Martin Viecha: Thank you. Let’s go to the next analyst. The next question comes from Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley.
Adam Jonas: Hey, everybody. So I can’t wait to see the Optimus lab. I’m sure everybody on this call feels the same way. Your last AI Day, Elon, was September 2022. Can we expect a Tesla AI Day this year? It seems like a lot has changed in that realm. And is this year the time?
Elon Musk: Yeah, it’s a good question. We have found that when we do these AI Days, some of our competitors literally look at what we do on a frame-by-frame basis.
Adam Jonas: They do.
Elon Musk: And then we find these things being copied.
Karn Budhiraj: Same thing with Battery Day.
Elon Musk: Same thing with Battery Day. So we have to be a little cautious about revealing the exact recipe of the secret sauce. But I think some kind of update would be good to do. I’ll talk it over with the team, and yeah, I think we might do something later this year. Our main goal with these AI Day things is recruiting and to sort of change the perception of Tesla as people thinking of Tesla as a car company when they should be thinking of Tesla as an AI robotics company.
Adam Jonas: Maybe as a follow-up. Elon, I’d love your thoughts on the topic of China-based OEMs expanding into Western markets. As the China market kind of gets saturated and there’s a tremendous growth in the supply, how much success should Tesla investors allow for this competition to achieve in Western markets? And can you envision a scenario where Tesla could partner with a Chinese OEM to help accelerate sustainable transport in markets like Europe and the United States? Thanks.
Elon Musk: Well, our observation is generally that the Chinese car companies are the most competitive car companies in the world. So I think they will have significant success outside of China depending on what kind of tariffs or trade barriers are established. Frankly, I think if there are not trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world. So they’re extremely good. We don’t see an obvious opportunity to partner. Certainly, we’re happy to, except on the supercharger front. We’re obviously happy to give any electric car company access to our supercharger network. We’re also happy to license full self-driving, perhaps license other technologies, and anything that could be helpful in advancing the sustainable energy revolution.
Martin Viecha: Thank you. And the next question comes from Dan Levy from Barclays.
Dan Levy: Hi. Good evening. Thank you for taking the questions. First, I’m wondering if you can just walk through some of the gating factors required to unlock your next-gen platform. You talked about a number of cost initiatives back at the Investor Day a year ago, things in manufacturing and powertrain. Maybe you can just give us a sense of where these initiatives stand. And do you believe — we know that there’s a number of new features and technologies in Cybertruck, things like 48 volts architecture, really employing your 4680 batteries. To what extent do you think Cybertruck is really a proving ground for the next-gen platform and is really going to be a gating factor to unlocking the cost reductions needed for the next-gen platform?
Lars Moravy: Yeah, I don’t think that anything on Cybertruck should be considered gating for the next-gen platform. We’re obviously doing a lot of manufacturing innovation, as Elon said, for a next-generation vehicle. When you do something at that scale, you have to prove it out. You don’t just throw it on the line and just build it. So we’re going through those validation phases for all those new manufacturing technologies now. Sure, 48 volts was definitely something we wanted to carry forward, and it’s something we hope the industry adopts as well. We’re also open to partnering.
Elon Musk: Yeah. 48 volts.
Lars Moravy: On that if everyone wants to do that.
Elon Musk: Certainly. Man, the people that really know that this is like the inside baseball thing. But man, 48, it’s so high time that the water industry moved from the 12 — the random number of 12 volts to 48 volts.
Lars Moravy: Random number of 48 volts.
Elon Musk: Yeah. Well, it’s much less random.
Lars Moravy: Slightly less random based on human injury, but…
Elon Musk: I mean dramatically reduces the amount of copper you need in the vehicle and also moving to sort of higher bandwidth communications, sort of ethernet level communications versus CAN Bus, which is pretty…
Lars Moravy: Pretty slow.
Elon Musk: Pretty slow. So it’s really just bringing cars to…
Lars Moravy: The 21st century.
Elon Musk: Yeah, pretty much.
Lars Moravy: So, certainly like…
Elon Musk: It’s not exact — it’s like normal for a laptop. Yeah.
Lars Moravy: Certainly bringing that like is an evolution in our architectures of vehicles, but it’s not gating by any means. The gating work is just to finish the design and manufacturing of the car, test them out and get them going.
Karn Budhiraj: Yeah, programs and execution mode, right?
Lars Moravy: Yeah.
Karn Budhiraj: So it’s talking about like, tooling lead time, manufacturing equipment lead time, factory lead time, and executing those programs.
Elon Musk: There’s a lot of specialized machines that make the machine for a next-gen vehicle. So these are not machines you can just order from anyone. You have to design a machine that has never existed to build a car in a way that has never existed.
Karn Budhiraj: Yeah. So you don’t just have like a design validation phase, but you have an equipment design validation phase as well.
Elon Musk: It does make it very hard to copy us because you have to copy the machine that makes the machine that makes the machine.
Lars Moravy: Talk about tiers.
