Here are the highlights from Tesla Annual Shareholder’s Meeting for 2023.
Elon in an answer to a question from Meet Kevin agreed to give advertising as an additional lever to increase demand. The central idea is 90% of the population may not be familiar with EV advantage and how affordable Teslas have become. In such a scenario, there is a large untapped pool of potential customers. When Tesla lowers price, each $1,000 drop in price translates to billions in reduced income. If spending a tiny portion of a billion on advertising can accomplish the equivalent amount of demand increase, then it’s a win and Tesla margins will go up and increase income.
Elon confirms Cybertruck on track for first delivery by end of the year. Production when ramp is complete by 2024, 2025 could hit 250,000 and will be driven by demand. Elon can increase production if demand is there.
Elon says there may be two additional new products to be announced in the future that together can bring in 5 million units annually. This could be Model 2 or something else but at these large volumes, it will be an affordable product.
Tesla presented a short clip of the progress of Optimus humanoid robot. It showed several of them walking and being trained to perform simple tasks. Their robot could pick up an item and move it. Elon predicts this product will take Tesla to a higher valuation since everyone would want one.
JB Straubel age 47 returns as board of director. He’s the CEO of Redwood Materials Inc a company that recycles lithium batteries. He was a co-founder and was in leadership role at Tesla previously for over a decade with specialty in cleantech and batteries. He has a B.S in Energy Systems Engineering and M.S. in Engineering on energy conversion from Stanford University.