Listen to Elon Musk’s Q1 2021 Earnings Call (Update PDF, more)

The much anticipated Tesla (TSLA) Q1 2021 Earnings Call was conducted yesterday evening (listen below). Tesla’s financial results show that the company’s Q1 YoY growth has been a phenomenal achievement by the automaker.

Tesla’s automotive revenues grew by 75% in Q1 YoY. A record number of Tesla Model 3 and Model Y cars were produced and delivered. Q1 in the auto industry is usually a slow start of the year but Tesla sales have gone up globally, defying the norm.

Tesla has hit another milestone in Q1 2021, the non-GAAP net income has surpassed the $1B mark for the first time in the company’s history.

Interestingly, Tesla’s revenue coming from selling the regulatory credits has also grown a whopping 46% ($354M in Q1 2020 vs. $518 in Q1 2021). Traditional auto manufacturers are losing money to Tesla not only because of the EV revolution that the company has ignited — but also by buying these credits to fuel their existence.

As I mentioned in my Model 3 and Model Y price increase report yesterday, Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla has a strong demand for both of these electric vehicles. This hike in demand has given Tesla the confidence to increase the prices of the basic and medium variants of the Model 3 and Y.

“Model 3 became the best-selling mid-size premium sedan in the world, in fact, I should say the best-selling luxury sedan of any kind in the world,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during his opening remarks of the Q1 2021 Earnings Call, “BMW 3 Series was once the best-selling premium sedan, it’s been exceeded by the Model 3,” he added (listen to the full audio call below).

What’s amazing about this achievement is that Tesla Model 3 has been around for a mere 3 and a half years only and produced in only two factories as of today.

Elon Musk said that by 2022, Tesla Model Y will quite likely be the best-selling car of any kind (car, truck, or SUV) in the world. This means that Model Y will even surpass the Model 3 in popularity. Gigafactory Shanghai has been producing Model Y for quite some time now. Giga Berlin is all set to start European Model Y production later this year, this will give a boost to Tesla sales in the region.

Tesla has shared the above Giga Texas image showing the latest Model Y factory construction progress. Looks like Tesla is planning to start Giga Texas with Model Y production before the Cybertruck. Tesla already has the expertise, resources, and experience to jump-start Model Y production and later on move towards the Cybertruck for which Tesla has yet to gain mass production expertise.

Musk also mentioned that Tesla is making great progress in Full Self-Driving (FSD) but this is probably the hardest technical problem that ever existed. He re-iterated that Tesla is working on a pure vision AI to solve this problem, getting rid of the radar in the process. As Tesla’s neural net grows with more and more data from over a million cars, chances are that FSD becomes a practical reality soon.

Musk also talked about supply chain issues the automaker is facing as Q2 started, from chip shortage to having difficulties getting critical engineers to Giga Shanghai due to COVID restrictions. Let’s listen to this interesting Earnings Call.

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