News
Tesla’s rivals from legacy auto are facing a day of reckoning due to the pandemic
In Volkswagen’s Zwickau plant in Germany, a storm seems to be brewing. The veteran automaker has put a lot of its cards on the ID.3, its upcoming all-electric hatchback. But with the pandemic still maintaining its hold on the global automotive market, things are starting to look a lot more challenging.
Volkswagen initially planned to produce the ID.3 en masse at the expansive facility. The Zwickau plant is expected to be one of the largest electric car factories in the globe, and it is poised to be a key factor in the German automaker’s attempt at closing the gap between itself and electric vehicle pioneer Tesla. Unfortunately for Volkswagen, the pandemic has thrown a proverbial wrench at its plans.
The effects of the COVID-19 virus will be felt for years to come, and the automotive sector will be among those that will likely take a massive hit. With the economic pressures of the pandemic, car buyers are expected to be more conservative about big ticket purchases. This could prove challenging for veteran automakers and their respective EV programs, as their electric lineup will likely hold a premium price over their more affordable gas-powered cars.
A premium price for electric vehicles will likely be a weight that legacy automakers would have to bear. With dropping oil prices, internal combustion cars could become more attractive to budget-conscious buyers. Tesla is pretty much immune to this, since the company only produces all-electric vehicles, and its cars are only getting more affordable. This was highlighted by the company’s recent decision to drop the price of its Model S, Model 3, and Model X, as well as its release of the Model Y.
In a recent statement to Bloomberg, Volkswagen has stated that when it comes to its shift to electric vehicles, the company has simply reached a point where there is no turning back. The pandemic has pretty much crushed demand for vehicles, and all-electric cars like the ID.3 are poised to enter uncharted territory. This was addressed by Thomas Ulbrich, who runs Volkswagen’s EV business. In a statement, he noted that ultimately, “we all have a historic task to accomplish to protect the health of our employees—and at the same time get business back on track responsibly.”
For VW, this means that the company has to push through with the ID.3 regardless of the existing challenges in the market. CEO Herbert Diess, an avid supporter of the electric car movement who has earned the respect of Tesla’s Elon Musk, hinted at this in previous comments. In a post last month on LinkedIn, Diess stated that he and his colleagues are still hard at work with the ID.3. “My new working week starts together with Thomas Ulbrich at the wheel of a Volkswagen ID.3 – our most important project to meet the European CO2-targets in 2020 and 2021. We are fighting hard to keep our timeline for the launches to come,” the CEO wrote.
Prior to the onset of the coronavirus, Volkswagen was poised to push the ID.3 as the first of its flagship electric vehicle line. But with the pandemic, things are poised for some big changes. The German automaker has already started adapting to these coming changes, and some seem to be partly inspired by younger carmakers such as Tesla. The company, for example, has decided to offer its ID.3 line online. Volkswagen has also started rolling out touchless test drives, just like Tesla in the United States and China.
But things will not be easy. The global automotive market will take a hit this year because of the pandemic, and some companies may end up in dire straits. French finance minister Bruno Le Maire has stated that Renault SA, the maker of the popular Zoe electric car, can “disappear” without state aid. Even Toyota, a company that is largely considered as an immovable pillar in the automotive segment, has warned that its profits will likely tumble to the lowest level in almost a decade.
For now, the best bet for automakers planning on releasing electric cars would be to release vehicles that provide what car buyers in the post pandemic would prefer: value and practicality. Tesla’s bet for this lies in the Model Y and the Model 3, as both cars are reasonably priced and offer the best that the EV industry has to offer. Hopefully, automakers like Volkswagen would be able to accomplish the same.
Tesla Robotaxi is among its biggest projects currently, but many have been quick to point out the fact that the company has definitely been slow to expand its fleet.
However, there is definitely a method to that madness. CEO Elon Musk answered several concerns during last night’s quarterly earnings call that some might have about that slow rollout of the Robotaxi suite, maintaining the company’s narrative on prioritizing safety and wanting to avoid injuries to anyone, including animals.
Musk said:
“With Robotaxi, our goals are very ambitious for Robotaxi, but we do need to be cautious about causing any accidents or causing any harm to anyone. Although there are, I think, 30,000 to 40,000 automotive deaths per year in the U.S. alone, most of those do not generate any press or maybe, you never really read about almost any of those. If we injure even one person, it’ll be worldwide headline news, and regulators will immediately clamp down on our activities.
We don’t want to injure anyone. We’re going as fast as humanly possible in scaling Robotaxi, but while trying to ensure that we do not harm anyone at all, and ideally do not even run over a pet. That’s really the constraint is we want to grow as fast as possible with Robotaxi without harm to anyone.”
Tesla has maintained an exemplary safety record with its Robotaxi suite, according to internal data. VP of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the Robotaxi suite has driven more than 380,000 miles unsupervised without any incidents.
0 notable incidents across over 380,000 miles traveled by Robotaxi
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Analyst Colin Langan of Bank of America also pushed Tesla executives for answers regarding the company’s decision to add cities across several states with dozens of vehicles “as opposed to hundreds.”
Elluswamy said there’s a bigger advantage to do it the way Tesla has been because it ensures that its software stack “is a very general one:”
“The reason we have been expanding across different cities instead of just doubling down on a single city, is that we want to make sure that our stack is a very general one. It is a general one. We just want to both prove to ourselves and to other folks that it is working across a lot of different cities without too much effort per city. That’s what we see internally.”
In the past, we have written about Tesla’s decision to be incredibly conservative with its Robotaxi rollout, especially with the incredibly small fleet size compared to competitors. However, there really is not a price anyone can put on safety for those utilizing the platform or pedestrians, so what Tesla is doing is justified.
A year into the Robotaxi program being active, Tesla has made major strides, but many investors and fans would like to see the fleet expand as quickly as the program has to other cities and states.
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 Robotaxi’s slow rollout gets explanation from Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific
