Tesla Q&A: Q1 2021 was a record quarter on many levels, said Elon Musk

Key Takeaways:
● In Q1, Tesla achieved its highest ever vehicle production and deliveries. This was despite multiple challenges, including seasonality, supply chain instability, and the transition to the new Model S and Model X.
● Tesla GAAP net income reached $438M, and its non-GAAP net income surpassed $1B for the first time in its history.
● Tesla expects to begin production and deliveries at its Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas sometime this year.

$Tesla(TSLA.US)$ has provided a total return of 391.5% over the past year, well above the S&P 500's total return of 47.7%. On the earnings call, CEO  Elon Musk told investors that  Q1 2021 was a record quarter on many levels. Tesla achieved record production, deliveries and surpassed $1 billion in non-GAAP net income for the first time.
Come and see what happened in the $Tesla(TSLA.US)$ 's Q1 2021 earnings call!

This article is a script from the Q&A session of Tesla's earnings call on April 26. In order to facilitate reading, we have made appropriate cuts. If you want to know more details, you can click here to re-watch the earnings call.

Q：Master of coin, can you tell us anything about Tesla's future plans in digital currency space or when any such major developments might be revealed?
A：Thinking about it from a corporate treasury perspective, we've been quite pleased with how much liquidity there is in the bitcoin market. So our ability to build our first position happened quickly. When we did the sale later in March, we also were able to execute that very quickly. And so as we think about kind of global liquidity for the business in risk management, being able to get cash in and out of the market is something that I think is exceptionally important for us.
So we do believe long term in the value of bitcoin. So it is our intent to hold what we have long term and continue to accumulate bitcoin from transactions from our customers as they purchase vehicles. Specifically with respect to things we may do, there are things that we're constantly discussing. We're not planning to make any announcements here, and we're watching this space closely.
So when we're ready to make an announcement on this front, if there's one to come, we'll certainly let you all know.

Q：You suggested that between a 5x to 10x improvement is achievable in the automotive production versus the first Model 3 line on the first principles physics analysis. Where does Berlin sit relative to that limit?
A：I think we're still quite far away from it. I mean the thing to bear in mind with production is -- for those who've never done production, they just don't understand how insanely hard production is. I want to really be very, very emphatic here. Prototypes are trivial, they're child's play.
Production is hard, is very hard. Now you say production at large scale with higher liability and low cost, insanely difficult. But Tesla achieved on the automotive side was not to create an electric car. The truly profound thing on the car side is that Tesla was the first American car company to achieve volume production of a car in 100 years and not go bankrupt.

Q: China recently announced changes to its NEV subsidy program that disqualifies Tesla vehicles from benefiting from the subsidies. To what extent is there room for Tesla to lower manufacturing costs in China and pass those savings to buyer, so they can qualify for the subsidy?
A: We are making rapid progress on lowering the production cost in China. And we're actually excited to announce on this call that we will be reducing the price of the standard range Model 3 basically tomorrow, China time. So the day after tomorrow, California time, but tomorrow, China time. And there will be a price below the subsidy limit. And we feel confident that that's, will still be a vehicle that delivers a good gross margin.
And on the manufacturing cost portion of the question, the cost of vehicles produced in Shanghai in Q1 is already lower than the cost to produce the Model 3 in Fremont, and there's still significant opportunity left to take costs out.