- Elon Musk claimed the Model Y crossover EV was the best-selling single model sold worldwide in the first quarter of this year, but the Toyota Corolla outsold it handily.
- Q2 was good to Tesla, with a 20% increase year-over-year in net income to $2.7 billion on gross revenues of $24.9 billion—itself a whopping 47% increase.
- Musk expects full self-driving to be as good as a human before the end of the year—National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation notwithstanding.
Perhaps taking advantage of general media confusion over Tesla’s production and delivery numbers, Elon Musk claimed the Model Y crossover EV was the best-selling single model sold worldwide in the first quarter of this year. That’s not just the best-selling Tesla model; it’s the best-selling anything—more than Toyota Corolla or any other traditional high-volume commodity car or truck.
Problem is, on all the charts we could find from Tesla as well as from fawning electric-vehicle sites reporting on them, the company groups Model Y production and sales with Model 3 production and sales. Tesla delivered 412,180 Models 3/Y globally in the first quarter, and we can’t find the breakout among the two.
We reached out to Toyota for Corolla numbers, and the automaker reports it sold 740,561 Corollas worldwide in the first quarter of this year, counting all versions including the Cross. That’s about 75% more than Tesla, even if you count the Model 3 in with the Model Y. Sorry, Elon, not even close.
Good news for Tesla and its fans is that the EV automaker delivered even more Models 3/Y in the second quarter—446,140—and that’s the quarter that Wednesday’s earnings call with Wall Street analysts (and journos who have no way to ask questions) was about.
As it has been for years, Tesla’s quarterly earnings call was audio-broadcast on YouTube and not on Musk’s own Twitter Spaces.
Q2 was good to Tesla, with a 20% increase year-over-year in net income to $2.7 billion on gross revenues of $24.9 billion—itself a whopping 47% increase. Nevertheless, Musk confessed confusion over the world’s economic ups and downs in an uncertain time and warned “summer shutdowns for factory upgrades” will affect production numbers. Tesla’s target is to deliver 1.8 million vehicles this year, Musk said. Not to be compared with US-only sales for other automakers, this estimate is for worldwide sales.
Other highlights include…
The Robotaxi, Coming This Year
“We think it will have quasi-infinite demand,” Musk said. Touting Tesla’s data-driven development of autonomy, he added, “The more training data you have, the better the results. There’s no substitute for mass amounts of data.”
Musk estimates Tesla has collected more data for autonomy than all other manufacturers combined—about 90% of all data for autonomy extant.
Because of Dojo
Pressing hard to establish himself as the 21st Century Henry Ford, Musk touted Tesla’s in-house components including its Dojo hardware and software being “designed to reduce the cost of neural net training. … We expect to use both NVIDIA and Dojo, to be clear.” But NVIDIA has plenty of other customers, so not enough capacity for Tesla’s needs.
Dojo has logged more than 300 million miles of data, Musk said, but that will soon be in the 10s of billions. Dojo-trained Autopilot “will go from being as good as a human to better. Ten times better than a human driver.”
He expects full self-driving to be as good as a human before the end of the year—National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation notwithstanding.
Cybertruck Still on Track
Ah, the one you’ve been waiting for. The one everyone has been waiting for, according to Musk, who said, “This is the first truck that will have four doors, over a six-foot bed, and fit into a 20-foot garage. It’s one of the biggest trucks on the outside and an even bigger truck on the inside... I think that’s one of the elements of good design, is it should feel big on the inside.
“We can’t wait to deliver it later this year.” It will sell in much larger volumes next year, he said. Tesla currently is assembling (release candidate) RC4 builds.
Musk later said Cybertruck demand “is off the hook—there isn’t even a hook.” By which he possibly meant “off the charts,” unless he was referring to his manufacturing executives being off the hook because they expect to launch the truck this year.
Tesla Charging Standard Becomes NACS
“We’re deeply honored that Ford, GM, Mercedes, and other OEMs have signed up to use our connector and gain access to our charging network. We strongly believe in helping other car companies accelerate the EV revolution, and we’re just trying to do the right thing in general.”
Tesla’s North American Charging Standard is offered open source while its full self-driving (the name “Autopilot” is long gone) is available for licensing.
“We are very open into licensing our full self-driving software and hardware to other car companies. And we are already in discussions … early discussions with a major OEM about using the Tesla FSD. We’re not keeping this to ourselves—we are licensing this to others,” Musk said.
Meanwhile, Tesla expects battery manufacturing incentives of between $150 million and $250 million from the Inflation Reduction Act for 2023, Chief Financial Officer Zach Kirkhorn said, adding that some of the credits will be shared 50/50 with battery-cell partner Panasonic.
Short-Term Amnesty on FSD Transfers
It appears some Tesla customers are “transferring” their full self-driving software from a trade-in to a new model to avoid paying $15,000 for it, again. The question of whether Tesla would allow it came up, and Musk offered these customers good news.
“We’re excited to announce that for Q3 we will be allowing transfer of FSD. This is a one-time amnesty,” said Musk, laughing. “So you need to take advantage of it in Q3, or at least place the order in Q3 within limited delivery timeframes, so … yeah. This makes people happy. This is a one-time thing.”
Too Much into the Weeds
Asked by a Wall Street analyst to quantify the expected cost of the Q3 factory shutdowns … Musk replied, “I think we’re getting too much into the weeds here. You’re asking for a level of precision that is not possible. So let’s move on.”
But an hour had passed, and it was the end of the call.
Contributing Editor
As a kid growing up in Metro Milwaukee, Todd Lassa impressed childhood friends with his ability to identify cars on the street by year, make, and model. But when American automakers put an end to yearly sheetmetal changes, Lassa turned his attention toward underpowered British sports cars with built-in oil leaks. After a varied early journalism career, he joined Autoweek, then worked in Motor Trend’s and Automobile’s Detroit bureaus, before escaping for Mountain Maryland with his wife, three dogs, three sports cars (only one of them British), and three bicycles. Lassa is founding editor of thehustings.news, which has nothing to do with cars.
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