What did Elon Musk say on Tesla's Q4 earnings call?

The humanoid robots will be important to address the labor shortage in the U.S., and their first use will be in Tesla's own factories, Musk said. Optimus has "the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time," he said.

Supply Chain Issues
Musk said that he expects Tesla to remain "chip-limited" in 2022, and that the company would introduce no new vehicle models this year as a result.

"We will not be introducing new vehicle models this year. We will still be parts constrained." He said the company would instead work on engineering and tooling to create those future vehicles.

The CEO also said the company is not currently working on a $25,000 compact electric vehicle, contrary to the ambitions he announced at a Tesla Battery Day presentation in 2020.

Autonomous Vehicle Tech
Instead, Tesla is focusing on developing autonomous vehicle tech, and scaling up production at its new factories in Austin, Texas and outside of Berlin.

Despite those challenges, Musk said, Tesla had been making quite a few cars in Austin and Berlin starting in late 2021.

He noted, "In Texas, we're building Model Ys with the structural battery pack and the 4680 cells. We will start delivering after final certification of the vehicle which should be fairly soon.”

Tesla's first U.S. factory in Fremont, California, achieved record production in 2021, the company noted. The company aims to expand capacity at that facility beyond 600,000 cars per year.

In its shareholder deck, Tesla revealed that it has expanded its experimental driver assistance systems testing program, dubbed FSD Beta, to around 60,000 users in the U.S.

"Full Self-Driving (FSD) software remains one of our primary areas of focus," the company wrote. “Over time, our software-related profit should accelerate our overall profitability.”