Tesla Q&A Q4 2021: an exceptional year

All you need to know about this earnings season

Attitudes: Over a longer-term horizon, the management is quite optimistic about the expansion of margins.

Goals: After an exceptional year, the fundamental focus of Tesla this year is scaling output.

In 2022, supply chain will continue to be the fundamental limiter of output across all factories.

Products: Tesla's first 4680 vehicles will be delivered this quarter.

Elon Musk: We're not currently working on a $25,000 car. At some point, we will, but we have enough on our plate right now, too much on our plate, frankly. So, at some point, there will be. I think that's sort of the wrong question. Really, it's really the thing that overwhelmingly matters is when is the car autonomous? I think, at the point in which it is autonomous, the cost of transport drops by a factor of 4 or 5.

Andrew Baglino: So throughout 2021, we focused on growing cell supply alongside our in-house 4680 effort to provide us flexibility and insurance as we attempt to grow as fast as possible. We're building 4680 structural packs every day, which are being assembled into vehicles in Texas. I was driving one yesterday and the day before. And we believe our first 4680 vehicles will be delivered this quarter.

Elon Musk: Like phone, everything and the car can -- like the house can just heat and cool things because those are coming home type of thing. So just do sensible things and just work really, I think it would be just quite a game changer down the road.

Zachary Kirkhorn: Our mix of Model Y is increasing as we've ramped that to higher capacity in Fremont and also in Shanghai. And the reason that matters is the Model Y is a vehicle that carries a higher profit than the Model 3. And then, as we increase the volume on that program with labor efficiencies, fixed cost amortization, they improve and the costs go down as well. The second one here is localization in Shanghai has been a huge help for margins for the Company. And then, we've also done various price increases in certain markets on certain models.

As we look over the next a quarter or two, we have ramp inefficiencies from the launch of Austin and Berlin, and it unavoidably will add cost to the business as we do that.