Tesla Q2 Earnings: Here Are the Questions Musk Will Answer

Tesla will report its second quarter earnings results on Wednesday, after the market closes.

As done in the past, the company used the Say Technologies platform to garner questions from retail and institutional shareholders.

As of Tuesday, over 1,750 questions were submitted with the most voted ones focusing on the robotaxi launch and expansion, the unsupervised full self-driving and the development of the Optimus humanoid.

Shareholders can submit questions up until 9 pm on July 23 — an hour and a half before the earnings call begins.

A retail shareholder asked if Tesla can give insight on “how robotaxis have been performing so far” and at what rate they’re expect to expand “in terms of vehicles, geofence, cities, and supervisors.”

The EV maker started offering paid fully driverless rides late last month, with an initial fleet of about 10 Model Ys covering a five-mile radius service area.

The rides were only available through invitation, the first ones sent to influencers, and there was a supervisor in the car at all times, in the passenger seat.

Earlier this month, Tesla owners who had signed up on the website also began receiving invitations. As of now, the service is still not open to the general public.

Last week, Tesla expanded the geofenced area of its robotaxi service in Austin, doubling the original service zone introduced in June.

The company’s CEO has also mentioned that the ride-hailing service will “probably” be coming to the Bay Area “in a month or two”, “as soon as the regulators approve” it.

However, as no more details were revealed since then, the company missed its target.

The second most voted question, with 2,900 votes representing 1.7 million shares, asks the company for “an update on the development and production timeline for Tesla‘s more affordable models.”

“How will these models balance cost reduction with profitability,” the shareholder added, “and what impact do you expect on demand in the current economic climate?”

Last week, Barclays analyst Dan Levy said he believes that the EV maker may “delay the launch of the low-cost model to the fourth quarter, which could be perceived negatively.”

In the meantime, another shareholder, who got 494 votes representing over 499,000 shares, questioned how Tesla means to boost sales of the Cybertruck, as its “ramp is now a year in, but sales have lagged other models.”

In the second quarter, the EV maker sold 143,535 vehicles in the US — down by 12.6% from a year ago. From those, only 4,306 were Cybertrucks. Sales declined by half from the same period last year.

A retail shareholder questions, “what are the key technical and regulatory hurdles still remaining for unsupervised FSD to be available for personal use” and what’s the timeline for that.

The question ranked third when it comes to other shareholders’ votes, with 2,400 votes representing 1.8 million shares.

The question placing fifth reaffirms it, by questioning when Tesla “anticipates customer vehicles to receive unsupervised FSD.” It received 1,400 votes from investors holding 911,500 shares.

Another shareholder wants to know if “front bumper cameras [are] going to be necessary for unsupervised full self driving” and, “if so, what is the company’s plan to retrofit vehicles that do not have them?”

It was the eighth most voted question, with 533 votes representing over 407,000 shares.

Tesla is currently testing the supervised version of its FSD across Europe, as it awaits regulatory approval.

The company has already launched the FSD in China earlier this year, however stricter regulations in Europe mean that Tesla is still limited to testing the technology on the continent.

On Sunday, Elon Musk said that a “step change improvement” to the FSD is coming as the company prepares to publicly release its robotaxi service, granted “that improvements for Austin don’t cause regressions elsewhere.”

“Your Tesla self-driving capability will see a step change improvement as we integrate upgrades for the Austin robotaxi build into the general production release,” the chief executive posted on X.

In mid-June, when the first Model Y operating as part of Tesla’s ride-hailing service was spotted, Elon Musk stated that these are “unmodified Tesla cars coming straight from the factory.”

He confirmed that every new vehicle is “capable of unsupervised self-driving.”

Musk then added that the model featured “a new version of software,” which he expected to be “ready for deployment in a few months” — hopefully in the third quarter.

Shareholders aim for Tesla to answer a few questions about the development of its Optimus humanoid, as three of the top 10 most voted questions focus on the topic.

A retail shareholder questions, “what specific factory tasks is Optimus currently performing, and what is the expected timeline for scaling production to enable external sales? How does Tesla envision Optimus contributing to revenue in the next 2–3 years?”

The question ranked fourth, with 2,300 votes representing 1.8 million shares.

In the seventh place, with 875 votes representing 898,800 shares, another investor questions if there is “any meaningful Optimus milestone changed for this year or next.”

The shareholder also asks if the company expects “thousands of Optimus” to be performing tasks in its factories by year end.

The last questioned ranked among the first ten, which got 517 votes representing over 408,000 shares, was about the humanoid’s capacity.

“Will Optimus “have the dexterity to assemble a smartphone (camera modules, speakers, etc) and therefore eventually assemble itself in the future?,” the shareholder asked.

Over the weekend, Musk responded to an user on X that said that the humanoid’s Total Addressable Market (TAM) was the entire global labor market, saying that “it’s much bigger than that.”

“Everyone will want at least one Optimus personally,” the CEO wrote. Musk also said that the “Optimus V3 is amazing” and “will have agility roughly equal to an agile human.”

A few weeks ago, Tesla‘s chief executive had said that the robot “already” includes Grok’s voice assistant.

The AI chatbot developed by Musk’s company xAI was included in Tesla vehicles in the latest software update.

“Are there any news for HW3 users getting retrofits or upgrades? Will they get HW4 or some future version of HW5?,” a retail investor questioned.

It was the sixth most voted question, with 936 votes representing 906,800 million shares.

Musk acknowledged on the last earnings call of 2024 that HW3 is not powerful enough to include the FSD, saying Tesla will need to upgrade the hardware.

He had previously claimed in 2016 that all Tesla vehicles built from that point on would come with “all necessary hardware for full self-driving capability.”