Tesla Cyber Roundup: Musk touts FSD, vehicle run-rate, new Gigafactory
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"Welcome to the Giga Texas," Elon Musk declared as he took the stage at Tesla's (NASDAQ:TSLA) Cyber Roundup down in Austin. The annual shareholder meeting came just weeks after Tesla (TSLA) reported Q2 earnings, which showed compressed automotive margins even as the company grew year-over-year.
Highlights: "We're aiming to achieve a 2M vehicle run-rate by the end of the year," he announced, adding that Tesla (TSLA) just produced its 3 millionth car. Shareholders also approved a 3-for-1 stock split, the second in two years, though it's not clear when that will take effect. Free cash flow generation was on the radar as well, with Musk pointing to $7B of FCF over the past four quarters, driven by a ramp-up in the Model 3.
"We have autonomy to some degree, but solving autonomy will really be an amplification of free cash flow to a degree that is... you run the numbers and it's like, wow, could it really be that crazy? It could be that crazy," Musk continued, jokingly adding "this year I swear." "We're now at over 40M miles [on the FSD Beta program] and I suspect by this year we're gonna have well over 100M miles. We're still tracking very much to have widespread deployment of FSD beta this year in North America."
Outlook: "Making macroeconomic prognostications is a recipe for disaster," but Musk estimates "we are past peak inflation" and likely to see a "relatively mild recession for something like 18 months." He also teased another factory location this year, saying the company would "end up building at least 10 or 12 Gigafactories." On the Supercharger front, Musk promised some "cool stuff," and suggested that Cybertruck specifications and pricing will be different than disclosed back in 2019 due to soaring inflation.