At the Tesla shareholders meeting, Musk assures "that there is no problem of demand"

Tesla held a shareholder meeting in Mountain View, California on Tuesday afternoon, and CEO Elon Musk addressed the audience on a number of issues facing the company before responding questions from shareholders.

Tesla had a complicated first half. She made significant model 3 shipments, but the demand for the S model would have been weak and X has dragged the company down. Some analysts have become bearish towards Tesla after Musk promised profitable quarters in Q4 2018, but then severely missed profitability in the first quarter of 2019.

But Musk defended the health of his company in his initial statement to the audience. He told shareholders: "I want to be clear about the fact that there is no problem of demand … Sales far exceeded production, and production was pretty good. have a decent chance for a record quarter … otherwise, it's going to be very close. "Musk added that 90% of orders came from non-booking customers.

Although Musk touted his company as a leader in sales to US automakers, he moved away from his quarterly profitability claims. At one point, he told a shareholder, "Profitability is always a challenge when you're a fast-growing company … Last year we doubled our fleet … It's difficult to be profitable for this level of growth ".

Musk then added, "I think we can have a positive cash flow despite a very fast growth rate." The CEO also discussed his prospects for the Tesla product line, stating that "we will not have long before we have a car with a range of 400 km".

The most important things to watch for shareholders, according to the executive? Battery availability and chronology of complete autonomy.

Full self driving

As for self-driving, Tesla has faced a situation of its own after the company promised that first customers would get advanced access to software to make this feature available. For its part, Consumer Reports has called the latest version of the autopilot "less competent than a human."

Tonight, Musk made no specific promise regarding the chronology of autonomous driving. But he reiterated that the feature "should be able to move from your garage to your parking space at work" without assistance. Later in the evening, Musk told a shareholder that Tesla was working on "roadside" and "edge" software to help the car handle temporary driving outside of traditional tracks.

For now, said Musk, his Full Self Driving feature prototype "can take me from home to the office." But he added that "there are interventions from time to time, it does not deal perfectly with every intersection or every turn."

Musk also admitted that it was difficult to perfect the "summoning" feature that he had he promoted there months. He said the invocation "must be reasonably fast" to navigate the car parks, otherwise it would be more convenient to walk to the car. It is however difficult to navigate autonomously in the car parks.

On the availability of the battery, Musk said the Gigafactory had a capacity capacity of 35 gigawatt hours (GWh) at this stage, although this "potential" number is lower than what is currently achieved.

Musk said that one of the main constraints for Tesla at the moment was the availability of batteries. At one point, he commented, "Maybe we could enter the mining sector, I do not know – we will do everything in our power to make sure we can move as quickly as possible."

New cars, new roofs

Tesla is also developing a model Y vehicle in the coming years, which will be a mid-size sedan. Musk said he expects the demand for this vehicle to be higher than the S, X and 3 handsets.

"We plan to reach volume production by the end of next year," added the CEO, adding, "Internally, we are aiming for earlier than that." Unlike the months leading up to Model 3 production, Musk was reluctant to be too aggressive publicly tonight.

Musk added that Tesla was hoping to announce a van this summer.

Tesla executives also discussed the company's solar roof project, which is generally a footnote to the company's more popular vehicle sector. Musk said the solar roof was currently on version 3, and he repeatedly reiterated that the "accelerated life tests" required by the roofing products were posing a problem to Tesla in terms of designing a Product of 30 years duration, easy to install and is inexpensive.