Investor's Corner
Tesla is a wake-up call for rivals and their ‘awful’ software, says longtime finance host
As Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) battled a fresh wave of criticism following the release of its Q1 2019 vehicle production and delivery report, the company saw a supporter from a rather unlikely place. During a segment on Fox Business Network‘s Mornings with Maria, one of the show’s panels boldly defended Tesla, calling for more support for the company due to its industry-changing innovations.
Tesla and Elon Musk’s court appearance with the SEC was the primary topic in the segment, and the show brought on ARK Invest analyst Tasha Keeney to get her insights on the electric car maker. ARK is among the most bullish supporters of Tesla, with the firm setting a $4,000 price target for the company’s stock provided that it enters the autonomous ride-sharing market. Speaking to the show’s hosts, the ARK analyst reiterated her firm’s stance on the company as a potential leader in the self-driving market.
Dagen McDowell, a longtime finance journalist and one of the panels in Mornings with Maria, pointed out that Tesla’s edge is evident even at its current state where it does not have a consumer-ready full self-driving suite. McDowell argued that among the prominent automakers today, Tesla is the leader when it comes to vehicle software, an emerging industry that could be worth up to $1.2 trillion by 2030.
“You don’t even need to look ahead to autonomous vehicles. I had this discussion with someone I’m close to over the weekend who works in Silicon Valley. Every other automaker, even luxury automakers in Germany, Japanese, and American, they are awful at software. There is no other car and no other car company that compares to a Tesla. We all, as drivers and consumers, ought to be rooting for this company. You don’t have to own stock in it, but you ought to root for them because hopefully, all these automakers will realize, ‘Oh, our software stinks,’” McDowell said.
There is no doubt that Tesla is still learning several key aspects of the vehicle manufacturing process. The company is only turning 16 years old this year, and over that time, it has transformed itself from a niche carmaker that made a very quick and expensive car for the rich to a company that is on the brink of disrupting the mass market auto industry. At its core, Tesla is still a young company, and its lack of expertise in areas such as fine manufacturing processes is understandable, especially considering the number of vehicles it is producing today.
What Tesla has mastery of is vehicle software. Since the days of the first-generation Model S, the company has proven to be far ahead of competitors. Keeney named Tesla’s free over-the-air updates as a prime example of this, since the company’s more experienced rivals are largely still unable to implement the same system on their own vehicles. McDowell proved bolder, flat-out stating that traditional automakers simply don’t know how to make tomorrow’s vehicles. “It’s because they’re dug in and they don’t know how to run a car company in the new century. That’s literally what these companies look like. I’m surprised that Apple and Google haven’t done more to try and manufacture a car or produce software for one,” she said.
Tesla might be ending the week as volatile and polarizing as ever, but the company seems to be heading towards some calmer waters ahead. With the first quarter done, Tesla can now focus more on producing and delivering its vehicles in the second quarter. The over 10,000 vehicles in transit at the end of Q1 could actually work in Tesla’s favor in Q2, as the company will be starting the quarter with over 10,000 electric car sales.
Apart from this, Elon Musk and the SEC’s court hearing proved to be far less dramatic than what the company’s critics have wished. Prior to Musk’s appearance in court, speculations among Tesla skeptics pointed to the possibility that he would be stripped off the CEO’s title, and possibly even fired from the company. Over the course of the hearing, Judge Alison Nathan proved incredibly objective, asking the SEC to clarify if Musk would need to get approval for tweets that reiterated information that had already been disclosed. She also asserted that government lawyers must take all steps necessary to reach a resolution before invoking contempt.
At the end of the hearing, the judge urged Elon Musk and the SEC’s legal team to “take a deep breath, put your reasonableness pants on, and work this out.” Musk did not speak during the hearing, though he did state that he was “very impressed with Judge Nathan’s analysis” as he was leaving the courthouse.
As of writing, Tesla stock is trading +2.01% at $273.15.
Watch the recent Tesla segment in Fox Business Network‘s Mornings with Maria in the video below.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
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 confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
