Tesla‘s shareholders are pressuring the company’s management ahead of the upcoming first quarter earnings call, scheduled for April 22. In the first three months of the year, Tesla posted weaker-than-expected deliveries and concerns over CEO Elon Musk’s political activity rose.
As usual, Tesla used Say Technologies platform to garner questions from retail and institutional shareholders. As of Thursday, over 2,500 questions were submitted with the most voted ones focusing on the upcoming affordable model, progress on the Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, demand concerns, and updates on both Robotaxi and Optimus.
Full Self-Driving
The top-voted question, which has received about 2,700 upvotes representing 1.5 million shares so far, focused on Tesla’s assisted driving software.
“When will FSD unsupervised be available for personal use on personally-owned cars?” a retail shareholder asked.
Tesla announced in January on X that its vehicles have started driving themselves to their loading dock lanes at its Fremont factory — having reached a cumulative of over 50,000 miles. Back then, Elon Musk quoted the post saying, “Unsupervised full self-driving begins.”
For the first time, Tesla launched its (supervised) full self driving software in China via an over the air update last February. In March, the company announced a free one-month trial — which ended on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Elon Musk said on a social media post that the Tesla vehicles will be driving themselves from the factory to the customer’s house “this year” already. “Tesla self-driving will be far safer than human driving,” he also stated.
In a separate question, the eighth most voted one, another shareholder asked for “more details on the plans for HW3 [Hardware 3] upgrade path for FSD.”
Musk acknowledged at the Q4 2024 earnings call that HW3 is not powerful enough for full autonomy saying Tesla will need to upgrade the hardware. This comes as an answer to a claim he made in 2016, when he said Tesla vehicles built from that point on would come with “all necessary hardware for full self-driving capability.”
“I think the honest answer is that we’re going to have to upgrade people’s Hardware 3 computer for those that have bought full self-driving,” he said during the company’s most recent earnings call, adding that it’s “going to be painful and difficult but we’ll get it done.”
New Affordable Model
The second most voted question aimed at the teased cheaper model. At the previous earnings call held in January, the chief executive clarified that Tesla is “still on track to launch a more affordable model in the first half of 2025 and will continue to expand our lineup from there.”
“Is Tesla still on track for releasing “more affordable models” this year?” the shareholder questioned. “Or will you be focusing on simplified versions to enhance affordability, similar to the RWD Cybertruck?”
The question was voted by about 2,600 shareholders who hold a total of 1.3 million shares in the company.
In October last year, Elon Musk disregarded the idea by saying, “Having a regular $25K model is pointless.”
In March, the Chinese outlet 36Kr reported that Tesla is planning a ‘cheaper Model Y’ in response to increasing competition from Chinese EV makers. However, neither Tesla nor Musk commented on the report.
Politics + Tariffs
As of Thursday, the third most voted question refers to the political activity of Trump’s Administration and Elon Musk’s involvement, as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which has led to a wave of protests on Tesla across Europe and North America.
“How is Tesla positioning itself to flexibly adapt to global economic risks in the form of tariffs, political biases, etc.?” the investor asked. The question garnered nearly 2,000 shareholder votes holding about 964,000 shares.
A separate shareholder asked “Did Tesla experience any meaningful changes in order inflow rate in Q1 relating to all of the rumors of “brand damage”?”, which was upvoted by one thousand people.
Business Insider reported earlier on Thursday that the company has cut its production target for the Cybertruck relocating workers to the Model Y production line. The model has been facing weaker than expected demand in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as Tesla prepares to launch it in other global markets later this year.
The fourth most voted question focused on the impact that Tesla faces from the batteries it gets from China’s CATL.” Does Tesla still have a battery supply constraint (noted on Q4 ER call) and how does this change w/tariffs?” the investor asked.
In the previous earnings call, Musk said that despite the brand’s hard work to grow annual volumes, battery packs were a constraint. “But we’re working on addressing that constraint. And I think we will make progress […] and then things are really going to go ballistic next year and really ballistic in 2027 and 2028,” the CEO said, before concluding “Yes, so a bit more on full-self-driving.”
Donald Trump announced earlier this month a 25% tariff on all imported vehicles and auto parts. The U.S. President followed by imposing taxes on all products being imported, with rates going as high as 54% for China — which, since then, has been updated to 245%, as global trade tensions rose between the world’s two largest economies.
As the Elon Musk-led brand produces most of its vehicles domestically, the tariff impact is lower; however, the CEO said the company is not immune to its effects.
Robotaxi + Humanoid
“Robotaxi still on track for this year?” was the seventh most voted question with 1,700 votes from shareholders holding over 640,000 shares in the company. Elon Musk has recently reaffirmed Tesla’s ambitions of starting Cybercab unsupervised full self-driving rides this June, in Austin.
“Our purpose-built Robotaxi product […] will continue to pursue a revolutionary ‘unboxed’ manufacturing strategy and is scheduled for volume production starting in 2026,” Tesla said in its previous shareholders deck.
The fifth most voted question in the Say platform focuses on Optimus — Tesla’s humanoid robot — and the potential impact of the tariffs on its development.
“Regarding the Tesla Optimus pilot line, could you confirm if it is currently operational? If so, what is the current production rate of Optimus bots per week? Additionally, how might the recent tariffs impact the scalability of this production line moving forward?”
ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood defended the brand’s focus on the humanoid robots, stating that Musk is “maniacally focused, seems to me, more than I understood before listening [to Tesla’s last conference call], on humanoid robots”.
As of the time of writing, Tesla is trading 0.2% lower at $241. Year to date, the stock has surged 60.56%.
