Investor's Corner
Wired Takes a Tesla Factory Tour with Diarmuid O’Connell
Wired got a tour of the Tesla factory recently in the company of Diarmuid O’Connell, vice president of business development. The tour turned into a discussion of the core values that are the foundation of everything Tesla does.
Wired UK editor Michael Rundle recounts his recent tour of the Tesla factory with Vice President of Business Development, Diarmuid O’Connell. What started off as a jaunt through the factory soon became a deep dive into the philosophy that underpins everything Tesla stands for.
O’Connell was the 50th person hired by Tesla and the first who was not a trained engineer. He is a firm believer in the gospel according to Musk, but he is far from the only one. As reported by Wired UK, one company staffer was overheard during the tour saying the company’s mission is to discomfort “petrodictators.”
O’Connell starts off by telling Rundle that Tesla is not in the business of making automobiles. “Tesla is in the business of inspiring competition. The more electric vehicles the better.” Then he adds, “It would be a fulfillment of our mission if the biggest manufacturer in the US put a mass-market EV on the road. We’re hopeful that they will and frankly that everyone else does.”
He suggests that Tesla is bent on securing the future of “sustainable transport” as a whole, not just making a profit. If it can establish that EVs are viable, more cars, more charging infrastructure, more battery research and development, more greening of the electrical greed, and a reduced dependence on foreign oil will follow, Tesla will make money. But if Tesla loses its bet on the future, not only will it fail, but the environment and the world will lose as well.
For those who criticize the company for being slow to get its products to market, O’Connell has an answer. “If we had been able to produce [the Model S] out of the box 12 years ago, we would have done so. We had no brand, no capital, no manufacturing base and no developed technology,” he says. “This is the classic technology introduction model that has led to the mass market for everything from air travel to cell phones. … This is how you do it if you’re starting from zero.”
Tesla relies too much on government subsidies and the sale of emissions credits, some critics charge. O’Connell has an answer for that too. The oil and gas industries receive “$2 trillion in global subsidies” every year, he points out, but he saves his most severe criticism for “the $25 billion R&D tax credit that Exxon Mobile and some of the other big American gasoline petroleum producers still enjoy 120 years into the development of that technology.” Why doesn’t the press talk about that, he wonders?
Asked about how autonomous cars and ride sharing may affect the environment going forward, he says, “I think what’s important is the emissions profile of any car, whether it’s shared or owned. Big or small. We’re trying to move as quickly as possible where the emissions profile of a vehicle is zero, and the emissions profile of the original electron going into the vehicle is as close to zero as possible.”
As Tesla expands its markets to other countries, it will source as many components as possible from local sources. That includes building more Gigafactories nearby, whether in Europe, China, Japan or any other country. Doing so is only common sense, he argues.
With all the buzz about the Chevy Bolt, new competition from Faraday Future, Atieva, NextEV, BYD and BAIC, O’Connell takes a “What have you done for me lately?” attitude. “The path of getting there — that’s the question. And the promise of doing something two- and three- and four years hence do not impress me,” O’Connell says. “People doing stuff now? That impresses me.”
Finally, O’Connell gets down the bottom line, the real nitty gritty, the foundation Tesla is built on. “[Y]ou also have to put on the table how are we as a society thinking about larger issues, and moving ourselves towards taking other than strictly market oriented actions, to deliver public health benefits,” he says. “Maybe survival [depends] on how you think about carbon intensity and the logical progression of too much carbon in our atmosphere.”
There a lot of people who think a social conscience is not the proper role of business. It’s not the capitalist model they teach in business school. Some would go so far as to say Tesla is foolish for letting such considerations as respect for the earth color its business plans and detract from the quest for profits.
Maybe so, but if you listen to Diarmuid O’Connell, who obviously gets his convictions from Elon Musk himself, someday in the not too distant future, we will find out who is foolish…..and who are really the fools.
Photo credits: Tesla
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk
Tesla locks in Elon Musk’s top problem solver as it enters its most ambitious era
The generous equity award was disclosed by the electric vehicle maker in a recent regulatory filing.
Tesla has granted Senior Vice President of Automotive Tom Zhu more than 520,000 stock options, tying a significant portion of his compensation to the company’s long-term performance.
The generous equity award was disclosed by the electric vehicle maker in a recent regulatory filing.
Tesla secures top talent
According to a Form 4 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Tom Zhu received 520,021 stock options with an exercise price of $435.80 per share. Since the award will not fully vest until March 5, 2031, Zhu must remain at Tesla for more than five years to realize the award’s full benefit.
Considering that Tesla shares are currently trading at around the $445 to $450 per share level, Zhu will really only see gains in his equity award if Tesla’s stock price sees a notable rise over the years, as noted in a Sina Finance report.
Still, even at today’s prices, Zhu’s stock award is already worth over $230 million. If Tesla reaches the market cap targets set forth in Elon Musk’s 2025 CEO Performance Award, Zhu would become a billionaire from this equity award alone.
Tesla’s problem solver
Zhu joined Tesla in April 2014 and initially led the company’s Supercharger rollout in China. Later that year, he assumed the leadership of Tesla’s China business, where he played a central role in Tesla’s localization efforts, including expanding retail and service networks, and later, overseeing the development of Gigafactory Shanghai.
Zhu’s efforts helped transform China into one of Tesla’s most important markets and production hubs. In 2023, Tesla promoted Zhu to Senior Vice President of Automotive, placing him among the company’s core global executives and expanding his influence beyond China. He has since garnered a reputation as the company’s problem solver, being tapped by Elon Musk to help ramp Giga Texas’s vehicle production.
With this in mind, Tesla’s recent filing seems to suggest that the company is locking in its top talent as it enters its newest, most ambitious era to date. As could be seen in the targets of Elon Musk’s 2025 pay package, Tesla is now aiming to be the world’s largest company by market cap, and it is aiming to achieve production levels that are unheard of. Zhu’s talents would definitely be of use in this stage of the company’s growth.
Tesla analyst Andrew Percoco of Morgan Stanley teased the company’s dominance in its self-driving initiative, stating that its lead over competitors is “not even close.”
Percoco recently overtook coverage of Tesla stock from Adam Jonas, who had covered the company at Morgan Stanley for years. Percoco is handling Tesla now that Jonas is covering embodied AI stocks and no longer automotive.
His first move after grabbing coverage was to adjust the price target from $410 to $425, as well as the rating from ‘Overweight’ to ‘Equal Weight.’
Percoco’s new note regarding Tesla highlights the company’s extensive lead in self-driving and autonomy projects, something that it has plenty of competition in, but has established its prowess over the past few years.
He writes:
“It’s not even close. Tesla continues to lead in autonomous driving, even as Nvidia rolls out new technology aimed at helping other automakers build driverless systems.”
Percoco’s main point regarding Tesla’s advantage is the company’s ability to collect large amounts of training data through its massive fleet, as millions of cars are driving throughout the world and gathering millions of miles of vehicle behavior on the road.
This is the main point that Percoco makes regarding Tesla’s lead in the entire autonomy sector: data is King, and Tesla has the most of it.
One big story that has hit the news over the past week is that of NVIDIA and its own self-driving suite, called Alpamayo. NVIDIA launched this open-source AI program last week, but it differs from Tesla’s in a significant fashion, especially from a hardware perspective, as it plans to use a combination of LiDAR, Radar, and Vision (Cameras) to operate.
Percoco said that NVIDIA’s announcement does not impact Morgan Stanley’s long-term opinions on Tesla and its strength or prowess in self-driving.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang commends Tesla’s Elon Musk for early belief
And, for what it’s worth, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang even said some remarkable things about Tesla following the launch of Alpamayo:
“I think the Tesla stack is the most advanced autonomous vehicle stack in the world. I’m fairly certain they were already using end-to-end AI. Whether their AI did reasoning or not is somewhat secondary to that first part.”
Percoco reiterated both the $425 price target and the ‘Equal Weight’ rating on Tesla shares.
LG Energy Solution pursuing battery deal for Tesla Optimus, other humanoid robots: report
Tesla receives approval for FSD Supervised tests in Sweden
