News
Gassed Up: Prices at the pump fall, unlike Tesla’s delivery numbers
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This week, it came to my attention when driving by my local Sheetz gas station (if you’re ever in the vicinity of one, get the Chicken Tender sub) that gas prices are getting low. Low in the sense that it is much lower than the typical $2.79 that I see on the sign. When they’re sitting at $2.09, it makes me interested in why, especially considering my county and, more specifically, my entire state of Pennsylvania is on a “Stay at Home” order currently. Prices are low, but nobody is driving. When I travel to my Dad’s house or to go on a hike at a local trail, my commute time is typically anywhere from 2-5 minutes quicker as I am not forced to deal with an excess amount of cars on the road.
Most would think that these low gas prices would entice some to buy that vehicle they’ve always wanted—the gas-guzzling truck, maybe that petrol-pounding sports car. Who knows, people want different things. But you’d think low prices would lead to higher petrol-powered sales, and it isn’t. Teslas continue to sell, and they’re selling in record numbers.
But what’s interesting to me is the fact that nobody is driving, and nobody is buying cars. Yet, the overwhelming appeal of low gas prices, combined with the new oh-so-brilliant rollback on emissions that I wrote about last week, is making cars cheaper. With people out of work, there are still people out there getting paid, and some could be interested in buying cars. After all, Tesla owners are, because the company just had its best Q1 yet.
With showrooms of the world’s most popular automakers becoming more and more bloated, inventories rising above what a building can contain, and salespeople out of work, the LA Times says that manufacturers and showroom managers alike are ready to cut a deal. No cars moving out of the building is costing some companies hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Service is where dealerships make their money, and that is, in reality, how some are managing to survive.
Unless, of course, there was a way that a carmaker could have customers order vehicles over the internet or phone. Then, that vehicle could be built to the buyer’s exact specifications and delivered or picked up without ever needed to come in contact with another human being. Oh, wait. This sounds familiar!
Tesla’s contactless delivery process has helped the company continue delivering vehicles to customers. While COVID-19 shut down some stores and provided barriers for delivery in others, Tesla found a way to work around that. The process was documented on our site a few weeks ago, and it showed that the company’s deliveries could continue without human-to-human contact.
According to the same LA Times article I talked about earlier, a Chevy dealership is “delivering” cars to people’s houses in a safe way. I’ll give credit where credit is due, and that’s a great way to adapt to the changing world we live in.
But as gas vehicles should appeal to people now more than ever because of low fuel prices, there’s plenty of evidence that suggests the tide is changing in favor of electric forms of transportation.
Let’s think about this:
1. Dealerships and petrol car manufacturers require government assistance to stay open. These businesses are laying off massive amounts of people, and they can’t afford to pay them currently at all. Their buildings are shut down, some dealerships are not running currently, and people are not buying gas vehicles anyway.
2. Tesla just released its Q1 2020 numbers. Despite Giga Shanghai being closed for an extended period, and Fremont being closed for the final week of the first quarter (which is where the company seems to push out massive amounts of vehicles to maximize delivery numbers), the company still had its biggest Q1 as a company. Eighty-eight thousand four hundred vehicles delivered in total, well above Wall Street’s estimates.
It is fair to assume a decent amount of these 88,400 cars were delivered before things got dicey here in the United States. Even still, Tesla has a lot to be proud of here.
I think all of us expected a slow Q1, and we all thought it was understandable. Even if things would have been even more impressive if deliveries and production were not affected by COVID, there is still a lot to be happy about. The whole situation is quite impressive, and it seems that Tesla’s ability to adapt to situations has led to its mass-appeal to car buyers.
Join me next week as I go ‘Beyond the News’ and give you my take on the current state of the industry and beyond.
Could it be that COVID is helping Tesla in a way? Not only is the big picture of environmental sustainability being answered through the lack of cars on the road, but the numbers suggest Tesla vehicles are being bought while gas cars are not. How is it that a car company could post its most impressive first quarter amidst a situation that has done nothing but hurt every other company in the world? The proof is in the pudding, and Tesla’s adaptability seems to be appealing to car buyers.
I use this newsletter to share my thoughts on what is going on in the Tesla world. If you want to talk to me directly, you can email me or reach me on Twitter. I don’t bite, be sure to reach out!
-Joey
Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Elon Musk’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
