Tesla is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) as it sees it as the “next big wave of growth.”
This wave will be driven by advances in autonomy and new product introductions, the company said in a presentation on Tuesday (July 23) to coincide with its quarterly earnings release.
“We are investing in many future projects, including AI training and inference, as well as the large-scale infrastructure to support our future products,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during the earnings call on Tuesday.
Powered by AI software and hardware, the company’s autonomous driving products include a suite of driver assistance features called FSD (Supervised), an autonomous humanoid robot called Optimus, and future autonomous driving and robotaxi services.
During the second quarter, Tesla further improved the robustness of FSD (Supervised). It also lowered the price of the service in North America and launched a free trial for Tesla owners with the right hardware. According to the presentation, the program is showing results and laying the groundwork for “more meaningful FSD monetization.”
Musk said during the conference call that Tesla plans to have staff show customers how to use FSD (Supervised) when they bring their cars in for repairs.
“Once people use it, they tend to keep using it, so I think it’s going to be very appealing and a big demand driver,” he said.
As for Optimus, the presentation said Tesla is currently having the humanoid robot perform its first task: handling batteries at Tesla factories.
The company plans to start producing Optimus vehicles for Tesla in early 2025, have several thousand produced and running at Tesla factories by the end of 2025, and then scale up production and start delivering to external customers in 2026, Musk said on the conference call.
“We’re better off solving the problem ourselves,” Musk said.
As for future self-driving and robotaxi services, the company is working on developing those technologies. While the rollout of a robotaxi service depends on technological advances and regulatory approval, Tesla is “actively committed” to the project because the “potential value” of robotaxi is “significant,” the company said in the presentation.
According to the presentation, Tesla is working towards its next big wave of expected growth, delivering record quarterly revenue in the second quarter. Total revenue increased 2% year over year, with total automotive revenue down 7%, energy generation and storage revenue up 100%, and services and other revenue up 21%.
The revenue growth was driven by strong growth in the company’s energy storage business and a continued recovery in vehicle deliveries, the latter of which was supported by improved overall consumer sentiment and Tesla’s offering of financing options designed to offset the impact of high interest rates, according to the presentation.
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Read more: AI, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, autonomy, revenue, Elon Musk, FSD (Supervised), news, Optimus, PYMNTS News, robotaxi, robotics, robots, Tesla, trending topics
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