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Full Recap of Tesla’s 2015 Annual Shareholder Meeting
At the Tesla Annual Shareholder Meeting, chairman Elon Musk touched on a number of subjects, including cars, the GigaFactory, battery storage and space travel.
Tesla growth chart used at 2015 annual shareholder meeting
During his remarks at the Tesla annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday, chairman Elon Musk touched on a wide range of topics from the AutoPilot system, the GigaFactory, residential and utility scale grid storage, and life on Mars. Here’s a synopsis.
Car Stuff
Musk told the meeting that he anticipates sales volume will continue to grow 50% per year, on average, for the next several years. The company has opened a new casting and machining center near the Fremont factory. Moving production functions there has opened up room at the factory to install a new assembly line capable of producing 3 times as many cars as the current line. A new paint facility capable of handling up to 500,000 cars a year has also been installed.
The Model X is undergoing final pre-production tweaking and will start production in “3 to 4 months.” In response to a question, Musk said that mounting the battery pack low in the chassis makes the Model X one of the safest SUV’s on the road. He went on to say that, like the Model S, it will achieve some of the highest crash test ratings of any car on the road.
“[I]t’s turning out to be a really great car. I think the Model X may arguably be a better SUV than the Model S is as a sedan. We want to make sure obviously that some of the key features of the Model X, particularly the Falcon Wing door and the way the second row seats are done …is…just right, and provide true functionality and true value improvements versus just sort of feeling gimmicky. It’s got to be a genuine improvement in utility and aesthetics, so getting those final nuances right for the Model X is what we’re focused on right now.”
When asked about the affordable mass-market Model 3, he said it would be available only with a single motor at first to keep costs down but would be offered in a dual motor version as well.
He did have exciting news about the Supercharger network. The company is fitting solar panels to as many Supercharger locations as possible. He assured the audience that those that could not be converted to solar power would soon get their electricity only from renewable power sources.
Musk also said the company has created a new liquid cooled charging cord that is significantly thinner and more flexible than the one used now. Not only does liquid cooling make the cable more elegant, it will permit the use of higher powered Supercharger facilities in the future.
He emphasized that the system will continue to expand in North America and other countries to permit Tesla owners to enjoy free long distance driving for life. He did say that owners who use Superchargers for all their daily charging can expect to receive a “note” from the company.
With regard to the AutoPilot suite of autonomous driving features, Musk indicated that the company is busy testing and upgrading the system. “We’re making gradual progress towards what I’d say is a releasable bit of software. But it is quite a tricky thing and we want to make sure that our testing is exhaustive before we release the software. But if we keep making progress, I think we may be able to get it out to all the access customers which is sort of our public beta program around the end of this month.”
Full implementation is not expected for about 3 years, with a lot depending on how regulators in the US and abroad react to it. He said that the system at this point is intended to function like the auto pilot in airplanes — there to help but not to allow drivers to sleep through their journey to arrive alert and refreshed at their destination…..yet.
Musk admitted that interest in battery swapping was far lower than expected. He indicated that the company is focusing more on improving Supercharger performance and less on building battery swap locations.
Tesla PowerWall
One of the biggest announcements of the day concerns the Tesla PowerWall. Some critics have chirped that the units introduced to great fanfare in April were too small to be worth the cost. “I am very happy to announce that we’ve dramatically increased the power capability of the Powerwall. So it’s actually going to go from having 2 kilowatts steady, 3.3 kilowatt peak to a 7 kilowatt power, 5 kilowatt steady, price is unchanged. So, it basically more than doubled the power output of the Powerpack and the price is going to stay the same.”
The company will prioritize deliveries to people who already have a residential solar system or who are installing one. Why? Because an inverter will be already included in their system, meaning adding a PowerWall will cost only about $3,500 for the unit and about $500 for installation. That’s huge.
But even with that announcement, Musk admitted that the PowerWall may not make economic sense for most customers in the US because the differences between the cost of electricity during a 24 hour period are usually not large enough for there to be a pay back on the cost of the system in a reasonable period of time. He cites Germany, Australia and Hawaii as markets where the PowerWall makes more economic sense.
The company focus is on grid scale storage, which it expects will account for 80% of its stationary battery business. “That’s where the economics are very compelling because there is an important difference between price and cost. The cost to the utilities of between day and night is quite substantial because the power usage is often sort of 2:1 at least if not greater than 2:1, sometimes substantially greater than 2:1 between peak day usage and trough night usage.”
Musk told the audience that utility companies look favorably on using Tesla battery storage units because they are more compact than what competitors offer, so they can fit into the footprint of existing substations without the need to acquire more land and the permitting issues that may create. He says utilities are just like residential customers — they appreciate that the Tesla units are basically “plug and play” ready, with no hassles or headaches.
The GigaFactory
Musk said the GigaFactory was coming along smoothly, with production expected to begin next year with full capacity expected within 3 years. In response to a question from the audience, he responded, “Our focus right now is just making sure that we build the Gigafactory version one correctly and that’s going to be quite a difficult challenge over the next few years. We’ll have the first part of it active next year but then we want to try to get to full production in roughly three years…that’s going to be quite a challenge. And I think once we get to that point we want to figure out where to put Gigafactory Two and Three.”
He says the GigaFactory will have the capacity to build 50 gigawatt-hours of batteries a year. “And that should allow for 500,000 cars to be produced a year plus have 15 gigawatt-hours left over for stationary. The way it’s looking, demand for stationary is higher than expected, so we’re looking at potentially expanding the output capability of the Gigafactory to meet the higher demand for stationary.”
SpaceX
An audience member asked when SpaceX would be going public and Musk responded that a SpaceX IPO was a long way off, primarily because the stock market is focused on quarterly reports and has an attention span limited to 1 to 2 years maximum. He said the timeline for SpaceX was quite a bit beyond that. Then he dropped this bomb:
“I’m trying to build a city on Mars and that ends up sacrificing profitability for a really long time. I think it would be not super loved by the public markets. I’d expect with SpaceX that we will probably go public once we will have a regular flights to Mars.”
The Take Away
One stockholder asked Elon Musk what his goals for the company are. He gave this answer, which may serve as the overarching statement that underlies everything he and his various companies are attempting to accomplish.
“Our goal at Tesla is pretty straight forward; it’s really to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy and particularly sustainable transport. So in order for humanity to have a good future or for life…we have to figure out how to make that future sustainable, meaning not to have crazy amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere and ultimately get into situation of hydrocarbon scarcity, which would be economically disastrous.
“So, that’s what we’re focused on. Our primary goal is to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport and then, with the batteries, help the advent of sustainable energy production.”
Quoted material is courtesy of Seeking Alpha transcription service.
Tesla is looking to expand into a new Asian market, strengthening its presence in a region that has been bullish on electric vehicles as a whole.
Tesla officially filed to establish a subsidiary of its business in Vietnam, a report from Reuters suggests. Tesla named the entity “Tesla Motors Vietnam Limited Liability Company.”
The planned entrance into the Vietnamese market is a good sign and move for Tesla, as it has become one of the fastest-growing EV markets in Southeast Asia. It is already among the leaders in the region in both volume and electrification rate. In the first half of this year, Vietnam led Southeast Asia in battery-electric passenger car sales at about 116,000 units, up about 71 percent year over year.
Currently, Vietnamese EV drivers rely on VinFast’s V-Green network, which has about 150,000 ports, but these are primarily reserved for VinFast vehicles. Public third-party charging is fragmented and unreliable for those who do not own chargers that are dedicated to a certain manufacturer’s vehicles.
Tesla has had mixed results in Asia as a whole, and as China remains the core part of its story in Asia, the company is evidently working on expanding its footprint on the continent. Tesla’s domestic retail deliveries fell about 12 percent year over year through the first eight months of 2026.
Model Y remains a standout individual product, holding its position as one of, if not the, best-selling vehicles in the world. However, Model 3 has been weaker than it has been in past years.
Gigafactory Shanghai, the company’s Chinese production facility, still performs very well. Wholesale volumes in terms of exports have more than doubled and now exceed domestic retail sales; Giga Shanghai builds vehicles for Europe, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other markets. South Korea has been an explicit bright spot, with registrations doubling year-to-date and Tesla frequently appearing as the top imported brand.
Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done
Tesla’s entrance into Vietnam signals a broader effort to take over the Asian market and grab more market share from rivals.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.
X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.
X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.
The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.
Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity
The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.
Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your “Must Have” section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.
xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.
OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
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Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
SpaceX launched three final O3b mPower satellites Sunday, finishing a lesser known SES satellite network.
SpaceX had an 87 minute window opening at 2:49 p.m. Eastern on Sunday to fly a Falcon 9 out of Cape Canaveral carrying the final three satellites for SES’s O3b mPower constellation, a project that has taken more than a decade to finish since Boeing and SES first signed SpaceX on for the work.
Unlike the thousands of Starlink satellites SpaceX has stacked into orbit over the years, O3b mPower flies in a different neighborhood entirely. The three new satellites, tagged F11, F12 and F13, are headed for medium Earth orbit at roughly 5,000 miles up, more than ten times higher than Starlink’s shell around 340 miles but still a small fraction of the 22,000 miles where old school geostationary satellites sit. That middle position is the whole point, because a satellite that far out needs far fewer siblings to blanket the globe than a low orbit constellation does. Essentially, SES only needed 13 satellites total to build a network offering quick, steady service that used to require thousands of spacecraft.
With most people having heard plenty about Starlink and almost nothing about O3b mPower, SES and SpaceX already blend the two networks for some customers. Both SpaceX and SES sell satellite broadband, but they’re aimed at different buyers. Starlink is built for volume, direct to consumers, RVs, homes, small businesses, plus a growing aviation and maritime business. O3b mPower skips consumers entirely and sells enterprise grade connectivity to airlines, cruise lines, offshore energy operators, telecoms needing backhaul, and governments, priced and provisioned more like a dedicated circuit.
A 2023 partnership lets cruise ships combine Starlink’s speed with O3b mPower’s steady capacity depending on what a ship needs at a given moment. Sunday’s completed 13 satellite constellation effectively finishes the medium orbit half of that pairing, years after.
Sunday’s mission was already a something on SpaceX’s manifest well before O3b mPower entered the picture. This flight marked its 29th trip to orbit, a history that includes two crewed Axiom missions, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and 22 separate Starlink batches. SpaceX has landed boosters on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas so often that Sunday’s touchdown attempt, if it went as planned, was set to be the 661st successful Falcon booster landing to date.
For a company that pushed the Starlink constellation past 11,000 satellites back in August, almost entirely through bulk launches from California, Sunday’s flight was a reminder that SpaceX’s schedule still has room for someone else’s satellites too. SES gets a finished network built for a narrower set of customers, and Falcon 9 gets one more line on an already long resume.
Tesla looks to expand into new Asian market, strengthening presence
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
