Episode 548: Model S and X Discontinued in Earnings Call Shocker

On this week's episode of Ride the Lightning, the Tesla and EV podcast, Tesla's Q4 earnings

call opens with news that is somehow both not surprising and shocking, all at the same

time the Model S and Model X are being discontinued.

It's the end of an era for Tesla as the company looks to redefine itself in the coming decade.

I've got so much to say about this, plus more highlights and analysis from the call.

Join me.

What's happening friends? I'm Ryan McCaffrey, joining you for episode 548 of Ride the Lightning,

the Tesla and EV podcast, publishing on February 1st, 2026.

We have already completed one month in the new year.

Well, I want to get right to it this week, so I will open with some quick setup and then

we're going to get right into the earnings call, skipping the shareholder letter.

Normally I start there.

We'll come back to that a little bit later, but we're going to get to the call as soon

as possible this week.

So first of all, I posted this week's Patreon poll a couple days earlier than usual so that

I could give folks time to get their votes in before the earnings call this past Wednesday.

The question was, what do you most want to hear Tesla speak about on this week's earnings

call and with about 300 votes cast before the earnings call, I took a screen grab on

Tuesday night just in case anybody decided to vote after the call.

It was pretty close.

33% of you voted that you wanted to hear about FSD slash autopilot policy changes, which

certainly makes sense in the wake of last week's news, which was not great about autopilot

being discontinued.

26% of you said you wanted to hear about FSD hardware upgrades for hardware 3 cars and

20% of you were hoping to hear about full self-driving unsupervised progress.

Well, one of those groups got their wish on the earnings call this week, the other two

did not.

You'll hear which one quote unquote one in just a little while.

And then secondly, I hope all of you who are kindly supporting my efforts here on the

podcast on my Patreon page enjoyed this week's Lightning Round mini episode, which again I

put up last weekend.

I wanted to get it out to you as early as possible ahead of the earnings call because

the topic this week was about the five questions I would have asked if I had had the mic, so

to speak, on the earnings call during the shareholder, retail shareholder question portion of the

earnings call I should say.

So check that out.

If you're interested, I guess now at this point you can just go back and figure out

what you can you can hear what I would have asked that versus what actually did get asked.

Thank you to all of you kindly supporting me on Patreon.

I do this every single week, every Sunday, a new episode comes out like clockwork, 52

weeks a year.

If you see it in your heart to throw me a little support, I'd be super grateful for

just five bucks a month.

You will get an ad free episode and early access to that ad free episode every week.

If you step up to that most popular $10 a month tier, you'll get the early access ad

free and all of those lightning round mini episodes.

So check it out on my Patreon page found at patreon.com slash Tesla podcast.

And with that, let's get right into it.

The Q4 2025 earnings call from Tesla.

We start as always with CEO Elon Musk's opening statement.

This one is a doozy.

It's 12 minutes long.

So buckle up and here we go.

We've updated the Tesla mission to amazing abundance.

And this is intended to send a message of optimism about the future.

Like we're most likely headed to an exciting amazing era of abundance.

And I think with the advent or with the continued growth of AI and robotics, I think we actually

are headed to a future of universal high income, not universal basic income, but universal

high income.

There's going to be a lot of change along the way, but that is what I see as the most

likely outcome.

So, so I think that's that that it makes sense to update Tesla's mission to reflect

that that goal.

And, and obviously along that way, we're going to keep improving safety, driving down the

cost of goods and getting people access to anything they need without compromise and

still making sure that the environment is great, nature is great, and people can have

whatever they want, which seems like probably the best future.

So I'm open to other ideas, but that sounds like it sounds like it sounds like if you

could say what is the best future, you could possibly imagine.

I guess it would be that everyone can have whatever they want, including amazing medical

care and, and, but we still keep, you know, the beauty of nature and, and, and earth.

I think that's probably the best outcome.

And, and we're seeing obviously the first steps along that way this year for Tesla,

first major steps, as we increase vehicle autonomy and begin to produce optimist robots

at scale.

We're making very, very big investments.

So this is going to be a very big CapEx year as Bible will get into that that is deliberate

because we're making big investments for an epic future.

So I think all these investments make a lot of sense.

We'll continue to make sure that when we do spend capital it is spent very efficiently.

But it's a lot of things, you know, major investments in batteries and the entire supply

chain of batteries.

So we're also going to be significant manufacturers of solar cells and we're making massive investments

in AI chips.

So but I think these will make a ton of, ton of strategic sense.

And then I guess I have like one, I guess, like, not exactly, it's not exactly bad news,

but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's time to basically bring the Model S and

X programs to, to an end with an honorable discharge because we're really moving into

a future that is based on autonomy and, and so if you're interested in buying a Model

S and X, now would be the time to order it because we expect to wind down S and X production

in next quarter and, and, and basically stop production of Model S and X next quarter.

We'll, we'll obviously continue to support the Model S and X programs for as long as

people have the vehicles, but, but we're going to take the Model S and X production space

in our Fremont factory and convert that into an Optimus factory, which will with the, with

the long-term goal of having a million units a year of, of Optimus robots in the current

SX space in Fremont.

So that is a slightly sad, but, but, but it's, but it is, it is, it is time to bring

the SX programs to, to an end and shift, shift really, it's part, it's part of our overall

shift to an autonomous future as my profile picture on, on Exit for a few months there,

the future is autonomous.

And I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to stop Elon right there and talk about this.

And I would like to apologize up front because this might go on for a while.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this segment takes up the bulk of this episode, but this

was clearly the absolutely earthquake news of the week.

This was just an absolutely seismic event.

That's the term I was looking for.

Now as I said at the very top, this is both absolutely shocking, but also not at all surprising.

In fact, as a few of you kindly pointed out, I actually predicted this a year early.

This was one of my 2025 Tesla New Year's predictions for the episode that I do right

at the beginning of every year.

I make my New Year's Tesla predictions and this was in there for 2025.

And just at the beginning of this year, when I was making my 26 predictions, I went back

and scored my 25 ones, and I had to bring this one up and say, well, thankfully that

didn't happen, so no points awarded to myself in this imaginary game.

But sure enough, this has now happened in 2026.

So the not at all surprising part comes from the fact that as we all know well by now,

sales of the Model S and Model X are continuing to dwindle.

They just continue to go in the wrong direction.

The slight refresh they got earlier last year, gosh, we're into 2026, the slight refresh

they got for the 2026 model year did not meaningfully spike sales in any way.

And in fact, to quantify this from the new shareholder letter for this quarter, we know

that year over year, total deliveries of the other vehicles group dropped 40%.

That is incredible and unfortunately not the good kind of incredible.

Now a lot of that is Cybertruck, which has its own sales challenges and we're going

to get to Cybertruck later and so is Elon, so stay tuned for that.

But a lot of that is SNX2.

The thing is, Tesla haters out there, they would tell you that this is a clear sign,

the 40% drop year over year in the other vehicles category.

They would say well this is a clear sign, the whole company is sinking.

But really, it is just the more expensive vehicles.

3 and Y deliveries, which account for 97% of the company's total deliveries, were down,

they were down 7% year over year and so the total factoring everything together, there

was a 9% drop in deliveries in 2025, which as I covered at the beginning of the year

going over those production delivery numbers is not great, certainly I'm not going to sit

here and say that yeah, Tesla is just on fire right now, wow this is amazing, no, 9% drop

overall in deliveries isn't great, but the bulk of the dip was coming from the more expensive,

the premium cars that are just a much, much lower volume, but anyway, the thing about

the S and the X is, and I've talked about this, they needed a far more substantial redesign,

whether that's a complete new sheet of paper, just full redesign, new look, new everything,

or at least a significant technology upgrade, I'm talking 500 miles of range like the Lucid

air is capable of, steer by wire like the Cybertruck has, 800 volt architecture like the

Cybertruck has, 500 kilowatt max charging like the Cybertruck has, etc. The S and X needed that stuff

and I imagine that Tesla simply wasn't willing to make that investment in the Model S and Model X,

which is a shame because, and I know that something that is stated in one year that over time things

change, right, they're not necessarily policy or practice in one year is not necessarily going to

be that still the same practice or policy years down the road because things do change, but Elon

had always said for many years that S and X would always be the technology leaders at Tesla and

that they would get all the good stuff first and that then that stuff would find its way down market

and that, as we all know, never happened with the S and X, not at least the last, well not

since the Cybertruck, that's what I'm actually getting at, the Cybertruck's advancements,

I named some of them just a minute ago, they never came to the Model S or Model X. The last

major technology leap that S and X took over over three and Y, quite frankly, was 2021 with new S and

X, the Plaid Drive train, the improvements to the thermal cooling system, there were a few other

ones, a few other smaller things, but really for the last, you can honestly say for the past

four now going on five years, four and a half, let's just call it, the S and X have

pretty well stagnated in the technology department, not that they're old and busted or anything like

that, I'm not trying to say that, but they have not been pushed forward the way that Cybertruck

absolutely pushed forward, from an engineering perspective, from a technology perspective,

S and X never followed suit, and so that's why I say that it would seem to me that

without Lars Morevi, chief engineer here to ask, it would seem to me that those cars just needed

that and Tesla wasn't willing to make what would have required a no doubt substantial investment,

so the question you have to ask yourself, and you're probably already asking yourself is, well,

is the Cybertruck going to be next because sales for that are going in the wrong direction too,

and it's been that way for some time, well, again, I hate to tease it, but I want to stay on S and

X for now, so stay tuned for more on the Cybertruck later in the call, but one of many thoughts,

I'm in the process of going through all my thoughts here, I'll tell you what, I just want to pause

for a second to tell you kind of how my day went yesterday, I was listening to the call and I was

taking notes, and when Elon stopped and said, well, I've got kind of sad, sort of sad news,

as you heard there, I was like, what is this going to be? And then when he said it, I was shocked,

like I said, even though I made a prediction about this a year ago, it still shocked me,

I just, I can't believe they've actually done it, but this was rocking me, I mean, it really was,

I was thinking about it all day, and it was really bumming me out in a very, just a car

way, not like in a real life, nothing happened to my friends or family members or pets or anything,

so it's not like that, but it really rocked, and I was getting, I got so many texts from basically

all the Tesla people in my life were texting me, I got a ton of messages on Patreon and email on

Instagram, like this, this rocked everybody, and to the point where I just like, I listened to the

call, I took some initial notes, and then I went back and fleshed out my notes and just wrote down

everything that was in my head that I wanted to organize into a thought, and now you're hearing

that stuff, but it even got to the point where like, I managed to get all my, kind of all my

initial thoughts down on paper last night, late last night, and then I thought, well, you know what,

I haven't taken Daisy out for a walk today, which I knew, because I was like, I knew I needed to focus

after my day job was over for the day, I needed to focus on this earnings call, and you know,

because it's just, I've got to record this thing, and so I ended up, after I got all my notes down,

I took Daisy for a walk at like 1030 at night, for two reasons, one, because she deserves a

walk every day, but two, I knew that I was like, you know what, I just want to clear my head on this,

and so normally I would listen to music, I would wear headphones, and I would listen to music while

I'm walking Daisy, I didn't bring any headphones, didn't bring any music, I just was alone with my

thoughts while walking the dog last night, and sure enough, like more stuff popped into my head,

so I took out my phone, and I was like dictating my notes into the phone, and yeah, like this,

it just, it really, it really affected me, like in a, in a, almost, I guess I wasn't expecting

this to hit me like this, but it absolutely did, so I, I want to, that aside, let me get back to

what I'm saying, and I apologize if I'm a little scatterbrained here, because this is just a pretty

unprecedented moment in Tesla history, like I've been doing this podcast

for 10 plus years now, and this is, this is the first time that Tesla's ever

discontinued a car while I've been doing this podcast, yes, they discontinued the, the original

Roadster, although that was a plan, that was a plan to just be a, they had a contract with Lotus

for Lotus to build them, so many cars in so many years, so this is, this is hitting different than,

than that, because Roadster was always just a bridge to their own cars in their own factory,

but anyway, getting back to this, one of the many thoughts that occurred to me is that with

SNX sunsetting next quarter, the anonymous tip that I shared with you at the top of the podcast

last week about the Model YL being introduced next month and sales staff being trained on,

on how to differentiate it between, you know, from the Model X, I gotta say that tip

is, is looking a lot stronger now, the, again, that I just had to, like I said, I was just

honest with you guys that I, this was the first time that, that this source had ever reached

out to me, so I was clear that I couldn't take that, that tip to the bank, but I wanted to share it

anyway, and this week, just one week later, that tip to me is looking stronger now, because I think

with no more Model X, before too long, you know, in the next few months, Tesla will no longer have

to worry about Model YL and Model X, quote unquote, competing with each other, like you,

you can, Tesla can put out a, a $60,000 Model YL, and there will be a market for it, some of those

people maybe would have bought an X, some of those people maybe just wanted a bigger, longer Y,

but I, I do think that this, this does strengthen the case for the Model YL and for that tip that

I shared last week to indeed be correct, so again, we'll see, we'll see in about a month from now.

Another thought that occurred to me, does this open the door for a Plaid Model 3,

and maybe even a Plaid Model Y, and as much as I would like that to be true,

my gut says probably not, now sure, Tesla could do it, they absolutely could do it,

they could say, well, you know what, S and X are gone, but we want to expand the off, like Model YL

is an, would be an expansion of the Model Y line, they could do a Plaid 3 or Y, now would they do it

in addition to the vanilla performance 3 and Y, probably not, it would most likely replace the

performance, but I just don't, the reason that I don't see them doing it and it, and I can't believe

I'm about to say this, like I wrote this down and I'm now looking at the words that I wrote,

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I think you'd probably agree that by and large Tesla

doesn't want to make drivers cars anymore, and the performance models of 3 and Y already sell

the least amount compared to the standard and the premium variance of the Model 3 and the Model Y,

we don't have numbers, I've always estimated just from the many many Teslas I see in my area,

so again it's just an eyeball approximation and it's not real data, but it seems to me like

it's about 1 in 10, our performance 3s are performance wise, 1 out of every 10 3s, I mean

the new Y obviously the performance version only just shipped, so they're next to none of them out

there yet, in fact I only just saw my first one this past week on the road, but anyway,

the thing is a Plaid 3 and or Plaid Y would be even more expensive than the

performance 3 and Y that we have now, and would thus, by just virtue of being more money, they

would sell even fewer units, and Tesla's not looking, they're still looking to sell cars,

but they're looking to sell 3s and Ys, not Ss and Xs, so for that reason I just don't see them

making a purely high performance 3 and Y when the focus is fully and completely on autonomy,

again, would love to be wrong here, but I don't see a Plaid 3 or Y, a Trimotor 3 or Y

coming down the line anytime soon, instead as we know, the last, the final, high performance car

that Tesla will seemingly ever make is the new Roadster, which really is the end of the line

for drivers cars from Tesla, and I've said this before, but it's kind of poetic

since the original Roadster is how the company started, so if this is how the drivers era of

Tesla ends 20 years later, 20 years after the start of it, then there's a little, that's a

little poetic, there's a little sweetness there, but still sad, but this also reaffirms my belief

that the Roadster isn't going to last long once it does finally go into production and start getting

made and delivered. I've said this before, I give it 4 years in production, tops, maybe less,

that's how long the original Roadster lasted from 2008 to 2012 or early 12 or late 2011,

it's about 4 years, so I think, because really there's just not going to be a huge market for a

200 plus thousand dollar car, and remember it was, it was listed as 200 thousand dollars base price

eight years ago, I guess, yeah, eight plus years ago now, and not a lot of things have gotten cheaper

in the last eight plus years, very much including cars, so that's why I say at least 200 thousand

dollars, no, there isn't a market for any 200 thousand dollar car that's going to be more than

five to ten thousand units, especially when it's a two seat, I know they originally unveiled it with

a plus two back seat, but that seats, if it's even in there in the final car, it's going to be

functionally useless, but there's just not going to be a market, a substantial market,

for a 200 plus thousand dollar super high performance, like a super car, it's just,

there just isn't going to be, so that's why I say between that and the fact that Tesla clearly

doesn't want to make driver's cars anymore, they want to make autonomous transportation devices,

that's why I think the the Roadster will get made, but once the demand runs dry,

that's going to be it, they're going to shut that down. Another thought I had about the end of

particularly Model S production is that in my opinion is that the final Model S should go into

a museum, and it should not go to a customer, and I realize that maybe that's in some weird way

selfish of me to say, even though it's not like I'm saying I should get it, but I would just,

I would like to see it go to a museum, and I also think that the final Model S should be painted

in signature red in order to just have a nice beautiful bookend to Model S number one,

which went to then Tesla board member Steve Gervetson, he had that car. Now that car,

VIN number one, Steve drove it, he owned it for a while, and he has since donated it to the

Peterson Auto Museum, where you can go see it by the way, it's currently residing down in the vault,

which is their fancy term for their basement, but there are a lot of cool cars down there that

aren't up in the main museum display, but since I made these notes right after the evening,

after the earnings call there, Wednesday night, Steve actually posted to X and said that he is

getting the final car, so I don't know if, I mean my guess would be that he texted Elon

right away and said, hey, can I buy the last one, and Elon said yes, and that's why Steve posted,

so again, I would, with no disrespect or offense to Steve, I would rather it go straight into a

museum, but at least we know history says that Steve will take good care of it, and it is a poetic

full circle in that regard, that the customer number one gets the final car, and then history

also tells us that Steve will donate it to a museum, whether it's the Peterson or another one,

when he's done with it, so that is what's, the signature red thing, I'm gonna hold firm on that,

I actually, I reached out to Lars, and I need to reach out to Franz too, and just float the

idea, now I posted that on X, and Steve, Steve Jervitsen, he liked the post, so it clearly means

that Steve would be on board if Tesla asked him if he wanted that car painted in signature red,

if it happens, please give me full credit, no, I'm half kidding, I would like a little credit

if the final car is signature red, it's entirely possible that Franz and Tesla and the team have

already had the same thought as I have there, but anyway, here's another bit of fallout from the end

of production on the Model S, that the 18650 form factor battery cells from Panasonic that have

been made, well, at Gigafactory 1, Gigantavada ever since it opened, Tesla will no longer need

those, there will be no more 18650 cars, unless, unless New Roadster uses them, which is possible,

I can't rule that out, I mean, it's, would seem like they would go with their own cells, the 4680s,

but unless that proves to be the case, the 18650s will be retired as well, which I don't know what

that means for their relationship with Panasonic at all, but that's a random factoid about all of

this, here's another thought I had, Lucid, and certainly Rivian as well, and maybe even a few

other companies, those guys are jumping up and down, throwing a party that Tesla is waving the

white flag on SNX, because those companies are both, as of now, low volume automakers, Rivian

is looking to break that, they're looking to go higher volume with the R2 this year,

and I'm rooting like heck for them, but as of now, those two companies are pretty low volume,

so even though SNX are low volume, if Lucid gets, I don't know, half of the Model S business,

people that wanted a Model S, but now will not be able to get one, that's a huge boon to Lucid,

and if Rivian and Lucid, I don't know, more or less split the Model X customer base,

the would-be customer base, because Lucid has the new gravity, and of course Rivian has the R1S,

that's a huge boost to each of those companies, so those two fellow EV-only startup automakers,

those guys are jumping for joy at Tesla's decision here, in fact they're probably the only ones

celebrating this, but I have one other crazy thought before I'm gonna get a little,

not emotional, but like I want to get into my feelings a little bit on this,

and that is this, and I was telling my wife this, and she, to her credit, she kept a straight face

when she could have just rolled her eyes, but the thought I had, and I'm gonna guess that a number

of you had this same thought, even though I cannot afford a Model S, and it's actually honestly too

big for my life, like it's too big of a car, hearing this news made me want to buy a Plaid Model S

before they go away, because as I've said many times, I feel like it is the best overall car

in the world when you factor everything in, and yeah, I just like, I've never owned one,

I mean, there was a long period of time where I badly wanted one, I was long before the Model

3 came around, and I first got into Tesla, and it's like, man, is there some way I could swing it

that I could get a Model S, and it worked out pretty well for me, where I ended up getting

Model 3 performance, and then new Model 3 performance, but this, maybe some of you are

nodding along right now with me, like it just, that was the somewhat irrational thought that

popped into my head was, man, this makes me want to buy a Plaid Model S before they go away, but

I want to come back now to how first world sad this makes me, and like I was saying, it's not

this, and I'm not sure if Tesla expected this reaction, it's not like a big wave of anti-Tesla,

it's not people, for the most part people aren't angry, although I'll tell you, I did get a text,

one of the texts I got from a good friend of mine, who's had an S and two X's, he's on a second X,

he's the sweetest guy, I love him to death, and he texted me like his initial reaction,

he was mad, like he was upset that Tesla was leaving behind the luxury buyers, the higher end

buyers, he was not happy, he was like genuinely upset, not in like a throw his phone at the

wall kind of way, but like he was up, he wasn't happy about it, and I think he was, I mean sure

he was probably sad too, but yeah, he was upset, and I don't blame him, but again I got so many

texts, like last week, the whole Tesla community was pretty darn mad at Tesla,

and I'm one of them, we all, and understandably so, justifiably so, at the whole removing,

removal of basic autopilot from the cars, that's, talked about it last week, I don't need to get

back into it, but everybody was mad at Tesla last week, and this week, I think everybody's

sad at Tesla, like sad for Tesla, and sad about Tesla, and well, speaking of sad at Tesla,

there are probably a lot of employees there that are kind of sad about this, like I'm sure

there are people that have worked on GA1, which is the SNX assembly line in Fremont,

that if they've probably worked on that line for years, like they probably have some serious

veterans that have been building those cars for years and years and years, that are sad about,

even if those people, those people are going to be building Optimus, Optimai, they're going to

be building robots, so they're going to be fine, that's the good news, but I'm sure that there are

some people at Tesla that are sad as well, but the thing is that what makes me, again,

car sad, not real life sad, nobody, a person didn't die, a beloved pet didn't die, it's a car,

but the Model S genuinely changed automotive history. Again, even the biggest Tesla hater

that's like hate listening to this right now, I hope there's nobody that's doing that, like if

you're hate listening to this, just go listen to something you get enjoyment out of, but

even the biggest Tesla hater would have to acknowledge that the Model S changed automotive

history. The biggest gear head, the biggest like anti EV, EV hater, petrol head, like even that guy

would have to acknowledge that the Model S changed the game.

To remind you, the Model S won Motor Trends Car of the Year award in 2013 and it did so

unanimously, their entire panel of voters chose it unanimously, which never happens,

and then years later, it went on to be named Motor Trends Ultimate Car of the Year, which was

like a decade by decade competition, and it beat out 70 years worth of other cars to be named

Motor Trends Ultimate Car of the Year. And if you were following Tesla in the early days,

or even if you weren't, it's totally okay if you weren't, in fact statistically most of you

weren't, and that's okay because this has become an EV movement that the Model S, it didn't pioneer

it, it didn't technically start it, but it was the big bang moment of the EV universe, I would argue.

And so if you weren't following all this in the early years, like I was, let me just tell you that

the Model S had to be not just good, it had to be amazing for Tesla to even have a chance to survive

because they weren't making any money as Tesla wasn't profitable until they finished

the production hell of Model 3. That entire time, Roadster SX Tesla was not a profitable company,

and in order for them to even have a chance to make it long term, the Model S had to be incredible,

and it was, and it was. It's unbelievable if you kind of go back and look at it, like

my guy, the DeLorean, okay, I know, take a shot, right, if you're playing the Ride the Lightning

drinking game, oh Ryan mentioned DeLorean again, but John DeLorean, a seasoned Detroit, seasoned

auto industry executive, engineer who became an executive, had built lots of cars over the years,

the GTO, he started the muscle car era, arguably, you know, became the head of Pontiac. The guy

starts a new car company, goes to build his own car from scratch, and it doesn't work, right,

not long term, right, it doesn't last. Tesla comes along, Lotus builds them their first car,

the Roadster, this proof of concept, let's show everybody that EVs are actually cool and fun,

and then let's build our own car for a lot less money and really start to transition the world

to sustainable transport, as the company mission was at the time, and they actually did it by

building, they did something no one had ever done, which was build an amazing electric,

a battery electric vehicle, you know, GM, sure, they built the EV1, it wasn't an amazing car,

I don't want to take anything away from it, but that car was never going to sell

as many units as the Model S sold, it would have evolved and iterated, but the S was incredible,

and it had to be for Tesla to have a chance, and I can honestly, for me, for many of you,

let me start there, for many of you the Model S is what got you into Tesla,

and quite possibly what got you into EVs, I can't say that because I had the extraordinary good

fortune, I've told the story many times about the DeLorean club event we had at the Tesla showroom

here in the Bay Area, I had the very good fortune of being able to experience behind the wheel,

driving, I drove the original Roadster and that's the car that flipped the light switch for me.

But the Model S was the first EV that was actually a legitimately great car by any and

every metric, safety, performance, cargo volume, efficiency, technology, styling,

like you name it, the Model S was a Swiss Army knife, and it was amazing, and that's why it won

Motor Trends Car of the Year award unanimously, and why it was their ultimate car of the year,

the Model S started the EV movement as we know it today. I still remember the first time I drove

the Model S, it was brief and it was with my cousin Pat, may he rest in peace, Pat was on the

reservation list before the car came out, he had put down a $5,000 deposit and so that is how

we got a test drive when Pat came up from Arizona to visit me in the fall of 2012.

At that time they had started deliveries of signature cars and they were starting general

production, they were only giving test drives to reservation holders at that point, so Pat went

first of course, I would never take that from him, he took the first drive, we had the Tesla Rep

in the car with us of course then, and then Pat and the Tesla Rep very graciously let me get

behind the wheel and drive the car, and then in March of 2013 Pat got his car, and I wasn't there

for his delivery but I flew down like the weekend after he got it, right after he got it, and we

just drove around all weekend, and we had so much fun, I will never, I will never forget that,

I'm sorry, I will never forget that, man, this is making me miss Pat, I'm sorry.

I don't recall Pat ever outright saying this, but I think I can pretty confidently say

that that Model S, that was his favorite thing he ever owned in life, that was his favorite,

now he loved his Harleys, he was a motorcycle guy too, but that Model S, he loved that car

so much, and he and I shared so many great times and great adventures in that car and because of

that car, and I think that Pat would be pretty sad right now too if he were here, he would be sad

about the S and X going away, now of course the Model S went on to, it got kind of forgotten about,

you might remember, the S got pretty well forgotten about for a few years there amidst the launch and

the production hell, the ramp up of production on the Model 3, that was when Tesla was trying to,

as I was saying earlier, not just become a profitable company, but that first and foremost

just survive, and they had to ramp Model 3 to do that, and so the Model S kind of fell behind,

like the three literally had more range, the long range three for 50 grand literally had more range

than the, I think it was $70,000 Model S 75D at the time, and so the S kind of stagnated for a

little while there, but then Tesla started paying a little more attention to it, we got the Raven,

we got the P100D, but then the real second life for the Model S, I would argue, came in the form

of the aforementioned Model S Plaid, now sure there had been quicker and quicker Model S's over the

years, Tesla never stopped making that car quicker, they never stopped throwing more power at it,

the P85 started things off right in 2012 right out of the gate, then the P85D added the second

motor and a whole bunch more power, dropped that 0 to 60 down into the low threes from the P85 was

like 4.4 seconds, a software update took it to 4.2 over the air software update, P85D was 3.2,

then they got it down to 3.1 with a software update, then the Ludacris hardware came in,

you had P85D Ludacris for a real short amount of time and then P90D Ludacris,

and there are people listening right now that own each of these cars, so now I'm saying P90D

and my P90D people are nodding their head right now, and P90D dropped it down to like 2.9, 2.8

seconds, 0 to 60, then the P100D pushed it further, that car I want to say was down at like 2.6

or 2.5, then the Raven powertrain came in, got it down to around I believe it was 2.4 and then

the Model S and Model X disappeared, they were out of production for about six months,

and in that time Tesla built the new as we still call it now, and I guess maybe we'll call it that

forever, but the new SNX, the Palladium drivetrain, that was the code name Palladium, as Raven was

the code name for the previous one, but the the Plaid, the new SNX widened the Model S, gave it

fatter rear tires, staggered stance, I guess some of the earlier S's had staggered tires,

but widened the car out in the back, I guess end in the front too, just widened it all around,

and of course the Model S Plaid with its three-motor setup and became the first production car to ever

break the two-second 0 to 60 mark, and it did so in a gigantic 5,000 pound sedan, but the thing

about the Plaid, it wasn't just a one-off party trick that you do at full state of charge, the Model

S Plaid keeps pulling hard at any speed with that tri-motor setup, if you're already going 90 in a Model

S Plaid and you hammer that accelerator pedal, the car will rocket you forward, it's stupid,

like that's the best word I can come up for, and I mean that in a good way, not as an insult,

or not in a derogatory way, the Model 3 performance, particularly the new one,

which I recognize only came out well after the Plaid, but the Model 3 performance is quick,

and I love it, and I still love hammering that accelerator when I get a safe chance to do so,

but the Plaid S is stupid, that's the level of performance that the Plaid has,

and it just, and that fixed one of the weaknesses of previous Tesla performance cars,

plenty of you listening right now own Plaid's, and I know how much all of you love them,

because many of you have told me how much you love them, in fact I would be curious

if any of you out there, like I was saying earlier about how I had the thought of,

even though I can't afford a Plaid, and it's too big for my life anyway, that this news,

this sun setting of the SNX makes me want to buy a Plaid S, I wonder if any of you out there

that have the means to do so are actually going to do it, maybe some of you have already ordered,

even if you hadn't planned to, I would love to hear from you, especially if you had no actual

plan to do this, but you saw it get discontinued and you decided to order one,

reach out to me, TeslaPodcast at gmail.com, or call in on the ride the lightning hotline,

which I'll give you, you can find the dial in information for that in the episode description.

Boy, I've been talking for so long, which I warned you, I warned you that's probably what

was going to happen, I got to take a quick pause here and mention my friends at Accelerate Auto

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trusted EV protection options in the industry. And now the Model X, I have not forgotten about you,

Model X. Oh the X, the Fabragé egg of cars as Elon would always refer to it. It was the first

mass produced car to have Gullwing doors, yes I know that Tesla calls them falcon wing doors

because they hinge in a second place, but they're in the Gullwing family. The first mass produced

car to have Gullwing doors since my beloved DeLorean and with the Model X sun setting here,

we will once again go back to no mass produced cars having Gullwing or falcon wing doors.

The X is an awesome car, it's awesome. The 6 seater was always so sweet to me,

it was, it just always felt like the cabin of a private airplane in the 6 seater configuration

with those fancy second row seats on the nice pedestals. And if you talk to Model X owners out

there they'll tell you a lot of them will say that their favorite thing about the car isn't

the falcon wing doors, some of them will say that. But I promise you a lot of them will say that

instead their favorite thing about the X that even the S doesn't have, in fact no other Tesla has it,

is the auto present and auto close doors, the invisible butler if you will. Meaning you simply

approach the car and the driver's door senses your phone key or key fob if we're talking about an

older X and it simply opens the driver door for you, you get in the car without touching the door

and then you simply tap the brake pedal and the driver's door closes. And I've spoken to so many

Model X owners over the years who just love that and they then they get in another car whether

even if it's another Tesla and they they get bummed out that they don't have that feature.

That is the secret favorite feature I would say, the secret best feature of the Model X.

And there has truly never been a car in history like the Model X, either before it or since,

since it debuted. I remember being at the Model X launch event. It was actually just like a month,

month and a half after this podcast started. It's one of the earliest episodes because that event

was at the end of September in 2015 and I started this podcast at the beginning of August of 2015.

And I remember Elon talking on stage when he's presenting the the car about it being able to

fit all five of his kids in it in the seven seat configuration, right? Now, Elon has gone on to have

a couple more Model X fulls worth of kids. He's he's into Reboven territory now but the X was

Tesla's family hauler and it quickly grew to outsell the Model S because SUVs just tend to outsell

sedans in the current market, particularly the the American market here. I looked this up at their

peak. The SNX combined sold 101,312 units in 2017, not coincidentally because that's right before

and right as the Model 3 arrived because in 2017 the only way you could get a Model 3 was to be a

Tesla employee. All the 2017's went to went to employees then in early 2018 they started

delivering them to SNX owners and then after that to Tesla to excuse me to Model 3 reservation holders

who didn't already own an SNX. So 101,312 that was the peak that was the best year that SNX ever had

and the best estimate is that it was about a 55,45 split favoring the X so call it like really just

call it about maybe 56,000 of those were roughly were X's and about 45,000 or so were Model S's.

In fact our friend the Tesla tips or Sawyer Merit went back and did some math and said that at least

up to now there's been about 740,000 total S's and X's combined and it's so which means that when it

does when the last ones do roll off the line in Q2 whether that's middle Q2, end Q2 whatever

that it's going to end up at about 750k maybe even a little more we'll see if there's a

there could be a little spike here a little surge for this last run of production but

740k or so to date and that's a heck of a lot of EV's over the years but

I'll say that I'm not just first world sad about the discontinuation of these two great

cars specifically again I've already said it on this podcast you've all heard me say 100 times

I think the the Model S plaid's the best overall car in the world and I'm a car guy

thing is you guys know that I'm a car guy that's what got me into Tesla was the cars themselves

the electrification was second to me at the time it was the cars themselves and the technology and

they're the just radical rethink of what a car was and the performance of them

that's what got me into Tesla and that's why I started this podcast is because I love the cars

again Tesla has discontinued a car once before the original Roadster though as I was saying

that was planned from the beginning it was always going to be a short-term thing while they got their

factory and built their own sedan as per the original secret master plan but I'm first world

sad about this because it also to me signals the beginning of the end of Tesla making cars that

people love to drive you'll hear Elon pretty explicitly talk about this in a clip that I have

prepped for you in a few minutes they are going to make one more one more go right it's they're

going to make a quarter million dollar middle finger to internal combustion engine cars in the

form of the Roadster and then again this this actually I can't believe I'm saying this performance

won't matter to them anymore driving dynamics won't matter to them anymore handling won't

matter to them anymore their focus will shift to safety where it's always been there but safety

and comfort in your autonomous pod whether that's a cyber cab or some other autonomous vehicle

that Tesla might make in the future and that's cool don't get me wrong that's that's cool I get

I get where they're going but they they are moving on and as a car guy that does bum me out

on one level it does in fact I have to confess to all of you if you're not tired of hearing me

I've been talking about I guess I've been going for half an hour plus now so I do apologize but

I have to confess that for the first time ever it I stopped and wondered this week I was like wait

a minute is there gonna be an end of the line to this podcast now hopefully not and I'm not

planning on that because the EV market has grown and there are lots of really fun EVs out there

from from other brands to talk about which is exactly why I started talking about other EVs

about a year ago and and it's not that I'm not going to be interested in whatever autonomous

pods that Tesla intends to make but I'm a car guy that's that's in my DNA at this point I've told

you all about how when I was the littlest of kids I had a collection of matchbox and hot wheels cars

and I could identify any car on the road when when I was in the back seat and my parents were driving

us around and I've just always been a car guy I've always been into cars and autonomous pods and I

I'm not using pods as a as slander here I don't I don't mean it to come across that way but

I don't want to necessarily call them cars but I think you know they're they're gonna be pods

because they're just there to protect you and make you comfortable they're not there to make you

enjoy the the twisty curves in a canyon road right that's not what their purpose is but

uh today is when I when I well not well yesterday yesterday today when I made the notes it was

the first time that I ever had the thought of oh well there might come a day when when ride the

lightning won't be the Tesla and EV podcast anymore it it might just be the EV podcast

I will say I that's nothing to worry about for you or for me for now I have every intention of

continuing every single week as I've done for the past 10 plus years because there's still plenty

of fun stuff going on between the roadster and the I mean just covering just watching and covering

the end of s and x is going to be it's it's bittersweet but it's going to be interesting

so yeah I'm not going anywhere don't don't worry about that you know I'm I'm I'm very much here

I'm and I'm still having fun I'm saddened by this news but I'm still very much having fun all right

let's go now let me let me play you the rest of Elon's opening statement take a listen to the rest

of it and so let's say with respect to full-soft driving and robo taxi

people are obviously following with a very close tension the progress of FSE and and

you can experience it for yourself if you've got if you've got a Tesla you can you notice with

really with with every software update the car gets better and better at autonomy

and and and we're you know we we we we were able to do our first rides with no safety

monitor in the car in Austin these are paid rides so these are just sort of randomly selected

paid rides with no safety monitor and and and I think maybe as of maybe yesterday or so we

actually don't we don't even have a chase car or anything like that so these are just

cars with no people in them and no one's following the car in Austin so we're obviously

are being very cautious about this because we want to have we want to have no no no injuries or

serious accidents along the way so I think it makes sense to be very cautious but you'll see the

amount of autonomy increase dramatically I think every every month essentially so

and and and then there will also be an opportunity something we've talked about for

a long time for existing owners of of Teslas to add or subtract their cars to the fleet

kind of like how Airbnb works where you can add or subtract your house to the Airbnb inventory

and I think probably the value of the the Teslas the sort of partial people adding or

subtracting the cars to the Teslas autonomous fleet is probably a little underweighted by a lot

of people because we've got millions of cars with AI for that can do this so

so it's that that it might potentially I think it will provide an opportunity for a lot of customers

to earn more by lending their car to the fleet than their lease cost to Tesla

Tesla yeah which is kind of it's kind of like you get you get you get you get in that scenario

you basically get paid to own a Tesla it's it's quite a good scenario and and and we expect to have

fully autonomous vehicles in you know probably I don't know

some between a quarter and half of the United States by the end of the year

pending regulatory approval you know a big factor would be if there's some kind of federal

preemption for autonomous vehicles in the absence of that you kind of have to go on a

city by city or state by state basis but nonetheless we we even if it is city by city

state by state we expect to be in you know I don't know dozens of cities dozens of major

cities by the end of the year with respect to energy the the Tesla energy team has done incredible

work and the growth rate on that is continuing to be very strong and and we're building more

manufacturing capacity and and expect that yeah and energy will will have very high growth for

really as far into the future as we can imagine the solar the solar opportunity is underestimated

we think the the best way to add significant capability to the grid is or known to the

way let's say it's powering AI data centers is solar and batteries on earth and solar in space

so that's why we're we're going to work towards getting 100 gigawatts a year of of solar cell

production integrating across the entire supply chain from raw materials all the way to finished

solar panels

maybe a bit more about optimus we'll probably unveil optimus three in a few months

and I think it's it's going to be quite surprising to people it's an incredibly capable robot

and as I mentioned we are replacing the sx line in Fremont with a million unit per

million unit per year line of optimus now because it is a completely new supply chain

it's just it's a there's really nothing from from the existing supply chains that exist

in in optimus everything is designed from physics first principles

so that means the the normal s curve of manufacturing ramp will be longer for optimus than it is for

products that have at least some portion of an existing supply chain like when everything's new

um the the production rate will be proportionate to the least lucky least confident part of the

entire supply chain and if there's 10 000 things that need to go right it's you know it only takes

one to to be slowed to to lag that but um so it will be sort of a stretched out s curve

but I'm confident that we'll get to a million units a year of in Fremont of optimus three

and and this this optimus really will be a general purpose robot that can

learn by observing human human behavior so you can like demonstrate a task or

literally verbally describe a task or show it a task even show it a video and it will be able

to do that task so it's a it's going to be a very capable robot um I think

long-term optimus will have a very significant impact on the us GDP like it will actually move

the needle on us GDP significantly so um in conclusion um uh you know there's still obviously

many who doubt our ambitions for creating amazing abundance but we're we're confident

it can be done and we're that we're making the right moves technologically to ensure that it does

and um it has this obviously not never been a company to shy away from solving

some of the hardest problems um you know that it's uh I think that's kind of how you build value

in companies you solve hard problems um it's like I don't know how you create value by solving

easy problems um so there's there's a lot of hard problems that the tesla team is going to solve

but it's an incredibly talented hardworking team um and I'd like to thank actually everyone at

tesla for their their incredible hard work um and it's an honor to work with such such a

talented group so thank you to everyone who is supporting this mission the future is more exciting

than you can imagine all right so here's a key logistical question that I have about adding

or subtracting your car to the robo taxi fleet how will that work in terms of meeting safety and

cleanliness standards in terms of your tire wear your body work damage the car might have

functionality of of headlights tail lights etc like there's going to have to be some sort of

check on your car to make sure that it's fit for service my question is can tesla do all that

remotely like they can see some of the car with the onboard cameras to say check for damage

and the cars kind of already can tell how much treadwear is left on the tires and they definitely

know the tire pressures but that is a question that I think does need answering now as I've

said before I don't really get the enjoyable abundance thing I don't agree with it as a

valid and attainable and trackable mission statement for tesla I I don't see it

and I am also skeptical that optimus will become as Elon has said many times the best selling

product of any kind ever now in fairness to him he didn't say that on this call but he has said

that a number of times before I just don't see that when it costs twenty five thousand dollars for

a robot it just that is that to me seems like we're into that's going to be a toy for the

the upper class the the more wealthier income bracket now unless maybe tesla expects that

people won't want to own cars anymore thanks to autonomy so maybe they'll take out financed

optimus loans instead of car loans maybe maybe that's how Elon and tesla see everyone having

an optimus and it providing everybody at every economic level in society anything they want

that he literally said that in that quote so tesla they need to convince me on this one

man hey maybe I'll say maybe the optimus v3 demo coming up later this year will will absolutely

do it maybe it'll blow me away because what I can say is in the very beginning when I had

experienced the the original roadster I knew I said you know I know this this works this is going

to be huge like I believe in this and I'm not quite there yet with optimus I don't know maybe I never

will be or maybe I'll just be late to the party and everybody will say I told you so but I don't

the enjoyable abundance thing I don't see it I'm not on board next we move to the investor

questions the most upvoted questions so this one includes an interesting answer from Lars and

from Elon about what will will will we get more models from tesla and more vehicle segments take

a listen to this one as Elon said the future is autonomous and obviously autonomy and cyber

cab are going to change the global market size and mix quite significantly I think that's quite

obvious you know general transportation is going to be better served by autonomy as it will be safer

and cheaper and over 90 percent of vehicle miles traveled are with two or less passengers now

which is why we designed cyber cab that way in this new autonomous market we at tesla have the

advantage of efficiency cost and manufacturing at scale that really no one else has and we have

built that over the last decades and we believe that that segment that we are creating will grow

millions year over year just to add to what Lars said there the point that Lars made which is that

90 percent of miles driven all with one or two passengers or one or one or two occupants essentially

is very important one because that implies that that's cyber the cyber cab which is a dedicated

you know two-seater or dedicated rover taxi it's a little confusing with the terms rover taxi and

cyber cab sorry about the confusion but and in fact in some states we're not allowed to use

the word cab or taxi so it's going to get even more strange it's going to be like cyber vehicle

or something cyber car but the the the cyber cab which is a specific vehicle model that we're making

does not have a steering wheel or pedals so this is clearly you know there's there's no you know

there's no fullback mechanism here it's like this car either drives itself or it does not drive

and we expect to start production in in april as always it's an s-curve of the production rate is

an s-curve so it starts off very slowly and then grows exponentially then you hit the linear and

then ultimately you know it asymptotes at what your target volume is so

but we would expect over time to make far more cyber caps than all of our other vehicles combined

given given that 90% of of distance driven or distance being distance traveled exactly no

longer driving is is one or two people i think it's like 80% is just one so it would mean that

long-term uh the cyber cab would make several times more cybercaps per year than

all of our other vehicles combined well this does contradict what the board chair robin denholm

had said not too long ago about tesla making the cyber cab with the wheel and pedals if regulators

required it and funny enough the engineering test cars that are running around various cities

those cars do have cyber truck squircles for wheels in them in case the engineers need to

intervene of course it makes sense since the robotaxis are steer by wire the that you'd use the

cyber truck stuff that i mean the wheel and pedals are probably literally plug-and-play but

anyway uh elon has always been shall we say stubborn when he really believes in something and

sometimes that's good sometimes that's bad like say model three production ramp he stayed stubborn

the company got through it and they became profitable sometimes bad like when he had to

walk back the deletion of the turn signal stocks on the model three in the model y

also i gotta say too it's and in you you can come back and say i told you so later

i am skeptical at this moment in time and i realize that this is tesla's gonna ramp to this

this is not going to be something that happens this year but i am skeptical that there will be

demand for one and a half to one point seven million cybercaps per year because that's what

that's what they say when they're saying all of the other vehicles combined so we'll see

we'll see got some big numbers big big promises here being thrown around uh here was the next

question kind of similar well the answer the question was about whether tesla still plans to

launch new models to address new price segments take a listen to this answer to to further on

what we were just talking about we've launched our least expensive models ever over the last few

months and our continue to expand um that those models globally and over the last decade we have

continually brought down the cost of our vehicles without sacrificing range performance or premuteness

and we'll continue to do that as vaibhav said investing in our factories but these are all

trade-offs of where we spend our time our money and to elon's point just now with cybercap coming

we're aiming to bring that tesla premium ride experience to our largest market yet

that could be five or ten times our current levels of production this new autonomous market

you have to start thinking about us as moving to providing transportation as a service more than the

total addressable market um for the purchase vehicles alone of course we do have plans to have

robotaxis in various shapes and sizes but obviously cybercap will be the grand majority of that volume

yeah the the vast majority of of miles traveled will be autonomous in the future

you know i would say probably less than i'm just guessing but probably less than five percent of

miles driven will be uh where somebody's actually driving the car themselves in the future maybe as

low as one percent and here's that additional clarity on tesla's future vehicle plans that

i was mentioning earlier i told you that fran seemed to be saying this during my last interview

with him uh in october but here is larz and elon making it crystal clear the future is autonomous

at tesla and so the roadster will be the last new vehicle that tesla ever makes with manual inputs

new vehicle they're gonna keep making three and why don't worry about that but the last new vehicle

now i'm not suggesting that elon is wrong for pivoting the company here i've gotten a lot of

notes about this from you guys this week and and people people have strong feelings here and i get

it as i have said many times betting against elon has historically been a bad idea and he's

always been good at seeing the long-term future but like i was saying earlier as a car guy who

started this podcast because i love tesla's cars this just hurts to hear and i also just

believe that there is going to be a significant incremental need meaning in the next five to

ten years for cars with inputs that people want to drive even if they have autonomous capability

i just think that the the mental uh what's the word i'm looking for

the mental part of the equation for people to be convinced that that they're okay riding

that they're okay to just hand the control over to a to an autonomous vehicle i think that's

going to be a tougher problem to crack than than maybe elon thinks because we know elon

tends to think very optimistically right like let's here's an example that where he said many

times about how the your car will be making money for you when it's when it's not in use with autonomy

you put it into the robot taxi fleet and the reality is i think you'd ask a hundred people

i'll bet you at least 70 of them probably more are going to have no interest in letting other

people ride in their car even if that's going to make the money it's i just i think he again he's

he's super optimistic but i i do think sometimes well at least i disagree with him on the the sort

of ground level nitty gritty stuff whereas he's kind of up in the up and with his head in the

clouds again not not necessarily in a bad way but that's that's kind of where i am

with this with regard to where tesla's going uh all right the next question was about

gross margin targets for each car which if you know me if you've been listening long enough

you probably know that's not normally a topic i would be too interested in but the answer to this

question was interesting to me so here you go you know we've talked about this with the previous

two questions but transportation as we know is changing and i think we cannot keep applying the

same framework from a car sales model to the future what we are trying to do so it has to be

looked at it more holistically in autonomy software will be the driver for growth from now

and as we aim to maximize the global feed we've been laser focused on cocks from our side to

make sure because that is something which we manage so we will keep focusing on that but

i think we we need to look at it from a different dimension yeah like this cyber cab that is the

whole design of cyber cab was it was to optimize the fully considered cost per mile of autonomous

driving um and you it's a different design problem than if you're trying to design cars for people

who will be driving versus being driven um and uh and so so cyber cab is like like said super

optimized for uh minimum cost per mile and and also for a much higher duty cycle so it we would

expect uh cyber cab to be used you know probably 50 or 60 hours a week instead of the 10 or 11

hours a week that a driven vehicle is used so you know typically people will might drive their car

for an hour and a half a day on average so it's like 10 hours per week out of 168

but i but i think an autonomous vehicle is likely to be

used probably five times as often which which means that you need to design the vehicle for

a much more wear and tear per unit time and much more resilient it's more like a like a commercial

truck um that that's an you know continuous operational close continuous operation um is

is how you design an autonomous vehicle and and so we will have uh larger vehicles in the

cyber cab in the future that that are designed for full autonomy um and we've we've we've actually

shown pictures of this and in fact have shown prototypes so this is not exactly a secret

in fact we've given people rides in them so you know we're not we're not we're not keeping this

hiding this light under a bushel here you know it's like we're literally

saying what we're going to do and have said what we're going to do for a while

so you know i i i i think long term we would we would really the only vehicles that we'll

make will be autonomous vehicles with the exception of the next generation roadster

um which we're hoping to debut in april hopefully it's it's going to be something

out of this world and so yeah if those previous two clips weren't enough for you here's the

tesla executive team hammering home their autonomous future plan even harder in that

clip there all right uh next up was an excellent question about really in short the status of

the robotaxi scale up as well as the arrival of full self-driving unsupervised in customer cars

take a listen yeah we have scaled the robotaxi service that's available to customers over the

last year in order to just learn the scaling problems without having uh to wait for the

unsupervised um basically like two two goes one is like learn as much as possible from the

fleet with the safety monitors and secondly we laser focus for the engineering team to solve the

unsupervised fsd problem uh i think we did both like by the end of last year uh we you know

we had a long tail of issues that we were able to churn through and then uh in the last couple

of weeks we had started our unsupervised uh robotaxi service to public customers in austin

i think some customers took rides last week and also service continues today without any

rear cars or something like that separately we did scale the fleet size in the bay area and in

austin and through that we learned you know issues with charging and other issues that we would have

seen once we sort of like scale the unsupervised fleet so both are happening in parallel a variant

of the software that's used for the robotaxi service was shipped to customers with v14 and

customers saw a huge jump in performance like a lot of you know happy feedback from customers

so and since then we have improved the software significantly as well and customers will continue

to see with their own software releases that the software is so good that you know they're like

screaming to remove the tire monitoring software because they're bored inside the car too much

adding to that a little bit with what ashok said about learning about our charging and service

needs you know we're using our vast network of charging and service centers that really only

tesla has in this space to jumpstart our infrastructure build out needs to get ahead of

robotaxi autonomous vehicle demand and we expect that because of this network we are the only

company capable of scaling at the rate that is needed for the tsunami of autonomy that is coming

yeah well that's all well and good but since lars was talking about leveraging tesla's vast

network of chargers to jumpstart autonomy i have a key question what about wireless charging

because supposedly that's all the robotaxis have so with the start of production supposedly coming

up in oh eight to ten weeks in april is there any update on that infrastructure or and actually i

got the answer to this since i wrote my notes will the cybercabs have in addition they will if they

will also have a traditional nacs port so that they can recharge if there isn't a wireless charger

nearby and the answer has turned out to be yes on that because the folks at what's inside

managed to catch a cyber cab at a supercharger uh plugging in and the at least on the engineering

prototypes we don't know if it'll be this way on the actual production vehicle but there is an nacs

port hiding in the rear left corner of the bumper the rear bumper so the driver's side uh at least

here in the us the driver's side so you just basically pull that pan it's not it doesn't

automatically flip up it's an ant it's a manual thing but you just pull it pull it open and then

you can plug uh you can plug that in so that is at least answers that but i still still very curious

about the wireless charging infrastructure all right next up remember earlier in this podcast

when i tease the fate of the cyber truck well here's more on that if you've been curious

um actually in its segment cyber truck can continues to be a leader and is selling more than

a new electric electric truck out there while our competition continues to pull back um but to the

question itself from a line standpoint we always designed our lines to be super flexible we built

three and y on the same line we built s and x on the same line still showing that we can do that

the cyber truck line was designed in the same way and is one of our most fully ready for autonomy

platforms yeah um but yeah we will transition the cyber truck line to just a fully autonomous line

and uh and there's obviously a market there for cargo delivery like you say like localized

cargo delivery within um within a city within a few hundred miles something like that there's

there's a pretty there's there's a lot of cargo that needs to move uh locally within a city and

and um an autonomous cyber truck could be very useful for that well i had to listen back to that

to make sure i was hearing correctly and it i thought that was pretty clear from elan that

tesla plans to eventually we don't know quite when but eventually turn the cyber truck into

an autonomous cargo truck basically meaning presumably no user inputs and probably means

you're not buying one i mean maybe i don't know maybe you still could i guess but so it if i'm

crazy if you're not getting that out of it if if i'm totally misreading that drop me an email

tesla podcast at gmail.com but anyway uh as lars mentioned yes cyber truck is the top selling ev

pickup truck but unfortunately as i've talked about in recent episodes that market the ev pickup

truck market just has not developed like anybody be it for gm rivian or tesla thought it would

i mean we know for a fact that the cyber truck is selling at 10 of the level that tesla thought it

would and they just discontinued their other two low volume vehicles so you know you can you can

kind of i don't think there's a lot of reading between the lines that needs to happen it's

it's pretty clear from that statement from elan and you know granted yes tesla is planning to

build a new low volume vehicle the roadster that car is a freak of nature one off that

quite honestly tesla is probably only building because they already took a bunch of people's

money for it eight years ago but anyway the point is that the cyber truck in its current form

probably is not long for this world at the volume it's currently outputting at next up when is full

self-driving going to be 100 percent supervised that was the next question and here is the answer

well it is 100 percent unsupervised and fsc is 100 percent unsupervised i mean we obviously have

cars operating with no one in them and no safety monitor and no follow car or anything like that

in austin right now for for customers we you know we're being just very cautious with the

rollout i mean we um with each successive version as we prove it out and we we make sure that there

are no sort of unique issues in you know in in particular cities because like sometimes you get

like some very you know difficult intersection and it'll be an intersection where a lot of humans

have accidents by the way there's like some some pretty nutty intersections where there are a lot

of humans make mistakes and have accidents in in various cities so we want to make sure that

uh you know fst can handle those um unusual intersections um like if you take la for example

where where wilson san harmonica combined is is like there's about i don't know 20 traffic lights

and people are constantly uh having accidents there so um you want to make sure that fst can

handle um unique things in a particular city um so uh and then we're also just being paranoid

about safety um but with with each successful release of of fst we will reduce the amount of

driver monitoring that's needed proportionate to the safety of the fst build well on this note

there wasn't a lot that i wanted to pull out of the shareholder letter this time all the fireworks

were on the call itself this quarter but there was one fun new chart added to the shareholder deck

that i thought i would share with you it's a planned robo taxi coverage chart so we've got sf

bay area status safety driver right there's a safety driver in the in the car with you

austin ramping unsupervised as we've already heard that talked about and then here's the real

fun of it we have the next one two three four five six seven markets confirmed by tesla here

all due in the first half of 2026 so by the end of june we have dallas houston

phoenix miami orlando tampa and los vegas so definitely wanted to share all of that with you

and in fact let's see here with i know this has been a really long podcast i have two more clips

to share with you the next one is about chips and a key part of tesla's growth in the coming years

well i mean the i tend to spend time on wherever whatever the most critical issue is for the company

and um and uh completing the ai5 chip design and having it be a great chip is um so arguably

the number one most critical thing to get done which is why i'm spending more time on that than

currently anything else at at tesla um spend pretty much every saturday on on this and um

and every and a chunk of every tuesday so it's like uh you know if i'm spending my saturdays on

something it's it's going to be something pretty important um i do think ai5 will be um a very good

chip um and i i feel quite confident about the design at this point um and then ai6 which will

follow that it'll be aspirationally would follow that in under a year will will be yet another big

leap beyond ai5 so i feel i feel pretty good about our chip strategy right now um and um

but but in terms of selling it outside of tesla you first need to make sure we have enough

chips for the all of our vehicle production and all of our optimist production and um and then

and then we will actually use the ai5 chips in our data centers um we already use the ai4

chips in our data centers so when we do training it's a combination of the ai4

um chips and uh Nvidia hardware um primarily that we do training with so um

but you say by the end of the decade i mean it's that's like things are changing so fast

it's hard to imagine like what happens at the end of the decade um

i mean we might i mean the when i when i look ahead at i'd say what what's the limiting factor

for tesla growth um if you go say three or four years out i i think it actually is chip production

is there enough ai logic and enough ai and enough memory enough ram for um for our volume

and um and and right now i see that as being the thing that probably limits our

our growth in in three or four years uh which would imply that we're not selling chips outside of

tesla because we need them um and um in fact i think um i i think it's gonna make sense and

and this this is definitely gonna be a sort of a controversial thing but uh i think tesla needs to

build a tariff fab um and i mentioned this at the shoulder meeting um but even when

even when we look at the output of the best-case output of all of our key suppliers and i'd say

even their beyond suppliers are like strategic partners like samsung tsmc and uh micron um

the and and we say like what's the most you could possibly make um then it's it's not enough so

so we i think in order to remove the constraint the the probable constraint in three or four years

we we're going to have to build a tesla tariff fab a very big fab that includes logic memory and

packaging um domestically um and uh and that's that's actually also going to be very important to

ensure that um we are protected against any geopolitical risks um i think people may be

under waiting for some of the geopolitical risks that are going to be a major factor in in in a

few years so um now you know a lot of people are like that's we'll say like that's crazy

fabs are really hard i'm like yes i know fabs are really hard i don't think they're easy um but

we do we do a lot of hot things you know we didn't used to have car factories that we

didn't used to have battery cell factories or lithium refineries or uh you know mega pack

factories or you know all these other things we we figured it out so so i think it's uh

i think we if we don't do the tesla tariff fab we're we're going to be limited by a supplier

output of um of of chips and i think maybe memory is an even bigger um limited than than AI logic

so um you know for example we have we have uh uh chip supply deals with TSMC in Arizona and

Samsung in Texas but but currently there are no uh advanced memory fabs at scale in the

hopefully you know micron will have something going in a few years because they're all

headquartered in Idaho you know um where they make a lot of potato chips and we need to make

computer chips too um so um anyway we're working we're working with our strategic partners on the

uh i think we we we've got to also try to try our hand at building um a large scale

fab that integrates logic memory and and uh packaging uh and if we don't do that we're

just going to be fundamentally limited by supply chain especially if there's some jail

in a worst case geopolitical situation it would be quite quite a severe situation so i think we

we it would be quite frankly be crazy not to try out the tariff tariff fab so um

yeah great we'll have we'll have a we'll have a bigger announcement on this in the future

boy i know i'm only playing some clips and not the entire call but

Elon sure talked a lot about geopolitical risk on this call what what does he know that we don't

about geopolitical stuff going on anyway hopefully nothing bad is coming but back to business

i won't be the slightest bit surprised if tesla builds a chip fab plant i mean they've already

built all kinds of other stuff that they need and they're arguably this is nothing new they are

arguably the largest primarily vertically integrated company in the entire world so

we'll see uh we'll see probably not if but when that chip fab that tariff fab comes uh starts

going under construction all right lastly the final question was more or less about

how tesla spends their capex and what's most important for them to spend money on

and i thought that elon gave an answer that encompasses a lot of where the company's focus

is at nowadays so here's the last clip that i have for you well really all we're trying to do is

make sure that we we can uh scale to a very high volume with autonomous vehicles with

human robots and and and that we address geopolitical risk which i think you know

there's so many companies out there that are asleep with the switch with regard to geopolitical

geopolitical risk they're like or they just have their head in the sand and hope nothing

about will happen i'm wearing more paranoid than that i always think of andy groves famous statement

only the paranoid survive you know why did he come up with that statement at intel

let's think so i'm i think there's a lot of wisdom in that statement

um so we're going to be paranoid uh and make sure that uh we can continue to build

batteries and robots and ai chips no matter what happens um and companies that don't do that

a bunch of them will cease to exist yeah i mean remember all this comes out of necessity it's

not that we want to do it it's just we and we have no choice yeah i mean we built the most advanced

lithium refinery in the world by the way it's it's not just like i wrote lithium refinery in

corpus christi it's not just a copy of what others have done it's it's an entirely new process that

is fundamentally more efficient and more advanced than anything else in the world the same is true

of our of our cathode refinery here in austin um and um and we wish others would build this can

other people please for the love of god help the name of all that is holy and others please build

this but build this stuff it's not the first time you asked exactly i mean this is not the first

time we've said something like this like why do we have to build these things why can others not

also please can someone else pull these things i mean this is very hard to build these things um

and we build them out of desperation not for any not because nobody else is building

lithium refineries and cathode refineries um you know we're pretty much the the not just the

largest but also the only um lithium refinery and cathode refinery in america um so um

yeah so we're making moves to make sure that no matter what happens it tells us we'll prosper

well there you go the path has been laid out very clearly now nothing should surprise any of us

anymore and let's see where tesla takes itself let's see where this company is heading it uh

it may not be for everybody it may super excite some people it's it is a path that i personally

would never have envisioned when i started this podcast over 10 years ago but that's the path

there on and we'll see what happens by the way i expect that probably a whole lot of you have

some serious thoughts about all of this about the cancellation of s and x and where tesla's going

and in fact it makes me think that we might need a slightly longer ride the lightning hotline

phone call segment next week we're already pushing two hours here so i'm going to skip

the hotline calls for this week but i promise you that we will take plenty of time for those

hotline calls next week so if you have a question comment reaction you want to call in feel free

to do it there are two easy ways to do that in either case i humbly request that you keep your

question to 90 seconds or less so that i can get to as many calls each week as possible and so you

either use your smartphone's built-in voice recording software record the question then

email that file to me at teslapodcastatgmail.com or you can take that same 90 second or less

question and just call in and leave a message anytime day or night on the ride the lightning

hotline itself it's a toll-free number and it's 1-888-989-8752 that number again

1-888-989-TSLA and well as for what's going on with me and my cars well not much you know just

just kind of the same old business as usual no complaints here but i do want to give an

entertainment recommendation for you this week before i go and that is one of my favorite shows

in the last several years i love this show it's just very i guess heartwarming is the right word

it's very funny i think uh anyway the show is shrinking it's on apple tv it's back for season

three that premiered this week so check that out if you already enjoy season one two of and if

you're looking for a good comedy that that kind of leaves you just feeling good there's no drama

there's no nothing depressing going on in it really give it a look you know obviously you'll

want to start with season one over on apple tv time now for your tesla pro tip of the week

it comes from nearby palo alto california from k r hey ryan k r from palo alto california here

with a quick pro tip of the week for years while manually driving i'd get annoyed at how slow the

map transitions after you type in a destination it initially shows the zoomed out overview of the

whole route and then it takes a good 10 or 15 seconds after you start driving before it finally

zooms back in and gives you those helpful visuals for the first turn in unfamiliar places or even

in just a parking lot that delay sometimes caused me to miss the first turn because i

didn't actually know where the car wanted me to go yet well i finally figured out a little shortcut

after you put in the destination and you see that expanded turn by turn list on the left

simply tap on the top of that list right where the large font is with the distance to your first

turn and it instantly collapses the list and snaps the map into the zoomed in view to get you on your

way it's reduced a lot of anxiety for me on the first few seconds of a trip especially in unfamiliar

neighborhoods figured i'd share cheers i love this one k r thank you i actually use this one

constantly myself it's a great one to point out for people who might not be aware of that one so

super appreciate you calling in with that love having the pro tip of the week so that we all

add to our collective ev knowledge base our tesla knowledge base at least a little bit each

and every week so if anyone else out there has a good tesla or ev pro tip of the week i'd love

for you to call in and share it with me so that i can share it with everybody i just gave you the

too easy call in methods just a few moments ago so refer back to that and just send in your pro

tip of the week time to mention a few friends of the podcast before i go starting with a new friend

rpm tesla i mentioned them last week they've been around a long long time longer than even ride the

lightning's been so they are not just some fly by night out of nowhere place rpm tesla specializes

in oem style tesla upgrades focusing on carbon fiber interior enhancements and functional accessories

that integrate seamlessly with factory designs and in turn they're all about compatibility

meaning their accessories do not compromise tesla's design language safety systems or

functionality they design a ton of stuff in house like all their steering wheel upgrades for the

yoke and round grip they prioritize quality over speed so you are not getting some cheap junk

speaking of cheap though you can buy confidence uh buy with confidence i should say as rpm tesla

offers free returns no restocking fees and lifetime warranties they feature over 500 diy

installation videos to make installation quick many companies sell lower quality products

and charge a 25 restocking fee if you don't like something rpm doesn't do that they only sell the

highest quality accessories over 1500 of them since 2013 they're family owned located in southern

california check them out at rpm tesla dot com and use the promo code rtl 10 plus like the symbol

plus rtl 10 plus for 10 extra off of your next order yes 10 extra combined with their current

discounted sales prices this is an exclusive promotion only right here on rtl rpm tesla

dot com check them out meanwhile the as i call them last week and and probably every now and again

because it's pretty accurate the amazon of tesla accessories abstract ocean they've got so much

great stuff just a ton of great stuff uh let's take a look you know what in the spirit of s and x

being discontinued let's see what model s stuff they've got if i click on model s all years they've

got their ultra premium tempered glass screen protector 20 bucks that is on sale 20 bucks

they've got their uh low tesla logo puddle lights 50 bucks for a pair that's really nice

they have got let's see here a center wheel cap kit if you happen to if you want to pull your

arrow inserts out of your model s or model x wheels they've got a center wheel cap kit for

you they've got a mega bright led premium puddle light pair uh let's see here gosh all in one

screen cleaner they've got let's see man oh wireless game controller for 25 bucks if you like gaming

in your s or x just so much cool stuff for sx for three y cyber truck rivian etc check them out

abstract ocean dot com put everything you like into your online shopping cart and for a 15

percent discount off of your first order use the coupon code rtl podcast all one word no spaces

rtl podcast at checkout the snap plate and snap plate plus available for all the teslas and plenty

of other evs as well is available at every amp dot com slash rtl and use the coupon code rtl

for a discount uh this is the front license plate bracket that i very much recommend rather than the

one tesla gives you this one is a nice clean minimalist design you can barely tell it's there

it's just basically like your front plates practically floating it doesn't interfere with the front

bumper camera with any parking sensors or anything else it's just a nice clean uh really well put

together license plate bracket for the front of your vehicle if you either want one or are legally

required to have one both are made from recycled made in the usa plastics with stainless steel

reinforcements so check them out again every amp dot com slash rtl or click the link in the episode

description and for a discount use the coupon code rtl at checkout immaculate reflections is my

awesome detailer here in the greater san francisco bay area so if you're here or going to be here

with a car that you love make an appointment ahead of time with immaculate reflections for either

paint correction get that paint finish looking as good as it possibly can better than factory new

maybe you want to do ceramic coating because you don't want to have to wax the car for the next

five to seven years because that's how long the ceramic coating is going to last maybe you want

to do paint protection film on some of the car on most of the car or even on like me all of the car

i'm a big fan of ppf it has saved my bacon meaning my paint it's saved my paint a number of times

and i do mean a number of times so yeah i'm a believer in that anyway professional detailing

at immaculate reflections i guarantee when you pick up your car after whatever service you have done

you will be very happy i promise you that and there's a ride the lightning discount available

for all of you listening to this so when you reach out through the website which is ir

detailing dot com you'll see a couple of different spots where you can click contact in the either

the upper left corner or even right in the middle of the home page reach out you can talk to jeff

the owner there about what you want to do with your car and he'll he'll work with you on that

and then just make sure to mention that you're arrived the lightning listener and he'll give

you the discount on whatever work you end up having done finally my patreon i mentioned it

earlier patreon.com slash tesla podcast if you are willing and able to support the podcast i would

be so grateful if you would consider that because a lot of time a lot of energy a lot of love research

and effort goes into this thing every week and in fact this week like i said i i uh put put my

accelerator to the floor yesterday wednesday the day of the earnings call got all my notes together

and i thought you know what i am just dying to talk about this s and x thing i'm just going to do

the podcast a day early so that the lovely patreon backers can get that early ad free access to it

and hear it one day earlier than they normally would and hear it three days earlier in this case

then when it goes wide for for the folks not with me on patreon so patreon.com slash tesla

podcast all the different support tiers are there all the information's there if you'd like to go

check it out and maybe even see it in your heart to join in at one of those patreon pledge tiers

we've been having a great discussion about all this s and x stuff in the in the patreon open

discussion channel there's kind of a a discord like page on there where where people can post

comments about everything that's going on which you know what's going on this week and we've had

a lively conversation in there so anyway join me on patreon if you are willing and able to do so

finally make sure to follow this podcast on any of the major podcast services it's free to do so

search ride the lightning tesla and as soon as you see my typical thumbnail my my logo there

come up just click follow and you're done that means you'll get a push notification anytime

there's a new episode which for me is every sunday at 9am eastern 6am pacific of course again

those patreon folks get it early and finally this week a big thanks goes out to my top tier

patreon backers who among a number of other perks as they thank you for their generosity on

patreon to support what i'm doing here with ride the lightning they get their name shouted out at

the end of each week's show so here we go with that i'll start with the roadster in space tier

backers they are pete white lyell austin steve radspinner fernando cordero laughton from chicago

shawn nightig neil weaver jackson wallace ralph 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 next up the maximum plaid backers and

by the way as i release this episode here on february 1st the next patreon zoom hangout which

is for the the top tier backers as well as a one-time courtesy invite to anybody that makes a new

pledge or upgrades their existing pledge so the next the february patreon zoom hangout will be

happening this coming saturday february 7th i'll be sending out calendar invites and emails about

that but anyway the maximum plaid crew they get invited every single month and we always have a

great conversation it'll be extra spicy this month i'm i can't actually now can't wait for that

i can't wait to talk to all those folks about uh what's going on with tesla with the autopilot

discontinued and the s and x discontinued it'll be a good conversation this month for sure thank

you to the maximum plaid backers jonathan wales cameron clark daniel grummer seth capello nick

and tony uh the galpin family ryan from new york city darren nickle cos barns patrick wasneski

gill cabrera todd badger joe edgel kevin yank the tesla owners club of sandwalking valley

willsteadman jeremy harris christ beach tom mills choreo donnell aron jon cody joel sap

paul casarino chris osbourne kb adam lavoix jason chalukas travis krenzel bruce otterstein

tom behan josh pennington john from cream ridge new jersey dustin hart derek finley

charles clement daemon kline jeff brown jerry slinger kenneth corbett brian vertoglio kim bae

troy sievers chip hooper matt chinander robert moran rav christopher man michael williams

and eric harbert and finally the grandfathered in plaid level supporters huge continued thanks

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 cabanillas the lydia family

erin alchool jared brown 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 my friends will wrap it up for an extremely long episode 548 the earnings call

episodes typically are a bit longer in this one well like i said at least at least i apologized

up front knowing that i was going to talk for a long time from the heart about model s and model

x and the the shocking discontinuation of those vehicles but i hope you enjoyed this week's episode

i had a lot of fun putting it together and i look forward to your phone calls next week again i'm

expecting some reactions so should be a good episode next week i hope i will do my best as

i always do happy electric motoring and i'll see you back here next week

music

elon musk people don't like elon musk the guy found a paypal and tesla and people are like

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 548: Model S and X Discontinued in Earnings Call Shocker

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