Elon Musk has made the argument that Tesla is more of an AI (artificial intelligence) and robotics company. This is another argument in the series of Musk’s insistence that Tesla is not an automotive company. He has been saying for some time now that investors should view Tesla as a group of startups. He says that Tesla’s service centres are a startup, Tesla’s insurance company is a startup, Tesla’s automation group is a startup, etc.

Musk said that eventually, Tesla is going to be as synonymous with AI and robotics as with vehicles and energy. The CEO mentioned this during a conference call about Tesla’s Q1 financial results.

Right now people think of Tesla as a car company or as an energy company. I think long term, people will think of Tesla as much as an AI robotics company as we are a car company or an energy company. I think we are developing one of the strongest hardware and software AI teams in the world.