Elon Musk promises Cybertrucks, robot podcasts, and even Tesla ads

At Tesla’s 2023 shareholder meeting, CEO Elon Musk forecast a rollercoaster of a year: A gloomy economy resulting in mass bankruptcies, the much-anticipated delivery of the Cybertruck, another delay in Roadster production, Tesla’s first ads, and an Optimus podcast. Oh, and Musk won’t be stepping down: “It ain’t so,” he said.

The event agenda featured a handful of proposals, including a shareholder proposal that would have required Tesla’s board to create a succession plan for “key persons” whose departure could negatively impact the company. (The board recommended that shareholders vote against this proposal; a final tally will be released in the coming days.)

A second shareholder proposal sought to require third-party audits of Tesla’s cobalt suppliers to address alleged “child labor and human rights abuses.” While preliminary results indicated shareholders voted against this proposal, Musk committed to such audits when he took the stage.

“I heard a question raised about cobalt mining,” he said. “And you know what, we will conduct a third-party audit. In fact, we’ll put a webcam on the mine. If anybody sees any children, please let us know.”

But the amount of cobalt used by Tesla is minimal compared to mobile phone makers, he added. “I recommend complaining to the phone manufacturers.”

Elon’s promises

While much of the meeting, the third held at the company’s Texas headquarters, focused on Tesla’s successes over the last year, shareholders heard a few predictions about new Tesla products, business model changes, and Musk’s commitment to the company. Here are Tech Brew’s top takeaways:

Cybertruck debut: Production of Tesla’s Cybertruck—which was introduced in 2019 to an underwhelming response from Wall Street and has been heavily criticized for its design—has been delayed several times, but is finally (almost) here, Musk told shareholders. “Sorry for the delay, but we’re finally going to start delivering production Cybertrucks later this year,” Musk said.

Optimus: Tesla also teased improvements to its humanoid robot, Optimus, in a video that showed a fleet of robots walking around, as well as picking items up and putting them down. At first, the robots will be used for “jobs people don’t want to do,” he said. “Tesla’s long-term value—a majority of its long-term value—will be Optimus,” Musk added. “And that prediction I’m very confident of.”

Advertising: Tesla ads may be in our future, as the notoriously ad-averse Musk told investors, to widespread applause, “we’ll try a little advertising and see how it goes.” He later told CNBC it was an in-the-moment decision he made on stage. “I only just agreed to it, so it’s not like I have a fully formed strategy,” he said.

Twitter: Musk assured shareholders that he’ll be focusing a little less on Twitter and a little more on his other ventures in the coming months, a nod to the newly appointed Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino. “The amount of time that Twitter will take going forward is relatively small compared to the last six months,” he said.

He also assured shareholders that the Tesla idea mines haven’t been dormant while he was doing “major open-heart surgery” on the social media platform. “We are building a new product, we are designing a new product,” he said. “We’re not sitting on our hands here.”