On July 24, Beijing time, Tesla released its financial report for the second quarter of 2024, with its single-quarter revenue reaching US$25.5 billion (about 185.5 billion yuan) and quarterly non-GAAP net profit of US$1.8 billion (about 13.1 billion yuan).
Among them, there is a very important piece of information that Tesla's safety report for the first quarter of 2024 shows that Tesla vehicles with Autopilot turned on are 11.4 times safer than the average. This is the first time that Tesla's self-driving function is 10 times safer than ordinary driving, and it is considered a historic turning point in the popularization of autonomous driving.
Highlights of Tesla's Q2 2024 earnings call are as follows:
1. Robotaxi will be released on October 10 and may be put into use by the end of this year, or next year at the latest.
2. Elon Musk: Tesla is likely to be FSD licensed in other markets by the end of this year, such as Europe and China.
3. Tesla produced more than 410,000 electric vehicles worldwide in the second quarter of 2024, and deliveries exceeded 444,000 units, an increase of 14.7% quarter-on-quarter, exceeding the expectations of Wall Street institutions. The Shanghai Gigafactory continued to play an important role, with deliveries reaching 71,007 units in June and domestic sales increasing to 59,261 units. The domestic sales performance in the first three weeks of July is still bright, and July is expected to set a record for the first month of domestic deliveries in a single quarter. The 5-year zero interest policy has been extended until August 31.
4. Elon Musk: We believe that pure electric vehicles are the best choice for consumers, and as misunderstandings about range, charging and service are gradually eliminated, pure electric vehicles will eventually win the favor of all consumers.
5. A new version of the fully autonomous driving capability (supervised version) relies mainly on eye tracking software to monitor the driver's attention, and the driver is no problem wearing sunglasses.
6. Q2 4680 cell production increased by 50% quarter-on-quarter, and costs continued to decline.
7. The energy storage business grew rapidly, with the installed capacity of energy storage products reaching 9.4 GWh in the second quarter, an increase of about 132% quarter-on-quarter, setting a new record for installed capacity in a single quarter. Powerwall 3 has continued to be successful since its launch and is now available in Canada, United Kingdom and Germany in addition to the United States.
8. The second-generation humanoid robot Optimus is already working on battery-related tasks in factories, and thousands of Optimus are expected to be on duty at Tesla factories by the end of 2025, with deliveries to external customers starting in 2026.
9. Tesla will have huge distributed computing power. Musk believes that the AI5 chip, which will be put into production at the end of next year, will make distributed computing power an obvious choice. Physically, future vehicles will be equipped with AI5 and above chips, and possibly billions of humanoid robots that can provide a staggering amount of inference when the vehicle and robot are idle.
10. The southern expansion of Gigafactory Texas is nearing completion and will house Tesla's largest Nvidia H100 chip cluster to date.
11. The Cyber SUV became the best-selling model in the United States segment in the second quarter, with production increasing more than 3 times quarter-on-quarter, and is on track to become profitable by the end of 2024.
12. The next-generation new model will start production in the first half of 2025 as planned, using the existing production line, which will maximize the current production capacity of nearly 3 million units and achieve a 50% increase compared to 2023. Tesla will then invest in new production lines.
Tesla's sales have picked up globally
In the second quarter of 2024, Tesla's global sales will gradually recover, and the contribution of the Chinese market is particularly obvious. According to the data of the Passenger Car Association, in the first half of this year, the total sales of Model Y exceeded 207,000 units. In the second quarter, the Model Y won the national passenger car sales championship for two consecutive months in May and June, with cumulative sales exceeding 80,000 units. At the same time, the number of domestic registrations of the Model 3 exceeded 6,000 units in a single week, setting a new sales record since the launch of the new model.
The fierce price war in the domestic market makes it difficult for Tesla to stand alone. Before August 31, Tesla will further increase the five-year financial interest-free policy to boost sales. According to statistics, Tesla's cumulative sales in the first three weeks of July have exceeded 28,400 units, and according to the current sales volume and order performance, Tesla's domestic sales in July are expected to create the highest record in the first month of a single quarter in history.
In the 15 European markets, Tesla's market share reached 27% in June; In Norway, Tesla's cumulative sales in the first half of the year were 1.25 times that of second-place Toyota; in Germany, the home of fuel vehicles, the Model Y was the best-selling electric vehicle in the first four months of this year.
Tesla believes that product strength is the key to Tesla's hot sales. Recently, a Germany car owner shared that his Model S has completed 2 million kilometers of mileage, and the vehicle status remains stable.
Tesla's second-quarter production and delivery report shows that Tesla has produced more than 410,000 electric vehicles worldwide and delivered more than 444,000 electric vehicles, an increase of 14.7% from the previous quarter, ranking first in global electric vehicle sales in the second quarter. Tesla's sales are still growing. Since 2013, Tesla's cumulative global sales have exceeded 6 million vehicles.
Tesla's hot sales are in advance, and it is not expensive to drive
Tesla believes that the premise of its hot sales is far more than the experience and high cost performance of fuel vehicles.
According to the latest report, the Model Y is the world's least energy-efficient SUV, with a range of 6.1 kilometers per kilowatt-hour, which leads the industry in the "electric vehicle powertrain efficiency" indicator. Tesla's approach is to innovate deeply in many aspects such as the three-electric system, thermal management, and body design, such as a unique flat wire motor design, the industry's first heat pump system, and a unique panoramic glass roof design.
When it comes to security, Tesla has done a lot of work. According to Tesla's Q1 2024 safety report, Tesla's Autopilot-enabled Tesla vehicles are 11.4 times safer than the average. This is the first time that Tesla's self-driving safety performance has surpassed ordinary driving by 10 times, which means that the autonomous driving industry has ushered in a historic development.
At the same time, Tesla has also made great efforts in battery safety. Tesla's safety report shows that from 2012 to 2022, Tesla vehicles will only have a fire accident every 210 million kilometers driven on average, and the fire rate is 1/8 of that of gasoline vehicles.
Autonomous driving and humanoid robots ushered in new opportunities for development
Tesla's second-generation humanoid robot, Optimus, is already working in factories to process batteries, and thousands of Optimus are expected to be on duty at Tesla's factories by the end of next year, before ramping up production and starting deliveries to external customers in 2026.
At present, new energy vehicles are reshaping the valuation system of passenger cars, and the traditional measurement standards have undergone fundamental changes. For example, range and autonomous driving technology have become the new focus. Ark Invest predicts that Tesla's valuation has the potential to rise 10 times to more than $5 trillion based on the self-driving business alone; If you add the humanoid robot business, Tesla will have a market value of $20 trillion in the optimistic scenario alone, which has been endorsed by Musk.
Tesla's FSD full self-driving feature is designed with end-to-end logic. Although Tesla did not announce its technical architecture, and the outside world has different opinions about it, in terms of results, Tesla FSD has shown amazing explosiveness. He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, and Lin Bin, co-founder of Xiaomi Group, all spoke highly of it.
In the second quarter, a new version of Tesla's fully self-driving capability (supervised version) was launched, which relies primarily on eye-tracking software to monitor the driver's attention. At the same time, the focus is on reducing interventions and improving driver comfort.
ARK Ark Fund pointed out in the "Big Ideas 2024" report that the accident rate of Tesla's FSD driving is about 80% lower than that of human drivers. Compared with ordinary vehicles, FSD improves driving safety by 16 times; Compared to other autonomous driving companies, FSD has a safe driving range of up to 74 times.
Based on this premise, Tesla is about to start a new Robotaxi business. Robotaxi will be released on October 10 and is likely to be operational by the end of this year, or next year at the latest. Robotaxi has two meanings - business model and driverless vehicle (type).
Cathy ·, CEO of Ark Investment Management, believes that Tesla's robotaxi platform will account for the largest share of the artificial intelligence market, and the entire opportunity will generate about $8 to $10 trillion in revenue by 2030, half of which she believes will go to platforms such as Tesla.
In short, Tesla's FSD fully self-driving function turns the car into a value-added product, 15% of the time for self-use, 85% of the time to earn money, sharing car space and computing power.
At the 2024 shareholders' meeting, Tesla showcased the latest advances in the control and execution capabilities of the humanoid robot "Optimus", which is shown in the video with smooth walking, flexible grasping and lowering of objects, and its movements and controls are closer to that of humans.
Tesla believes that the Optimus robot is not only a showcase for technological innovation, but also an important part of the future business model. Musk expects that Optimus will significantly increase the productivity of Tesla's factories in the future and is expected to take a place in the global labor market.
Not only that, Tesla's "robot + electric vehicle" collaborative application scenario opens up infinite possibilities, such as humanoid robots can be used as home assistants, responsible for safety monitoring and home maintenance when the owner is away, and can even complete the charging and maintenance tasks of electric vehicles autonomously.
Musk predicted at the 2024 shareholders' meeting that the ratio of humanoid robots to humans will exceed 1:1 or even reach 2:1 in the future, indicating that the global humanoid robot market will have a huge capacity of 10 billion to 20 billion units, with an annual output of up to 1 billion units. If Tesla can occupy 10% of the market share, its annual production will reach 100 million Optimus, and the cost of a single robot is expected to be controlled at about $10,000, and Tesla is expected to achieve a profit margin of $1 trillion a year at a price of $20,000.
The energy storage business ushered in a big explosion
Tesla's ambitions are by no means limited to passenger cars, in electric vehicles, energy storage equipment, power generation equipment, artificial intelligence, robots, gigafactories and other businesses, Tesla hopes to reach the world's first in every field.
The growth of the energy storage business is particularly obvious, and it has become the growth engine of Tesla's business. In the second quarter, the installed capacity of energy storage products reached 9.4 GWh, an increase of about 132% quarter-on-quarter, once again setting a new record for installed capacity in a single quarter.
Powerwall 3 has continued to be successful since its launch and is now available in Canada, United Kingdom and Germany in addition to the United States.
On July 18, Tesla announced that it will provide 15.3 GWh of Megapacks battery energy storage systems for the solar + energy storage project of United States clean energy company Intersect Power by 2030, which is Tesla's largest Megapack contract so far. The agreement also puts Intersect Power on track to become one of the world's largest buyers and operators of Megapacks.
Tesla's energy business has great potential, bringing record revenue and profits to the energy business thanks to the contributions of Megapack and Powerwall. Moreover, there was strong growth in follow-up orders for energy storage deployments.
In addition, Tesla's Shanghai energy storage gigafactory officially started in May this year and is expected to be put into operation in the first quarter of 2025, after which the output of the ultra-large electrochemical commercial energy storage system Megapack will reach 10,000 units, with an energy storage scale of nearly 40 GWh (1 GWh = 1,000 MWh).
According to Bloomberg's forecast, the global market demand for energy storage batteries will reach 1,000 GWh by 2030, with a market size of $1.2 trillion. The start of construction of the Shanghai Energy Storage Gigafactory indicates that Tesla's layout improvement and integration innovation in multiple areas of "electric vehicles, energy storage, and artificial intelligence" have entered a new chapter.