Elon Musk breaks his own Tesla (TSLA) earnings rule in desperate move
Elon Musk is breaking his own rule of not making announcements during Tesla earnings as the CEO appears desperate amid a brand crisis.
Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, do not report the most typical earnings.
Earlier in Tesla’s run as a public company, Musk had often been combative with Wall Street analysts. Tesla became one of the first major companies to prioritize taking softball questions from retail investors over more challenging questions from analysts.
In 2021, Musk even said that he would stop attending most Tesla earnings calls, which is highly unusual for the CEO of a major publicly traded company:
“I will no longer be the default during earnings calls. Going forward, I will most likely not be on earnings calls unless there’s something really important that I need to say.”
However, he ended up attending virtually all Tesla earnings calls after making that comment.
Musk has also often said that “Tesla earnings calls are not a place for product announcements” and has shut down the idea of using the platform for revealing new information about the company.
The CEO appears to be moving away from that amid a crisis at Tesla.
Tesla has confirmed that, along with its earnings on Tuesday, the automaker will also hold a “live company update”:
In addition to posting first quarter results, Tesla management will hold a live company update and question and answer webcast that day at 4:30 p.m. Central Time (5:30 p.m. Eastern Time).
This is the first time Tesla has announced something like that.
It comes after Tesla also held an all-hands meeting publicly for the first time just a month ago.
This is happening amid a significant crisis at Tesla. The company experienced its first year of declining sales in 2024, and the decline accelerated in 2025 amid boycotts and protests over Musk’s involvement in politics.
Tesla’s sales are declining, gross margins are shrinking, the Cybertruck is proving to be a commercial flop, and Tesla owners are selling their vehicles in mass to distance themselves from the increasingly more controversial CEO.
Musk held the all-hands meeting publicly amid this crisis and sort of used the event to promote Tesla’s products and more directly, its stock.
Tesla’s stock is down 40% year-to-date, and it’s currently down 4% in pre-market trading a day before the earnings.
What could Tesla announce at the “company update”?
Musk’s public all-hands meeting, along with the attachment of a “company update” to the earnings, both appear to be desperation moves amid a declining stock price and brand crisis at Tesla.
With Tesla delivering ~40,000 fewer vehicles in Q1 2025 versus last year, the automaker is expected to have a tough quarter, which the CEO doesn’t want to pile onto an already long series of bad news.
Last Friday, Reuters released a report claiming a delay in Tesla’s launch of its previously announced, more affordable EV in the US. More importantly, the report appears to make more people understand that Tesla’s upcoming “more affordable EV” is simply a stripped-down Model Y.
Musk may use this “company update” to clarify Tesla’s plans for more affordable EVs, but if they are not ready to go into production right away, it’s unlikely, as the CEO wouldn’t want to fall into the Osborne effect.
It’s more likely that Musk will stick to the same stock-pumping approach he has in the last few years: self-driving and robotics.
The CEO has repeatedly said that Tesla is worth nothing if it doesn’t solve self-driving, and he more recently added that he sees Tesla becoming the most valuable company in the world with its humanoid robots.
I would expect Tesla’s “company update” to focus on those areas.
Musk will likely release more detailed plans about the planned launch of the “unsupervised self-driving” ride-hailing fleet in Austin. We previously reported that Tesla will use the launch of the geo-fenced, teleoperation-assisted fleet as a “win” in self-driving despite being an approach similar to what Waymo has been doing for years and that Musk has been criticizing as unscalable.
It’s a moving of the goalpost compared to Tesla’s previous promises of customer vehicles becoming capable of robotaxi self-driving.
The unveiling of the latest generation of Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, also wouldn’t be surprising.
Tesla has made impressive progress on the robotics side of things with its latest prototypes, but all previous demonstrations of the robots included teleoperation by humans. Until that’s a thing of the past, the Optimus robot has only minimal use cases and value. It will be something to look out for.
Along with these potential product announcements, it is also possible that Musk will announce a proposal for Tesla to invest in xAi, which he would likely present in conjunction with the integration of Grok in Tesla vehicles and robots.
Electrek’s Take
You can sense the desperation here. Tesla is afraid that the earnings will send the stock spiraling further down, and it plans a little pumping session at the same time to compensate.
I am curious to see whether it works or not. Lately, I think the stock more closely relate to whether or not people believe Musk’s claims than anything else and certainly not fundamentals.
With Tesla’s earnings anticipated to decline in the upcoming report and future earnings likely adjusted down, Tesla will trade at record-high price-to-earnings and future earnings ratios.
Every time that happened, Tesla’s stock somewhat quickly readjusted. Still, it will be interesting to see if whatever Musk announces at the “company update” can prevent that from happening, or if Tesla shareholders will start to question whether Musk’s views on Tesla’s self-driving and robotic efforts are accurate.
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China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) has unveiled its latest battery cell technologies, which charge as quickly as filling up a gas tank while potentially lowering costs without compromise.
CATL has quickly become the world’s largest battery manufacturer by a wide margin. It is one of, if not the biggest, force for advancing electric transportation.
A big part of CATL’s success is due to its advancements in lithium-iron phosphate battery cells, also known as LFP. LFP cells are cheaper than nickel-rich batteries, but they used to have much lower energy density.
The Chinese battery manufacturers managed to close the gap somewhat while maintaining lower costs, resulting in LFP cells becoming popular for entry-level EVs.
Now, CATL is looking to do the same with sodium-ion batteries.
Like LFP cells, sodium-ion battery cells have the potential to be cheaper than more common Li-ion cells, but they also offer potential for superior performance, particularly in terms of faster charging and longer lifecycles.
CATL has unveiled today Naxtra, its new sodium-ion battery cells, and it claimed some truly impressive specs.
The new cell reportedly achieves an energy density of 175 Wh per kg (385 Wh per lb), on par with the higher-end of LFP battery cells.
The new cells also offer potential for significant safety improvements.
CATL shared several intense stress tests, including drilling into a cell and even cutting it in half without any thermal event:
The next-gen sodium cells could help further lower the cost of electric vehicles without compromising performance, and while increasing safety.
On top of the new Naxtra cell, CATL has also unveiled its next-gen Shenxing LFP battery cells.
Its charge rate is truly impressive. CATL shared several examples of cars charging at around 1,000 kW and maintaining over 500 kW at over 50% state of charge:
The new cell is being described as capable of adding 300 miles (482 km) of range in about 5 minutes – depending on the EV model.
That’s virtually as quick as filling up a tank of gas.
CATL says that the Shenxing will be in 67 electric vehicle models by the end of the year.
The next-gen cell was unveiled after BYD, CATL’s biggest competitor, also unveiled its latest technology, capable of charging electric vehicles at extremely high speeds.
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New York State has announced an extra $30 million for point-of-sale rebates to lease or buy more than 60 new EV models.
The rebates are available to consumers through New York’s Drive Clean Rebate program, which offers a point-of-sale rebate off the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of an EV at participating car dealerships in New York State.
The rebate is available in all 62 counties, with the highest rebate of $2,000 available for EVs with a greater-than-200-mile range. (For a 40- to 199-mile range, the rebate is $1,000.) The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) runs the program.
NYSERDA President and CEO Doreen M. Harris said, “Converting to EVs reduces the total cost of vehicle ownership through lower fuel and vehicle maintenance costs, and NYSERDA is proud to help provide New Yorkers with more purchasing power through these rebates.”
The Drive Clean Rebate program has issued over 190,000 rebates to consumers since 2017, contributing to the more than 280,000 EVs on the road in New York State.
NYSERDA also boosted its EV charging incentives. Through the Charge Ready NY 2.0 program, the state is boosting the cash available for Level 2 charger installations at apartment buildings, workplaces, and hotels from $2,000 to $3,000 per port. And if the chargers go into disadvantaged communities, that amount jumps to $4,000 per port.
New York has racked up over 17,000 public EV chargers, making it second only to California for charger count. On top of that, there are more than 4,000 semi-public stations tucked into workplaces and multifamily buildings across the state.
Read more: New York awards $60M to Revel to install 267 DC fast chargers
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LTL carrier ArcBest Freight (ABF) announced plans to add five new Orange EV electric terminal tractors to its existing ZEV fleet, bringing its total deployment of these battery electric HDEVs to 14 … with even more to come.
LTL stands for “Less than Truck Load,” and basically means that, since whatever you’re shipping won’t take up a full container, you can share the costs of shipping with other customers with goods going the same way. You save a little more money and the shipper makes a little more money, making it a rare win-win scenario in the shipping space. And that’s important, because LTL containers amount to a massive 15% of total US shipping.
ABF has been putting Orange EV yard dogs to work in their LTL traffic terminals since their initial deployment of four trucks in June 2022. The company added five more a few years later, and just purchased five more — further underscoring their confidence in the benefits of transitioning their fleet to electric power.
“The Orange EV terminal trucks meet our operational requirements and expectations for safe, reliable, and affordable service and performance,” explains Matthew Godfrey, ABF Freight president. “We’re committed to responsible environmental management, and our investment in EVs aligns with our continuous efforts to enhance efficiency while maintaining exceptional service standards.”
ABF joins other large logistics companies like YMX and DHL in deploying the Orange EV terminal trucks, which have logged hundreds of thousands of hours of service for their customers.
Electrek’s Take
Over at The Heavy Equipment Podcast, we had a chance to talk to Orange EV founder Kurt Neutgens ahead of last year’s ACT Expo for clean trucking. On the show (embedded, above), Kurt explained how his experience at Ford helped inform his design ideology, and that the Orange EV was designed to be cost competitive with diesel options, even without subsidies.
Give it a listen, then let us know what you think of the big yard dogs in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Orange EV; via PR Newswire.
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