Earnings at Tesla almost halved as discounts and price cuts pile pressure on the electric carmaker’s profit margins. Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, blamed “a bit of a hangover” after rivals cut prices “very substantially, which has made it a bit more difficult for Tesla”.
Tesla has sought to drum up interest in its plans for robotaxis, artificial intelligence and “genuinely useful” humanoid robots as deliveries slipped amid cooling demand.
Roadster production
Production of the carmaker’s nextgeneration Roadster sports car is scheduled to begin next year, Musk said on a conference call with investors on July 23. He also said he would be “shocked” if Tesla does not introduce “unsupervised” self-driving software by 2025, and claimed that “several thousand” Optimus robots will be deployed in the company’s factories next year, before it starts manufacturing them for wider use.
Its latest results underlined the challenges Tesla has faced in recent months, however. Total sales at the business rose 2% to $25.5bn in the latest quarter, ahead of expectations of $24.8bn on Wall Street. But profits dropped 45% to $1.48bn.
Shares in Tesla dropped 6.9% during out-of-hours trading in New York. Musk, who also leads SpaceX, the rockets and satellites business, and controls X, formerly known as Twitter, declared earlier this month that both companies like Tesla would relocate their headquarters from California to Texas.
