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 quarter 12025 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%.
Now, 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.
Real story seems harder to face. Tesla's brand might be losing
its pull now. Elon Musk's comments during the
call lead heavily on future promises.
He spoke about robo taxis, full self driving cars and humanoid
rabbits. 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 Geo fenced areas and remote
human operators. This approach mirrors 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. Now updates have slowed because
Tesla's engineers are focused on making the Austin service work.
Now humanoid robots also return 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. Now.
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 effects more than shareholders, though.
Customers who invested thousands of dollars in the 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 stock
no longer reflects how the business is performing today
reflects how much belief there is in Musk's ability to deliver
tomorrow. Now, 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's 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 100,000 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 logas.
No, 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 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.
How? 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. Hey, thank you so much for
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