Tesla will report its second-quarter 2026 earnings results on Wednesday, after the US market closes at 5:30 pm E.T.
As previously done, the company used the Say Technologies platform to collect questions from both retail and institutional shareholders. The management is expected to answer the top-voted ones.
As of Tuesday, over 400 questions were submitted, with the most voted ones — ranked by total shares represented — focusing on the Robotaxi launch and fleet expansion, the timeline for unsupervised Full Self-Driving on customer vehicles, and the Optimus humanoid robot production ramp.
The five most frequently tagged categories were FSD with 74 questions, Robotaxi with 61, Optimus with 42, Cybercab with 26, and SpaceX with 22 — following the also Elon Musk-led company’s record-breaking IPO earlier this year.
Robotaxi and Cybercab
Robotaxi and Cybercab questions drew the largest combined shareholder weight, with five entries in the top-voted list representing an estimated 9.3 million shares across retail and institutional investors.
The highest-weighted question in this category, backed by 5.4 million shares, asked about “the main constraints to expanding robotaxi operations faster” and how those align “with Cybercab production.”
A second, representing 1.5 million shares, challenged the company’s track record directly, noting that “Tesla has missed short term guidance on robotaxi 3 earnings reports in a row, from 50% coverage of USA by end of 2025 to most recently 7 new cities in 1H26.”
The company announced on Tuesday that it expanded the service to Orlando and Tampa, adding two more Florida cities to the network one day before earnings.
The move brought the total number of metropolitan areas with active robotaxi service to seven — Austin, Bay Area, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa — across three states.
Phoenix and Las Vegas are the only two outstanding from the original seven-city first-half target outlined by Tesla in January.
The announcements follow a pattern that has repeated ahead of each of the last three earnings reports: unsupervised rides in Austin declared at Q4, Dallas and Houston launched four days before Q1 results, and now Orlando and Tampa the day before Q2.
Fleet Size Concerns
As of mid-July, Tesla operated roughly 175 registered vehicles across its Texas cities, far below the 1,000-vehicle year-end target Morgan Stanley forecast in December 2025. Musk acknowledged on the Q1 call that Robotaxi revenue “will not be super material this year.”
An institutional investor, whose question represented 1.3 million shares, asked “why is it necessary to limit robotaxi operations within specific zones within cities to start.”
Another retail shareholder, representing 518,900 shares, pressed for specifics on “how many vehicles are targeted for the fleet by year-end, and what recurring revenue contribution is expected.”
On the Cybercab, a retail investor question backed by 595,800 shares asked bluntly when “cybercab start customer rides.”
Production of the purpose-built, two-seat autonomous vehicle began at Giga Texas in February, roughly six weeks ahead of the timeline Musk had reaffirmed.
A July 18 drone flyover showed 245 Cybercabs staged across the factory’s lots — more than double the roughly 102 units observers counted five weeks earlier.
Engineering tests on Austin public roads began June 30, with 34 vehicles in the public-road test fleet.
On Monday, Tesla confirmed that the Cybercab will be the first vehicle in its lineup with direct Starlink V5 integration, embedding SpaceX’s latest satellite terminal into the robotaxi — a move that provides a backup connectivity layer for navigation, fleet management and over-the-air updates in areas where cellular coverage is weak.
Musk cautioned on the Q1 call that the early ramp would be “very slow” before climbing later in the year.
Optimus
Optimus drew four questions out of the top 10, totalling roughly 7.5 million shares, making the humanoid robot the second-largest theme by shareholder representation.
The heaviest-weighted question, backed by 5.3 million shares, asked for “the current status of Optimus Gen 3 production ramp, initial deployment in factories, and external sales timeline/volume for 2027.”
Tesla plans low-volume production beginning this summer at its Fremont factory, where the former Model S and Model X line is being converted into a humanoid robot site.
An institutional investor, representing 1.4 million shares, drew a comparison between Optimus and FSD data collection.
Tesla‘s fleet “created a huge data advantage by collecting billions of real-world miles” for autonomous driving, the question noted, but “that advantage doesn’t yet exist for Optimus.”
VP of AI software Ashok Elluswamy told internal teams that 2026 would be “the most demanding year of their careers.”
A third question, backed by 341,900 shares, asked about “the biggest remaining technical and manufacturing bottlenecks preventing Optimus from reaching mass production” and what “concrete milestones” investors should monitor over the next 12 months.
A fourth, representing 493,000 shares, asked about Tesla‘s plan to roll out “Digital Optimus with SpaceXAI” and deploy “Megapods to Superchargers.”
Musk has repeatedly described Optimus as central to the company’s long-term valuation, writing on X that “~80% of Tesla‘s value will be Optimus.”
FSD, Hardware 3
Four questions totalling approximately 1.4 million shares addressed unsupervised Full Self-Driving availability and the Hardware 3 gap — three issues that are increasingly interlinked as the company approaches unsupervised deployment on customer vehicles.
A retail shareholder question backed by 399,900 shares noted that “Elon confirmed HW3 cannot achieve Unsupervised FSD” and asked for “the plan for owners who paid for FSD — free hardware upgrades, transfers, or refunds.”
The HW3 issue has been a sore point since the Q1 call, when Musk attributed the shortfall to memory bandwidth, saying the older computer has roughly one-eighth that of AI4.
Around four million vehicles worldwide are affected. A Dutch owner launched a collective EU-wide claim in April over the exclusion.
Tesla began rolling out FSD V14 Lite to a first wave of Hardware 3 owners on June 29.
The company on Monday expanded the software beyond the small early-access pool to a broader group of affected vehicles — a version that narrows the gap with newer cars but stops short of unsupervised capability.
Two separate questions, representing 456,700 and 302,700 shares respectively, asked about the timeline for unsupervised FSD on consumer-owned vehicles.
One asked for “unsupervised FSD with point-to-point summon capability,” while the other questioned “how will police know you’re not driving if you get pulled over for speeding.”
Musk said on the Q1 call he was “just guessing” but that unsupervised FSD would reach consumer vehicles “probably in the fourth quarter.”
The FSD fleet has surpassed 10 billion cumulative miles, matching the threshold Musk set in January as the data volume needed for safe unsupervised driving.
In Europe, the software has crossed 50 million kilometres driven across five countries in roughly three months, after it was approved in the Netherlands in April.
A fourth question, backed by 271,600 shares, asked “why has progress stalled on Tesla Insurance” and whether it “will be a prerequisite for Tesla taking liability for customer vehicles when unsupervised FSD is released.”
In January, Lemonade launched an autonomous car insurance product offering approximately 50% lower rates for FSD miles — a product Morgan Stanley called a turning point in how insurers treat autonomous technology.
SpaceX, Corporate Strategy
Two questions representing roughly 2 million shares addressed the growing financial and operational ties between Tesla and SpaceX.
An institutional investor backed by 1.3 million shares referenced prior management statements that “Tesla would lead the R&D while SpaceX would lead production for Terafab” and asked for an update on “how that division of responsibilities is evolving.”
Terafab, the semiconductor fabrication project unveiled in March, is a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI.
SpaceX estimated an initial investment of $55 billion and a total of $119 billion for all phases.
Tesla‘s finance chief confirmed that the cost is not yet included in the company’s 2026 capital-expenditure plan, which already exceeds $25 billion.
Intel joined the project in April as the manufacturing partner.
Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives has described the venture as a “first step” toward a Tesla-SpaceX merger he predicts will occur “likely in 2027.”
A retail shareholder question backed by 668,200 shares asked management — and specifically CEO Elon Musk — to “commit to achieving at least half of the goals outlined in your 2025 compensation plan before considering any offers to acquire or merge Tesla.”
The question reflects broader anxiety among retail holders over the potential restructuring that a SpaceX combination could entail.
