Robotaxis, 30 billion humanoids, $45 trillion market cap: Elon Musk gets very bullish about AI

Tesla CEO Elon Musk was in a particularly bullish mood on Thursday (US time), making some very big predictions about the future of technology, and his company’s worth, after shareholders formally approved the $A84 billion pay deal that had been knocked back by a Delaware judge.

Musk spent an hour giving a presentation at the conclusion of the meeting, and nearly another hour answering questions from his mostly adoring shareholders. In it, he predicted that Tesla would be worth 10 times more than the world’s current most valuable company, or around $A45 trillion.

The basis of that? His prediction of a world that may not be familiar, or even attractive, to many people today, and his contention that “everyone” will want their own humanoid robot like the Optimus product Tesla is refining.

“I think (the future) is just going to be absolutely mind blowing,” Musk said. “We’re obviously making great progress in solving sustainable energy problems with electric vehicles, with stationary storage, with solar  …  and, and then, I think in terms of the, the value of the company, autonomy is just such a mind blowing thing.”

He then went on to describe how Tesla could make a “trillion dollars” in profit from humanoid robots, who could perform tasks such as baby-sitting, teaching kids, being a companion, playing the piano, working in factories and hopefully not turning into Terminator 2.

“Who doesn’t want to see (Star Wars character) C-3PO?” Musk said. “It will be pretty awesome. I think everyone will want one. So I think the ratio of humanoid robots to humans will probably be at least two to one, something like that. One to one for sure.

“So, which means like somewhere on the order of 10 billion humanoid robots, maybe 20 or 30 billion.” And at $10,000 a pop, he suggested, that would translate into trillions of dollars of profits for Tesla.

Musk was also bullish about autonomous driving, predicting that Tesla owners would be able to push a button and allow their cars to be used – like Uber or AirBNB – by others as a robot-taxi, with no human intervention. He said progress on autonomous driving is “exponential” and he envisaged tens of millions of vehicles being used in this way.

“That would mean a $US20 trillion market cap from Optimus alone and probably $US5 to $US10 trillion from autonomous vehicles,” Musk said. “So like, I think it’s actually conceivable, it’s within the realm of possibility for Tesla to achieve evaluation 10 times that are the most valuable company today.”

Currently, the world’s most valuable listed company is Apple, with a market cap of $US3.3 trillion ($A5 trillion). Ten times that amount would take Tesla to $US30 trillion ($A45 trillion), and of course make Musk even more impossibly wealthy than he is now.

Much of Musk’s talk was on autonomy and AI, but there was some information on near term product developments.

Chief among these were that the Tesla Semi electric truck would move from limited to full production next year, and that Tesla would be working on modified versions of the Cybertruck for the China and European markets. Presumably, that means making them smaller.

He also talked of the next Tesla car, commonly referred to as the Tesla 2, or the $US25,000 Tesla, although no one is too sure any more. Tesla needs a lower cost vehicle to compete with the rapidly emerging Chinese EV makers. Musk said only that “it would be amazing.”

On energy storage, Musk talked of the new Powerwall 3 and the new version of the Megapack, which he claimed would not need to go through a sub-station and would be able to connect directly into high voltage power lines.

“Megapack 3, which is a probably a couple years away, will start actually absorbing more and more of the substation of the power electronics,” Musk said.

“I sort of think you want to get to the point with the Megapack where you can literally just take the high voltage power lines and plug them in. There’s no substation. We just just plug them in. Just drop them down and drop it down and plug it in.

“Which is like, mind blowing for the utility industry by the way. Like, they’re like what? Yeah, you just plug the wires in and it’ll work for very high voltage. So that I think is actually going to be major.”

Yes, it would.