Hey everybody RobMower here and today we are going to be talking about the results of Bloomberg's Model 3 owner survey. Pretty comprehensive survey, a lot of interesting details in there. We've also got a bit of news on FSD, a couple of different reports to go through, and other items as well. Not the best day for Tesla stock today after a strong start finishing down 3.25% to close at $255.71, while the NASDAQ was down about half a percent on the day. As a macro reminder, tomorrow morning we will get the Personal Consumption Expenditures report, BCE, so we'll keep an eye out for how those numbers come in.
Alright, we'll start off with a couple of quick items yesterday. Elon tweeted that he tested the version 12 alpha build of FSD beta and said that it is mind-blowing. So, as a reminder, FSD version 12 is supposed to be sort of end-to-end neural networks or AI control compared to today where neural networks are being more heavily used for perception and then for planning or control. There's a higher ratio of things that are specifically programmed or essentially hard coded into that process. So, version 12 would be eliminating a lot of that manual coding, replacing that in favor of neural network type of controls, which is a very exciting prospect because those neural networks can then be refined and trained over time, and just like we have seen perception, get a lot better, hopefully planning and decision-making would get a lot better very quickly as well. So, it's an exciting teaser from Elon Musk, obviously we don't know what the timeline on that would be as usual, but I do think it's encouraging for them to at least have a testable alpha version ready at this point, although we can't know for sure if that is still relying on for the lack of a better term some hard coding or if so to what extent that may be the case. So, again, best to keep expectations in check.
Alright, next up we've got a couple new photos of what is most probably a test Model 3 highland. After a bit of a lull, it seems like we've got a couple more sightings of these over the last few days. These photos shared on Twitter by Y2K-Caulin, if we look at the front, you can pretty clearly see that there is a very straight horizontal line in front fender, as compared to a more downward sloping line on the current iteration of the Model 3, so this would match the one uncovered leak that we had previously seen, but obviously hard to tell too much with the covers that Tesla's got on. There have also been rumors over the last couple of days and it does seem to be the case that there is some production downtime right now at Fremont, which shouldn't be too surprising given Tesla's comments on the Q2 call. I still think we're a ways out from any sort of confirmation or details on highland, but hopefully that all goes smoothly for Tesla.
Alright speaking of the Model 3, let's get into the Bloomberg Model 3 owner survey, so many of you may remember that Bloomberg did a Model 3 owner survey back in 2018-2019 of early Model 3 owners, and it was really insightful because it showed how much people just loved this vehicle, how much better their experience with this car was than their previous vehicles. The results were pretty validating of what was to come at that point in time. And this is also done by Tom Randall, who I've got a lot of respect for, obviously with the media it's kind of hit or miss, but I think Tom does a good job. And they control this survey with things like vehicle identification numbers, so it should be a pretty solid methodology, more so than we usually see for these types of things.
So anyway, this is the follow up survey, so again thousands of Model 3 owners, many of whom were from that first survey, so Bloomberg was able to kind of track responses over time, which gives some pretty interesting insights. Now unfortunately it's been mired down in focus on Elon Musk and thoughts on Elon Musk. People talk about those, but I do want to start with things that are going to get less attention but are ultimately I think quite a bit more important.
Starting with the fact that across 5600 owner surveys, the Model 3 is still receiving phenomenal scores from respondents. So three statements here and then the degree to which respondents agreed with those statements. The Model 3 is enjoyable to drive, I would recommend a Tesla to my friends or family, the Model 3 exceeded my expectations. And remember because of Tesla's success since then expectations are probably quite a bit higher now. However, starting with that top question, Model 3 is enjoyable to drive, 4.91 score in 2023 from the survey, which means the average response is a strongly agree. You can barely even see any little slivers of people even saying neutral, let alone disagree or strongly disagree on this statement. Now going down the line, I would recommend a Tesla to friends or family. Again the average here strongly agree it looks like maybe 90, 95% or so, either strongly agree or agree. That's a really great score but obviously it's down trended from the probably untouchable score that Tesla had back in 2019. And then a similar score on Model 3 exceeded my expectations.
So overall, 87% of respondents saying that they are considering another Tesla for their next vehicle purchase, 96% saying they're considering an EV for their next vehicle purchase. That means that more than 90% of those that are considering an EV are considering a Tesla. That is a really, really good result.
Alright, reliability and service, these are two things that Tesla has often faced criticism for. If we look at the scores though, very high marks on reliability, almost all owners saying that they strongly agree or agree that the Model 3 has been more reliable than previous cars they have owned. And that remains the case even when broken down further by category.
Now for service, this is a situation where someone has had an issue, right? They need something to be fixed. So they're probably not super happy in the first place. But actually really good scores here, people are very satisfied on average with mobile service, satisfied with service centers, satisfied with stores. And 91% of respondents said that the service they received was adequate and that is up from 2019. And 90% said that they received service in a timely manner, also up from 2019. So obviously room for improvement, but I think really good scores across the board here and paints things in a much different and probably much more accurate light than we tend to hear as the narrative of oh, Tesla's are unreliable or oh, Tesla's service is terrible. It's just not the case. These responses indicate that Tesla is very good to even excellent in those categories.
Few other interesting things, autopilot and FSD, actually the majority of respondents said that FSD was worth what they paid for it. And most agree that it is a useful feature in its current state of development and that it improves their safety. Obviously the responses are more polarized on the FSD topics than some other areas, but interesting to see that. And most feel like Tesla is on the right track with their full self driving development.
Additionally for autopilot specifically, Tesla owners reported that autopilot made them safer drivers. The result there was a 4.2. So an average between agree and strongly agree for charging Tesla getting really strong marks here, no surprise, but indicates that Tesla owners are not struggling with any perceived inconvenience from EVs. And then for Tesla insurance, the user experience seems to be going well with most indicating that they would be likely or very likely to recommend insurance to someone else.
So a lot of insightful and really good things in there, but obviously most of the attention going to the results from Elon Musk, they looked at all the questions that they had that were consistent between 2019 and 2023. The biggest decline was responses to the statement of my opinion of Tesla CEO Elon Musk is positive. That was a 4.4 score on average in 2019. That's now dropped to 2.97, roughly a neutral opinion. Most respondents felt that Elon Musk's recent public statements had harmed Tesla's reputation rather than improved it, and most said that those statements had lowered their opinion of Elon. As this chart demonstrates, 91% of owners who said that they would not buy another Tesla had unfavorable opinions of Elon Musk. But remember that is a very small percentage of respondents. Most people are considering buying another Tesla again, 87% considering buying another Tesla. So would a less opinionated Elon Musk improve these results? Probably. But from the responses, the impact isn't all that significant today. And as a reminder, these things can change over time. We've talked about the pretty high degree of volatility in brand surveys before, so it doesn't mean that it couldn't get worse and become more significant of an issue, but it could also get better over time as well. It's also worth a reminder that these are current Tesla owners, so although maybe they aren't as happy with Elon Musk's recent comments, there's an argument to be made that that does appeal to you a different demographic that maybe helps some people consider a Tesla that wouldn't have considered it before. So the net at the moment probably negative, but again, hopefully not too impactful to what Tesla is trying to accomplish. I think pretty much across the board, the rest of the results are incredibly strong.
Alright, let's move on from that survey. We do have a couple other articles today that are getting some attention. First, we've got an article from CNBC about the California Attorney General investigating Tesla regarding autopilot, things like phantom breaking. If you read this article and you know who Greg Wester is, well, that should tell you all you need to know. The guy has a lot of bias against Tesla, so I don't think we need to spend a ton of time on this. I think we have already known that obviously regulatory institutes are very interested in what Tesla is doing with autopilot, so I think there's always a degree of quote unquote investigating that is happening, and that's part of what they should be doing as regulators.
Now the other article was a quote unquote special report by Reuters, so they busted out the fancy graphics for this one. This is like a 3 or 4000 word article. A lot of words to really not say a whole lot. I'm not even sure what their main point is. They talk about a variety of different things, but they're all around range, which can pretty much be summarized by something that we all know, which is that EPA range is not equivalent or supposed to be equivalent to real world range.
They seem to try to paint Tesla into this gacha moment about cars delivering lower ranges, particularly in like cold conditions, which I mean, it's kind of just physics, but they detail this story from one customer. I'm not going to be able to get through this without laughing, but the first quote in this article is quote, we're looking at the range and you literally see the number decrease in front of your eyes. You set off his dashboard range meter. Pretty sure that's how it's supposed to work. Obviously understand the point that he's trying to make that it's going down more quickly than what he would have hoped, but that being the way of explaining it kind of gives you a flavor for this article in general, I would say.
Anyway, they go on to talk about how this guy was convinced that there was an issue with his battery because of the range that he was getting. So he tried to schedule service and have Tesla look at the battery, Tesla looked at it remotely with remote diagnostics and said, no, you're good, canceled the appointment, which Reuters then tries to turn into some big scandal like Tesla had a specific team dedicated to canceling service appointments for people with battery issues. Well, no, they just looked into the issue remotely and realized that it would be a waste of everybody's time. What a truly scandalous thing to have people working on.
So anyway, this is like a 3000 word article. That quote was in the first couple of paragraphs. The last couple of paragraphs of the article literally says quote, after doing more research into range estimates, he said he ultimately concluded there is nothing wrong with his car and quote. So they make a huge deal out of Tesla canceling these service appointments and then they go on to say, oh, Tesla was actually right and there wasn't an issue and it should have been canceled. Wow. Well, I'm glad that there's nothing else out there that is more worthy of a special report from Reuters than this captivating topic, which they then try to spin into it being Tesla's fault for people feeling like there's battery problems because of how they are displaying range. If they feel so strongly about this, maybe they should be doing a special research report into the EPA test cycle and how that could be improved rather than criticizing Tesla for displaying unrealistic range.
Now, I think we all know if you drive a Tesla that the energy meter and trip planners are both phenomenal at predicting range. But of course, it's going to be very rare where EPA test conditions match up with real world driving, especially if you're doing a lot of high speed driving, because the EPA test cycle really doesn't go that fast. So they seem to basically be asking Tesla to just voluntarily under report when other manufacturers are obviously not going to do that.
There is very one small part of the article that seemed to have maybe a reasonable criticism where it talked about how Tesla had built an algorithm that displayed a little bit more range for the top 50% of the charge curve. And then over time as a declined to the lower 50%, it started to show something a little bit more realistic. But that was very early days for Tesla. And I think they probably did that so that when people got into lower numbers, they wouldn't end up being stranded. Obviously these days, Tesla is still using algorithms to figure these things out. They're just a lot more refined than they were in 2013. I also had to chuckle because at the same time as they were talking about Tesla overstating range, they talk about how Tesla then left a safety buffer of about 15 miles to again protect from anybody getting stranded. So which is it? Are they overstating it? Are they understating it? Depends on which part of the article you want to read and then sensationalize. Poor reporting is nothing new for Tesla, but it's been a while since I've seen one this bad and it's so long, but at least we got some laughs out of it.
Alright last item for today, Ford has reported their Q2 earnings. They did beat expectations on the top and bottom line. And similar to GM yesterday, they did increase their earnings guidance for the entirety of the year.
But I am most interested in their progress on electric vehicles. So they did lose another $1.1 billion in earnings before interest in tax this quarter on the EV business. Ford commendably, one of the very few that breaks this out. Another huge loss, this is up from $700 million last quarter. Their margin improved a bit. Negative 101% last quarter, negative 59% even margin this quarter. And Ford adjusted their guidance for EVs.
So overall the business they guided up, but EVs they guided down. They said that they now expect to hit a run rate of 600,000 vehicles produced sometime in 2024 that previously had been 2023. And they now expect to lose 50% more this year on the EV business than they previously guided for. And that was a $3 billion e-bit loss for the year previously. They've increased that to now a $4.5 billion loss this year.
I do have to wonder how much the Model Y price cuts influenced those projections. So we'll keep watching that, but that'll wrap it up for today as always. Thank you for listening. Make sure you're subscribed and signed up for notifications. And also find me on Twitter slash X at Tesla podcast.