Tesla Q2 Financial Report: Delivered 444,000 Vehicles in a Single Quarter, Revenue Increased but Net Profit Not as Expected

On July 24, Tesla released its Q2 2024 financial report. Tesla's second quarter revenue exceeded expectations, but net profit fell short.

The financial report shows: Tesla's production volume for the second quarter of this year was 410,800 units, a year-on-year decrease of 14%. 444,000 units were delivered, a year-on-year decrease of nearly 5%, but a quarter-on-quarter increase of 14%; of which the delivery volume in June reached 71,007 units, and China's sales increased to 59,261 units. In terms of revenue, Tesla once again set a record, with single-quarter revenue reaching 25.5 billion U.S. dollars, and non-GAAP net profit for the quarter was 1.8 billion U.S. dollars.

At the same time, Musk also stated in a financial report conference call that Tesla may obtain FSD permits in other markets by the end of this year, such as the European and Chinese markets. Robotaxi will be released on October 10th and is likely to be put into use by the end of this year or at the latest next year. In addition, the new version of FSD fully autonomous driving capability (supervised version) has been launched, which mainly relies on eye tracking software to monitor the driver's attention, and it is not a problem if the driver wears sunglasses.

In addition, Musk mentioned the long-awaited entry-level model priced at 25,000 US dollars, which will start production as planned in the first half of 2025, and can use existing production lines. It will maximize the use of nearly 3 million existing capacities and achieve 50% growth compared to 2023. Later, Tesla will invest in new production lines, and there will be no new car launches within Tesla in 2024. In the US domestic market, a new generation Roadster may be launched in 2025.

In other aspects, Tesla's energy storage business is growing fast. In the second quarter, the installed capacity of energy storage products reached 4GWh, an increase of about 132% from the previous quarter, and a new record for the installed capacity in a single quarter. The Powerwall 3 continued to succeed after its launch, and is now on the market in Canada, the UK, and Germany, in addition to the United States. By 2030, the global demand for energy storage batteries will reach 1000GWh, with a market size of $1.2 trillion. The commencement of the Shanghai Energy Storage Super Factory indicates that Tesla's layout and integrated innovation in "electric vehicles, energy storage, artificial intelligence" has entered a new chapter. In addition, the production of 4680 batteries increased by 50% quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter, and the cost continued to decrease.

The second-generation humanoid robot Optimus is already processing battery-related tasks in the factory. It is expected that by the end of 2025 there will be thousands of Optimus robots performing tasks in Tesla factories, and deliveries to external customers will begin in 2026. Tesla will have tremendous distributed computing power. Musk believes that the AI5 chip, which is scheduled to be put into production by the end of next year, will make distributed computing power an obvious choice. Physically, future vehicles will be equipped with AI5 and above version chips, and there may be billions of humanoid robots, which can provide an amazing amount of inference computing power when the vehicles and robots are idle. The southern expansion project of the Texas Super Factory is about to be completed, and it will accommodate the largest cluster of Nvidia H100 chips in Tesla so far.

When an analyst asked how artificial intelligence would affect automotive revenue, Musk replied that the contribution of Optimus to the company's revenue might exceed the total of all other business departments of the company. He believes that the global demand for humanoid robots will reach 22 million units, with Optimus at the forefront, "We have all the elements, I believe, we are the only company that has all the elements in terms of humanoid robots."

At the earnings communications meeting, an analyst asked whether the termination of subsidies for electric vehicles by the U.S. government would have a negative impact on Tesla. Musk replied, "This will have some impact, but it will be a devastating blow to our competitors." He continued to emphasize that Tesla's value depends heavily on autonomous driving, and stated that if investors do not believe that the company will solve the issue of autonomous driving, they should sell their stocks.

Overall, the earnings report did not provide much detailed introduction and outlook for products of investor interest, such as low-priced models, Robotaxi, Optimus, etc. The main emphasis is still on company-wide cost reduction, development of traditional hardware business, and acceleration of AI product and service development.