After scrapping an August 8 debut date, we can now mark our calendars for a Robotaxi reveal on October 10.
On Tuesday, Tesla held its quarterly earnings call to detail the company’s performance through June 30. During the proceedings, CEO Elon Musk also disclosed more details on the company’s autonomous Robotaxi, with a reveal set for October 10, and mentioned the company will show off “a couple other things” during the unveiling.
Starting with the company’s earnings: Tesla reported $1.5 billion in operating profit for the second quarter of 2024. That figure is down 45% quarter-over-quarter from Q2 2023, after an already rough start to the year. In the first quarter, Tesla’s profits were also down 55%. Much of that loss can be attributed to Tesla’s aggressive price-slashing strategy in order to boost sales, as its rivals also offer incentives to conquest buyers away from what has been (and still remains) the best-selling EV brand. Through June 30, Tesla produced 410,831 total models this year, and delivered 443,956 units — the latter figure representing a nearly 5% drop from last year.
Tesla did hit notable milestones this quarter, however, including a record $890 million in regulatory credit sales. Its energy storage business is also booming, with deployments skyrocketing to 9.4-gigawatt-hours in Q2 2024, well beyond any previous quarter.
For Musk, though, the major focus is in autonomy, both with its “Optimus” humanoid robot development and the self-driving Robotaxi. Other developments, for the moment, are “in the noise,” as he homed in on autonomy as the company’s long-term profit generator.
“Regarding full self-driving and robotaxi, we’ve made a lot of progress with FSD in Q2, and with version 12.5 beginning rollout, we think customers will see many improvements in how full self-driving works.” Asked when we could possibly expect the first completely unsupervised robotaxi ride to take place, Musk said it could happen this year. He also mentioned that he has been “overly optimistic” with his predictions, however, so he added it will definitely happen by next year, if not earlier.
