Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast. I'm thrilled to share some exciting news with you. Over the next two weeks, we're evolving. We'll be broadening our focus to cover all the tech titans shaping our world.
you'll still get the latest insights on Elon Musk, plus so much more. So stay tuned for our official relaunch coming soon. After Tesla's Q1 2025 earnings report, one thing stood out. The numbers were bad, but the stock went up.
Tesla posted its worst margins in years with only 2% profitability and deliveries fell by 50,000 vehicles compared to the previous quarter. Now, most companies would have faced a sell-off after results like that, but instead Tesla's stock surged by as much as 8%.
And the earnings call offered few actual answers. Tesla's leadership blamed broader economic uncertainty for falling demand, saying people are hesitant to make big purchases right now. And that explanation ignores a key fact. EV sales are growing, just not for Tesla. Competitors are posting gains while Tesla's inventory piles up. The real story seems harder to face. Tesla's brand might be losing its pull.
Elon Musk's comments during the call leaned heavily on future promises. He spoke about robo-taxis, full self-driving cars, and humanoid robots.
Now, these ideas have been discussed at Tesla for years without becoming a reality. Yet once again, the future took center stage. Musk said Tesla would launch a small pilot program for self-driving vehicles in Austin by June, starting with just 10 to 20 cars. He also predicted millions of robo taxis on the road by the second half of 2026. Now, the Austin pilot will use geofenced areas and remote human operators, this approach
mirror services like Waymo, even though Musk previously criticized those systems as unscalable. Now Tesla's full self-driving software for consumers, which many customers already paid for, remains completely unfinished. Updates have slowed because Tesla's engineers are focused on making the Austin service work. Humanoid robots also returned to the spotlight. Musk claimed
Tesla will build millions of robots by the end of the decade, leading the company to become the world's most valuable business. But right now, Tesla's robots can only perform basic, scripted tasks under human control. There's no proof yet that Tesla has a competitive advantage in robotics compared to other companies working in the same space.
So they're no different than any other general purpose robot on the market. The gap between Tesla's current performance and its future vision continues to grow. Financial results show tighter margins, slower sales and rising inventory. Yet the market keeps responding to Musk's storytelling. The stock price has drifted away from the company's day-to-day business and attached itself to Musk's longer term promises.
Now, this pattern affects more than shareholders, though. Customers who invested thousands of dollars into Tesla's full self-driving package are still waiting for the tech they were promised years ago. They paid up front for something that they don't have and they don't know when they're going to get. And employees inside Tesla are being shifted between projects that change direction based on external pressure rather than internal readiness.
Now Tesla's earning calls used to focus on product milestones and financial metrics. Now they're more about painting a picture of what the future could look like.
Musk blends technical claims with marketing language, making it harder to separate actual progress from hopeful projections. And the strength of Tesla's stock no longer reflects how the business is performing today. It reflects how much belief there is in Musk's ability to deliver tomorrow. That belief has carried the company through tough periods before, but it also introduces new risks. Faith can drive a stock higher, but eventually, results have to catch up.
how Tesla stock rose because investors are still choosing to believe in the future that Musk describes, even when the present shows warning signs. And when Elon was asked about protests and public criticism of Tesla, he opened the call by stating that those demonstrating against the company were all, everyone was organized and paid. The hundred thousand people were all paid and organized together.
He went on to say, they're obviously not going to say, admit that the reason that they're protesting is because they're receiving fraudulent money or that they are the recipients of wasteful largesse. Now,
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There was no evidence provided to support Elon's claim, though. He never said anything about where he got this information, this data from. And as an engineer, you would expect him to present his data. But it's also not the first time that Musk has said,
the kind of thing without proof. It's a tactic to shift attention away from a substance of criticism and instead cast doubt on the motives of the people raising concerns. And protests have been growing around Tesla factories and facilities, especially in Europe.
They involve unions, labor rights boards, environmental advocates, and even some Tesla employees. Complaints range from unsafe working conditions to anti-union practices. And instead of addressing any of these directly, Musk chose to suggest these people were financially motivated actors, essentially dismissing all criticism as bad faith. Now, as the earnings call continued, Musk moved away from the realities of Tesla's current operations and the protests,
We spent more time discussing projects, of course, that haven't shipped yet. AI, robotaxis and humanoid robots were all in focus in this. For many investors, this shift in tone is very familiar. When margins are down or delivery numbers miss the mark, Tesla's future gets pushed to the front of the story.
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