The Revisionist Language That Tesla Used In The Q1 2024 Earnings Call

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The Tesla, Inc. Q1 2024 earnings call was fascinating in how Tesla representatives drew on carefully phrased statements to appease and turn around what was then a largely disgruntled shareholder group. The revisionist language within the earnings call took coexisting, diverse, and sometimes sharply clashing accounts of Tesla’s recent financial performance and, somehow, recreated them into new and appealing promises.

The speakers — who included CEO Elon Musk; vice president of investor relations, Martin Viecha; CFO Vaibhav Taneja; vice president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy; and director of autopilot software, Ashok Elluswamy — touched on various subjects and accounts that challenged and sought to alter what had been previously accepted as a harsh reality of Tesla’s financials within the nascent EV marketplace.

Sure, it can be said that the Tesla Q1 2024 earnings call delved into revisionist language due to acceptable shifts in perspective that arise from digesting past information and molding it into current frameworks. Instead of ideology, politics, and misbegotten negativism, it might be said that Tesla reframed pervasive concerns about the company’s direction in such a way that is common in the auto industry and society at large, serving as a type of gyroscope to help maintain a proverbial ship’s even keel.

Okay, let’s give Musk the benefit of the doubt. His comments are always a source of close reading after earnings calls. When we first met Musk and heard about the vision he was embarking on to build a sustainable future, we were convinced he held a mindset that conveyed caring about his impact on others and that he was willing to listen, learn, and exert the choice and character to change as situations merited it.

Now his revisionist language makes me wonder if we drank the kool-aid a bit too quickly.

Revisionist Language & the Q1 2024 Tesla Earnings Call

Let’s look at some of the language choices Elon Musk used this week during the earnings call to determine a bit more fully why and how so many people in the Tesla network have been pacified.

(Note: All italicized phrasing is attributed to Musk.)

“We navigated several unforeseen challenges…” Such mitigating factors that affected Tesla’s Q1 results — which break the flow between communicator and receiver — were outlined in the shareholder letter and included the Red Sea conflict, the arson attack at Gigafactory Berlin, and the gradual ramp of the updated Model 3 in Fremont.

“… a lot of other auto manufacturers are pulling back on EVs and pursuing plug-in hybrids instead…” Battery electric vehicles will clearly triumph over PHEVs by the end of the decade. So Musk has divided up parts of the world into particular visions, or ways of seeing and acting upon the world, known as classification. In doing so, he’s reminded us that the future must be that all zero emissions vehicles powered by a greener electric grid.

“… electric vehicles will ultimately dominate the market…” Adherents to the transition to zero emissions transportation concur with this remark. However, it is a forecast rather than fact, and, with the use of the word “dominate” comes implicit meanings that internal combustion engine (ICE) power will recede into the historical memory of engines.

“… record profitability for the energy business…” Tesla’s energy generation and storage segment business has 2 parts — energy storage and solar. The former’s products include lithium-ion-battery-based stationary energy storage systems (Powerwall for residential, Powerpack for businesses, and Megapack for utilities and large-scale commercial projects), while solar’s products include solar panels and solar roof tiles. Tesla’s utility-scale Megapack batteries hit 14.7 GWh of deployments in 2023, a 125% boost on 2022’s figure.

“… that looks likely to continue to increase in the quarters and years ahead …” This propositional assumption — one that states a position about what is or can be or will be the case — relies on conjecture that the company expects continued growth on a trailing 12-month basis going forward. What isn’t discussed is the fragility of the company’s solar sector.

“We actually know that it [i.e., Tesla energy] will grow significantly faster than the car business.” This interesting revisionist language choice, when considered reflectively, means that in a logical sense difference is disregarded and, as a result, equivalences emerge illogically. It’s a data fact that Tesla’s vehicle fleet did not grow nearly as much as the number of Superchargers, service vehicles, and Tesla locations did. But to say that “we actually know” the future of Tesla energy fails to reveal enough information and, instead, relies on belief in the Tesla Way.

“We’ve updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models ahead.” This sound bite offers a nod to promotional culture. Right now, it’s hard for many people to determine the actual trajectory of the Tesla business plan, as earlier this week Tesla laid off its entire US growth content team. They were in charge of creating the company’s first ads. The statement offers a view of contemporary cultural phenomena as virtually serving promotional functions— representing, advocating, and anticipating events in addition to seeming like real function. We’ll have to continue to read social media posts to read between the lines to figure how the new vehicle lineup is progressing.

“… next generation platform.” The use of the phrase, “next generation platform” has become so commonplace in the auto industry that it’s become cliche, or an overused term that no longer means what it did in its original usage.

“It’s not contingent on any new factory or massive new production line.” Musk’s statement here reflects a widespread acknowledgement of explanations and justifications for how things are and how things are done — legitimization. Musk has told shareholders for a long time that Tesla expects to cut manufacturing costs in half, partially through an updated set of manufacturing processes, and through its next-generation vehicle platform.

“It’ll be made on our current production lines much more efficiently.” This evaluation, or assigning a worth or value to something based on explicit statements and value assumptions, takes hypotheses and presents them as fact. An example is the claim that the Tesla Semi will be manufactured at the German factory, alongside Musk’s gut instincts that high-volume production of the Tesla Semi will be up and running by the end of the year.

“We think this should allow us to get to over 3 million vehicles of capacity when realized to the full extent.” The pressure to produce lower-priced electric cars comes from two distinct sources. First, consumers want less expensive EVs. Second, Chinese automakers have now gotten their production costs down to the point where it costs about a third less to manufacture an EV in China than it does anywhere else in the world. Musk’s propositional assumption gives us a moment of relaxation amidst the likely challenges to achieve these 3 million vehicles.

“To make it more accessible.” Musk seems to recognize the rarefied air that surrounds FSD use — because it’s only available to Tesla users, it must be configured so they find it safe, reliable, consistent, and secure. This acknowledgement conceptualizes power as instilled and reproduced according to a status quo, which Musk seems anxious to transcend.

“I strongly urge you to try it out.” Musk is asking its current Tesla ownership group here to transcend a private sphere decision — whether to attempt to turn on the Full Self Driving (FSD) mode and relinquish driver control — into a public sphere display of loyalty. The public self is the domain of social life in which people express their identity in ways that connect to or act upon social and political concerns, so Musk’s appeal to test FSD is part of a larger confluence where the company will accelerate its data collection from individuals who are not paid to engage in research but who do so voluntarily in order to be part of a social group.

“It’s profound.” Emotion and equivalence are tied together with Musk’s assessment of FSD’s value. When taken in hand with Tesla’s vertical alignment projects that are already in place and successful, could FSD actually be achievable?

“Since the launch of full self-driving, supervised full self-driving.” Years have whisked by without Tesla operating a single robotaxi, yet Musk’s insistence on the power and place of robotaxis in the Tesla portfolio is still convincing to the market. Using recontextualization, or a relationship between different social practices in which one is relocated in the context of another, Musk corrects himself in his use of “full self-driving” to that of “supervised full self-driving.” The distinction is more that legalese; it is

“… that will become very obvious in hindsight.” This value assumption elevates Musk’s beliefs to a level which suggests that his vision is or at least should be universal, good, and desirable. Can it be so?

(Thanks to Seeking Alpha, which provided a full transcript of this week’s Tesla Q1 earnings call.)