and we just need time to kind of smooth

the rough edges and solve for comfort in addition to safety with a with a major news

uh the autopilot architecture change um but it really is uh i mean i i know what the

you know the roadmap is for the tesla real world ai and and for any granular detail obviously

ashoka's leading that um and i i mean i spent a lot of time with the team going you know in

like excruciating detail here on on what we're doing to improve the real world ai

and um like i said that's this car is going to feel like it is a living creature

and that's with ai4 before even ai5 yeah the roadmap is super exhilarating like it's like

so like waiting so much like release all the stuff we are working on in terms of like you know

what we ship to customers versus robotaxi uh it's more mostly the same obviously customers

have somewhat features like you know they can choose whether the car wants to park in a spot or

driver or something like that which is not super relevant for robotaxi uh but there's not really

a few minor changes like those ones but the majority of the algorithms and architecture

everything is the same between those two platforms yeah but as i mentioned earlier like

we'll be adding reasoning to um i don't know sure is that like reasoning in like 14.3 maybe

14.4 something like that yeah i know this year for sure yeah so with reasoning it's literally

going to think about which parking spot to pick uh at the so it's going to say this is the entrance

but actually probably there's not a parking spot right at the entrance if it's a full you know if

the if the parking light is fairly full the probability of an open parking spot right at

the entrance is very low um but actually what it'll simply do is drop you off at the entrance of

the store and then go find a parking spot um but it's it's going to get very smart about

figuring out a parking spot it's going to spot figure out it's going to spot empty spots much

better than human it's got 360 degree vision um and it's going to yeah like said just it's

going to re use reasoning to solve things i'm putting that all inside the computer that has a

for is the actual challenge that's what the team is working on because obviously you can do reasoning

on the server that takes whatever but then in car you need to make real-time decisions um so

putting all that into the computer that's in the car that's the challenge yeah that's why i say like

like i know i pretty good understanding of like ai you know the sort of the giant model level with

grok and with with tesla and like i'm confident in saying that tesla has the the tesla ai has the

highest intelligence density when you look at the intelligence per gigabyte um i think like tesla ai

is probably an order of magnitude better than anyone else um and it doesn't it doesn't have any choice

because that that ai has got to fit in the ai4 computer um but the the discipline of having that

level of ai intelligence density um will pay great dividends when you go to something that has an

order of magnitude order of magnitude more capability like ai5 now you have that same

intelligence density but but you got 10 times more capability in the computer if i may can i

make a humble request to the ai team as somebody who cares more than is probably healthy about his

cars so just like there's a hurry mode and a mad max setting for fsd may i please get a

picky car guy setting in which my fsd after it drops me off in front of whatever store i'm going to

goes to the very back of the parking lot and looks for a corner spot away from every other car now

you might think i'm joking around right now i am serious that is i don't want my car going

and parking itself directly between two giant suvs or something like that like i genuinely

want it to go far away from any other car and just go hide basically just minimize the risk of

door dings just go far away and then i'll call you when i'm ready for you so i am being 100

serious with that request we'll see how quickly versions 14.3 and 14.4 arrive they were mentioned

there i mean 14.1 went out a little a little wider this week as of this recording on late

friday night i have not yet personally received it and then 14.2 is supposed to be the one that

goes out to all fsd owners slash subscribers all right i've got just one more clip for you it is

about optimus with a little interesting tidbit about the ai5 chip in there take a listen um well

we're not the hardware design will not actually be frozen even through start of production um

there'll be continued iteration um because a bunch of the things that you discover are very difficult

to make you only find that pretty late in the game so we'll be doing rolling changes of of

for the optimus design even after solder production um but i do think that the the you know the new

hand is um an incredible piece of engineering and uh you know that's you know we'll actually

we'll have um a production intent prototype uh ready to show off in you know q1 probably february

march um and then we're uh yeah we're gonna be building a you know million unit optimus production

line um you know hopefully with the production start towards the end of next year um but that

production ramp will take a while to get to an annual annualized rate of a million because

it's going to move as fast as the the slowest dumbest least lucky thing out of 10 000 unique items

um but it will get to a million units and then ultimately you know we'll do optimus

four that'll be you know 10 million units optimus five maybe 50 to 100 million units i mean it's

really pretty nutty so after listening to that i'm curious did ai4 also get changes made to it

after it started production because if it did that would mean that my late 2024 my december 2024

build model 3 performance has ai4.1 if that's a thing i'm just i'm curious i don't know so

that really was the fascinating part of that clip for me it is cool to hear that we'll see

optimus version 3 near the end of q1 next year and when you think about it when we're gonna

do the ryan thing one more time in this episode we're gonna zoom out to that 10 000 foot view

tesla's got a lot coming up so q4 right now this quarter should be the roadster re-reveal

per france on last week's uh episode of this podcast q1 should be the optimus re-reveal if you

will q2 should be the start of production on the presumably final version of the tesla semi

as well as the start of cybercap production as we heard earlier so they are quite the busy

bees at tesla over the next year or so and well there you go that is your recap highlights and

analysis of tesla's q3 earnings call i know we're already at 90 minutes here for this episode so

i'm going to skip the ride the lightning hotline section of the podcast for this week but i promise

i will come back to it next week therefore if you've got a tesla or ev related question comment

or discussion topic for the podcast feel free to call in i'd love to hear from you and again

i'll play some calls on next week's episode there are two easy ways to call in either use your

smartphones built-in voice recording software then just record your question please try to

keep it to 90 seconds or less so that i can get to as many callers each week as possible

and then email that file to me at my podcast email address which is teslapodcast at gmail.com

alternatively you can simply call in and leave a message on the ride the lightning hotline

anytime day or night it's a toll-free number and that number is 1-888-989-TSLA that number again

1-888-989-8752 all right as for what is going on with me and my car well i had a funny little tesla

service experience today so uh the i was fortunate enough to have a little bit of leftover referral

credit that's going to expire at the end of the year and the thing i'd been eyeing in the shop

because i'm i'm very lucky i have a bunch of tesla shirts and i have all the upgrades that i can

have on both my cars so there's not a ton i can actually spend money on but what i what

i caught my eye was the model three performance winter tire and wheel package which i confess i

might never use it it's possible i might never use it but the car wears summer tires

most of the time all currently all of the time and if i ever wanted to take my family

up to lake tahoe in the winter time well summer tires are not a safe way to do that so okay

if i've got some leftover credit i would love to get the winter tire and wheel package for

the new model three performance which had been on the tesla shop but just showing as available

in fall of 2025 since it first went up like last year or something so i've been keeping my eye on

it keeping my on it and then about i don't know two three weeks ago i saw that it went up it

went it was available for sale so i grabbed it with my referral credit and scheduled a service

appointment well i tesla you could this uh maybe this is a a little learning experience here for

them they could have let me know that it turns out the wheels and tires were not in stock yet

so i got there and they checked with their parts department and nope no winter tire and wheel package

for the model three performance the guy was super nice about it you know i wasn't mad at him it wasn't

his fault um and it's i also just don't i have no urgent need for this whatsoever like i said

it might turn out that i never need it but in fact i wasn't even gonna have them put on the car

the appointment was to have them installed but i just actually i i bought some tire totes so i

and i just handed them the box and said i just want them bagged up and put in the back of my car

for uh for use later so um that's all i was looking for but anyway he said they'll be in

in about a week so okay that's totally fine but yeah ended up going to the going to tesla service

today for well it didn't turn out to be nothing because they said there was a service bulletin

on my car again this is the new one for uh to clean the the glass in front of the camera i don't

know if they have it like a special solution to help keep it to keep it from fogging up or what but

so they did that that took them about 15 minutes so at least there it was a somewhat productive

visit to tesla service and again since i'm not in any urgent need of those time those winter

tire and wheels at all i wasn't the slightest bit upset so um that was that was my little tesla

experience this week here's an entertainment recommendation for you new game i love it we

gave it an eight out of 10 at ig and i didn't do the review but uh the game is ninja gaiden 4

it's available for pc playstation 5 or xbox it's also on game pass for xbox or game pass for pc

it is a fast action game so uh there are not a lot of games that make me feel awesome while playing

them but the combat moves you do in this game it is just it's so slick i mean it's not easy there

is an easy mode if you're new to it so you know you won't get completely slaughtered by the by the

ai enemies but i'm a big fan of the ninja gaiden series and i'm really really liking ninja gaiden

4 so far so if that is of interest to you it's out now grab it on your platform of choice now

it is time for the tesla pro tip of the week it comes from osman in sydney hi ryan this is

osman speaking from sydney australia i'm a relatively recent listener but definitely a new tesla

owner as i've only had my um model wide juniper for about five months now my wife and i recently

took a long road trip and on the way back we had a six and a half hour drive um and it was it was a

monday which happens to be the day that your podcast drops for us here in australia i wanted

to listen to the podcast but my wife is a serial nappa and she was okay with me listening to the

podcast but in that moment i realized i could use the audio balance feature on my tesla to

minimize the disturbance to to my wife so my my pro tip of the week um is that if you want to

minimize disturbance to your passengers in the car you can go to the audio setting in your car

and click on the balance tab and on the balance tab it'll be an image of where you would want

the audio from your car to come out from and just tap on the driver's seat once that's selected

only audio will come out from the speakers around the driver and not around anyone else in the car

which should minimize any disturbance to your passengers i just wanted to share that thank

you so much for your podcast and um i look forward to listening to you moving forward thank you bye

hi osmond i want to say welcome to the tesla community and welcome to the ride the lightning

community i'm so glad that you found this podcast i love this pro tip and i appreciate

you calling in to share it it is definitely very considerate for sleeping passengers and i do

genuinely think that there are others out there that are going to want to utilize this

so i'm happy to play this pro tip thank you so much for calling in with it and a reminder if

anybody else out there has a good tesla or ev pro tip of the week please call in with it i would

absolutely love to hear it so i can add to my own knowledge base and share it with everybody else

listening as well to send in a pro tip of the week just send it in like you're sending in a regular

ride the lightning hotline call which i gave you the two easy calling methods for just a few minutes

ago i want to mention a couple friends of ride the lightning before i get out of here i know this

has been a long one uh but if you'll bear with me for just a few more minutes abstract ocean

dot com they've got so many great aftermarket accessories for all the teslas i want to call

out specifically their cyber truck armor protection the x spell pre-cut pieces for the

non-stainless parts of the truck so the tailgate the bumpers the wheel arches if you want to keep

those looking extra perfect extra nice the folks at abstract ocean have you well covered but they've

also got a ton of great stuff for s for x for three for y for rivian r1s r1t check them out

a lot of lighting kits the one of their biggest sellers the tempered glass custom fit screen

protectors for each of the cars just go take a look abstract ocean dot com and use the coupon code

rtl podcast at checkout to get 15 off of your first order that coupon code again has no spaces in it

it's just rtl podcast the snap plate and the newer stronger snap plate plus available for all the

teslas as well i'm a big fan of this because it is a nice clean minimalist design and it'll go on

safely and securely but also if you ever want to take it off for any reason at all it will come off

nice and easily and without leaving behind any tape residue or anything unwanted so it'll be

like it was never there but when it's on it's on there nice and snug and it's just again got a nice

clean minimalist look to get yours go to every amp dot com slash rtl and don't forget to use the coupon

code rtl as well for a discount on those they are both made from recycled made in the usa plastics

with stainless steel reinforcements good stuff on the snap plates immaculate reflections that's my

detailer here in the greater san francisco bay area and if you are in or going to be in this

neck of the woods with a car that you care about whether it's your tesla or something else in your

garage i encourage you prior to your arrival in the area to reach out to immaculate reflections

and schedule in an appointment for either ceramic coating so that you don't have to worry about

waxing your car for the next five plus years maybe you want to do paint correction to get all the

little flaws taken out of the paint maybe you want to do some paint protection film on the front

end of the car or all the key areas of the car or the entire car whatever you want to do there is

a discount waiting for you all you got to do is mention that you're a ride the lightning listener

so go to irdetailing.com and when you are done browsing around when you go to the the contact

link there when you reach out just mention in your message that you're a ride the

lightning listener and any work that you book in will have that ride the lightning listener

discount wait not approved apply there we go sorry my brain is failing it's getting late

and i need some dinner that is clearly what's happening right now finally my patreon i know

podcast that is the website to go to if you are feeling up for supporting me i would love it

i'd be humbled and grateful if you chose to throw me five bucks a month that'll get you

early access and add free early access to each week's episode if you jump up to that ten dollar

per month tier that's the most popular one you'll get the add free early access and all of those

lightning round mini episodes that i do as well so head on over to patreon.com

slash tesla podcast if the month to month thing isn't your isn't your thing but you'd like to

support me and you'd rather just pay once for an entire year of support there is an annual

pledge option as well as the labradors are rumbling on the couch over here if that's if

one of those about to fall off the couch oh no they they recovered before flopping onto the ground

anyway there's a uh there's a 10 discount on the annual pledge if you want to go that route

that's my way of saying thank you for committing to a full year of patreon support so again one

more time patreon.com slash tesla podcast or click the link in the episode description you

can follow this podcast on any of the big podcast feeds whether it's apple podcasts or spotify or

tune in or youtube podcasts just search ride the lightning tesla when it pops up click the follow

button and then you will be notified every time there is a new episode which in my case is every

sunday at nine a.m eastern six a.m pacific and lily that is enough little lady come on guys

i'm trying to do a podcast here daisy daisy hold on up us wait oh my goodness these guys are not

stopping hold on daisy my goodness okay mine off let's go let's go there we go all right just take

a little break here that's all we got to do uh where did i leave off ah you can follow me on x

and or on instagram my username is dmc underscore ryan you can also email me anytime and my email

address is tesla podcast at gmail.com before i say goodbye for this week let me say hello and

thank you to the top tier patreon backers i'll start with the maximum plaid crew they are

jonathan wales cameron clark daniel grummer seth capello nick and tony the galpin family

ryan from new york city darren nickle cos barns patrick wisneski gill cabrera

todd badger joe edgel kevin yank the tesla owners club of sandwalking valley willsteadman

justin pares jeremy harris chris beach tom mills choreo donnell erin jon cody joel sap

paul casarino chris osbourne kb adam lavoix jason chelukas travis krenzel bruce otterstein

tom behan josh pennington john from cream ridge new jersey

dustin hart derek finley charles clement daemon cline jeff brown jerry slinger

corbett brian bertoglio kim bae troy severs nick jacoby chip hooper

matt chinander robert moran rob and christopher man next up the roadster in space tier backers

huge extra thanks to these extra generous folks pete white lile austin steve radspinner

fernando cordero laughton from chicago shawn nightig neal weaver jackson wallis

rulf and jennifer evers howard anthony smith victoria aya coveto tesla hitchhiker 42 carol

weston robert from near philly american home contractors dug carry michael gallo and tony

figaroa and finally the grandfathered in plaid level supporters big thanks for your continued

support to george cassiopo logan willis peter chalet eric randolph dory and steve guberman

the tesla owners club of taiwan ron lee charlie gillespie jeff angwin chase cabaneas the lydia

family erin alchool jared brown gerome strack jamie dalton mike and barber from louisville

matt nixon the tesla owners club of wisconsin ish not elon musk in quotes peter and the bear

boys of colorado and that'll wrap it up for a very long these these uh earnings call episodes do

tend to be fairly long uh so i won't drag this one on any longer i will simply say thank you for

your time your attention the both of those things are are precious valuable resources that you we

all only have a limited quantity of in a given day in a given week in a given life so thank you

for listening i do appreciate it happy electric motoring my friends and i'll see you back here

next week

elon musk people don't like elon musk the guy founded paypal and tesla and people are like

climate change also have you been in a tesla have you been in a tesla my buddy let me drive

his tesla i laughed out loud at how fast it went been clinically depressed my entire life

on dozens of medications in a tesla for 13 seconds cured forever i mean i think a tesla

is the most fun thing you could possibly buy ever that's what it's meant to be our goal is to make

it's it's not exactly a car it's actually a thing to maximize enjoyment it's maximum fun

Episode 534: Tesla Q3 Earnings Call Highlights and Analysis

About this episode

Tesla Model S

Tesla Model Y

Tesla Model 3

leasing prices

MSRP

left hand drive

full electric

Renault Clio

Dacia Sandero

Volkswagen T-Roc

autonomy

Tesla Cybertruck

Chevrolet Silverado EV

Gmc Sierra

Ford F150 Lightning

supercharger

active safety features

FSD

powertrain

battery pack

Tesla Semi

first generation product

volume production

Tesla Model X

EV

Rivian R1S

roadside assistance

AI

winter tire and wheel package

summer tires

Abstract Ocean

Rivian R1T

Request an Explanation

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