Investor's Corner
Tesla’s Q2 Earnings Call and how it differs from 2020’s in a big way
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to report Earnings for Q2 2021 later today. Just a year and four days after it revealed its financial performance for Q2 2020, its performance during the second quarter of this year is vastly different from that of last year. With an emerging need for the company’s vehicles and energy products, along with the potential to extend its quarterly profitability streak to eight consecutive quarters, let’s take a look at how the two quarters have differed and what is expected from analysts on the day of the call.
Q2 2020 vs. Q2 2021
Tesla’s Q2 2020 remains one of the biggest “what-ifs” in Tesla’s short and storied history. While the company was riding a wave of momentum due to its three straight reported quarters of profitability, speculation persisted that Tesla might have had issues extending this streak in Q2 ’20. It was a simple enough reason as well. The COVID-19 pandemic was ripping through the world, and Tesla, despite its apparent immunization when it comes to the global semiconductor shortage, was prone to uncertainty at its manufacturing plants that spanned from Buffalo to Shanghai.
The pandemic shut down the company’s main production facility in Fremont for most of the quarter. It affected the company’s trending growth of production throughout its vehicle manufacturing facilities, and Tesla reported lower production figures than in Q1 2020, dropping from 102,627 to 88,272. Deliveries, however, increased from 88,400 to 90,650.
Tesla navigated a difficult Q2 with better-than-anticipated numbers, beating Wall Street expectations with $6.036 billion in revenue, eclipsing Wall Street estimates of $5.146 billion.
In terms of deliveries and production figures, Tesla continued growth, rising from 180,338 production and 184,800 deliveries in Q1 2021 to 206,421 and 201,250 in Q2. These numbers were attributed to the mass-market Model 3 and Model Y, accounting for an overwhelming percentage of each category for each of 2021’s quarters so far. The Model S and Model X were not being produced during Q1, and deliveries of the Model S Plaid started in Q2. The Model X delivery timeline has not been detailed, but Tesla’s website states the vehicle is set to begin deliveries in January-February 2022.
Situations were vastly different from Q2 ’20 to Q2 ’21. Last year’s second quarter was widely up in the air on what Tesla would report. Its ability to hit profitability once again wasn’t much of a shock to Tesla bulls, but others were impressed by the continuing growth story despite tough economic times. The Q2 showing may have contributed to the automaker’s stock soaring into the stratosphere. Already on an upward trend, the stock would continue to increase in value, peaking out at $900.40.
What analysts are saying on the day of Tesla Earnings
Analysts have already put forth their expectations for Tesla’s Earnings Call later today, but some are still putting in their last two cents as market close comes closer.
Tesla investor and former critic Jim Cramer stated earlier today that he expects CEO Elon Musk to talk about competition and the upcoming release of the Tesla Cybertruck. Cramer sees Tesla’s imminent entrance into the pickup market as the company’s introduction to disrupting Ford’s domination of the U.S. passenger truck sector.
“What he [Elon] has to deal with for the first time is competition,” Cramer said. “Let’s see what he does with the challenge of others,” he added, sprinkling in details about Lucid’s introduction to the New York Stock Exchange earlier today.
Oppenheimer’s Colin Rusch, interestingly, said that the firm isn’t “super concerned about results this quarter.” Instead, Oppenheimer will be paying close mind to Tesla’s updates of the ongoing construction projects in Austin, Texas, and Germany at Giga Berlin, along with the progress of Full Self-Driving. “From a technology perspective, the progress on autonomy is really the heart of the matter if you’re making a bullish bet here,” Rusch said to Yahoo Finance.
Tesla recently announced that it would offer a $200 per month subscription version of the $10,000 Full Self-Driving suite. Rusch said there is potential for between 10 and 20 million customers during the latter half of this decade. “You get to some pretty heavy numbers from a cash flow perspective, and I think that’s what’s going to be at stake here for the next couple years.”
$TSLA Performance on Earnings Day
At the time of writing, Tesla stock was up over 2.1%, or $13.60, trading at around $656.88. The stock was up over 3% earlier in the day. The anticipation for an extended profitability streak and potential updates regarding the 4680 battery cell, Giga Texas, and the Cybertruck, may have contributed to the increase in price ahead of the call.
Tesla will report its Earnings for Q2 2021 tonight at 5:30 PM EST, 2:30 PM PST. Prior to the call, Tesla will issue its Q2 2021 Update Letter on the Investor Relations website.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.
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 Robotaxi will be a 24/7 service: here’s when
Tesla Full Self-Driving will now overtake manual driving to avoid disaster
