11 Tesla Highlights From Annual Meeting — Next-Gen Superchargers, Battery Prices, Roadster 2 “SpaceX Package,” Tesla Cash Flow …

June 6th, 2018 by Zachary Shahan

Tesla had its annual shareholder meeting last night (or yesterday afternoon if you’re in California). As usual, there were a ton of great comments, new pieces of information about various Tesla products, and some cool charts. Below are 11 highlights, and I’ve published another 17 highlights from the Q&A session in a follow-up article.

1. Tesla Model 3 production capacity is up to 3,500 cars a week, with an expectation of reaching a production run rate of 5,000 a week by the end of June. I wrote about this at length last night, so go ahead and check that out for more Model 3 number fun. Furthermore, the Model 3 became the top selling midsize luxury car in May. For much more context on that topic, and some CleanTechnica charts, see the link above.

2. Tesla expects to produce more than half of the world’s EV batteries next quarter … and presumably for quite a while after that. Elon highlighted that this estimate includes Chinese electric vehicles. The way it was stated, that would include electric buses and trucks, but I’d like to get confirmation of that claim and where the data come from.

3. Tesla Model 3 repairs have gone down dramatically as production has gone up exponentially. This was expected, but it’s still great to see the chart.

4. Elon made brief notes about the coming Tesla Semi & Tesla Roadster 2, but included in that was that they are going to be even better than what was unveiled. In fact, Elon called the Roadster that was unveiled last year the “base Roadster,” which is hard to comprehend since the specs of that “base” version of the car were already so insane. Oh, also, “it’s gonna have a SpaceX options package.”

5. Tesla’s energy storage production has now reached 1 GWh worldwide, as Kyle Field discussed at length yesterday. In less than a year, Tesla expects to install another 1 GWh of energy storage. In fact, there’s much more demand than that, but as usual, Tesla is production limited.

6. Tesla’s factory worker injury rate is now approximately 6% below the auto industry average and 50% what it was when GM and Toyota were last building cars in the NUMMI factory. Last year, Tesla’s factory worker injury rate was a bit above the auto industry average. Tesla’s long-term goal is to get it to 50% of the industry average, or 25% of what it was when GM and Toyota were running the factory.

7. It takes two hours just to walk through the parts of the Gigafactory online at this point. Once the company is further along, Elon wants to host epic tours for the public so that more of us can join the monumental construction. The Gigafactory is approximately one-third done right now. When completed, the company expects it to be perhaps twice as big as the next biggest building in the world.

8. Elon more or less told us this before, but he clarified that the Chinese Gigafactory will possibly be announced next month, and a European one later this year. (The company apparently still doesn’t know where the European one will be located.) Ultimately, there will be 10 or 12 gigafactories worldwide, the company expects.

9. Tesla Superchargers will reach 10,000 in number soon. Tesla is also working on a next-gen Supercharger, with details likely to be shared later this year. Supercharger expansion on the whole will speed up once that next-gen tech hits the ground, which is pretty wild when you look at how much it has been expanding.

10. Elon carefully reiterated his expectation that Tesla would be cash flow positive and GAAP net income positive in Q3 & Q4 of 2018. He didn’t say “definitely,” which I think is a word he used in a tweet on this subject, but he seemed highly confident of this and reiterated that Tesla didn’t expect to raise any more money this year.

11. Tesla expects to get battery cell prices below $100/kWh by the end of the year. This depends a bit on commodity prices, of course. With some chemistry improvements and more vertical integration at the cell level at the Gigafactory, as well as improved design of the module and pack, Tesla intends to eventually get below $100/kWh at the pack level. The aim is to reach that in “definitely less than 2 years,” Elon noted. “That’s Tesla long term,” he added with a chuckle.









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