Can you help me fight the fossils? Help spread the word far and wide about EVs? Click ? EVne.ws/patreon   Read today’s show notes on https://www.evnewsdaily.com   Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, welcome to EV News Daily for Friday 26th October 2018. It’s Martyn Lee here and I’ve been through EV story today so you don’t have to.   Thank you to MYEV.com for helping make this show, they’ve built the first marketplace specifically for Electric Vehicles. It’s a totally free marketplace that simplifies the buying and selling process, and help you learn about EVs along the way too.   So this is a podcast with a difference as it's only on one topic, and that would be Tesla. But in no way do I think I can do a better job that those who regularly produce the best content out there, Ryan McCaffrey's Ride The Lightning Podcast is there for passion about the cars, Rob Maurer is there for the financials, Now You Know is a lot of fun.   But actually this isn’t a Tesla podcast today. Let me explain, sure it's about one company, but it's the story of where we've come from, and where we're going to. I've made 276 of these shows so this is a reset, a line in the sand. Regardless of Tesla, this is really about a company making a profit on electric cars by producing them at scale. If you could, I'd say pour yourself a Teslaquila, and enjoy this.   For everyone who has told me electric cars are a fad, and for every milk float joke I've had to listen to, I'll dedicate today's show to you. For everyone who works at Tesla, any owners of a car or anyone who will own a Tesla one day, this is for you.   Yesterday Tesla changed fundamentally as a company. It is now mass producing pure electric cars and making a profit.  Some background, most were expecting the earning call to be scheduled on October 31st or the first week of November. So when Tesla said "hey what are you doing in 10 minutes, we've got news" it was surely a sign they had good news. Ok so we got a little more advance notice than that, but not much more!   As the results were announced just after I recorded yesterday’s podcast I've had almost a whole day to listen to the call, make notes, filter out what's really important and just bring you the highlights. Consider this is a greatest hits set of the news. This isn't going to be like going to see the Rolling Stones and them saying they're going to do some new songs. Just play us Gimme Shelter and Start Me Up. So here is my greatest hits set of Tesla news...   Wall street forecasts were for revenue to be $6.3bn, it $6.8bn They generated free cash flow of $881m GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) net income of $312 million Up from Q2 loss of $612m An operating margin of 6.1% Q2 (April, May, June) gross margin on the Model 3 was 5%, analysts doubted they could ever hit 15%...it was > 20% Production costs are plummeting They have $3bn of cash and cash equivalents on hand   My impression of listening to the earning call is that there was no evidence of Tesla crowing about these results or gloating. They rose above the swamp where the negativity lives.   INITIAL COMMENTS Elon spoke a lot about safety to begin with, how they are topping the crash test charts because they don't build cars to game the system and be strong where the tests are done, they are anti-gamers. As in, they crash their own cars, identify the weakest spots, and make them stronger. It's why their cars are the safest on the road - why some people think they're over engineered. Todd Maron spoke about the architecture of an EV and all that room up front where a fossil engine would be, basically a giant crumple zone, it makes EVs way safer for occupants and for any cars which collide with a Tesla.   BEING A FAN FAVOURITE Elon choked up when he talked about Ryan McCaffrey's idea of using fans to help the official Tesla staff over a couple of weekends, when handovers were crazy, and how Tesla owners would spend time with ne