Investor's Corner
Journalist in Twitter scuffle with Tesla’s Elon Musk spills details to CNBC
A journalist who recently caught the ire of CEO Elon Musk on Twitter defended her coverage in a recent interview. During a segment on CNBC‘s Halftime Report, Business Insider senior finance correspondent Linette Lopez told her side of the story, confirming that former Tesla employee and alleged saboteur Martin Tripp did provide her with information, and denying any financial connections with noted Tesla short-seller Jim Chanos.
“It’s up to shareholders to decide whether or the CEO of a $50 million (sic) company should spend his time yelling at reporters on Twitter. What my reporting indicates is that the mission of Tesla is not really quite in line with the manufacturing of Tesla. Elon Musk has, for years, a high-quality car that is environmentally-friendly and what we’re seeing coming out of both Tesla factories is not exactly that,” Lopez said.
Lopez was joined in her segment in CNBC‘s Halftime Report by Bethany McLean of Vanity Fair and Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenberg. McLean, who is noted as one of the reporters who was involved in the Enron investigations, stated that Musk’s actions against Lopez on Twitter are uncharacteristic of a CEO that is confident of his company’s numbers. McLean also commended the Business Insider reporter for following her story.
“I think Musk should be ashamed of himself and shareholders should think about running for the hills. Given the ugliness on Twitter where somebody like Elon Musk starts to lead a pack and the pack takes that as an excuse to behave in an extremely ugly manner, and I think that brings out the worst in human nature. Even if you’re right and you’re on to something, it’s pretty hard to sit on the other side of that and not have it get to you. So, I commend Linette for her courage,” McLean said.
Ultimately, the Business Insider correspondent concluded that she would continue covering the electric car maker in her reports. Lopez also noted that she still has sources, and she still has stories to tell.
“Of course, there’s no question. I will continue to cover Tesla. I will continue to work very hard. I am not out of sourcing, and I am not out of stories,” Lopez said.
Linette Lopez has been covering Tesla for a while now, and a good number of her articles are pointedly negative. Articles such as “Elon Musk doesn’t care about you” and “Internal documents reveal Tesla is blowing through an insane amount of raw material and cash to make Model 3s, and production is still a nightmare,” after all, invoke an air of subjectivity. Her favorable articles featuring Tesla’s most notable short-seller, Jim Chanos, also gives an impression that she already has a clear stance on Tesla.
Nevertheless, McLean’s statements about Twitter bringing out the ugly side of human beings is pretty much on target as well. Some members of the online community, after all, have resorted to below-the-belt attacks on Lopez, and that is not okay. Musk is no stranger to online hate, either, as proven by the criticism he received after his team built a mini-submarine for the stranded Wild Boar soccer team in Thailand. Musk received a lot of flak for allegedly being a “narcissist” and attempting to take credit away from the divers who rescued the children and their coach. Recent Twitter updates by Musk, however, proved that the team conducting the rescue operations were in active communication with the Tesla CEO. Social media posts from Thailand also confirmed that they appreciated Musk and his team’s efforts to help (the minisub is now part of the country’s rescue equipment), but the vitriol is still there.
Ultimately, if there is one thing that Musk could to silence his critics and prove members of the media like Lopez and McClean wrong, it would be through Tesla’s numbers in the quarters and years to come. If the numbers at the end of Q2 2018 and its recent strategies with the Model 3, such as its new test drive program and its 5-minute Sign & Drive delivery process are any indication, it seems like Tesla is now actively fighting critics with its results. With Tesla expecting China’s Gigafactory 3 to begin vehicle production within two years of the facility’s construction, the time might soon come when Elon Musk would just have to sit back and let his company’s numbers do the talking.
Watch a part of Linette Lopez’s segment in CNBC‘s Halftime Report in the video below.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
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 miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues – $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow – $1.444 billion
- Profit – $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 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.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Tesla Earnings: financial expectations and what we should to hear about
In terms of discussions, Tesla earnings calls are usually a great time to get some clarification on the company’s outlook for its current and future projects.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) will report its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 this evening after the market closes, and analysts have already put out their expectations from a financial standpoint for the company’s first three months of the year.
Additionally, there will be plenty of things that will be discussed, including the recent expansion of the Robotaxi program, the Roadster unveiling, and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) approvals across the globe.
Financial Expectations
Wall Street consensus expectations put Tesla’s Earnings Per Share (EPS) at $0.36, while revenues are expected to come in around $22.35 billion.
This would compare to an EPS of $0.27 and $19.34 billion compared to Tesla’s Q1 2025. Last quarter, EPS came in at $0.50 on $29.4 billion of revenue.
Tesla beat analyst expectations last quarter, but the next trading day, the stock fell nearly 3.5 percent. We never quite can gauge how the market will respond to Tesla’s earnings; we’ve seen shares rise on a miss and fall on a beat.
It really goes on the news, and investor consensus, it seems.
What to Expect
In terms of discussions, Tesla earnings calls are usually a great time to get some clarification on the company’s outlook for its current and future projects. Right now, the big focus of investors is the Robotaxi program, the Roadster unveiling, and what the outlook for Full Self-Driving’s expansion throughout Europe and the rest of the world looks like.
Robotaxi
Tesla just recently expanded its unsupervised Robotaxi program to Dallas and Houston, joining Austin as the first cities in the U.S. to have access to the company’s ride-hailing suite.
Tesla expands Unsupervised Robotaxi service to two new cities
Some saw this move as a quick effort to turn attention away from a delivery miss and an anticipated miss on earnings. However, we’ve seen Tesla be more than deliberate with its expansion of the Robotaxi suite, so it’s hard to believe the company would make this move if it were not truly ready to do so.
The company is also working to expand its U.S. ride-hailing service outside of Texas and California, and recently filed paperwork to build a Robotaxi-exclusive Supercharger stall.
Expansion is planned for Florida, Nevada, and Arizona at some point this year, with more states to follow.
Roadster Unveiling
The Roadster unveiling was slated for April 1, and then pushed back (once again) to “probably late April,” according to Elon Musk.
It does not appear that the Roadster unveiling will happen within that time frame, at least not to our knowledge. Nobody has received media or press invites for a Roadster unveiling, and given the lofty expectations set for the vehicle by Musk and Co., it seems like something they’d want to show off to the public.
The Roadster has become a truly frustrating project for Tesla and its fans; evidently, there is something that is not up to the expectations Musk and others have. Meanwhile, fans are essentially waiting for something that is six years late.
At this point, also given the company’s focus on autonomy, it almost seems more worth it to just cancel it, remove any and all timelines and expectations, and surprise people with something crazy down the line, maybe in two or three years. There should be no talk of it.
Full Self-Driving Global Expansion
We expect Musk and Co. to shed some details on where it stands with other European government bodies, as it recently was able to roll out FSD (Supervised) to customers in the Netherlands.
Spain is also working with Tesla to assess FSD’s viability as a publicly available option for owners.
With that being said, there should be some additional information for investors as they listen to the call; no talk of it would be a pretty big letdown.
Optimus
There will likely be a date set for the Gen 3 Optimus unveiling, and we’re hopeful Tesla can keep that date set in stone and meet it. Not reaching timelines is a relatively minor issue, but a company can only do this for so long before its fans and investors start to lose trust and disregard any talk about dates.
It seems this is happening already.
Optimus has been pegged as Tesla’s big money maker for the future. The goals and expectations are high, but it is a privilege to have that sort of pressure when investors know the company’s capability.
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