Tesla is making slower progress with company boss Elon Musk’s widely announced plan to focus the electric car pioneer on robots and self-driving robotaxis than was envisaged just a few months ago. Tesla is no longer talking about series production of the robot called Optimus and the robotaxi vehicle Cybercab without a steering wheel and pedals this year. Instead, Musk spoke to analysts about the complexity of developing a humanoid robot. Production will therefore only start slowly.
At the same time, Tesla posted a lower profit in the last quarter as expenses for new projects increased. Capital investments would continue to grow in the next two or three years, said finance chief Vaibhav Taneja. In 2026 they should be around 26 billion US dollars.
Is Musk’s SpaceX swallowing Tesla?
Meanwhile, Musk didn’t really put aside speculation about a possible merger between Tesla and his space company SpaceX. After a corresponding question from analysts, he spoke of overlaps between the companies – and then said that one cannot talk about a merger of companies in a conference call about quarterly figures. “This has to be done with an appropriate procedure.” He then handed the floor over to General Counsel Brandon Ehrhart, who once again highlighted joint projects such as the construction of a chip factory called Terafab.
Musk is the boss of both Tesla and SpaceX, which went public in June. After initial price gains, SpaceX shares are now trading below the issue price. At SpaceX, Musk has complete say thanks to a higher stake and shares with more voting rights; at Tesla he has been aiming for such a position for years. SpaceX has already swallowed Musk’s AI company xAI. Musk had previously brought the online platform X into xAI.
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Telsa delivers more cars
Tesla had ended the past two years with declining sales. However, deliveries in the second quarter grew surprisingly strongly year-on-year by around a quarter to 480,126 vehicles. In line with this, sales also rose by 26 percent to almost 28.24 billion dollars (24.75 billion euros). Analysts on average had only expected around $25.7 billion.
But when it comes to adjusted earnings per share, Tesla missed Wall Street expectations by a wide margin. Analysts had expected an average of 51 US cents, Tesla came to 33 cents. The shares fell around four percent in after-hours US trading.
Tesla has its European factory, which produces the Model Y, in Grünheide near Berlin. The group recently announced an expansion of production in the factory.
Tesla: Quarterly profit falls
Quarterly profit fell by five percent to just over $1.11 billion. The decline was probably due, among other things, to discounts in the important home market of the USA. At the same time, Tesla removed the more lucrative, expensive Models S and
In addition, proceeds from the sale of CO₂ pollution rights fell to $146 million from $380 million just three months earlier. US President Donald Trump decimated this business through his actions against emissions limits in the USA. In recent years, trading in CO₂ rights has often helped Tesla through dry spells.
Of the quarterly profit, $763 million also comes from pure book profit thanks to the appreciation of Tesla’s SpaceX stake through the IPO. After the balance sheet date of June 30th, the paper lost significantly in value.
Uncertainty about Tesla’s robotaxi fleet
Tesla assures that the introduction of driverless robotaxis is going well. But around a year after launch, there is no official information on the size of the fleet in several US cities – or how many passengers were carried. The new figure given was that Tesla’s driverless cars had so far traveled a total of 380,000 miles (around 611,000 kilometers) without supervision. Robotaxis from Google sister company Waymo currently drive around two million miles per week. However, Tesla sees confirmation of its controversial approach of only using cameras in self-driving cars, without the more expensive laser radars that Waymo, among others, relies on for greater reliability. Musk had announced that he wanted to dominate the market.
