Tuesday evening, Tesla will release it's Q1 2025 earnings. Professional analysts have put in a lot of work to try to predict how the numbers will come out, and if you're interested in that sort of thing, you can find it easily on Google.
Instead, I'm going to try to forecast how Tesla management will handle the Q&A portion of the event. Some of the questions will come live from professional analysts—but Tesla has also indicated they will respond to [questions from retail investors submitted and voted on via the Say app](https://app.saytechnologies.com/tesla-2025-q1). So I'm going to look at the current top-voted six questions. Tesla may not address every single one of them, but I expect them to try to answer most of them.
**TLDR; It's clear even relatively bullish Tesla investors have serious concerns about the company, and Tesla management is going to have a difficult time reassuring them during the earnings call.**
Anyway, here are the questions:
>When will FSD unsupervised be available for personal use on personally-owned cars?
This is current top-voted question on Say, which is a little surprising, because I think it's a pretty safe bet that Tesla's management will decline to make any predictions. Perhaps Elon Musk will blame people's alleged irrational fear of self-driving cars, as he did in Tesla's previous earnings call, where he complained that, "if somebody scrapes that shin with an autonomous car, it's headline news". There's another reason for Tesla to refuse to make promises though: there's simply no evidence Tesla's self-driving tech has caught up to where Waymo was several years ago. More on that below.
>Is Tesla still on track for releasing “more affordable models” this year? Or will you be focusing on simplified versions to enhance affordability, similar to the RWD Cybertruck?
Here, again, I think we can predict fairly confidently what Tesla will say: they're going with somewhat cheaper variants of existing models (the new Cybertruck is "only" about $70,000). But I understand why Tesla investors want this question answered—during Tesla's earnings call for Q1 2024, it was hinted that the company would be introducing a *much* less expensive model to compete with budget EV models offered by companies like Nissan and Kia. The prospect was greeted with enthusiasm by investors. Now, however, those investors are going to want to see Tesla deliver.
Unfortunately, if the plan for a new, cheaper Tesla model were ever on track, they've probably have been completely derailed by Trump's tariffs. In fact, just yesterday [Reuters released a story about just how big of a problem the new tariffs are for Tesla](https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/trumps-tariffs-chinese-parts-cybercab-semi-disrupt-teslas-us-production-plans-2025-04-16/). Some may see a silver lining in that tariffs should also make Nissans and Kias much more expensive, but I'm not sure Tesla will even *try* to make that argument. Musk himself has said tariffs will have a ["significant"](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1905076240479895932) impact on Tesla, and I think he means it.
>How is Tesla positioning itself to flexibly adapt to global economic risks in the form of tariffs, political biases, etc.?
This question gets to tariffs directly. Tesla management will no doubt try to offer some hope—perhaps pointing out that the situation is still up in the air to a significant extent—but it's going to be hard to sugarcoat the situation.
I'm not exactly sure what the questioner means by "political biases", but stick a pin in it, because it's not the only highly-voted question that mentions politics.
>Does Tesla still have a battery supply constraint (noted on Q4 ER call) and how does this change w/tariffs?
This references a comment Musk made in the previous earnings call about battery production, rather than demand, being the biggest constraint on Tesla sales. It seems quite likely this is no longer true—because demand is down! That said, the reporting I've read on how tariffs will affect Tesla hasn't mentioned battery production *specifically* as an area where tariffs will really hurt.
>Did Tesla experience any meaningful changes in order inflow rate in Q1 relating to all of the rumors of “brand damage”?
It is extremely weird that this question is framed in terms of "rumors", because, to be clear, this is what we are talking about:
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The above scene is currently playing out somewhere on the order of a hundred, two hundred times *per week* across the country.
In terms of what would be good for Tesla's stock price Wednesday morning after earnings, probably the best possible thing that could happen is that Musk uses the earnings call to announce that he's stepping down from the Trump administration and devoting his full attention to Tesla. Personally, I'm not sure this would actually solve Tesla's problems, but I think lots of investors think it would.
However, it seems unlikely Musk will step down from his role in the Trump administration in the foreseeable future. Two weeks ago, when Politico reported Musk was leaving the Trump administration, both Musk and the White House [quickly denounced the story as "fake news"](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-trump-friend-and-adviser-doge/). Furthermore, Musk's [X feed](https://x.com/elonmusk) is still in full MAGA mode, giving absolutely no indication he regrets anything about his political activities.
The best-case scenario here (again, from a Tesla shareholder point of view) is probably that we get some spin about how given X, Y, and Z, Tesla's Q1 delivery numbers are actually better than people realize. A claim of that sort will probably be met with skepticism from many investors, but it beats Musk going on a rant how he's the target of a vast criminal conspiracy funded by George Soros. The latter possibility is not one I'd necessarily bet much money on, but it's also hard not to wonder about given the current state of Musk's X account.
And last but certainly not least:
>Robotaxi still on track for this year?
For context, in his opening remarks for Tesla's most recent earnings call, Musk said "We feel confident in being able to do an initial launch of unsupervised, no one in the car, full self-driving in Austin in June." Then, during the Q&A section, the very first question, submitted via the Say app, specifically asked about unsupervised FSD in California, to which Musk replied, "I'm confident that we'll release unsupervised FSD California this year as well".
Finally, when an analyst asked about how the company will know whether or not it's on the right track in 12 months, Musk went even further: "I'm very confident we'll have released unsupervised full self-driving, fully autonomous Teslas in Austin and several other cities in America by the end of this year, as probably everywhere in America next year, at everywhere in North America, at least. I think in terms of next year, our constraints, I think it's likely to be just regulatory."
I expect Musk to have to walk this rhetoric back next week. Maybe only slightly—maybe "this year" becomes "by end of year or early next year". But it still won't exactly be the news investors are hoping to hear.
The trouble here is that there's simply no evidence Tesla has figured out how to make self-driving cars that can operate safely without human supervision. It's possible Tesla really will try to take advantage of a ~~lax~~ friendly regulatory environment in Texas to launch a taxi service in Austin fairly soon—but even then, it seems likely these taxis will be [teleoperated, not unsupervised](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1gz5clw/tesla_hiring_teleoperators_for_robotaxis/). (Musk's equivocation between "unsupervised" and "no one in the car" has been [noted by Tesla watchers](https://electrek.co/2025/03/26/tesla-hypes-unsupervised-full-self-driving-june-actually-launch/).) Worse, there's no indication Tesla has made *any* progress on launching robotaxis outside Texas—[misleading hype about getting a chauffeur license in California](https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-got-a-permit-to-operate-a-taxi-service-in-california-but-theres-a-catch/#:~:text=5%3A53%20PM-,Tesla%20Got%20a%20Permit%20to%20Operate%20a%20Taxi%20Service%20in,t%20allow%20for%20driverless%20rides) notwithstanding.
In short, a lot of investors are going to be going into this earnings call looking for reassurance from Tesla. And I just don't think the company can give it to them.
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