Takeaways From Tesla’s 2023 Shareholder Meeting

Tesla held its 2023 Annual Shareholders Meeting at its Gigafactory in Austin, Texas this week, during which the company highlighted upcoming news and voted to add to its board of directors. The meeting included a number of key takeaways, including updates on the Cybertruck electric vehicle, the state of the economy and more.

Above: A Tesla Supercharger (Image: Casey Murphy / EVANNEX).

The Shareholders Meeting began with a vote to add former executive and Redwood Materials head JB Straubel to the company’s board as an independent director, as CNBC reports. Following the meeting, CNBC’s David Faber also hosted an exclusive interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, ranging in topics from Tesla and Twitter to AI, the economy and other subjects still.

Highlights from the meeting include Tesla’s plan to start doing some advertising again, after the company has gone the past few years without any ad costs. The company plans to approach cautiously, with Musk saying, “We’ll try out a little advertising and see how it goes.”

Additionally, Tesla plans to start conducting third-party audits of its cobalt supply chain to ensure there are no points of child labor. The news comes as Tesla prepares to shift to a new type of drive unit for its next-generation EVs, set to need less silicon carbide with no rare earth metals. Additionally, Tesla is moving toward a low-voltage EV architecture which Musk expects to use less copper.

Musk also said during the meeting that the Cybertruck is still on track to begin delivering this year, and Tesla is targeting an eventual yearly production of 250,000 to 500,000 units of the electric pickup. He also says the Model Y will become the best-selling car in the world this year, and he expects the Optimus robot to make up “a majority of long-term value” for Tesla in the future.

In his interview with David Faber after the meeting, Musk further detailed his expectations for Teslas to someday bring in significant revenue through the use of robotaxis, along with more discussion on AI at Tesla and elsewhere, Fed hikes, Twitter and a number of other topics. He also says that he thinks the current state of the economy will last another 12 months or so, which will remain a difficult macroeconomic landscape for the automaker.

Above: Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fed operating with too much 'latency' on rate hike decisions (Video: CNBC).

When asked how much of robotaxi income would be allocated to the Tesla owner and how much would go toward the company, Musk reiterated his vision for a car driving itself and making money while owners are at work.

So the, the owner of the car would make, I don’t know, some amount, who knows what it would be, but perhaps it could be a 50/50 split or 70/30. I don't know but the cars are if you buy a Tesla car, it can only be used in a Tesla network. It cannot be used in someone else's network. So that means that if the car is able to be used five times as much and Tesla is likely to make basically two or three times the original value, or sale value of the car in robo taxi revenue.

This this is this is gigantic. It'd be like selling cars for software margins because in fact it is software. And so instead of effectively having say 25 cent margins, it might be 70% or more and I mean the the free cash flow associated with that it is actually truly a staggering amount. The best analysis that I've seen thus far about this is from Cathie Wood’s firm, Ark Invest.

You can watch Tesla’s full 2023 shareholders meeting below, and you can check out Elon Musk’s interview with CNBC’s David Faber here.

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