Here’s a summary of key points Elon Musk made during the Tesla Earnings Q4-2024 call on January 29, 2025. Elon Musk described 2025 as a crucial year for Tesla, especially with the rollout of unsupervised FSD, potentially marking it as the most significant year in the company’s history. However, Musk addressed the challenge of scaling vehicle production, pointing out that battery packs are currently the limiting factor, but expects explosive growth once this constraint is resolved in 2026.
Earnings and Financial
- The financial results were terrible
- 26% of their earnings this quarter came from unrealised $BTC gains
- A 6.3% revenue miss,
- Free cash flow of $3.6B in 2024; $2.0B in Q4 and the $7.5B increase in cash and investments took it in 2024 to $36.6B
- Automotive GM up to 17,1%
- Average Cost of Goods reduced to under $35,000
- EBIT miss by 38%, and missed earnings per share
- No increase in deliveries for 2024 over 2023 although this was stated in 2023.
- Musk envisions Tesla becoming the world’s most valuable company, potentially surpassing the combined value of the next top five companies.
- Tesla aiming for 25% increase in auto sales for 2025
- New Model Y released and sale everywhere in March.
- Increased Chargers by over 3,000 in Q4 and grew the network by 19% YoY – now at 65k+ Superchargers worldwide
- Model Y is the best selling vehicle globally.
- Spent over $5 billion on AI capex
FSD
- Increased AI training compute by over 400% in 2024
- Deployment of Cortex, a ~50k H100 training cluster at Gigafactory Texas, and to double by end of 2025
- Cortex helped enable V13 of FSD (Supervised), which boasts major improvements in safety and comfort thanks to 4.2x increase in data, higher resolution video inputs, 2x reduction in photon-to-control latency and redesigned controller
- Musk predicts that Unsupervised FSD will be available in nearly all U.S. markets by year’s end, with the only limitation being regulatory approvals.
- Musk confessed that upgrading vehicles with Hardware 3 (HW3) for FSD will be challenging but necessary for those who’ve already purchased the feature, expressing a humorous relief that fewer people bought it than expected.
- Tesla is reportedly in talks with other car manufacturers about licensing its FSD technology, with Musk noting substantial interest but only considering high-volume opportunities.
- Musk expressed confidence in launching Unsupervised FSD in California this year
- He believes scepticism towards FSD primarily comes from those who haven’t experienced it firsthand
- V14 is scaling the model, including audio, and increase context length.
- China won’t allow training in USA and vice versa, so FSD will take time to move to China. European regulators will slow FSD approvals.
Personal Public Transport (Ride Hail)
- Will only license FSD to other manufacturers when Tesla has FSD approved in USA
- Tesla plans to introduce Unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) as a paid service in Austin, Texas in June 2025, offering a fully automated service with no driver required.
- Elon Musk announced that Tesla owners will soon have the option to include or exclude their vehicles from the Robotaxi fleet starting in 2026, similar to how Airbnb works.
- Aiming to produce > 2 million cybercabs per year
Energy Business
- Record energy sales, and record Powerwall3 sales for 11GW of storage.
- Tesla is set to construct a third factory for its Megapack energy storage system, with China Megafactory due to start producing in Q1 2025
- Tesla is limited by the number of battery packs available.
Humanoid Robotics
- Plan for several thousand Optimus robots for internal use in 2025. These will be V1 of bots.
- They will do the boring and semi dangerous jobs they cannot hire people for.
- Able to play the piano and be able to thread a needle.
- Supply to external companies starting in late 2026 with V2
- Aiming for production scale increases that could see 100 million units produced annually within 5 years.
- Scaling production 500% per year and produce 10k to 100k robots
- Potential to generate revenue exceeding $10 trillion.
- Computational resources needed for training are ten times that of what’s required for their vehicles.
Tesla Semi
- Nevada Semi factory construction continues, with first truck builds scheduled for end of 2025 and ramp in early 2026
- Autonomous critical as fewer truck drivers entering the market.
- Will be a $1 billion a month business at full capacity
Miscellaneous
- Not given up on solar. Trying to make installation easier
- Premium product
- Safety. In Q4 was 1 crash for every 5.9 million miles driven compared to a crash every 700,000 miles without Autopilot.
Figures: Tesla Earnings Call Q4-2024
Free Cash Flow and Capital Expenditure
More Reading
- Tesla Earnings Q4 2024 29th January 2025 https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure
- Stonk Info https://x.com/stonksinfo/status/1884763348417589536
- Sergey CYW https://x.com/SergeyCYW/status/1849289731080679733
- Tesla, Inc. – Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript Cern Basher https://x.com/CernBasher/status/1884841838067986876
