Earnings at Tesla reportedly almost halved as discounts and price cuts piled pressure on the electric carmaker’s profit margins.
According to The Guardian, CEO Elon Musk blamed “a bit of a hangover” after rivals cut prices “very substantially, which has made it a bit more difficult for Tesla”.
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Tesla has sought to drum up interest in its plans for robotaxis, artificial intelligence and “genuinely useful” humanoid robots as deliveries slipped amid cooling demand.
Production of the new Roadster sports car was scheduled to begin next year, Musk said on a conference call with investors on Tuesday.
He also said he would be “shocked” if Tesla did not introduce “unsupervised” self-driving software by 2025, and claimed “several thousand” Optimus robots would be sued in the company’s factories next year before it started manufacturing them for wider use.
Results underlined the challenges Tesla has faced in recent months, the Guardian said. Total sales rose 2% to US$25.5bn in the latest quarter, ahead of expectations of $24.8bn on Wall Street. But profits dropped 45% to $1.48bn.
Shares dropped 6.9% during out of hours trading in New York. “We don’t see this as a long-term issue,” Musk said of discounting in the electric vehicle market, “but really fairly short-term.”
