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Tesla and Mobileye end their partnership after fatal accident

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During the Q2 earnings call with analysts and investors on Wednesday, MobilEye chief technical officer CTO Amnon Shashua announced that his company would not extend its business relationship with Tesla Motors beyond the EyeQ3 technology it currently supplies. The image analysis provided by the EyeQ3 is at the heart of the Autopilot system currently used in all Tesla automobiles.

Shashua did say MobilEye would continue to work with Tesla to improve how EyeQ3 performs in the Model S and Model X. “EyeQ3 shipments will continue for the near future, and maybe for the longer future,” Shashua said.

The reason for the parting of the ways is unclear. As part of his remarks, Shashua said his company believes achieving true autonomy means going “beyond typical supplier relationships.” He further stated that fully autonomous systems will require a true partnership between a car maker and a technology company like Mobileye.

The unspoken message is that MobilEye is unhappy with its working relationship with Tesla, particularly in the aftermath of the Joshua Brown fatality on May 7. It apparently feels its reputation has been impugned by the investigation into Brown’s death, but Shashua refused to be drawn on the subject of which company ended the business relationship.

He said, “We simply decided where we wanted to put our resources for the future of autonomous driving… and we decided what we decided.” He also said that Tesla’s business is “not material” to MobilEye’s bottom line, nor is it a significant percentage of the company’s overall revenue.

This is a critical time for Tesla in its quest to develop fully autonomous autonomous. It is widely assumed that the upcoming Model 3 will offer the most advanced self driving technology available. Time and again, Tesla has elected to bring production of as many components as possible in house, where it can control all aspects of the manufacturing process. So far, it has had no comment on its strained relationship with MobilEye.

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Update July 27 at 7:00 am: At a press conference at the Gigafactory last night, Elon Musk was asked about the MobilEye situation. “Certainly we’re going to do full autonomy of our cars. They’ll go their path and we’ll go ours. Us parting ways was somewhat inevitable. So there was nothing surprising from our standpoint.” Via Fortune.

According to Fortune, Musk commented on the split and said, “Mobileye’s ability to evolve its technology is unfortunately negatively affected by having to support hundreds of models from legacy auto companies, resulting in a very high engineering drag coefficient, Tesla is laser-focused on achieving full self-driving capability on one integrated platform with an order of magnitude greater safety than the average manually driven car.”

Source: TechCrunch

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Tesla Q3 2026 Earnings results: in-line revenues, slight beat on EPS

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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the third quarter of 2026, marking a reasonable performance on the various financial metrics. Tesla still plans to hold a call that will field investor questions at 5:30 p.m. ET, 4:30 p.m. CT.

Here’s where Earnings came in:

  • Total Revenues: $28.046 reported vs. $28.34B expected
  • Non-GAAP EPS: $0.48 reported vs. $0.45 expected
  • Operating Margin: 2.6 % reported vs. 2.5% expected
  • Operating Income: $718M reported vs. $721M expected
  • Free Cash Flow: $1.531B reported vs. ~-$4.51B expected

Major Takeaways

Full Self-Driving (Supervised)

“FSD (Supervised)⁴ attach rate continued to grow, reaching over 75% of new vehicle deliveries in North America – our most mature market – a nearly twenty percentage point sequential increase. We believe that FSD is driving demand in markets where it is available, and we continue to work with regulators to get it approved in other markets.”

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Tesla Semi

“We began volume production of Tesla Semi, our Class 8 heavy-duty truck. The top variant can go 500 miles at full 82,000 lbs gross combination weight while achieving an efficiency of 1.7 kWh/mile. That efficiency allows the Tesla Semi to use a third of the energy used by a comparable diesel truck to haul the same payload. In a transportation market where energy is one of the largest components of total cost per mile, this will provide a meaningful advantage to Tesla Semi operators.”

SI Compute

“We plan to reach 400 MW of SI training compute by the end of the year, supporting the development of both vehicle and humanoid robot autonomy software. Additionally, we continued construction for the Austin Fab, where we plan to start commissioning equipment in 2027.”

Robotaxi

“We began deployment of Cybercab into our Robotaxi fleet in Austin. We reached nearly two million cumulative unsupervised miles for our Robotaxi service as of the end of the quarter. Operating hours in Austin are now 6am to midnight, and we expect to reduce wait times via increased fleet supply and improvement of Robotaxi orchestration algorithms. Grok is available in Cybercab with access to Grok Bot and Connectors, which allows users to manage their inbox, calendars, files, chats and tasks – all hands free via voice command – making Cybercab a mode of transport, a productivity space and, with our entertainment options, a second living room.”

Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.

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Tesla reports Q3 Earnings today: here’s what to expect

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Credit: TechOperator | X

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reports its earnings for Q3 today. Here’s what to expect, as the company will reveal its balance sheet after the market closes on Wednesday.

Tesla already reported deliveries just after Q3 ended, and it demolished Wall Street consensus estimates of roughly 462,000 vehicles. Tesla delivered 486,532 cars in the third quarter, which was a big beat, but was down 2.1 percent from the same quarter last year. Energy storage deployments were 13.7 GWh, up year-over-year.

Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong

For the quarter, analysts have already compiled their predictions for what Tesla will report this afternoon:

  • Total Revenues: $28.34B
  • Non-GAAP EPS: $0.43
  • Operating Margin: 2.5%
  • Operating Income: $721M
  • Free Cash Flow: ~-$4.51B

Here are a few things we are looking forward to hearing about on the call:

Automotive Gross Margin and Overall Profitability

This was 16.3 percent in Q2, down from 19.2 percent in Q1, and was impacted by warranty charges and some fading regulatory credits. Consensus implies overall gross margin near 18 percent, but a miss here would potentially reinforce concerns about pricing pressure on its vehicles.

Pay attention to energy storage margins as well, especially since Tesla missed GWh expectations, although it was still a strong quarter.

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Robotaxi/Cybercab, Unsupervised FSD, and Optimus Progress

The Say questions from retail investors usually focus on these types of projects, and this quarter is no different. Scaling the Cybercab fleet beyond Austin amid the open NHTSA safety review, timeline for Unsupervised FSD in customer cars, Robotaxi unit economics, and Optimus cost per unit plus when it could start generating revenue, are all things to be looking for.

Any concrete timelines or regulatory path details will likely move the stock more than the near-term numbers. SpaceX merger speculation, which was detailed during SpaceX’s earnings call last night, may also surface, although the key details were shared last night.

Elon Musk just confirmed the Tesla and SpaceX merger step everyone was waiting for

Say Investor Questions

  1. How does the Cybercab fleet scale past Austin, and what’s the regulatory path outside Texas given NHTSA’s open safety review?
  2. When can we anticipate FSD unsupervised in customer cars?
  3. When will the CyberCab be available for customer purchase/ownership?
  4. What’s the unit economics per paid robotaxi mile, and how does it compare to the thirty-cent target?
  5. Tesla has acknowledged that HW3 vehicles cannot support unsupervised FSD. When will owners know whether they can upgrade their hardware for free, and when will Tesla provide a clear plan?

The full Earnings Call will be streamed this evening after market close around 5 p.m. this evening.

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SpaceX confirms Starship 15 launch window with massive ambitions

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX confirmed the date of Starship’s 15th launch window with some massive ambitions for the mission, as it will attempt to catch Ship for the first time.

CEO Elon Musk confirmed during SpaceX’s Earnings Call last night on October 20 that it would launch Starship for its 15th test flight in November, and there are some incredible things the company wants to try, making it perhaps the most groundbreaking launch in the program’s history.

SpaceX delivers blockbuster Q3 results as Super Intelligence segment booms

The most major development of the call was SpaceX’s intention to catch Ship alongside catching the Super Heavy Booster, something that has happened in the past. SpaceX showed an animation of the Ship catch, which will be done on the launch tower’s chopsticks:

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This monumental goal is to catch both the Ship and Booster in a dual-catch scenario, an incredible feat since SpaceX has never been able to reuse a Ship after launch. Musk said it would be “the first time that an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered,” and said it would be a “profound technology milestone.”

Musk said the odds of success on this first Ship catch attempt are “more likely than not,” but SpaceX is ultimately prepared for more tries moving forward. The SpaceX frontman said that, starting next year, Starship would have a “steady stream” of flights through the end of the year.

The cadence will accelerate in 2027, with Musk stating the company plans to target weekly flights in the first half of 2027 and twice-weekly by year-end.

The Flight 15 attempt follows that of Flight 14, which took off in late September and was Starship’s first orbital mission. It deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, accomplished a controlled ocean splashdown of both stages, and shed more light on potential challenges for the program moving forward.

As of now, the Starship program is firing on all cylinders.

Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.

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