Why Tesla Earnings Calls No Longer Discuss Cars

Written by | Zhang Linyu

Edited by | Zhang Nan

At 4:30 PM Central Time on July 22, Tesla's Q2 earnings call began, with little mention of its traditional automotive business.

During the Q&A session, analysts no longer asked when the low-cost model colloquially known as Model 2 would go into mass production. Tesla has never officially used this name, nor did they inquire about the progress of the next-generation model.

Elon Musk and his core executives shared information with the audience regarding FSD (Full Self-Driving, Tesla's fully autonomous driving software, which still requires driver supervision at all times in the current version), Robotaxi, Optimus robot, and chip factory.

This forms a certain contrast with Tesla's current revenue structure.

Revenue Increase Without Profit Increase

In Q2 2026, Tesla delivered a total of 480,126 vehicles globally, a 25% year-over-year increase and a 34% quarter-over-quarter increase, marking the company's best Q2 delivery record, second only to the historical record of 497,099 vehicles set in Q3 2025.

Among them, 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were delivered, accounting for 97.4% of total deliveries; other models including Model S, Model X, Cybertruck, and Semi trucks totaled 12,364 deliveries, accounting for only 2.6%.

Production for the same period was 451,758 units. Deliveries exceeded production by 28,368 units, and global vehicle inventory days dropped from 27 days in the previous quarter to 15 days.

Tesla did not disclose absolute sales by region for Q2, but Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja revealed that compared to Q1, deliveries grew 60% in the Americas, 27% in Asia-Pacific, and 12% in EMEA. He also stated that Tesla ended Q2 with the largest order backlog since 2023.

The shareholder letter listed the markets where Q2 delivery records were set: South Korea, Australia, Colombia, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Portugal, Philippines, Chile, Slovenia, and Lithuania. Taneja additionally noted that Model Y set sales records in the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand.

Sales grew, but profits did not increase correspondingly.

In Q2, Tesla's total revenue was $28.236 billion, up 26% year-over-year, marking the first time revenue over the past 12 months exceeded $100 billion. Among them, automotive business revenue was $20.516 billion, up 23% year-over-year, accounting for 72.7% of total revenue; energy generation and storage business revenue was $3.139 billion, up 13%; service and other business revenue was $4.581 billion, up 50%, becoming the fastest-growing business.

Tesla's gross profit for the quarter was $4.751 billion, up 23% year-over-year; GAAP gross margin was 16.8%, down 41 basis points from 17.2% in the same period last year.

Operating profit was only $398 million, down 57% year-over-year; operating margin dropped from 4.1% to 1.4% compared to the same period last year.

In other words, Tesla's revenue increased by $5.74 billion year-over-year, but operating profit decreased by $525 million.

One source of pressure on profits came from expenses. In Q2, Tesla's R&D expenses reached $2.371 billion, up 49% year-over-year; sales, general, and administrative expenses reached $1.982 billion, up 45%. The two expenses totaled $4.353 billion, almost eating up all gross profit.

The shareholder letter attributed expense growth to three areas: R&D projects such as AI, equity incentives (including 2025 CEO compensation plan), and sales and admin expenses. Equity incentive expenses were $1.151 billion pre-tax this quarter, compared to $635 million in the same period last year.

Automotive regulatory credit revenue dropped from $439 million last year to $146 million, down 67% year-over-year; it was $380 million last quarter. The $7,500 U.S. federal EV tax credit expired on September 30, 2025; after federal law amendments, fines for automakers failing to meet fuel economy standards were zeroed out, removing the motivation to buy Tesla credits.

Automotive business GAAP gross margin was 16.9%; automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credit revenue was 16.3%, higher than 15.0% in the same period last year, but significantly lower than 19.2% in Q1 this year.

Taneja explained that Q1 automotive gross margin was helped by approximately $230 million in reserve reversals for warranties and tariff reductions; these benefits did not repeat in Q2; excluding these impacts, automotive gross margin excluding credits was roughly flat with the previous quarter.

In the attribution of revenue and profit in the shareholder letter, 'decline in average selling price per vehicle' is listed as a negative factor in two places.

The energy business also saw 'revenue increase without profit increase'.

In Q2, Tesla's energy storage deployment reached 13.5 GWh, up 41% year-over-year and 53% quarter-over-quarter, the second-highest quarter in history. However, due to approximately $240 million in warranty expenses caused by supplier cell issues, the energy business gross margin dropped from 39.5% in Q1 to 20.4%.

Service and other businesses became one of the few clear profit growth points.

This business's gross profit grew from $166 million in the same period last year to $648 million, an increase of $302 million quarter-over-quarter; gross margin rose from 5.5% last year and 9.2% last quarter to 14.1%, a historic high.

Tesla's GAAP net profit for the quarter was $1.114 billion, down 5% year-over-year; diluted EPS was $0.32, down 3% year-over-year.

This $1.114 billion includes an unrealized gain from a SpaceX equity investment, $1.005 billion pre-tax and $763 million after-tax. Tesla bought this SpaceX equity for $2.002 billion in Q1 2026, realizing a paper gain of $1.005 billion one quarter later.

Taneja said this approximately $1 billion gain was offset by approximately $300 million in foreign exchange losses and about $100 million in Bitcoin losses. On the income statement, the total 'Other income (expense), net' for the quarter was $590 million.

Excluding equity incentives, SpaceX paper gains, digital asset fluctuations, and special tax items, Tesla's non-GAAP net profit was $1.153 billion, down 17% year-over-year; non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.33, down 18% year-over-year.

In Q2, Tesla's operating cash flow was $4.697 billion, up 85% year-over-year; capital expenditures reached $5.789 billion, up 142% year-over-year, resulting in $1.092 billion of negative free cash flow.

The company expects capital expenditures for the full year 2026 to exceed $25 billion, and capex will continue to grow in the next two to three years.

As of the end of June, Tesla held $43.524 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, down $1.219 billion from Q1.

Automotive remains Tesla's largest revenue source and the foundation supporting cash flow and capital expenditures, but the earnings call is no longer about cars.

Elon Musk Only Discussed Three Things

After the earnings call began, Elon Musk sounded emotionally down. He later explained to analysts that he was sick that day, 'If I sound a bit off, it's because I'm sick today and feeling unwell.'

He briefly mentioned three things.

The first thing was Cybercab. He announced that Cybercab production has started at the Texas Gigafactory. As a two-seater model designed specifically for Robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals, Cybercab is seen as the core carrier for Tesla shifting from selling cars to operating an autonomous driving fleet. Tesla has provided Cybercab ride experiences for employees within the Texas factory campus since July.

However, Cybercab will not scale up rapidly in the short term.

Since it uses a completely new chassis, Tesla must first let test vehicles equipped with steering wheels, accelerator pedals, and brake pedals accumulate sufficient driving data to complete the autonomous driving system calibration for the Cybercab chassis.

The second thing was the Optimus robot.

Musk again called Optimus 'the largest product ever', but he also admitted this will be the hardest product for Tesla to date to achieve mass production.

Cars at least have mature supply chains for tires, glass, mirrors, and body parts, but almost all components of Optimus need to be redesigned and supply systems established.

Tesla has dismantled the Model S and Model X production lines at the Fremont factory and started installing the first-generation Optimus production line; the Optimus building at the Texas factory is also under construction.

The shareholder letter said the first batch of Optimus will be deployed within Tesla's Optimus Academy for collecting training data and developing features.

Musk stated that Optimus production ramp will follow a typical S-curve, but due to many new components, the initial flat phase of the curve will be very long.

Musk hopes the third-generation Optimus will eventually reach an annual production of 1 million units, and the fourth generation 10 million units. However, he immediately emphasized these are ideal targets, and achieving true mass production is 'surprisingly difficult'.

The third thing was the chip factory.

This is a massive chip manufacturing project in cooperation between Tesla and SpaceX. Terafab not only produces logic chips but also covers storage chips, advanced packaging, testing, and photomask manufacturing.

Musk did not disclose the site location at the earnings call, only stating there will soon be a separate launch event because this project 'deserves its own day' and should not be squeezed into an earnings call.

He envisioned placing photomask manufacturing, logic chips, storage chips, packaging, and testing in the same building to shorten chip design and validation cycles.

Terafab's main task is not to produce traditional chips for cars, but to solve the AI computing power needed for future large-scale Optimus mass production.

Musk believes that without its own chip manufacturing capability, Optimus will eventually be constrained by AI chip supply.

There was another chip statement in the shareholder letter: Tesla's semiconductor wafer fab in Austin is advancing construction and equipment procurement; the project is still in early stages, aiming to build its own chip manufacturing capability to ensure long-term supply of logic and storage chips. The full shareholder letter does not mention Terafab.

June 4, 2026, Hsinchu, Taiwan, TSMC 2026 Annual Shareholders' Meeting.

A corporate shareholder representative asked TSMC Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei how he viewed Musk building his own wafer fab. Wei said: 'My only comment is to 'bless him'.' He also said TSMC has never lacked opponents; the only way to face them is to continue to strive and win.

Cybercab, Optimus, and Terafab form the main axis of Musk's entire narrative at this earnings call. The traditional automotive business only exists as a cash source and AI implementation platform.

The Limitation on Production Is Not Demand, but Battery Packs

The shareholder letter stated in two places that battery pack capacity is the main limiting factor for recent vehicle production increases. Taneja added at the meeting that production growth will be limited by supply chains, not just batteries, but also electronic components.

In the same quarter, Tesla faced the largest order backlog since 2023.

As of the end of Q2, Tesla's paid FSD subscriptions reached 1.48 million, up 56% year-over-year; global paid users approached 1.5 million, with 55% one-time purchase and 45% subscription. Over 55% of new cars in North America had FSD subscriptions activated at delivery.

The shareholder letter stated Tesla has pushed FSD v14 lite to vehicles equipped with AI3 hardware in the U.S. and South Korea, by distilling driving behaviors from the v14 series on AI4 into the camera and compute configuration of AI3.

Hardware 3 and Hardware 4 correspond to AI3 and AI4. Musk said in the Q&A session that upgrading vehicles below Hardware 4 'will eventually be economically reasonable', but Tesla public documents have no hardware upgrade plans.

The shareholder letter listed nine Robotaxi metro areas: California's SF Bay Area with safety drivers; Texas Austin, Dallas, Houston and Florida Miami, Orlando, Tampa in unsupervised operational ramp-up phase; Arizona Phoenix, Nevada Las Vegas in preparation.

Tesla claimed Robotaxi is online in 7 major metro areas, cumulatively driving over 380,000 miles safely with no accident records.

Analyst Q&A Transcript

Below is the transcript of the Q&A session from Tesla's Q2 2026 Earnings Call, compiled by this publication from the conference call recording, with omissions.

Earnings Call Executive List

Host: Travis Axelrod (Travis Axelrod, Head of Investor Relations at Tesla)

Musk (Elon Musk, Tesla Co-founder and CEO)

Vaibhav Taneja (Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla CFO)

Ashok Elluswamy

Karn Budhiraj

Lars Moravy (Lars Moravy, Vice President of Vehicle Engineering at Tesla)

Brandon Ehrhart (Brandon Ehrhart, Tesla General Counsel and Corporate Secretary)

Q1: Currently there is no mature Optimus supply chain, so Tesla has to do much of the work internally. In the process of advancing this, are there suppliers willing to co-invest with you to establish local manufacturing capability in the U.S., helping Tesla achieve scale faster? From an investment cycle perspective, having partners advance together could improve capital efficiency. How do you consider this?

Musk: Our suppliers are performing exceptionally well. To support Optimus, Robotaxi, and other projects, they have invested and are continuing to invest huge funds.

Especially Samsung Electronics and TSMC, both building wafer fabs. TSMC is building in Arizona, Samsung is building in Texas, investing tens of billions of dollars to produce AI computing chips for Optimus and Robotaxi.

Panasonic has also invested billions of dollars to expand battery production.

Please excuse me, I'm feeling a bit unwell today, slightly sick. If my voice sounds off, it's because I'm indeed feeling unwell today.

Our partners are all excellent. I want to thank them for their support, their investments, and their hard work.

Karn Budhiraj: I want to add a point on this basis. A significant portion of Samsung's wafer fab capacity will be used for future projects. This is a massive investment involving billions of dollars.

We also see investment of similar scale in the storage chip sector. Additionally, investment has emerged in some new dedicated parts areas, such as metal injection molding parts, flexible printed circuits, and various non-traditional technologies. These technologies are mostly designed for robots, differing from our traditional automotive supply chains in the past.

In some areas, if we cannot find suitable partners, we never hesitate to move production internally. We have a very strong manufacturing engineering team and design team that can help us scale up production of these products.

Musk: I also want to thank Micron Technology (Micron Technology, U.S. storage chip manufacturer) for allocating storage chip capacity for us. They must make some very difficult decisions on storage chip capacity allocation. Given the crazy high price of storage chips today, we are very grateful that Micron is willing to reserve space for Tesla in the coming years and allocate considerable capacity to us under reasonable terms.

Q2: Regulations in U.S. states seem to be changing, possibly involving sensor configuration requirements. For Robotaxi deployment, what approach do you want regulators to take? To avoid excessive regulation while ensuring Robotaxi lands correctly, what regulatory environment do you hope to see?

Lars Moravy: When discussing regulations, especially the U.S. regulatory environment, significant progress has been made. The federal government has taken very proactive measures around the 'Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards' (FMVSS), beginning to accept and promote specifically designed autonomous vehicles. We are very grateful for the support from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in this regard.

As for individual states, some recent movements in New Jersey are obviously somewhat disappointing.

But as Ashok said in his opening remarks, what we really care about is the vehicle's own performance. Ultimately, it is product performance that drives regulators and the public to accept this technology.

I believe the best way to regulate is to set a goal or task for companies and innovators, then let us find solutions ourselves. If some regulations define the solution before clearly stating the problem, we certainly won't welcome that practice.

Tesla has always proven itself with actual performance in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. This will also become the foundation for our continued expansion.

Q3: Next, what milestones should investors focus on? After reaching which milestones will you accelerate Robotaxi fleet expansion or market deployment? Is it further safety validation, such as mileage per accident, or other metrics? Additionally, will you consider partnering with third parties like ride-hailing platforms to increase vehicle utilization, or continue to maintain full vertical integration?

Musk: We expect Robotaxi to adopt a vertical integration model, like Tesla's other businesses. I don't think Robotaxi will face a problem of insufficient demand. Its economics will be extremely attractive, with many people wanting to use this service, and demand will exceed our service capacity. In this case, vertical integration is obviously the choice.

The real issue is just what we call the progression of reliability 'multiple 9s'. That is, to scale up, how many 9s of reliability does the system actually need to reach?

Ideally, we want reliability to reach 99.999999%. I believe the only limitation to Robotaxi growth is moving towards more 9s of reliability.

Q4: Outsiders have been discussing the possibility of SpaceX and Tesla merging in some way. The two companies have already carried out extensive cooperation. Will merging the two companies eventually produce synergies? As time passes, is this reasonable?

Musk: As everyone can see from the extensive cooperation carried out by the two companies in many fields, the overlap between their businesses is increasing, especially the Terafab project. This will be a true massive project.

But obviously, we cannot discuss matters like company mergers on an earnings conference call. Such matters must be carried out according to appropriate procedures.

Brandon Ehrhart: We have always benefited from our relationship with SpaceX. SpaceX is an excellent partner, and we have conducted many transactions beneficial to both parties with them.

Earlier this year, we deepened the relationship between the two sides through an investment and a framework agreement. This will enable us to continue working with SpaceX to advance the projects Elon just mentioned, such as Terafab and Digital Optimus.

Musk: Additionally, there are many other collaborations. Grok (the large model of Musk's AI company xAI) has now been integrated into the car, and Grok is also helping drive Digital Optimus. Starlink (SpaceX's satellite internet service) is being integrated into Cybercab. In the future, Starlink will also be integrated into all our automotive products, at least in markets where Starlink is already operating.

Because in Robotaxi application scenarios, the network must cover all places.

Even in Silicon Valley, there are many places with very poor mobile network signals, sometimes even no signal at all. When I drive to work, the first 10 to 15 minutes I cannot actually make calls because the mobile network connection is too poor.

We cannot let Robotaxi enter these 'Bermuda Triangles' lacking mobile network connections and get stuck there. Starlink can provide network connections anywhere, so it is very important. This avoids Robotaxi losing connection.

If people are sitting in the car, they might want to handle work efficiently, or they might hope to get an entertainment experience. With Starlink, people can watch 4K live sports events in the car, and the cost per GB of data is very low. This is actually difficult to achieve through mobile communication networks.

Vaibhav Taneja: You can understand this from the Cybercab ride experience. In a world where you don't need to focus on driving, all the time you sit in the car can be used for other things, whether attending conference calls, watching movies, or doing other activities.

Therefore, if you observe the design of Cybercab, you will see it is equipped with a very large screen.

We have started providing Cybercab ride experiences within the Austin factory. In the not-so-distant future, consumers will also be able to experience it. Once you truly experience it, you will understand why network connections become so important.

Q5: Currently Robotaxi is constantly adding operating cities, but according to media reports, the number of vehicles seems to still be only dozens, not hundreds. Why not concentrate on expanding the scale of Austin or one or two cities first? To achieve higher deployment volume in a major city, what else do you need to solve?

Ashok Elluswamy: The reason we chose to expand to different cities instead of focusing on only one city is that we want to ensure the tech stack has strong generality.

It is indeed a general system. We just want to prove to ourselves and the outside world that this system can run in many different cities, and entering each city does not require investing too much extra work. This is exactly what we see internally.

As Elon just mentioned, the growth rate is actually rising exponentially, it's just that it's currently in the early stage of the exponential curve, so the outside world finds it hard to understand this growth.

As for whether to focus on mileage or vehicle count, since vehicles in the Robotaxi fleet will basically run continuously, while human drivers might only use vehicles a few hours a day, there is a huge difference between the two.

These vehicles will operate continuously for the vast majority of the time. This means that even if the number of vehicles is small, a large amount of mileage can be generated. Therefore, we focus more on unsupervised driving mileage rather than simply the number of vehicles.

We hope to operate a very efficient fleet. All work that improves operational efficiency will further increase the mileage each vehicle in the fleet can contribute.

Vaibhav Taneja: We are trying to expand this business, while also ensuring to solve various problems that may exist. These problems involve not only software but also operations, and we are also working on handling them. Therefore, we hope to first expand the geographic coverage, and before truly large-scale deployment, solve these problems through a smaller, controllable fleet.

Musk: Regarding Cybercab, one point needs special explanation. Because Cybercab uses a completely new vehicle chassis, before mass deployment, we must accumulate driving data specifically for Cybercab.

Model 3, Model Y, and other models already have millions of cars driving on the road, we have a lot of data, but Cybercab does not yet have such data foundation.

We must first let Cybercab equipped with devices such as steering wheels, accelerator pedals, and brake pedals accumulate mileage, thereby completing system calibration for the Cybercab chassis.

When we establish sufficient confidence in this, everyone will see a significant increase in the number of Cybercabs in various cities.

Lars Moravy: Another reason to point out is that total cost of ownership and transportation regulatory environments are not the same between different cities and different states. Currently, there is no unified federal regulatory framework.

The reason we expand city by city is to ensure we can meet these requirements separately and respond to the specific requirements of each city as much as possible.

We must enter every city to meet local requirements. We will continue to do this, and expand the scale further after meeting all conditions.

Q6: The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is pushing to cancel pedals and steering wheels. Will these become factors limiting Cybercab production expansion? At the federal level, are there any other problems that need to be solved to truly release your ability to expand Cybercab scale?

Lars Moravy: The short answer is, no. We maintain a very good relationship with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, especially with Administrator Jonathan Morrison.

I think they are just catering to public demand and the trend known worldwide to be coming. They are trying to stay ahead of the trend to ensure appropriate measures are taken.

In the past few years, we have always honestly introduced our plans and ongoing work to them.

I don't want to say the two sides are completely in step, but I feel we have a partner there, and both sides are advancing relevant work together.

[Editor's Note: Morrison was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as NHTSA Administrator on September 18, 2025. He served as NHTSA General Counsel from 2017 to 2021. Before returning to NHTSA in 2025, he was responsible for legal, regulatory, government affairs, and policy in Apple's Special Projects Group (i.e., Apple's car project)]

Q7: Starlink has been integrated into Cybercab. Can Cybercab in turn become a remote hotspot for Starlink mobile services? Also, when do you expect to start developing autonomous driving for Tesla Semi? Considering the shortage of truck drivers, autonomous driving trucks also seem to be a market of large scale.

Musk: As you mentioned, there is indeed a very serious shortage of truck drivers now. Not enough people are willing to drive trucks, and trucks are crucial for U.S. freight transportation. Autonomous Semi will be very important for solving the truck driver shortage problem and also helps improve safety.

For Tesla Semi still driven by truck drivers, autonomous driving functions will also significantly improve driving safety and comfort.

Since the number of Tesla Semis is currently still very small, even by the end of this year, its proportion in Tesla's total vehicles will still be very low, therefore, it is reasonable to prioritize autonomous driving R&D resources for high-volume models.

We will prioritize solving the autonomous driving problems of Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, truly making these models achieve universal, unsupervised autonomous driving.

We expect Tesla Semi's autonomous driving function might be realized by the end of this year or early next year. I just don't want the Semi project to distract our attention from continuously improving safety reliability and moving towards more 9s on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab.

Therefore, in the next approximately six months, the priority of the autonomous Semi project will be slightly pushed back. However, it will definitely be achievable next year and able to catch up with Tesla Semi's process of large-scale production increase.

As for communication, we might treat the Starlink terminals in Tesla cars as mobile communication base stations, or some kind of network connection relay towers, providing network relay to mobile phones on the ground and anyone who wants to use Wi-Fi.

Obviously, fixed Starlink terminals can also provide similar services. [Editor's Note: Shareholder letter states Tesla Semi will start production at a new factory in Nevada this year]

Q8: Optimus will use microprocessors, microcontrollers, actuators, and other semiconductors. Tesla can purchase from the market, design them themselves and hand them over to third-party wafer fabs for manufacturing, or design and produce them themselves. For these components, which approach do you prefer?

Musk: Optimus uses a large number of highly specialized power electronic devices and circuit boards. All of these are designed by Tesla, but the manufacturing work is completed by suppliers.

Fourth-generation Optimus will be produced in Austin. Compared to third-generation products, the supply system of fourth-generation Optimus will achieve a higher degree of vertical integration.

Our goal is for the production volume of fourth-generation Optimus to be an order of magnitude higher than third-generation products. Ideally, the annual production of third-generation Optimus will be 1 million units, and fourth-generation products will reach 10 million units per year.

Of course, all relevant cautionary statements need to be added here, because scaling up production is an extremely difficult task.

Fourth-generation Optimus will adopt a higher degree of vertical integration. Therefore, at that time we may complete a large amount of printed circuit board related work internally.

Q9: Does Tesla still plan to upgrade Hardware 3 to Hardware 4 in order to run V15 and future versions of FSD? Will existing vehicles still undergo hardware upgrades?

Musk: I think upgrading all vehicles below Hardware 4 will eventually be economically reasonable, basically all cars already equipped with cameras.

If there is not even a camera system, the required modifications might be too many. For any vehicle already designed around the camera system, upgrading at a certain point in time will be economically reasonable. I think we hope to upgrade these vehicles directly to the next-generation AI compute board.

Specifically, there might be two options. We have an upgraded AI4 chip, with a certain degree of improvement compared to AI4, which might go into production around mid-next year. Then there is AI5, we hope AI5 can also achieve mass production around mid-next year. AI5 will initially be applied to Optimus.

Currently, we have made very good progress in AI5. Tesla's chip team is performing excellently, advancing AI5 R&D at an unbelievable speed.

I am very excited about the design of Tesla's AI6 chip. I think it will become the world's best edge computing chip. If someone owns a better chip, I really want to meet him and shake hands, because the AI6 chip is really too excellent.

Progress in chips is very smooth. Thank you again to TSMC, Samsung, and Micron for their support.

Q10: In the current round of capital expenditure cycle, to what extent is the investment speed limited by efficiency? If investment continues to increase, will it lead to a decrease in capital efficiency? To what extent does the capital expenditure speed determine Tesla's progress in lifting supply constraints?

Musk: The requirement I put to the Tesla team is that as long as it doesn't cause excessive waste, we should carry out capital expenditure as quickly as possible.

We are not pursuing extreme high efficiency of capital investment, because that would slow down project progress. We need to strike a balance between capital efficiency and time.

If the project can be completed earlier, then slightly lower capital efficiency is acceptable, because from the company's perspective, this will actually bring higher net present value.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with the current progress. We are carrying out construction and capacity expansion of astonishing scale in multiple completely different fields simultaneously.

I think, previously no company has advanced so much work on such a large scale at the same time. Perhaps when Henry Ford expanded Model T production, it was close to this situation in relative scale; or during World War II, enterprises once tried to massively expand weapon production.

I think, this might be the fastest industrial-scale expansion in the United States since World War II.

Vaibhav Taneja: If you observe our capital expenditure, you will find that all expenditures are used to build assets that can be put into production. We are expanding various factories, including Optimus factories, Cybercab factories, Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery factories that started production earlier this year, Semi factories, and even semiconductor wafer factories.

In addition, we also plan to build large-scale solar manufacturing capacity in the U.S., raising the scale of solar manufacturing in the U.S. by an order of magnitude. This point is very important, the importance of solar manufacturing is underestimated.

None of this work is easy. To build a factory, you must start from zero. Due to too many construction projects underway, Tesla eventually became the general contractor for almost all construction projects.

We are expanding at a very fast speed. This means we need to advance many things simultaneously. Therefore, we can only move forward at the fastest speed humans can reach to ensure these projects can truly operate in the real world.

Musk: I think our capital expenditure efficiency is good beyond conventional scales.

Q11: In the foreseeable future, to what extent will the energy storage business be limited by supply? Of the current energy storage projects, how much is used for public utility peak shaving and valley filling, and how much is used to solve power quality problems caused by drastic fluctuations in electricity consumption at data centers? What is the state of demand in the data center and utility sectors respectively?

Musk: This is not just peak shaving and valley filling, it also includes grid balancing. Battery packs are not only activated for short periods. For balancing the power generated by wind power and solar power, batteries are an excellent tool.

In the future, the vast majority of global energy will be produced through a combination of solar and batteries. All Starlink satellites are also powered by solar panels and batteries. You can completely imagine the Earth as a huge satellite.

The energy the sun can provide far exceeds any other energy source. We believe that power constraints will become a major problem facing AI. In fact, it is already a major problem.

Just starting AI computers requires consuming a large amount of power. The power demand for AI computing is very high, and even super-large cloud computing companies find it difficult to find enough power for AI computing and smoothly enable relevant equipment.

In addition, power fluctuations must be suppressed. Especially during AI model training, power demand will change drastically in a very short time.

During a training process, power consumption might drop 70% within 100 milliseconds. This requires very fast-responding advanced power electronic equipment to suppress large power changes, especially changes during AI model training.

This is why SpaceX bought a large number of Megapacks (Tesla's large-scale energy storage product) for data centers. They are mainly used to suppress power fluctuations appearing during training. Batteries can also help data centers obtain more power from the grid.

If you tell utility companies that during the few hours or days with the worst power usage conditions in the year, they don't need to supply power to you because batteries can undertake the power supply task, then they will be easier to provide power access to you.

In fact, the best way to increase the total output of energy in the United States might be to use batteries on a large scale. The United States has about 1.2 to 1.3 terawatts of power generation capacity, but the average power consumption is only about 0.5 terawatts. That is to say, the power generation capacity in the United States is about 2.5 times the average power consumption.

This means that by just using batteries, the energy output of the United States could potentially double. Therefore, we believe that the demand for Megapacks in the future market will be very high.