Tesla shareholders have been wrestling with some harsh realities as of late, like the fact that for the last 3.7 years, September 1st 2020, Tesla stock has returned effectively 0%. This means if you would have just left your money in the NASDAQ composite index for the past 3 years, you would have been better off as that would have returned nearly 33%. And even worse, back to Tesla, anyone who started buying Tesla stock in this range is still down and those that bought around the peak are going to be down roughly 60%. It's periods like this why I often argue many normal investors are better off investing in low cost funds because they can't handle the swings of a high beta company like Tesla. I mean, if you have people that are getting paid to manage people's money professionally, like Ross Gerber and Gary Black selling Tesla down at these levels, not up here, do we really think your average retail investor with a 9-5 and a family is going to be able to do much better over time? So from a Tesla stock perspective, let's just call the spade a spade. The bears have been more right than wrong for a few years now, so clearly Tesla bulls are deluded fanboys, right? In all honesty, I'd respectfully argue there are a few of those out there but, as I always love to say, nothing ever goes up monotonically and long-term investing requires time horizons of at least 5 years and I'd prefer 7.
With this context out of the way, not one of us can go back and change our investment strategy the past few years. What we can do is reassess whether being in Tesla stock makes sense for us individually going forward with everything we just learned. If you've been around, you've heard me say there will be a bifurcation in Tesla investors. Those that believe Tesla will solve FSD and those that do not. It's fine either way, having two sides is what makes a market, but Elon has now given everyone repeated warnings. It is only a matter of time before we exceed the reliability of humans and not much time at that. But really the way to think of Tesla is most entirely in terms of solving autonomy and being able to turn on that autonomy for a gigantic fleet. If you value Tesla as just like an order company, you would just have to fundamentally, if it's just the wrong framework, it will count to be. If you ask the wrong question, then the right answer is impossible. If somebody doesn't believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company. I stand by what I said, Tesla has a very solid underlying business with car sales and energy products, but the valuation multiples Tesla is awarded would undoubtedly be much lower if autonomy was not part of the story.
But what Tesla just said about its production plans is a monumental shift from what many were expecting. Tesla's current installed capacity right now is over 2.35 million. They just said they're now planning to use these existing lines that have been operating at less than full capacity, which hurts margins to a degree to build a new line of vehicles plural. This point has to land on everybody, no new manufacturing lines, no new factories are required to take Tesla's installed capacity to over 3 million units per year and to roll out new vehicles in the process. Not only is this going to save Tesla hundreds of millions of dollars the next two years, but it's also going to save them time as Tesla is now expecting to launch these new vehicles in early 2025, if not later this year. It's certainly fair to have your doubts about Tesla's product launch timelines, but I'll repeat, the lines are already installed. This also likely means Giga Mexico, Giga India, Giga wherever will be put to the back burner at least for a bit while Tesla transitions to this next phase. This also means Wall Street is going to be forced to start modeling for the cybercab, what Tesla is calling the Robotaxy, and whatever other vehicles Tesla launches. The stock market prices in for activity 6-12 months into the future, and this new lineup now falls into that timeline. There will be a delay though because at this point we still have plenty of uncertainty on the specifics, but that's what August 8th is for. It's looking like Tesla may launch this new ride-hailing app with supervised FSD first. This screenshot showed 4 passengers max and the Model Y seats 5.
Elon also clearly outlined Tesla owners will be able to deploy their cars whenever they want like Airbnb. Tesla will give customers the option to filter who actually gets in their car, friends, family, 5 star users, etc. And the owner can have their car back anytime they need it. But before that point, why couldn't Tesla let owners do this with them in the driver's seat? Maybe on the weekends or evenings they want to make some extra money and educate passengers about Tesla and FSD in the process. And how about this one from Bernstein? They said we struggle with why Tesla needs a discrete Robotaxy offering. Let me help you out here. Given the AI scaling laws that Ashok mentioned, model scaling, data scaling, compute scaling, and architecture scaling, as the fleet grows, so does the training flywheel and this ever-growing feedback loop where Tesla has real-time dashboards of critical interventions to then feed into the system.
So after the next training cycle, the system improves. The scaling compute law implies Tesla can now train the neural nets for much longer with more compute which yields better results. And Tesla is working on better architectures which for the same level of compute also yields better results. And on the customer side, the sooner Tesla rolls out these cybercabs or even the existing fleet with a human supervisor and the ride-hailing app, the sooner the public gets comfortable with the app, the service, they can have good experiences and this will start to build that ever-important trust. That's going to be incredibly difficult to compete with. Just like Google search, plenty of competitors have tried to break that monopoly and have failed. We've heard people like Gary Black say that even if Tesla solves autonomy first, someone's going to copy them shortly after.
In my opinion, this is flat out wrong. The only other companies making EVs at scale other than Tesla are Chinese companies and their cars are not coming to the US anytime soon. Tesla is going to corner the US Robotecti market because as we've said for years, crews in Waymo cannot scale. And because Tesla investors have lacked the feeling of stability as of late, since I'm always thinking of you guys, here's that tangible stability many of us have been missing. We know a big part of Tesla's edges in data collection and sorting. As a society, we also have plenty of really good new data coming out that most people are not paying attention to. There are now many studies showing that prolonged sitting throughout the day is quite terrible for our health. What this means is that we should probably spend about half of our work time standing and about half of it sitting. If you had to do all one or the other, standing is going to be better than sitting. Ashley has now been using her adjustable desk from FlexiSpot for over one year, and they are the sponsor of this video, but we figured it was time for a long term review.
I have an adjustable desk as well, but if you want something that's affordable, very solid quality and easy to set up, FlexiSpot is a website to bookmark. Ashley assembled her FlexiSpot desk by herself in about 15 minutes. Now, let me just warn you that not all standing desks are that easy to assemble. One year later, the motors on this FlexiSpot desk are still going very strong. Now, I do not recommend doing this, but in the name of science, I figured it was worth showing you this is not some flimsy desk. You may also remember this unnecessary test that it passed with flying colors. Ashley's version has built-in storage, a memory function so you can choose your own preset heights, or you can use the arrows to set it where you want it each time. There are three USB charge ports for all of your devices, plus on the FlexiSpot website, there are a ton of different desk styles and desktop choices like bamboo, glass, chipboard, etc.
FlexiSpot also offers a five year warranty and free returns for 30 days, so again, you really have nothing to lose. For stability, I'm a fan of their E7 desk series, plus they have some ergonomic chairs as well. I just think that for the money, it's a really great value. You can use my promo code electrified30 for $30 off on their com-har and E7 series. The link will be below.
We also need to recognize how despite all of the disruptions in quarter one and the inventory build-up, thanks to production timing mismatch and cars stuck on ships, Tesla still managed to keep gross margins fairly stable coming in ahead of almost everyone's expectations. Tesla's proving to everyone they're more than capable of navigating unexpected challenges in tough environments. Despite all of Tesla's price cuts, Tesla is managing to cut vehicle production costs at a similar pace, giving those savings back to the customer. It's clear that Tesla is in the midst of an all-out assault on cost. Tesla expects to save $1.1 billion per year from these recent layoffs. Tesla is hyper-focused on using its CapEx efficiently, and Elon said they're not sacrificing any meaningful projects from the layoffs. And to debunk the stupidity that is still out there from people like this guy who are arguing Tesla faces the prospect of bankruptcy in three years because they burned $2.5 billion in cash in quarter one.
This is just one of those, tell me you have no idea what you're talking about without telling me moments. Clearly, this guy did not listen to the call because the negative free cash flow was a one-off situation and is nothing to worry about. It was due to that inventory increase we just talked about thanks to the Red Sea disruptions, the Berlin arson attack, and maybe more importantly, it was because Tesla increased its spend on AI compute to the tune of $1 billion in the quarter. Vibov said Tesla expects this inventory build to reverse in quarter two and to return to positive free cash flow in quarter two. So, case closed. I know there will always be stupidity like this in the world that Tesla cannot fix, but we can all step up and provide rationales and facts to disprove disinformation like this. But while we're here, share buybacks will have their day at Tesla. But for now, I would much rather see Tesla buying compute than its own shares back. The faster Tesla solves FSD, the faster Tesla stock can take off.
Even Elon himself said share buybacks are dependent on generating significant positive free cash flow. Free cash flow is just operating cash flow minus CapEx. If we just look at Tesla's operating cash flow of $200 million with that inventory build and all of the disruptions from ramping the Model 3 Plus and the Cybertruck, if you needed proof that Tesla is elite at navigating storms, here you go. And from an earnings perspective, it's not major, but Tesla's tax rate was higher this quarter at 26% than it's been the past few quarters. But this could be a new normal since the local Shanghai government granted Tesla a corporate income tax rate of 15% from 2019 to 2023, lower than the usual 25%. But that has just expired.
We said earlier this year it's wise to wait until quarter two to get a clear picture of the real demand for Tesla. So it was great to hear Elon and the team say they expect Q2 to be much better than Q1. And they expect to sell more cars this year than they did last year, despite the very slow start in quarter one. So this will clearly backload that sales growth for Tesla into the next three quarters. This right here should serve as strong evidence why we should never overreact to quarterly delivery numbers. The logistical challenge Tesla faces matching excess demand for certain models in certain markets is massive and this will not always work out well every quarter. But over a few quarters, these imbalances work themselves out and play out in the numbers. Tesla has also already streamlined the ordering process for customers so they can buy a Tesla in less than one minute.
And just real quick, speaking of that excess demand for certain vehicles with the launch of the Model 3 performance yesterday, we already have people like Jason Camisa raving about the car. No, no, NVH, great ride. Superb seats amazing. Screen and all the infotainment. Great. I didn't even turn the stereo on. I've heard great stuff about don't care. Wait, what about body controls since we were talking momentarily recently about suspension? Like so comfort and body control both. And yes, the performance variant does qualify for the tax credit making this car a ridiculous value for what you get. Tesla knows they have to continually offer better products at better prices and that is precisely what they're focused on doing.
Shifting to Tesla energy just to run some simple numbers, we had record margins for Tesla energy in quarter one 24.6%. But that was not the highlight. Vibov said they expect Tesla energy storage deployments to grow at least 75% this year over 2023 and that this will begin to contribute significantly to overall profitability. Tesla's energy storage revenue was $6.035 billion in 2023. So the expected growth implies $10.6 billion of energy storage revenue for 2024. At least then if you toss a 26% gross margin on that, sure it could be higher. That's $2.8 billion in profits for the year. Tesla energy profits were only $1.1 billion in 2023 and we have the Shanghai mega-pactory set to enter production in early 2025.
But at this point, if we're not laser focused on Tesla's autonomous efforts, we really are failing to see the company for what it plans to be here pretty soon. The team clearly said they do not think regulatory approval for robotaxes is going to be that challenging and that it should be straightforward thanks to companies like Cruz and Waymo paving the way. Tesla is expecting those efforts to pave the way for a broad-based regulatory approval in the United States and getting approval in at least a few states to start should be relatively easy. Then when you layer in Tesla's quality testing process and all of the data that Ashok laid out, the regulators are going to have a hard time denying approval when the data clearly shows the system makes roads safer. On top of that, we learn Tesla plans to roll out FSD globally, effectively wherever they get approval and that includes China. Tesla sounded confident about FSD's ability to hit the ground moving in other geographies as it stands now and then of course they can begin country-specific tweaks from there but many of the rules of the road do carry over. So not only can Cruz and Waymo not really scale in the United States but Tesla's system should receive broad US approval relatively easily and it also has a clear path to scaling globally. So these systems really are just not the same at all. And don't forget what Ashok said. So we have this like constant feedback loop of issues, fixes, evaluations and then it runs on repeat. And especially with the new beautiful architecture, all of this is automatically improving without requiring much engineering interventions. Tesla has a good sense of what the cars will do in three to four months ahead of us and Elon said versions 12.4 and 12.5 could be versions 13 and 14 as their almost complete retrains of the neural nets. Now yeah, Elon has certainly hyped up releases in the past but it's fair to be optimistic here given the progress of V12. Another data point that allows for optimism is Tesla growing its hardware compute by 130% quarter over quarter and they plan to more than double it again by the end of this year, expecting to exit 2024 with around the equivalent of 85,000 H100s. But don't forget it's not just about raw compute, it's about the efficiency of set a compute. And on the architecture side, that's where Tesla continues to refine.
Yeah, well, you know, let's talk about earth shattering. I can't think of anything more earth shattering than a car that drives itself. And I think that's exactly what people should be focused on. So yes, our, you know, previously published price target was $2,000 per share by 2027. We're updating that now. So look out for that research. But we think that two thirds of the enterprise value in that year could be attributable to a robo-taxi network to ignore this is crazy in my mind. I think that this Tesla will be one of the greatest AI companies of our generation. And you know, for a while they were compute constrained and that's not the case anymore. So basically, you know, new problems arise and they just need the compute to solve it. And now they they're, you know, have that or at least have line of sight to having that. I think that's huge. So I'm super excited for the robo-taxi event later this year.
Elon did also say that even if he was abducted or left Tesla now, there's enough momentum that Tesla would solve autonomy for vehicles, maybe just a bit slower. He did, however, add that optimists and future products would become question marks. So if you want Tesla to have goofy levels of upside and a next generation of products that are not even on the map yet HVAC, boat, van, we really do need Elon at the helm. Given the absurd upside of Optimus long term, greater than everything else combined at Tesla. Yeah, I'm good with saying voting no on Elon's pay package is a dumb idea if you want a higher Tesla stock price in the future.
I will say though, for some reason the comments Elon made about Optimus I'm having a hard time taking it face value. He said Optimus could be unlimited production in the factory doing useful tasks before the end of this year and they may be able to sell it externally by the end of next year. However, it is true that Tesla should be best positioned to reach volume production of a humanoid bot. Many of these other humanoid startups don't have high volume manufacturing experience. You can also argue that solving for a few use cases for Optimus in a closed factory setting will be much easier than solving for autonomy. So we'll see. We did get some clarity on a few loose ends as well and projects that aren't going to boost Tesla stock in the next year or so, but they're definitely things to look forward to.
Tesla's finalizing the engineering of the semi, but as we've said all year, volume production was most likely not happening this year since the foundation has not been laid for the new factory yet. We did get a new realistic timeline for external customer deliveries not named Pepsi and it's now 2026 for volume semi production. Tesla will marginally increase production before then at Gig and Nevada on the current prototype-ish lines, but nothing meaningful before 2026. I also still find it comical how everyone acts like Tesla's regulatory credits are monopoly money.
Vibob clearly said they're not going anywhere for the next few years since almost all other major automakers are pulling back from selling BEVs. Critics have been saying these credits are going away since 2018. Tesla's competitors have funded billions of dollars of Tesla's growth in new vehicles, new factories and new tech, and this is going to continue for another few years at least. But perhaps the most satisfying benefit for Tesla of other automakers pulling back, Tesla is now getting batteries for significantly cheaper. And don't forget, the reason many of the world's largest battery makers now have excess supply is because legacy OEMs were placing massive orders last year and prior when they were charging ahead with EVs, but now those orders are way down.
Meanwhile, Tesla has been going upstream to make deals for its own 4680s and they've passed on those learnings and those savings to their battery cell suppliers. So yeah, Tesla is supplying its battery suppliers with better deals on components while continually growing its orders from its battery cell partners. Who do you think these battery companies are going to favor going forward? The companies that basically screwed them over going back on their plans or the company that's actually saving them money on the supply side and continually placing bigger orders reliably. So even though 4680s are now more of a hedge and not as important as we once thought, to write this project off as a failure is ridiculous. Lars did say the goal was to beat supplier costs of nickel based cells by the end of this year. That's a huge milestone and yes, it'll take years to actually turn all of that R&D cost into cumulative profit.
But this is the first step that's required and keep in mind Tesla's battery suppliers cell costs have come way down making it a tougher milestone to hit for Tesla. Given the tone around the 4680 conversation, it sounds like Tesla doesn't plan to use 4680s for the next gen vehicles, which isn't a major surprise since it's likely those vehicles use LFP cells. But given Tesla said they don't have anywhere else to put 4680s other than the Cybertruck, we don't need Tesla to rapidly scale 4680s for now. The ramp will just stay ahead of Cybertruck production, keep improving yields and costs and in a few years or sooner. When battery prices go back up again when legacy OEMs try again on EVs, Tesla will be even better positioned by having 4680s. Ford is most likely. The automaker Tesla isn't talks with about licensing FSD. Elon said they may sign a dealer to this year, but it's going to take at least three to four years before any OEM actually installs Tesla's cameras and inference compute in its vehicles.
So this is yet another catalyst for Tesla stock that will just be waiting in the wings for a few years. And yeah, there may be some short term pops on the announcement and it'll absolutely change the sentiment around FSD and Tesla's competitive position as it signals Ford or whoever else is throwing in the towel on trying to solve autonomy themselves. But when it comes to improving Tesla's financials and profits and being baked into models, we're going to have to wait. It also should be noted incorporating Tesla's hardware and software will be way easier than most of the competition if they ever even get to that point. Since a company like Ford would not have to integrate LIDAR, radar, ultrasonics, another benefit of Tesla's system being simple and much more cost effective. That translates into much less work for Ford and others and given how long it takes these companies to make model changes, that's a big deal. But again, it's probably 2028 or 2029 before a Ford vehicle has Tesla's FSD.
The conversation about Tesla using its fleet of millions of cars with paid for distributed inference compute and cooling is certainly neat. And another call option that no other company will have at scale. But to me, this is a 2030s thing. Elon did use the illustration of 100 million Teslas so yeah, that's going to take some time. But if each car has 1kW of inference compute power running on a 60kW pack or so, is not a huge deal as you could run it for 10 hours and only use 10kW. With that built in liquid cooled thermal management which is a huge expense for data centers. When Tesla launches the ride hailing app, the utilization of some of the Tesla fleet will undoubtedly go up, meaning idle time and thus opportunities for revenue streams like this go down. But this is certainly something to not forget about and to look forward to as we head toward 2030.
As an investor, I'd much rather have the option than not and Elon highlighted Tesla's AI inference efficiency is vastly better than any other company. I think it's important we don't forget the reason Tesla has this edge all stemmed from overcoming a challenge. Tesla was constrained by the inference hardware on the car so they were forced to adapt and create a solution. Overcoming that is already paying dividends but has even greater capability to continue doing so years from now. I've been saying it's often darkest just before the dawn and Tesla's CFO reiterated just that. This is the pruning exercise which we went through and at the end of it will be much stronger and much more resilient to deal with the future because the future is really bright like I said in my wing remarks. We just have to get through this period and get there. And I'll just say it, there's a chance the darkest days are now behind us.
Unexpected things can certainly happen and I'm not at all arguing the stock price goes straight up from here but peak fear should be off the table with FSD making great progress and a lower cost we think vehicle backs squarely in the picture and sooner than anyone was expecting. The way I see it the pieces really are now squarely in place. Elon is focused the team has been pruned compute is scaling rapidly regulatory approvals for robotaxes should be straightforward in the US. V12 has been pushed to 1.8 million vehicles and 50% are using it so far and that number continues to grow with Tesla quickly racking up hundreds of millions of miles on V12 in just a matter of weeks. Tesla is now going to maximize its current production lines blending those next gen principles with the current lines bringing those new vehicles sales should be much better the remaining 3 quarters this year. Battery costs are really low for Tesla and helping Tesla to continue to drive price cuts and thus affordability. We don't have to speculate about permanent FSD transfers anymore because Elon aggressively shot that down.
The Cybertruck ramp already hit 1000 per week and yes there are supplier limitations but as you'd expect at this point they're focusing on quality and things are progressing. In just 105 days we're going to have the cybercab unveil and hopefully learn much more about these other new products and how Tesla will handle the ride hailing app. Energy storage is on track for a major growth year which will provide a material boost to Tesla's profits. More deferred revenue recognition is likely around the corner with reverse and smart summon coming to the FSD stack and from the 10Q Tesla expects to recognize over 800 million dollars in the next 12 months. Tesla has a handful of encouraging call options that are already produced and paid for to serve as catalysts years into the future. We've already endured a major drawdown in the Tesla stock price. Even though I don't fully believe Elon's timing on the optimist's comments there are certainly arguments to be made that scaling optimist will be much easier than solving FSD.
And I know this all may sound overwhelmingly positive but given the expectations everybody had going into the call I felt like I needed to portray this reversal and sentiment that I think these earnings and the call provided. So yeah while risks remain like higher rates for longer, a recession, Elon losing his conplane vote, unknown unknowns in the March of the Nines, potential delays with Project Juniper and these new vehicle delays slowing the current lines, escalating global wars, mainstream being programmed to be anti-EV etc. When it comes to the things Tesla can control, I think they're doing a great job of making tough choices, reorganizing, refocusing on hyper efficiency and communicating reasons for poor performance. It's also somewhat ironic that people have been exclaiming some Tesla shareholders should sell their shares. And now Elon has literally said as much on a conference call if you don't believe in the future Tesla is building. How many CEOs do you know with this level of honesty? So while I don't make personal recommendations about selling shares, you need to decide on your own if Tesla is actually transforming into a company that's not what you had hoped for.
If you decide to stick around from here, you really should be on board with a refined company focus. The one thing I wish we got more clarity on was Tesla's new plan to advertise or not after cutting the content team in the US. I stand by the notion that Tesla desperately needs to run an educational campaign as ads are not going to move the needle for people who have been fed fud about EVs. Now only you can weigh all of these factors on your own, but for me, I got most of the clarity I needed from the call for now. We'll have to wait a few months for the Robotaxi unveil, but the next 3-5 years at Tesla look incredibly bright.
Circling back to the video intro, Tesla shareholders that have not sold have not lost money. You only lock in losses when you sell at a loss. For those that have actually been accumulating this entire time, the story is in the midst of being written. You can't judge a painting when it's half done, that's just foolish. You can't start a movie an hour in, watch 10 minutes, and then have an accurate understanding of the full thing. As we've said all along, the Tesla shareholders with patience and the proper time horizon for long-term investing will likely be handsomely rewarded in the end.
Sure, there could have been moves made over the past few years with Tesla stock, but decades of data have proven no one times the market properly consistently. And if you just invest in quality companies via a dollar cost average method over years and decades, not weeks and months, you will likely generate wealth. The next 2-3 years are going to be some of the most exciting we've ever seen at Tesla, and we'll see who has the last laugh.
And to everybody who's been calling Elon a part-time CEO, saying he doesn't care about Tesla anymore, all he cares about is X, I'd have you listen to this. Do you expect to lessen your involvement with Tesla at any point over the next 3 years? Well, Tesla constitutes a majority of my work time, and I work every day of the week. It's for me to take a study off an afternoon. So, I make sure Tesla is very prosperous, and it is like it is prosperous, and it will be very much so in the future.