Probably because there were too many people complaining about the brakes, Tesla decided to build a new car without brakes.
On the earnings call for the first quarter of 2022, Musk exploded a bunch of blockbusters, including a blockbuster new car.
The new car will not have a steering wheel and pedals, as it will be driven entirely using FSD (fully autonomous driving) software.
No brakes and steering wheel
"We're also working on a new vehicle, which I mentioned at the opening of Tesla's Texas Gigafactory, a specialized Robotaxi (self-driving taxi) that's highly optimized for autonomous driving, meaning it won't have a steering wheel or pedals."
Musk said on the conference call, "There's a lot of innovation around it, and I think those innovations are pretty exciting." He didn't reveal the car's exterior, but we can refer to Musk's tunneling company, The Boring Company's promotional video.
Musk estimates that Robotaxi will be able to provide consumers with the lowest cost of transportation per unit, even lower than subways and buses.
This is not only to overturn the taxi network, but also to grab the business of public transportation! Therefore, Musk believes that this new car will become the main driving force for Tesla's growth in the future.
Tesla plans to launch this Robotaxi in 2023 and achieve mass production in 2024.
But anyone who knows Musk knows that this guy's commitment to time has never been reliable — in 2019, he said that there will be 1 million Tesla Robotai by the end of 2020.
What is certain is that the launch time of Robotaxi depends on the development progress of FSD.
Recently Musk said twice about FSD Beta, and in the process of development, there will be a lot of false victory dawn.
That is, many times you think that autonomous driving has finally been solved, but in fact, this is entering a bottleneck, and you need to break the bottleneck and start rapid progress again.
Perhaps, one day, we will see Tesla abandon the camera solution and join the lidar camp.
Tesla's most important project
The Optimus robot, which was not paid much attention to before, has been raised to a new height in the priority within Tesla.
On the conference call, Musk said that the scale of the Optimus robot project is not yet realized, its importance will become apparent in the next few years, and even Optimus will eventually be more valuable than the automotive business, than FSD.
In August 2021, Tesla unveiled the Optimus robot at Artificial Intelligence Day, which consists of an FSD in-vehicle computer on Tesla vehicles, as well as a visual perception system and 40 miniature motors.
In Tesla's vision, such a robot may be used to perform dangerous or cool work of humans in the early stage, and in the future, the robot will become more advanced, capable of caring for people, cooking and other tasks.
Musk said that by around 2050, most homes will have home robots. It won't cost crazy, and probably won't cost more than a car.
Suddenly came to mind "Detroit: Becoming Human"...
One more thing
In addition to this, Musk also mentioned several things during the conference call:
1, berlin gigafactory in the early stage of production, will still use 2170 battery packs, until the third quarter of this year will be switched to 4680 battery packs.
The Texas Gigafactory will also use 2170/4680 battery packs to produce the Model Y.
2, Cybertruck and Semi may upgrade the 800V voltage platform, but the current 800V platform has little advantage, but the cost is not low. Tesla's more sales support it switching platforms.
3. The FSD Beta software will be pushed to all FSD users in the United States this year, and the number of FSD Beta users has increased to 100,000 people.
4, the global car inventory cycle of 3 days, while the peer is about 40-50 days level.
Tesla sells cars in China, Europe and North America, and there are a large number of cars to cross the ocean, and there are many orders that need to be transported 1000-2000km long distance after delivery.
The final average inventory cycle is 3 days, which is a very scary number, indicating that Tesla has a considerable proportion of models, achieving "delivery within one day".
A very important reason why Cook was able to become Jobs's successor that year was that he reduced Apple's inventory cycle from 1 month to 6 days.
There is no boundary Tesla
Finally, let's take a look at Tesla's first quarter 2022 financial report.
According to the financial report, Tesla's revenue was $18.76 billion, an increase of 81% year-on-year, of which the automotive business revenue was $16.861 billion, an increase of 87.3% year-on-year.
Net profit was US$3.318 billion, up 657.6% year-on-year, and all figures were better than market expectations.
It is worth noting that the gross profit margin of Tesla's automobile business in the first quarter has reached 32.9%, higher than the market expectation of 28.4%.
Taking the 316,900 Model Y entry-level model as an example, its gross profit reached 104,000 yuan.
Selling a car to make 100,000 yuan, Dou Zong strong people are terrified.
Under the multiple positive news, Tesla's stock price rose 5.57% after hours, and its current market value is $1.04 trillion.
After reading the conference call, an industry insider said:
"Tesla's innovative fission is terrifying, and today Tesla is a real collection of N different, cutting-edge startups, each small company has a huge imagination, and the bandwidth of Musk's brain is too wide."
At that time, Wang Xing said: Meituan is a company without borders.
Now it seems that the US group has a border. The real boundary should be Tesla.