Investor's Corner
Tesla’s competitors are realizing that making good electric cars is not so easy
For years, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) critics have argued that the electric car maker is nothing special, incompetent even, to the point where any other company, veteran or newcomer, could easily beat the Silicon Valley-based carmaker in their own game. Fast forward to November 2019, and it is starting to become evident that perhaps Tesla is not so easy to overtake after all.
Take NIO, for example, a company that is perceived as “China’s Tesla” several times in the past. Aggressive and ambitious, NIO was supported by TSLA critics as a rival that has the potential to beat the American electric car maker at its own game. Yet, inasmuch as the greater part of 2019 was cruel to Tesla, so was it difficult for NIO.
Over the past few months, NIO was hit by a perfect storm including a reduction of government subsidies, trade war uncertainties, and what appears to be decreasing demand in its home country. This has resulted in NIO cutting over 2,000 jobs to optimize its operations. Its shares, which are publicly traded just like TSLA stock, have also plummeted.
One could argue that NIO is encountering difficulties since it is still a young company. But even veteran automakers are also running into issues with their respective EV programs. Take the Volkswagen Group’s Audi, for example. The Audi e-tron is a well-reviewed premium electric vehicle with a price that is comparable to the Model X, but it features over 100 miles less range from a battery that is nearly as big as the pack in Tesla’s SUV. Audi’s recall of half of all e-trons sold since the vehicle was launched due to a fire risk further highlights the difficulty of the EV market.
Even Jaguar with the award-winning I-PACE was no exception. The I-PACE is quite the darling of the motoring industry, having swept over 60 awards since its release. Yet, even the stunningly-designed vehicle is seeing its sales decline, and owners are reporting issues such as less-than-expected range. Similar to the Audi e-tron, the I-PACE was also hit by a recall last June due to issues with its regenerative braking system, which could increase the risk of collisions.
Among the veterans, Porsche appears to be the one that is doing the best. The Taycan is well-received by both the pro and anti-Tesla community, but even the track-capable monster from Stuttgart struggles with range and its price. The Taycan is every bit the monster that the sports car maker promised, but the vehicle’s range falls far below the 310 miles that were expected years before its release. Its price has also ballooned, with a well-equipped Taycan Turbo S setting buyers back far above the $200,000 range.
The difficulty of the electric car industry could not be highlighted better than Dyson, a British company that made its mark through its innovative, premium fans and vacuum cleaners. Dyson attempted to enter the EV market, but after spending $1.3 billion, the company decided to abandon its efforts, deeming the initiative as commercially unviable.
Seeing all these challenges, one can almost see why Tesla CEO Elon Musk has described Tesla as an exercise in insanity. A company with nothing but a prototype sports car and an ambition to take on the auto industry in pre-2008 recession America, after all, could only be described as either courageous or absolutely crazy. Yet, beyond all the trials and tribulations, Tesla remains standing, and it is now positioned to lead in the EV market.
It took a lot of close calls, brushes with potential death, and Elon Musk’s self-inflicted wounds, but it is starting to become evident that maybe, just maybe, Tesla’s long-term bet is finally paying off. In the emerging EV era, it would be difficult to catch a company that has its own rapid charging network, battery technology, a habit of constant software upgrades, and an ecosystem of vehicles and energy products that highlight a key goal — to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
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.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Tesla (TSLA) Q1 2026 earnings results: beat on EPS and revenues
SpaceX is following in Tesla’s footsteps in a way nobody expected
