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Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2020 earnings results: What Wall Street expects

Tesla Gigafactory Nevada battery cell production line (Credit: Super Factories)

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Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is poised to hold its second quarter earnings call tomorrow, July 22, 2020 after the markets close. Stakes are high for the electric car maker, especially since the company is coming off three straight quarters of profitability. If Tesla pulls a rabbit out of the hat tomorrow and posts even a little bit of profit, the company could end up qualifying for potential inclusion into the S&P 500 index. 

Tesla stock has always been polarizing, and this is true for Wall Street analysts as well. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives noted that the electric car maker’s potential S&P 500 inclusion is considered by TSLA bulls as practically inevitable. That being said, Tesla’s past Q2 performance and the ongoing pandemic appears to have encouraged Wall Street to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism towards the company nonetheless. 

Following are Wall Street’s current estimates for Tesla’s Q2 2020 earnings results. 

Revenue

Wall Street currently expects Tesla to announce revenue of $5.146 billion, which is less than the $5.985 billion that the company reported in the first quarter. Estimize, a crowdsourced platform that aggregates estimates from analysts, executives, fund managers, and academics, is a bit more optimistic, with estimates pointing to revenue of $5.443 billion. 

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Tesla’s revenue may indeed take a hit during the second quarter, and this is in no small part due to the pandemic, which effectively shut down the company’s main production facility in the United States for several weeks. That being said, Tesla is still doing relatively well compared to legacy automakers, being the only one among US carmakers to post a year over year growth in sales this year so far. 

Earnings per share

While Tesla is carrying a lot of momentum heading into its second quarter earnings call, Wall Street expects the electric car maker to post a loss of $0.14 per share for Q2 2020. Interestingly enough, Estimize actually expects Tesla to post a small profit of $0.19 per share. This is quite an interesting set of events, as Wall Street and the crowdsourced platform’s consensus are usually in line with each other. 

All eyes will likely be on Tesla’s Q2 2020 EPS tomorrow since it could determine if the company could qualify for the S&P 500 or not. Ives, for his part, has stated that Wedbush is taking a rather positive stance for the company. “While Street numbers are all over the map and looking for red ink this quarter, we are modeling profitability with the 90k delivery number and ongoing cost cutting “getting Musk & Co. away from the red ink. This quarter is another step forward in the Tesla story as Musk & Co. must deliver to match euphoric Street expectations baked into the stock,” he wrote

Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings call is expected to be held on Wednesday, July 22, 2020, at 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time (5:30 p.m. ET). 

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Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Tesla owners surpass 8 billion miles driven on FSD Supervised

Tesla shared the milestone as adoption of the system accelerates across several markets.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla owners have now driven more than 8 billion miles using Full Self-Driving Supervised, as per a new update from the electric vehicle maker’s official X account. 

Tesla shared the milestone as adoption of the system accelerates across several markets.

“Tesla owners have now driven >8 billion miles on FSD Supervised,” the company wrote in its post on X. Tesla also included a graphic showing FSD Supervised’s miles driven before a collision, which far exceeds that of the United States average. 

The growth curve of FSD Supervised’s cumulative miles over the past five years has been notable. As noted in data shared by Tesla watcher Sawyer Merritt, annual FSD (Supervised) miles have increased from roughly 6 million in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and 4.25 billion in 2025. In just the first 50 days of 2026, Tesla owners logged another 1 billion miles.

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At the current pace, the fleet is trending towards hitting about 10 billion FSD Supervised miles this year. The increase has been driven by Tesla’s growing vehicle fleet, periodic free trials, and expanding Robotaxi operations, among others.

Tesla also recently updated the safety data for FSD Supervised on its website, covering North America across all road types over the latest 12-month period.

As per Tesla’s figures, vehicles operating with FSD Supervised engaged recorded one major collision every 5,300,676 miles. In comparison, Teslas driven manually with Active Safety systems recorded one major collision every 2,175,763 miles, while Teslas driven manually without Active Safety recorded one major collision every 855,132 miles. The U.S. average during the same period was one major collision every 660,164 miles.

During the measured period, Tesla reported 830 total major collisions with FSD (Supervised) engaged, compared to 16,131 collisions for Teslas driven manually with Active Safety and 250 collisions for Teslas driven manually without Active Safety. Total miles logged exceeded 4.39 billion miles for FSD (Supervised) during the same timeframe.

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The Boring Company’s Music City Loop gains unanimous approval

After eight months of negotiations, MNAA board members voted unanimously on Feb. 18 to move forward with the project.

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(Credit: The Boring Company)

The Metro Nashville Airport Authority (MNAA) has approved a 40-year agreement with Elon Musk’s The Boring Company to build the Music City Loop, a tunnel system linking Nashville International Airport to downtown. 

After eight months of negotiations, MNAA board members voted unanimously on Feb. 18 to move forward with the project. Under the terms, The Boring Company will pay the airport authority an annual $300,000 licensing fee for the use of roughly 933,000 square feet of airport property, with a 3% annual increase.

Over 40 years, that totals to approximately $34 million, with two optional five-year extensions that could extend the term to 50 years, as per a report from The Tennesean.

The Boring Company celebrated the Music City Loop’s approval in a post on its official X account. “The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority has unanimously (7-0) approved a Music City Loop connection/station. Thanks so much to @Fly_Nashville for the great partnership,” the tunneling startup wrote in its post. 

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Once operational, the Music City Loop is expected to generate a $5 fee per airport pickup and drop-off, similar to rideshare charges. Airport officials estimate more than $300 million in operational revenue over the agreement’s duration, though this projection is deemed conservative.

“This is a significant benefit to the airport authority because we’re receiving a new way for our passengers to arrive downtown at zero capital investment from us. We don’t have to fund the operations and maintenance of that. TBC, The Boring Co., will do that for us,” MNAA President and CEO Doug Kreulen said. 

The project has drawn both backing and criticism. Business leaders cited economic benefits and improved mobility between downtown and the airport. “Hospitality isn’t just an amenity. It’s an economic engine,” Strategic Hospitality’s Max Goldberg said.

Opponents, including state lawmakers, raised questions about environmental impacts, worker safety, and long-term risks. Sen. Heidi Campbell said, “Safety depends on rules applied evenly without exception… You’re not just evaluating a tunnel. You’re evaluating a risk, structural risk, legal risk, reputational risk and financial risk.”

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Tesla announces crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone

The number of miles traveled has contextual significance for two reasons: one being the milestone itself, and another being Tesla’s continuing progress toward 10 billion miles of training data to achieve what CEO Elon Musk says will be the threshold needed to achieve unsupervised self-driving.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has announced a crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone, as it has officially confirmed drivers have surpassed over 8 billion miles traveled using the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) suite for semi-autonomous travel.

The FSD (Supervised) suite is one of the most robust on the market, and is among the safest from a data perspective available to the public.

On Wednesday, Tesla confirmed in a post on X that it has officially surpassed the 8 billion-mile mark, just a few months after reaching 7 billion cumulative miles, which was announced on December 27, 2025.

The number of miles traveled has contextual significance for two reasons: one being the milestone itself, and another being Tesla’s continuing progress toward 10 billion miles of training data to achieve what CEO Elon Musk says will be the threshold needed to achieve unsupervised self-driving.

The milestone itself is significant, especially considering Tesla has continued to gain valuable data from every mile traveled. However, the pace at which it is gathering these miles is getting faster.

Secondly, in January, Musk said the company would need “roughly 10 billion miles of training data” to achieve safe and unsupervised self-driving. “Reality has a super long tail of complexity,” Musk said.

Training data primarily means the fleet’s accumulated real-world miles that Tesla uses to train and improve its end-to-end AI models. This data captures the “long tail” — extremely rare, complex, or unpredictable situations that simulations alone cannot fully replicate at scale.

This is not the same as the total miles driven on Full Self-Driving, which is the 8 billion miles milestone that is being celebrated here.

The FSD-supervised miles contribute heavily to the training data, but the 10 billion figure is an estimate of the cumulative real-world exposure needed overall to push the system to human-level reliability.

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