Full Tesla Financials Conference Call, + Note On 1 Million Cars From Fremont Surprise

May 5, 20168 years ago Zachary Shahan 29 Comments

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Update: The video has been changed to correct for an error in the uploaded audio.

Like in some previous quarters, I went ahead and put the full recording of the Q1 2016 Tesla financials conference call on YouTube. You can always listen to the conference calls on the Tesla investment portal, but it’s a clunky system and really hard to skip around to the spot you want. Also, with YouTube, you can share links to specific moments in the call (handy in comments, articles, etc.).

Again, if you missed any of the highlights I pulled out from the call last night as it was happening, check these out:

Holy Cow, Tesla Has Moved Its 500,000 Cars-A-Year Aim To 2018 (From 2020)

Despite Model X Delays, Tesla Maintains 2016 Production Target (80,000–90,000)

7 More “Tidbits” (aka Bombshells) From Tesla’s Financials Call

There were, of course, some wonderful discussions under those articles, so I encourage you to dive into those and explore the various insights and highlights our readers offered up as well.

And these unique follow-up posts are closely related as well, so here’s one more pitch for them:

Top Tesla Analyst Jumps Ship, Reveals Herself As Tesla Fangurl

Tesla Drastically Underestimated Model S & X Demand (Financials Flashback)

As noted yesterday, one of the highlights of the call was as follows: Pushed to estimate how many cars Tesla would be producing in 2020 now that the 2018 target is 500,000, Elon said “close to 1 million.” He said that could probably be done with the Fremont factory and Gigafactory alone (no need for new factories to reach that). That may seem like a sudden explosion in the production capacity of the Fremont factory, but it turns out this has been an open secret for a while….

If you go visit the Tesla fremont factory, you have to sign an NDA to not share sensitive information with anyone else. Apparently, one thing shared on thee tours is that the Fremont factory is capable of producing ~900,000 Tesla cars and SUVs. So, Tesla has been aware of this for quite a long time, and been sharing the info with people who come to the factory for an in-depth look at the newest US manufacturing behemoth. That certainly makes it clear that ~1 million is not just a crazy number Elon spontaneously pulled out of a hat last night.

Speaking of the Tesla factory, primary Important Media owner Scott Cooney took a tour this month. Have a look at some of the pictures (from outside, not the NDA area):