Investor's Corner
Tesla’s (TSLA) Q2 2019 earnings call with Elon Musk set for July 24
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) has announced that it would be posting its financial results for Q2 2019 after the market closes on Wednesday, July 24, 2019. The company would be issuing a brief advisory with a link to its Q2 2019 Update Letter, which will be accessible from Tesla’s Investor Relations website. A live Q&A session is set for 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time (5:30 p.m. Eastern Time) to discuss the electric car and energy company’s financial results and outlook.
Analysts polled by FactSet currently expect Tesla to report an adjusted loss of $0.45 per share on sales of $6.6 billion in the second quarter, which compares favorably with an adjusted loss of $3.06 per share on sales of $4 billion in Q2 2018. So far, the rather early earnings call date appears to have been received well by the market, with Tesla shares trading 1.81% at $242.91 per share as of writing.
Tesla’s financial results for the second quarter are up for question, considering that Elon Musk has mentioned that Q2 2019 could see a loss once more. Nevertheless, expectations are high that Tesla’s finances in Q2 will be more palatable compared to the company’s first-quarter results, which showed a loss of $702 million, thanks in part to delivery difficulties to international markets such as Europe and China. These challenges were expected to have been mostly addressed in the second quarter, paving the way for a potential return to profitability in Q3 2019.
Quite interestingly, Tesla’s rather early second-quarter earnings call announcement comes amidst news of challenges being faced by companies considered as the Silicon Valley-based carmaker’s rivals in the EV market. Among these is NIO, widely called the “Tesla of China,” which is seeing some roadblocks in its momentum. NIO had a promising start in 2018, but recent months have been difficult for the company, as reflected in the electric car maker’s slumping sales, the departure of US CEO Padmasree Warrior, and concerns about the quality of the company’s vehicles. These challenges have been reflected in NIO’s stock price, which has declined 42% since its IPO in September.
Fellow Chinese EV startup Seres (formerly known as SF Motors), at one point also deemed a potential rival to Tesla, was racked with a round of layoffs for its US staff. The company had employed about 300 people in Santa Clara as it planned a potential US launch for its first electric vehicle, the all-electric SF5 SUV. But at a recent staff meeting, the company announced that it would be laying off 90 employees at its US headquarters in Santa Clara.
BMW, which is trying to get its momentum back in the electric car market, also faces some challenges with its freshly unveiled Mini Electric. The vehicle, which actually looks pretty fun, has notably underwhelming specs, with a paltry 146 miles of range, a starting price of $35,000, and technology that’s primarily based on the aging i3, a competitor of the early versions of the Model S. This is far below the bar set by vehicles like the Tesla Model 3 Standard Plus, which starts just below $40,000, but has 240 miles of range and standard features like Autopilot.
These challenges faced by young companies like NIO and veterans like BMW show that the electric car segment, which Tesla has survived in for 16 years now, is becoming a very tough business to crack. With other companies like Kia and Hyundai coming up with low-priced EVs that are bang for the buck like the Niro EV and Kona Electric, and with Tesla widening its lead over the competition with the Model 3, the electric car segment is only bound to get more competitive. It wouldn’t be surprising to see companies with weaker hands get shaken off in the coming years.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Featured
Tesla Cybercab is coming to Asia this month as US service officially begins
Tesla Asia says Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai this month.
Tesla’s Cybercab is heading to Asia. The official Tesla Asia account posted on X Thursday, inviting Cybercab fans to “Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai.” The post went up within hours of Tesla’s own Cybercab milestone in Texas, where the company said Thursday it had begun offering rides in across Austin.
Exact dates and venues for the Asia tour haven’t been released yet, though Tesla Hong Kong replied to the announcement with “Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong soon,” while Tesla Japan’s response pointed fans to a sign up page for updates. Neither post mentions test rides or a service area, and nothing so far suggests Tesla is launching Robotaxi operations in any of the four cities. Based on how Tesla has run past Cybercab tours, in Europe in late 2024 and at US shopping centers that same December, the Asia stops are almost certainly static displays at Tesla stores or public venues as a means to stimulate buzz for its future driverless ride-hailing service in the big cities.
Cybercab will be on display in Asia this month!
Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai. pic.twitter.com/wGmmEastfX— Tesla Asia (@Tesla_Asia) September 4, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s only prior Cybercab appearance in the region, a booth at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai last November, which Teslarati covered at the time. At that event, Tesla’s regional general manager for Shanghai framed the car as evidence of the company’s broader mission, a message Tesla has since formalized in its Master Plan Part IV, which states that “autonomous vehicles have the capacity to dramatically improve the affordability, availability and safety of transportation while reducing pollution, particularly in our increasingly dense global cities.” The same document is where Tesla lays out its “sustainable abundance” framing for Cybercab and Optimus alike, describing the two as the hardware behind an AI driven push to cut the cost of transportation and labor at scale.
Whether Cybercab actually operates as a robotaxi anywhere in Asia remains an open question, considering China has already pushed an autonomous ride-hailing market that’s run on homegrown players like Baidu’s Apollo Go and Pony AI. For now, the four city tour reads as a marketing push timed to Austin’s momentum.
Elon Musk
OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership
OpenAI will cut SpaceX-owned Cursor’s model access in November, citing Musk’s history of broken contracts.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced late Friday that it is ending its partnership with Cursor, cutting off the coding tool’s access to its models on November 12. The move comes two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, folding the popular AI coding assistant into Elon Musk’s growing SpaceXAI division.
In a post on its website, OpenAI said the decision came down to trust, not technology. “We cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts,” the company wrote. OpenAI pointed to two specific incidents: X, now part of SpaceX, allegedly breaking the terms of an existing OpenAI contract after Musk bought Twitter.
That lawsuit is the backdrop for all of this. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015, left the board in 2018, and sued Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, arguing they abandoned the company’s nonprofit mission for profit. A federal jury sided with OpenAI in May, finding Musk waited too long to sue rather than ruling on the merits of his claims. Musk said at the time he would appeal to the Ninth Circuit, calling the outcome a “calendar technicality” rather than a real judgment.
SpaceX’s interest in Cursor predates that verdict by weeks. The company first struck a deal with Cursor in April, securing an option to acquire it for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for joint development work instead. As Teslarati reported at the time, the logic was straightforward: Cursor was paying retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its most direct competitors, every time a developer used its product, while SpaceX had idle capacity on its Colossus supercomputer, roughly the equivalent of a million Nvidia H100 GPUs, that Cursor could use to train its own models instead. SpaceX exercised the option in June, days after its own IPO, and the deal closed in mid-August.
Once it closed, Musk moved fast. On an all-hands call with more than 1,000 Cursor employees, he reportedly told staff that SpaceXAI’s Grok was playing catchup in the AI race, unlike Tesla and SpaceX in their own markets, and singled out Anthropic as the company to catch. Cursor CEO Michael Truell now reports directly to Musk inside SpaceXAI.
Losing OpenAI’s models leaves Cursor leaning harder on Anthropic’s Claude, which has its own compute agreement with SpaceX, and on Cursor’s in-house Composer model, the one SpaceX’s compute was supposed to accelerate in the first place. OpenAI framed the November deadline as maximum notice under its contract, and said it wants to “go above and beyond” to help developers through the transition. Whether Anthropic makes the same call is now the open question in AI coding.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
Tesla Cybercab launch catches NHTSA’s attention who wants to know more
Tesla Cybercab is coming to Asia this month as US service officially begins
