In an aerial view, the Tesla Corporate Headquarters is seen on January 3, 2023 in Travis County, Texas.
Brandon Bells | beautiful pictures
Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke to shareholders at the company’s annual meeting on Tuesday, predicting the economy will recover in 12 months and promising the company will produce the Cybertruck by the end. this year.
Addressing the lengthy delay on the angular electric pickup, Musk lamented some of the production challenges and said, “Sorry for the delay. We’re finally getting started. deliver production Cybertrucks later this year.” He said Cybertruck will be the vehicle he drives every day.
Musk also said that he expects a challenging economic environment to persist over the next 12 months and many companies to go bankrupt. But after that, he believes the economy will recover and Tesla will be in a good position.
He also predicts that the Tesla Model Y will be “the best-selling car on Earth this year.”
During the Q&A session, an attendee dressed as a robot in a cowboy hat asked Musk if Tesla would build an RV or a camper. Musk said the company has no plans to build an RV at this time, but the upcoming Cybertruck could be converted into an RV or camper.
In response to a question about his $44 billion takeover of social media service Twitter, Musk said it was a “short-term distraction” and said he had to do some “surgery”. big open heart” to ensure its survival, then noted that he was delighted to have former NBC Universal advertising executive Linda Yaccarino join the company to become the new CEO.
Another attendee asked Musk if he would reconsider Tesla’s longstanding stance on traditional advertising. Historically, the company has relied on word of mouth, influencer marketing, and other non-traditional marketing and advertising to advertise its products and their best attributes.
Musk said on Tuesday, “We’re going to try a little ad and see how it goes.”
Straubel added to ship, new steering ship offered
Shareholders earlier voted to add former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, now CEO of Redwood Materials, to the automaker’s board of directors. Redwood Materials recycles e-waste and batteries, and last year multi-billion dollar deal with Tesla supplier Panasonic.
Following the shareholder vote, CEO Elon Musk began the part of the meeting with a commitment to conduct a third-party audit of Tesla’s cobalt supply chain, specifically to ensure zero labor. children in any Tesla cobalt supplier.
Cobalt is a key component for making batteries for Tesla’s electric cars and backup battery packs used at home and for utility-scale energy projects. “Even for the small amount of cobalt that we produce, we’ll make sure that for the six weeks through Sunday, no child labor is exploited,” Musk said to cheers from the activists. direct investment.
Musk also announced that Tesla plans to manufacture a new type of actuator, which he said will require less silicon carbide than previous actuators and are free of rare earth elements. He added that Tesla will also move to a new, low-voltage architecture in its cars, which requires less copper.
Later in his presentation, Musk bragged about the company’s energy storage business and said “big battery” sales growth was faster than growth in the automotive segment. the core of the company.
distraction concerns
Since the electric vehicle maker’s most recent annual meeting in August 2022, Tesla’s largest retail shareholder, Leo Koguan, has criticized Musk for selling off billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares. to fund the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the social media company.
Koguan, a billionaire and founder of IT services company SHI International, call the company’s board of directors to “do shock therapy to recover stock prices”, namely by buying back shares at the end of last year.
Some of Tesla’s institutional investors have advised Musk because too distracting in his new role as Twitter CEO to perform optimally at the helm of Tesla, but Musk said Tuesday that he expects to spend less time on Twitter in the future than in six months. via. They also criticized Tesla’s board of directors, led by chairman Robyn Denholm, for failing to restrain him and protect shareholders’ interests.
Tesla shares closed at $228.52 on October 28, 2022, after Musk officially took over Twitter. They closed at $166.52 on May 16, 2023 when the meeting started and were up about 0.5% after hours.
At last year’s shareholder meeting, Musk predicted an 18-month recession, hinted at the possibility of share buybacks and told investors that the electric vehicle business was targeting 20 million production. vehicles per year by 2030, which he thinks will require a total of dozens of plants per plant. a production of 1.5 million to 2 million pieces per year.
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
