Tesla did its quarterly investor/analyst call last night after releasing its mixed financials. The interesting news is that the company will release a more affordable vehicle in the first half of next year. The bad news, if you think of Tesla as a car company, is that CEO Elon Musk is sticking to his line that it isn’t.
It was also another weird, low-energy call from Musk, though I find he’s a bit more honest when he’s in these down moods. Elsewhere in the Tesla-verse is a judge’s ruling in the company’s favor that it can pursue a trial against Rivian for allegedly encouraging its ex-Tesla employees to steal trade secrets.
Alphabet, aka Google’s parents, aren’t so bothered by GM’s robotaxi shift and are doubling down with a $5 billion investment in its robotaxi arm Waymo. Does it sense blood in the water?
We work hard around here. It’s our culture. But we don’t, I hope, have the stereotypical “Japanese salaryman” kinda vibe. Toyota, also, is hoping to move away from those vibes as it takes a deliberate pause to fix the company.
Tesla Margins Drop To 14.6%
If you want to lose money, bet against Elon Musk. He has been right more than he’s been wrong, and his companies have made a lot of money for investors. He’s also destroyed shorts with the same intensity of an imperfectly potty-trained toddler after a frito pie bender.
I guess I should clarify: If you bet against Musk in the last year, depending on the timing of those bets, you might have made some money.
My question yesterday about Tesla was more about revenue than margins. Specifically, I was curious how much the company’s push to move cars at a discount would hit Tesla’s historically high margins.
If you look at the company’s Q2 financial disclosure you’ll see the answer is: a lot. Tesla’s margins, after you take out regulatory credits the company gets from other OEMs, dropped to 14.6%, versus analyst estimates of 16.29%. The company did make about $1 billion more in revenue than expected, it just made less money than usual doing it.
If The Autopian were making billions of dollars (it is not) I think I’d be fine with making a little less per dollar if I was making it up in volume. Tesla doesn’t work that way, and its margins were a big part of its perceived value. That’s at least how investors seem to be feeling today. Tesla’s stock is down almost 12% this morning.
Even though the company made a little more in total revenue (up about 2%), where it made those revenues is important:
I’m turning a bit into a broken record here, but Elon Musk does not think of Tesla as a car company. One of the few times he didn’t sound listless during the hour+ call was when he talked about buying chips and AI and his Optimus robot.
Here’s what Elon had to say about all of that:
The undertaking is massive, but I think the future is incredibly bright. I really just can’t emphasize the importance of autonomy for the vehicle side and for Optimus. Although the numbers sound crazy, I think, Tesla is producing at volume with and supervised MSD essentially enabling the fleet to operate a giant autonomous fleet. And it takes the valuation, I think, to some pretty crazy number.
That’s not a lot about cars, though Musk did basically confirm that the affordable Tesla is coming in the first half of 2025 and, rather than some mostly gigacast car, it’ll be a more traditional Tesla model that can be built on existing production lines:
We won’t get too much into the product road map here because that is reserved for product announcement events. But we are on track to deliver a more affordable model in the first half of next year.
I would suggest listening to this section (which you can do here) and you’ll notice he barely finishes his thought about the car before jumping into:
The big — really, by far, the biggest differentiator for Tesla is autonomy. In addition to that, we have scale economies and, I think, we’re the most efficient electric vehicle producer in the world.
If autonomy is so important to Tesla how long do we have to wait to see a fully self-driving robotaxi? Musk was immediately asked this question and gave a more-than-usually accurate assessment:
“It’s difficult, obviously, my predictions on this have been overly optimistic in the past. So I mean, based on the current trend, it seems as though we should get miles between interventions to be high enough that — to be far enough in excess of humans that you could do unsupervised possibly by the end of this year. I would be shocked if we cannot do it next year.”
Musk has made it clear that he’s not content with having a car company, and he doesn’t believe a car company is a particularly interesting or valuable thing to own. He owns an autonomy/robotics/taxi/airbnb/energy storage company. If you think he can pull even half of that off then you don’t really care about a short-term share drop because the impending value of the company makes it a future Apple.
If you don’t believe in him then you should run.
Tesla Can Go Ahead With Rivian Lawsuit
Did Rivian encourage Tesla defectors to steal Tesla’s company secrets in order to improve Rivian’s products? That’s the question at the heart of a lawsuit from Tesla against its rival EV automaker.
Rivian, for its part, denies this happened, and tried to get a judge in California to dismiss the case outright. According to Reuters, that’s not going to happen:
Judge Theodore C. Zayner of the Santa Clara County Superior Court tentatively denied Rivian’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, stating Tesla presented sufficient evidence for a trial.
“Tesla’s evidence establishes that some Rivian employees were less thoroughly investigated and not disciplined,” the judge wrote in the tentative order.
This will be one to watch.
Google/Alphabet Puts $5 Billion Into Waymo
Maybe autonomy is important. Google’s parent company Alphabet announced it’s putting $5 billion into its subsidiary Waymo just as Cruise said it was discontinuing development of its steering wheel-less robotaxi.
“This new round of funding will enable Waymo to continue to build the world’s leading autonomous driving company,” Alphabet’s outgoing finance chief Ruth Porat said Tuesday on the company’s second-quarter earnings call, adding Waymo is an “important example” of Alphabet’s long-standing investments.
Porat announced the “multiyear” investment on the call and said more information would be available in the company’s quarterly Securities and Exchange Commission filing, expected on Wednesday.
The next steps for Waymo are replacing the Jag i-Pace-based robotaxis with Zeekr-based Waymo Drivers and a more robust commercialization.
Toyota Pushes For A 4-Day Workweek
The stereotype of a Japanese “salaryman” is an overworked white-collar employee who puts in 60 hours for his beloved employer, only taking a few hours off to get absolutely blitzed while singing John Denver songs in some seedy karaoke bar.
In a way, that’s how the whole Toyota company has worked for the last few years. Toyota ended up making more money than any other public Japanese company in history last fiscal year, but at what cost? Toyota’s employees were so stretched they started cheating on emissions and safety tests they would have probably otherwise passed. Suppliers are taxed. Investors are wary.
Hans Greimel over at Automotive News has a story about how Toyota is joining a larger corporate shift in Japan to reconsider what an employee-employer relationship should look like as the company tries to slow down.
Executives likened the pause to “pulling the andon,” the Japanese term for the cord factory workers pull to stop the assembly line when they spot a problem and need to troubleshoot.
“Existing workloads should be reduced for the time being,” Sato said in May. “We should question whether a particular work is necessary or not. We might need to stop certain types.”
Will Toyota actually go for a four-day workweek? Maybe not. The overall goal is to achieve a work/life balance, whatever that means.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
This is not my joke, but someone today reminded me that the real song of the summer has been/will always be Len’s “Steal My Sunshine.” And, look, I don’t want to get too political, but there’s been a real vibe shift this week and I think we can all appreciate a little Len right now.
The Big Question
Do you like a four-day workweek? What do you do now?
Tired of 60+ hour workweeks at Toyota? I’m making $5000 per month by adding snarky comments to Autopian posts. Ask me how!
Damn tell me how? Where is the link that clearly leads to a shady ass website
Oh, you’re ON the shady website.
You guys are getting paid??
Doctors hate him for this one simple trick…
I have worked a variety of schedules over my career, including 4/10s, 5/8s, and my personal favorite – 9/80s (every other Friday off). While I enjoyed having every Friday off, it led to a hectic Thursday as everyone tried to wrap up the week simultaneously. When I worked the 9/80 schedule, half the company had a different Friday off from the other half. This led to far less chaos on Thursdays, scheduling meetings on Fridays logistically couldn’t really be done, and everyone spent Friday mornings catching up on things they couldn’t get to during the week and then left early feeling productive and not stressed-out rolling into the weekend.
I worked 4/9s and then 4 hours on Fridays. Guess what day of the week engineering finally pushed all of their hot orders out and was the busiest, bullshit day of the week.
Oh does that bring up bad memories. I worked half-day Fridays for about seven years and for the first year it was worse than 4/10s. I was a junior engineer and the senior folks would dump all their crap on the junior folks at lunch time and then leave. After the first year or so I realized the trick was to come in stupid early (we had “flex time” to allow for the nasty Houston traffic) and then duck out before anyone else left for lunch. I absolutely do not miss that schedule.
No Friday Deploys!
But they still try to slip them in if you aren’t watching.
4/10s night not be bad, but I’m never going back to 6.5/13-16s.
Really pissed off my Indian managers when I pulled the religion card and said I’m going to church whether they liked it or not. They argued that I was fully remote (due to office space limitations in the US) and assigned to an Indian managed part of the company, therefore I fell under Indian labor laws, which did not guarantee religious time off.
Did that crazy schedule during the Great Recession, but left that American computer company the minute I had a lapse of insanity and the market improved. Kicker was that I couldn’t find anyone to submit my resignation to for a week. Should have just started my new job and never told my old employer.
Wow. Just wow. That sounds terrible. I am glad that I haven’t had to deal with anything like that, because I have no idea how I would respond to it.
I really should have gone looking for another job for multiple reasons. 1) While the local IT market was ugly, there were still openings if you hunted hard or knew someone. 2) If you were applying for a job, it was seen as greatly favorable if you were still employed rather than unemployed (read: RIF’d.).
My wife and I had two young kids and having income was very important. A job in the hand was better than two in the bush, or something like that. The company I worked for was looking for any reason to let you go, though they didn’t need a reason. People that let it slip they were looking or were otherwise found out were generally let go quickly. That kept in line with their SOP to immediately let you go if you submitted a resignation. It was rare if you were allowed to stay through your 2 week notice.
In response to “never bet against Musk”….
I was a TSLA investor since 2013. But Elon’s gotta go. He turned into an edgelord rightwing cuck, and since he announced he was donating 45M to trump, yeah… that company is going down in flames. I know one guy who’s had multiple Teslas, he just traded his in yesterday, and everyone else I know that wanted one, no longer wants one because the guy is such an asshat. You can’t seperate the company from the guy, so that company is doomed.
I cashed out all my TSLA stock last year and never looked back. I’d bet against him. He fell off the wagon and went into full crazy town, alienating the customer base that made Tesla what it is. it’s fucked.
Smart move long term on cashing out TSLA. I still think Tesla stock ($221) is sort of like a pyramid scheme, profitable for the early investors, but a bust for those left holding the bag when the positive automotive cash flow stops. 78% of revenue is from car sales.
So, not to jump into a politics discussion, but you point out something I have seen with some of my neighbors and their recent vehicle purchases. I live in a purple neighborhood in a purple area of a generally red city. Many of my neighbors have owned multiple Teslas over the years, but within the last six or so months several (6+) have traded their Teslas in for other makes – and one had only picked up their Model 3 Performance earlier this year. Of the ones I’ve chatted with, all were concerned with Musk tanking the residual value of their cars and got out while they could. Most also didn’t care for Musk as a person, but could overlook that if he wasn’t so entwined with Tesla as a company.
Conversely, I know quite a few folks who are pro-Trump who in years past hated Musk because they hate EVs who now think Musk is great, but not a single one of them would ever consider buying an EV from Tesla or anyone else. It makes me wonder where Musk is trying to get to with some of his recent choices, as the demographic he seems to be trying to reach (pander to?) are not the folks who would buy his company’s products? If I owned any stock in Tesla, I’d be wary as well, as whatever strategy Musk and Tesla are employing seem suspect.
“Conversely, I know quite a few folks who are pro-Trump who in years past hated Musk because they hate EVs who now think Musk is great,”
Dude, thank you! I know a lot of these people. It’s almost like they’re programmed to follow along with whatever narrative is being fed to them. And yeah, I’m not being political either, but I think both sides of sick of MAGA insanity.
Elon really started making massive mistakes when he purchased Twitter, and it’s been downhill since imho. Dude is addicted to engagement and nothing gets engagement like being a colossal troll that owns a giant social media company.
The Twitter purchase was definitely a marked shift in his erratic behavior. Even as devoted to Musk as the Tesla board is, I keep wondering how much longer they will tolerate the volatility he has been fostering amongst all the companies he has himself spread across? At this point I am simply watching the Musk news with popcorn and amused fascination.
His kid came out as trans before the whole Twitter thing and he was not supportive so they emancipated their self and then his wife also left him so he was a prime target for right wing propaganda targeting single men about women and the “woke mind virus turning your kids trans”. He literally just spoke to Jordan Peterson and used that phrase. Listening to him speak, he’s a complete fucking moron when it comes to politics, but like many billionaires, his ego is inflated by his bank account into thinking he’s a renaissance man.
Musk said he voted Biden in the last election (and supposedly every Democratic candidate with his prior votes). During the Biden presidency a group of politicians started attacking Musk when he became the world’s richest billionaire. And at that time, Biden didn’t invite Tesla to a White House special EV event — there proclaiming that it was GM that was spearheading the new EV revolution. I used to think those injuries to Elon’s ego were the main cause of him moving to Texas and becoming a Republican. But recently I came across an interesting bit of news from about two years ago that said Musk was heartbroken because one of his sons, on turning 18, had his name changed and cut off all contact with his father. The kid had been going to an expensive private school in LA that Musk said brainwashed his son with neo-Marxist ideologies and a hatred of billionaires. If true, it may fill in some details as to his extreme actions since that time.
All of the above an ditching turn signal stalks.
Hey does Trump now like EV’s? or is ‘clean coal’ lol still his thing?
“It’s difficult, obviously, my predictions on this have been overly optimistic in the past.”
Fully agree with Jason’s take from Robot take the Wheel, that putting a human in a stand-by mode will not work. It befuddles me that beta testing on public roadways is allowed, and there is not more public outrage demanding strict parameters to the development. Driving enthusiasts should be particularly offended at the prospect of all future vehicles limiting their control.
“It befuddles me that beta testing on public roadways is allowed, and there is not more public outrage demanding strict parameters to the development”
It’s cause only poor people have been killed so far (maybe just the one?) – if a white kid from a rich or famous family gets plastered, suddenly it will be a crisis.
Pretty sure the dumbass sleeping in his Tesla model S “autopilot” killed when a semi turned across his path, was a well off white dude.
Tesla has taught me the threshold for being an “AI & robotics” company is to make no money from AI or robotics. In light of these revelations, I am declaring myself an AI & robotics company. Tech bros can now start sending that sweet, sweet venture capital money to support my Porsche buying…errr….AI efforts.
I work 0600-1500 M-F most of the time, but we’re down a contractor right now. That has left me working 0600-1800 half the week. I miss working shifts that gave me 3- and 4-day workweeks, but I don’t miss switching between days and nights. 4 tens would be great, but the 3/4 12s is even better (for me; I know some people don’t like 12-hour shifts).
I was worried about my 12 hour shift but I’ve found I really enjoy it, the night shift was a bigger transition.
Yeah, I love a 12, but switching between days and nights can be rough.
I thought Tesla opened all their patents and shit, letting anyone use their tech.
I’m a 8 to 5er, but I’m on call 27/7/366.
I’d love to work 4 8s instead of 5.
Does this mean we’re not getting the Roadster?
What made you believe we were ever really going to see the Roadster? More Musk lies.
We might get one, but it won’t do the range or acceleration that was spoken about at the ‘launch’
On the 4-day, YES, we should work 4 tens instead of 5 eights. Everyone would instantly save 20% of their JREs. For me personally, I’d save about a grand a year just in fuel.
On Tesla not being a car company, guess what? GM is not a car company. They’re a bank and insurance company that just happens to make cars.
I guess it depends on what 4 days? And are those 8 hour days or 10 hour days, or 12 hour days? If it’s like 8 hour days and we get Fridays off now too, heck yeah!
If it’s rotating 10s or more, then that’s kind of meh, I’ve done weeks of 10+ hour days during crunch times and it burns you out, even with weekends off. Think that extra day off would just become a recovery day.
I’m in IT, salaried, so I get to work at least 1 weekend, generally Saturday night-Sunday morning, just about every month, sometimes all 4!(only weekend I had off in May was Memorial Day weekend).
I don’t think the capitalist culture knows any other way than to work people as much as they can, think the counter to that was unions but so many non-union vocations still, and people need jobs so they get driven into the ground trying to pay that $700 car loan.
Four ten-hour days is just shifting the grind around; after enough of it the resulting “3 day weekend” will be just one day to recover and then the standard two-day weekend.
Four days should mean four standard 8-hour days. For white-collar workers, that essentially means cutting back on
somea lot of useless meetings to leave more time for actually getting things done. For blue-collar workers, cut the hours but scale the pay up to stay the same as before. Sorry, no sympathy for management there. Blue-collar workers’ productivity his high to the point of management driving them beyond sane output. Four eights, good pay, and enough workers hired to maintain production for the same 5-6-or-7 day schedule as always. It’s the workers that the company depends on. Treat them well and don’t skimp on staffing.I can’t +1 this comment enough.
I worked four 10 hour days a week for a stretch of my career. I didn’t like it because I had to cram running/cycling/weight training into what was left of those 10 hours days along with eating and sleeping. I much more prefer five 8 hours days or four 8 hour days.
He’s more than welcome to spin off the car company into its own thing and let a sensible (by CEO standards) human run it.
A four day work week would be nice, depending on if we are talking about a paradigm shift to 32-36 hours being full time, or four 10 hour days being the accepted norm. Either way it would free up a day to get “business hour” items done, such as doctor visits, awful trips to the DMV or bank, etc. But my work is already flexible in allowing us to do those things and just make up the hours as we see fit in lieu of taking leave if we wish.
I work mostly remote, with 1-2 trips to the office a week. I’ve come to love the hybrid schedule way more than working completely remote, at least as far as my current line of work (hydrogeologist at a state agency) goes.
yes, but the switch to the 4 day work week will also mean that the other companies and services will go to the 4 day work week.
Which ones will work Mon-Thurs and which ones will work Tue-Friday?
That is true. I suppose I am assuming there will be a world where places are not necessarily closed, but have a rotating cast of four day workers.
We’ve made our small nonprofit 4-days per week (32 hours), with full pay and benefits and still emphasizing schedule flexibility as a central tenet. There are many talent attraction and retention benefits, including top candidates who have less attractive offers when job shopping. It’s a strong help for anyone carrying a heavy kid or older adult caregiver role.
I work from home and have no kids. Job is low stress, but I would absolutely love a 4-day work week.
I’m a Realtor.
What is this 4-5 day work week?
Well, it sounds to me like maybe it’s time to spin off Tesla’s carmaking business and let somebody else run it.
Or for Musk to step down and let somebody else run the whole company as it is. Either way
I can’t believe Toyota is even mentioning a 4 day work week. There are lots of hurdles to overcome in Japanese culture before that can be a thing. The important thing is not that the company allows it, but that it’s culturally acceptable to take them up on it. That’s going to be much harder.
I think a 4 day workweek might be nice later in life but with school age (and younger) kids, everything else is oriented around 2 day weekends anyway so I might as well keep the 5 day week.
I have grown very accustomed to the 7-4 shift for the past ~17 years. Beats most traffic on both ends, and allows time in the evening with family and hobbies. Kids are in school on Friday, so I should work on Friday.
I’ve also kinda lost my desire to put in more than 40 hours. Profit share and bonuses are a thing of the past, it seems. I don’t want my employers to get in the habit that they should expect 45+ hours per week. It’s not worth it anymore.
As my kids graduate and I’m in my 50’s, a 4 day week would be nice. The wife and I could steal away a nice long weekend somewhere without much guilt.
As far as Japan, from my personal experience they need a significant cultural reset from the rigid structure, and “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down” mentality. Employees are cogs in machine, and there is very little room for original thought or creativity. Younger employees who understand new concepts are generally shut down by older management that don’t understand. Further, in many trips/meetings to various companies there, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a female worker outside of someone bringing tea or similar- they are basically eliminating half of their population’s creative potential. Meanwhile in China, it is normal for a project manager to be female.
In a world that is quickly evolving to new technology, I expect Japan to be left behind unless they quickly make major changes to their overly rigid cultural structure.
It’s wild to me that a 4 day work week is being discussed in a country with a hyper conservative and incredibly rigid, demanding social structure like Japan but it usually gets called communism and chucked out a window here in Yee Haw land. Japan is infamous for having a rigid caste system that essentially works the lower classes to death, and THEY are okay with considering a four day work week?
Fucking yikes. Americans work an obscene amount compared to almost every other first world country and it’s just considered normal/the cost of doing capitalism really hard. We deserve better. Suffice to say, I’m a rabid supporter of a 4 day work week and research shows employees aren’t any less productive when they have one.
Work shouldn’t be your entire life, it should be something you deal with that allows you to enjoy your life to the fullest. I had a job when I worked 4 10s and had 3 day weekends and loved it, although I think we can do one better and have a 32-36 hour or so work week. It’s way past time.
Anywhere I have worked most average joe blow would prefer 10hr days 4 days a week and I have worked in areas with people leaning on all ends of the political spectrum. Now if it is people that are high up in the corporate world saying no to it yeah that is just a money and power thing hah
Only problem with a 32-36 hr wk, is your pay/benefits would not be adjusted accordingly and your workload would be the same. Git ‘er done!
As many of my kids generation have found out, many of the service type/lower tier jobs only want to work you 25-30 hr/wk, so you have to have 2 jobs to meet basic expenses.
The shortened-hours workweek versus the standard 40 hours defined for overtime rules has been a loophole exploited by companies wanting to skirt overtime in jobs where a worker’s required tasks are likely to extend clocked-in time. It’s just a way to get away with wage theft. Anything over the company’s declared “full time work week” hours should be overtime. Period.
I have never worked a typical 4 day work week. I have worked a 48/36 12hr shifts before but that was working 6 to 6 and swinging between nights and days every 2 weeks. Worked a typical 8hr 5 days a week and I have worked a 9/80 which was having every other Friday off. I would love to work 4 10hr days but that doesn’t seem to be a big thing in the Midwest when I was working on the East Coast there seemed to be more jobs that offered it though. Or even back to 12hr days but not swinging between nights and days.
Not interested in listening to Musk’s call, but did he actually confirm the “more affordable” model is an all new design and not a Model 3 with a smaller battery or something?
As for the 4 day week, we have a loose “no Friday meetings” policy where I work, so a slower Friday is nice to catch up on remaining loose ends from the week. I’m paid hourly, work remote, and set my own schedule (within reason), so I’m pretty content with the status quo. I’d probably rather have more time in the evenings with my kids than a Friday off anyways.
As long as school is five days a week, a four-day workweek does me zero good.
I mean there is appeal to me being able to do some things without my kids, but the nature of my work allows me to step away during the day usually anyways.
You’re right that vacations and such aren’t improved when the kids still have school.
Many public schools already have 4-day weeks.
Wow, I hadn’t heard that, how progressive–that’ll go a long way toward legitimizing the alternative work schedule, I’m sure. It isn’t that way near me, but I’ll look into it.
I don’t have kids so hadn’t paid much attention to it, but happened to hear about it happening in Missouri. I just looked it up and apparently 30% of Missouri school districts are on that schedule, mostly to save money.
No, he hasn’t said anything about what form the new model will take, just that it won’t be the ambitious clean sheet design they had been working on, and will instead be on an existing platform (Model 3/Y based). It could still be a new, separate model range, or, it could very well just be a stripped down/decontented variant of the Model 3
I’m trying to imagine how anyone would strip down the Norwegian prison cell that is the Model 3. FFS, turn signal stalks are apparently too pricey a luxury already.
Yeah it seems to me the only way is a smaller battery.
No, what he said is it will be manufactured with the existing factory flow: probably multiple gigacastings, seats installed on structural battery pack then inserted from below, etc. When Tesla originally announced the “25K car”, they said it would be built on a new “Unboxed” factory flow, where cars would be assembled as “front module”, “rear module”, etc. then the modules connected. This was claimed to lower costs, increase production volume while using less factory square footage, etc. I think the decision to not try to debug a new product and a new assembly flow simultaneously is a sound one, and shows they are getting more realistic.
On the May 1st call, he said
“These new vehicles, including more affordable models will use aspects of the next generation platform as well as aspects of our current platforms,”
Which implies carry-over engineering from vehicles already in production, rather than a total clean sheet design that’s just built on the same assembly line
It sure seems being John Gault isn’t as much fun as it used to be.
the popularity of cigarettes with gold dollar signs has certainly diminished over the years.
“Do you like a four-day workweek? What do you do now?”
Put in more unpaid overtime, obviously. Those TPS reports ain’t gonna write themselves!
OT = own time
“If The Autopian were making billions of dollars (it is not)…”
Wait, what??
As a member I am furious to hear this! Line must go UP!!!
Billionare status in sight if you pick the right dollar.
That Corinthian Leather subscription will cost you $34,383,198.80 Zimbabwean Dollars
I have some old $100 trillion Zimbabwe bills sitting around that my wife bought me for laughs. Time to cash em in!