Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke in a different tone during the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. The best way to describe it is that he was more subdued than usual on these calls.
Take new products, for example. Musk often promises huge technological leaps on tight deadlines for Tesla’s upcoming products (think Roadster or Cybertruck). This time around, he preached patience.
“I would now say that whenever you have an all-new product with an all-new supply chain, and everything is new, its growth curve is always a stretched S-curve. So you should expect very slow initial production for CyberCab and Semi,” Musk said.
I’m not the only one who noticed the difference.
“Tesla’s earnings calls are usually freewheeling affairs, with pulsating electronic music and wildly optimistic projections from CEO Elon Musk, who often likes to crack crude jokes and giggle. Today was different,” wrote Theo Wayt in The Information.
“Instead of the typical sci-fi rhapsodies about self-driving vehicles taking over the world and robots solving poverty, Musk spent much of the call talking about constraints on his vision for Tesla.”
Photo by VV Shots on Getty Images
Elon Musk ‘injects some realism’ into Optimus timeline
Even though he was much more subdued during the first quarter earnings call, a tiger can’t change its stripes and Elon Musk can’t completely abandon his tendency towards hyperbole when talking about his companies.
During the call, he said that while FSD version 14.3 currently “represents a major architectural update,” version 15, which is expected to launch by the end of this year, but certainly next year, will be a complete overhaul of the current system, making even version 14.3 obsolete.
“I think our safety is significantly higher than human driving, but version 15 will take it to another level,” Musk said.
But Musk really dialed back expectations when he talked about Optimus.
During the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, he said Tesla’s near-term goal was to discontinue Model S and Model X production and convert those assembly lines into manufacturing capacity for Optimus. He estimated that the company would begin production in the first half of 2026 and would soon have enough capacity to make 1 million robots annually.
Whether there is a market for 1 million humanoid robots annually remains to be seen, but Musk admitted on this call that even just converting the production capacity is no small task. And while many headlines focused on Musk’s future goal of producing 10 million Optimus robots annually, many skipped over the dose of reality he also delivered.
“Frankly, if we can halt production of a line, dismantle the entire production line, reinstall a completely new one, and get it up and running within four months, that would be an incredibly fast pace. I don’t think any other company on Earth has achieved this, just to objectively clarify and inject some realism into the current situation,” said Musk in the Q1 earnings call.
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“It is impossible to dismantle such a massive production line overnight. This process will take at least several months. You then need to install new production lines, provide all necessary wiring and communication, and test the machines on the new production lines. This also takes several months,” Musk said.
“I don’t know what the production capacity of Optimus will be this year. It’s impossible to predict.”
In January, the company said it would unveil the Gen 3 version of Optimus in the first quarter. Tesla did not do so on Wednesday.
Tesla reports mixed first-quarter results
Tesla missed analyst revenue expectations, reporting $22.39 billion vs. analysts’ $22.64 billion, but earnings of 41 cents per share topped estimates of 37 cents per share.
Revenue was 16% higher year over year, including a 16% increase in auto revenue to $16.2 billion from $14 billion last year.
Tesla delivered more than 358,000 vehicles in the quarter, a 6% increase over last year. But Tesla has reported falling deliveries for two consecutive years.
Maybe the biggest news to come out of the call was Musk’s announcement that 2026 capital expenditures will exceed $25 billion, while free cash flow at the end of the quarter was about $14 billion.
“While this may seem substantial, and we will face negative free cash flow impacts for the remainder of the year, we believe this is the right strategic approach to position the company for its next era,” said Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja.
In addition to the capex, Tesla says it is also incurring costs for six factories that will soon become operational as it invests in new products like the Cyber Taxi, Tesla Semi and Optimus.
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