Elon Musk tried to rally Tesla bulls Tuesday, brushing off a weak first-quarter earnings report and touting a future of “sustainable abundance.”
Tesla missed expectations on the top and bottom lines and reported a 71% plunge in net income from the year prior.
His comments came as the electric vehicle maker faces a turbulent year, with shares down nearly 40%, European market share slumping along with deliveries and the brand under siege with regular protests at showrooms across the U.S.
When the report came out Tuesday after hours, shares did not react, with all eyes on Musk’s comments on the earnings call. Shares popped Wednesday along with the broader stock market.
Musk immediately addressed his efforts with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency under President Donald Trump, saying he would be reducing his federal budget-slashing efforts starting in May.
“I’ll have to continue doing it for, I think, probably the remainder of the president’s term,” Musk said on the call. “So I think I’ll continue to spend a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it is useful, but starting next month, I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla,” he added.
Here are five key quotes from Musk on the Tesla earnings call, as transcribed by FactSet:
Future of Tesla:
“The future of the company is fundamentally based on large-scale autonomous cars and large-scale and large volume, vast numbers of autonomous humanoid robots.
So, the value of the company that makes truly useful autonomous humanoid robots and autonomous useful vehicles at scale at low cost, which is what Tesla is going to do is staggering. I continue to believe that Tesla with excellent execution will be the most valuable company in the world by far.”
Financial impact of robotaxi:
“I said I think on the last earnings call that we will start to see the prosperity of autonomy take effect in a material way around the middle of next year. We expect to have – be selling fully autonomous rides in June in Austin as we’ve been saying for now several months. So, that’s continued.
But the real question from financial standpoint is when does it really become material and affect the bottom-line of the company and start to be a fundamental part of the – when does it move the financial needle in a significant way? That’s probably around the middle of next year, second half of next year.”
Optimus robots:
“And with regards to Optimus, making good progress in Optimus. We expect to have thousands of Optimus robots working in Tesla factories by the end of this year, beginning this fall. And we expect to scale Optimus up faster than any product, I think, in history to get to millions of units per year as soon as possible. I think we feel confident in getting to 1 million units per year in less than five years, maybe four years. So by 2030, I feel confident in predicting 1 million Optimus units per year. It might be 2029.”
Tariffs:
“Now tariffs are still tough on a company when margins are still low. But we do have localized supply chains in both America, Europe, and China. So that puts us in a stronger position than any of our competitors. And undoubtedly, I’m going to get a lot of questions about tariffs. And I just want to emphasize that the tariff decision is entirely up to the President of the United States. I will weigh in with my advice with the President, which if he will listen to my advice but then it’s up to him, of course, to make his decision.
I’ve been on the record many times saying that I believe lower tariffs are generally a good idea for prosperity. But this decision is fundamentally up to the elected representative of the people being the President of the United States. So I’ll continue to advocate for lower tariffs rather than higher tariffs, but that’s all I can do.”
Tesla energy segment:
“With respect to energy, our energy business is doing very well. The Megapack … enables utility companies to output far more total energy than would otherwise be the case. When you think of the energy capability of a grid, it’s much more than, let’s say, total energy output per year. If a power plants could operate at peak power for all 24 hours as opposed to being at half power, sometimes a quarter power at night, then you could double the energy output of existing power plants.”
