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Tesla fires back at Fortune with cheeky “Misfortune” blog post
The drama continues between Tesla and Fortune after the media outlet published a story questioning Tesla’s ethics claiming the company sold $2 billion worth of stock but failed to disclose that it was under investigation by the National Highway Transport Association (NHTSA) after Joshua Brown was killed when his Model S in Autopilot mode crashed into a tractor trailer.
Since the story was published, Tesla CEO Elon Musk defended the company’s position that news surrounding the Autopilot related death was not material to its stock price. Fortune disagreed citing that the stock price dropped $6 per share after news broke that the NHTSA was in fact investigating evidence surrounding Brown’s death. That’s when Musk fired back via email picking choice words with Fortune’s writer and stating, “Indeed, if anyone bothered to do the math (obviously, you did not) they would realize that of the over 1M auto deaths per year worldwide, approximately half a million people would have been saved if the Tesla autopilot was universally available. Please, take 5 mins and do the bloody math before you write an article that misleads the public.”
The Tesla vs Fortune debacle spilled over into the public Twittersphere between Fortune’s Editor Alan Murray and Elon Musk. The tweets continued throughout Wednesday with Alan Murray defending the media outlet’s position that Tesla did not disclose news of the Autopilot death. Fortune went as far as quoting statements made in an SEC filing by Tesla which warned investors that a fatal crash related to its Autopilot feature would be a material event to the company’s brand, business, and operating results. Tesla would later bring to light that Fortune mischaracterized the quote within the SEC filing.
Tesla has since released a blog post on this matter titled “Misfortune”.
Misfortune
Fortune’s article is fundamentally incorrect.
First, Fortune mischaracterizes Tesla’s SEC filing. Here is what Tesla’s SEC filing actually says: “We may become subject to product liability claims, which could harm our financial condition and liquidity if we are not able to successfully defend or insure against such claims.” [full text included below] This is just stating the obvious. One of the risks facing Tesla (or any company) is that someone could bring product liability claims against it. However, neither at the time of this SEC filing, nor in the several weeks to date, has anyone brought a product liability claim against Tesla relating to the crash in Florida.
Next, Fortune entirely ignores what Tesla knew and when, nor have they even asked the questions. Instead, they simply assume that Tesla had complete information from the moment this accident occurred. This was a physical impossibility given that the damage sustained by the Model S in the crash limited Tesla’s ability to recover data from it remotely.
When Tesla told NHTSA about the accident on May 16th, we had barely started our investigation. Tesla informed NHTSA because it wanted to let NHTSA know about a death that had taken place in one of its vehicles. It was not until May 18th that a Tesla investigator was able to go to Florida to inspect the car and the crash site and pull the complete vehicle logs from the car, and it was not until the last week of May that Tesla was able to finish its review of those logs and complete its investigation. When Fortune contacted Tesla for comment on this story during the July 4th holiday, Fortune never asked any of these questions and instead just made assumptions. Tesla asked Fortune to give it a day to confirm these facts before it rushed its story to print. They declined and instead ran a misleading article.
Here’s what we did know at the time of the accident and subsequent filing:
- That Tesla Autopilot had been safely used in over 100 million miles of driving by tens of thousands of customers worldwide, with zero confirmed fatalities and a wealth of internal data demonstrating safer, more predictable vehicle control performance when the system is properly used.
- That contrasted against worldwide accident data, customers using Autopilot are statistically safer than those not using it at all.
- That given its nature as a driver assistance system, a collision on Autopilot was a statistical inevitability, though by this point, not one that would alter the conclusion already borne out over millions of miles that the system provided a net safety benefit to society.
Given the fact that the “better-than-human” threshold had been crossed and robustly validated internally, news of a statistical inevitability did not materially change any statements previously made about the Autopilot system, its capabilities, or net impact on roadway safety.
Finally, the Fortune article makes two other false assumptions. First, they assume that this accident was caused by an Autopilot failure. To be clear, this accident was the result of a semi-tractor trailer crossing both lanes of a divided highway in front of an oncoming car. Whether driven under manual or assisted mode, this presented a challenging and unexpected emergency braking scenario for the driver to respond to. In the moments leading up to the collision, there is no evidence to suggest that Autopilot was not operating as designed and as described to users: specifically, as a driver assistance system that maintains a vehicle’s position in lane and adjusts the vehicle’s speed to match surrounding traffic.
Fortune never even addresses that point. Second, Fortune assumes that, putting all of these other problems aside, a single accident involving Autopilot, regardless of how many accidents Autopilot has stopped and how many lives it has saved, is material to Tesla’s investors. On the day the news broke about NHTSA’s decision to initiate a preliminary evaluation into the incident, Tesla’s stock traded up, not down, confirming that not only did our investors know better, but that our own internal assessment of the performance and risk profile of Autopilot were in line with market expectations.
The bottom line is that Fortune jumped the gun on a story before they had the facts. They then sought wrongly to defend that position by plucking boilerplate language from SEC filings that have no bearing on what happened, while failing to correct or acknowledge their original omissions and errors.
Full text referenced above:
We may become subject to product liability claims, which could harm our financial condition and liquidity if we are not able to successfully defend or insure against such claims.
“Product liability claims could harm our business, prospects, operating results and financial condition. The automobile industry experiences significant product liability claims and we face inherent risk of exposure to claims in the event our vehicles do not perform as expected resulting in personal injury or death. We also may face similar claims related to any misuse or failures of new technologies that we are pioneering, including autopilot in our vehicles and our Tesla Energy products. A successful product liability claim against us with respect to any aspect of our products could require us to pay a substantial monetary award. Our risks in this area are particularly pronounced given the limited number of vehicles and energy storage products delivered to date and limited field experience of our products. Moreover, a product liability claim could generate substantial negative publicity about our products and business and would have material adverse effect on our brand, business, prospects and operating results. We self-insure against the risk of product liability claims, meaning that any product liability claims will have to be paid from company funds, not by insurance.”
Elon Musk
SpaceX to launch military missile tracking satellites through new Space Force contract
SpaceX wins a $178.5M Space Force contract to launch missile tracking satellites starting in 2027.
The U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX a $178.5 million task order on April 1, 2026 to launch missile tracking satellites for the Space Development Agency. The contract, designated SDA-4, covers two Falcon 9 launches beginning in Q3 2027, one from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and one from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The satellites, built by Sierra Space, are designed to bolster the nation’s ability to detect and track missile threats from orbit.
The award falls under the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 program, which Space Force uses to move payloads to orbit on faster timelines and at more competitive prices. “Our Lane 1 contract affords us the flexibility to deliver satellites for our customers, like SDA, more easily and faster than ever before to all the orbits our satellites need to reach,” said Col. Matt Flahive, SSC’s system program director for Launch Acquisition, in the official press release.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
The SDA-4 contract is the latest in a long string of national security wins for SpaceX. As Teslarati reported last month, the Space Force recently shifted a GPS III satellite launch from ULA’s Vulcan rocket to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 after a significant Vulcan booster anomaly grounded ULA’s military missions indefinitely. That move made it four consecutive GPS III satellites transferred to SpaceX after contracts were originally awarded to its competitor.
This didn’t come without a fight and dates back years. SpaceX originally had to sue the Air Force in 2014 for the right to compete for national security launches, at a time when United Launch Alliance held a near monopoly on the market. Since then, the company has steadily displaced ULA as the dominant provider, and last year the Space Force confirmed SpaceX would handle approximately 60 percent of all Phase 3 launches through 2032, worth close to $6 billion.
With missile defense satellites now part of its launch manifest alongside GPS, communications, and reconnaissance payloads, SpaceX is giving hungry investors something to chew on before its imminent IPO.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s Q1 delivery figures show Elon Musk was right
On the surface, the numbers reflect a mature EV market facing competition, softening demand, and the loss of certain incentives. Yet they also quietly validate a prediction Elon Musk has repeated for years: Tesla’s traditional auto business is becoming far less central to the company’s future.
Tesla reported its Q1 delivery figures on Thursday, and the figures — solid but unspectacular — show that CEO Elon Musk was right about what the company’s most important production and division would be.
We are seeing that shift occur in real time.
Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles in the first quarter of 2026, according to the company’s official report released April 2.
The figure represents modest year-over-year growth of roughly 6 percent from Q1 2025’s 336,681 deliveries but a sharp sequential drop from Q4 2025’s 418,227. Production reached 408,386 vehicles, while energy storage deployments hit 8.8 GWh.
On the surface, the numbers reflect a mature EV market facing competition, softening demand, and the loss of certain incentives. Yet they also quietly validate a prediction Elon Musk has repeated for years: Tesla’s traditional auto business is becoming far less central to the company’s future.
Musk has long argued that vehicles alone will not define Tesla’s value.
Optimus Will Be Tesla’s Big Thing
In September 2025, Musk stated bluntly on X that “~80% of Tesla’s value will be Optimus,” the company’s humanoid robot.
He has described Optimus as potentially “more significant than the vehicle business over time.” Those comments were not abstract futurism. In January 2026, during the Q4 2025 earnings call, Musk announced the end of Model S and X production, framing it as an “honorable discharge,” he called it.
Those are the biggest factors.
~80% of Tesla’s value will be Optimus.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 1, 2025
The Fremont factory space, once dedicated to those flagship sedans, is being converted into an Optimus manufacturing line, with a long-term target of one million robots per year from that single facility alone.
The Q1 2026 numbers arrive at precisely the moment this strategic pivot is accelerating. Model 3 and Y deliveries totaled 341,893 units, while “other models” (including Cybertruck, Semi, and the final wave of S/X) added 16,130.
Growth is no longer explosive because Tesla is no longer chasing volume at all costs. Instead, the company is reallocating capital and factory floor space toward autonomy, energy storage, and robotics, businesses Musk believes will command far higher margins and enterprise value than incremental car sales.
Delivery Hits and Misses are Becoming Less Important
Wall Street’s pre-release consensus had pegged deliveries near 365,000. Coming in below that estimate might have rattled investors focused solely on automotive metrics. Yet Musk’s thesis has never been about maximizing quarterly vehicle shipments.
Tesla, he has insisted, “has never been valued strictly as a car company.”
The modest Q1 auto performance, paired with the deliberate wind-down of legacy programs and the ramp of Optimus, underscores that point. While EV demand stabilizes, Tesla is building the infrastructure for Robotaxis and humanoid robots that could dwarf today’s car business.
The future is here, and it is happening. It’s funny to think about how quickly Tesla was able to disrupt the traditional automotive business and force many car companies to show their hand. But just as fast as Tesla disrupted that, it is now moving to disrupt its own operation.
Cars, once the only recognizable and widely-known division of Tesla, is now becoming a background effort, slowly being overtaken by the company’s ambitions to dominate AI, autonomy, and robotics for years to come.
Critics may still view the shift as risky or premature. But the Q1 figures, solid but unspectacular in the auto segment, illustrate exactly what Musk has been signaling: the era when Tesla’s valuation rose and fell with every Model Y delivery is ending.
The company’s long-term bet is on AI-driven products that turn vehicles into high-margin robotaxis and factories into robot foundries. Thursday’s delivery report did not just meet the market’s tempered expectations; it proved Elon Musk was right all along.
The car business, once everything, is quietly becoming an important piece of a much larger puzzle.
Investor's Corner
Tesla reports Q1 deliveries, missing expectations slightly
The figure, however, fell short of Wall Street’s consensus estimate of 365,645 units, reflecting ongoing headwinds in the global EV market.
Tesla reported deliveries for the first quarter of 2026 today, missing expectations set by Wall Street analysts slightly as the company aims to have a massive year in terms of sales, along with other projects.
Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles in the first quarter of 2026, marking a 6.3 percent increase from 336,681 vehicles in Q1 2025.
The figure, however, fell short of Wall Street’s consensus estimate of 365,645 units, reflecting ongoing headwinds in the global EV market. Production reached approximately 362,000 vehicles, with Model 3 and Model Y accounting for the vast majority. The results come as Tesla navigates softening demand, intensifying competition in China and Europe, and the expiration of key U.S. federal tax incentives.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles in Q1 2026
Tesla also reported record energy deployments of 8.8 GWh
Wall Street had delivery consensus estimates of 365,645 pic.twitter.com/EVNAu5L3UT
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 2, 2026
Energy storage deployments provided a bright spot, hitting a record 8.8 GWh in Q1. This underscores the accelerating momentum in Tesla’s energy segment, which has become a critical growth driver even as automotive volumes stabilize.
Year-over-year, the energy business continues to outpace vehicle sales, with analysts noting strong backlog demand for Megapack systems amid rising grid-scale needs for renewables and AI data centers.
Looking ahead, analysts project full-year 2026 vehicle deliveries in the range of 1.69 million units—a modest 3-5% rise from roughly 1.64 million in 2025.
Growth is expected to accelerate in the second half as production ramps and new incentives emerge in select markets. However, risks remain: persistent high interest rates, price competition from legacy automakers and Chinese EV makers, and potential margin pressure could cap upside.
Tesla has not issued official full-year guidance, but executives have signaled confidence in sequential quarterly improvements driven by cost reductions and refreshed lineups.
By the end of 2026, Tesla plans several major product launches to reignite momentum. The refreshed Model Y, including a new 7-seater variant already rolling out in select markets, is expected to boost family-oriented sales with updated styling, efficiency gains, and interior enhancements.
Autonomous ambitions remain central to Tesla’s mission, and that’s where the vast majority of the attention has been put. Volume production of the Cybercab (Robotaxi) is targeted to begin ramping in 2026, potentially unlocking new revenue streams through unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) deployment.
A next-generation affordable EV platform, possibly under $30,000, is also in advanced planning stages for 2026 or 2027 introduction. On the energy front, the Megapack 3 and larger Megablock systems will drive further deployment scale.
While Q1 highlights transitional challenges in autos, Tesla’s diversified roadmap, spanning refreshed consumer vehicles, commercial trucks, Robotaxis, and explosive energy growth, positions the company for a stronger second half and beyond. Investors will watch Q2 closely for signs of sustained recovery, especially with new vehicles potentially on the horizon.
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