Tesla’s Mystery Tour Rolls Past More Weak Earnings
Why focus on falling EV sales when there’s dreams of AI and robotics to sell?
Focus on the bot.
Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg
The secret to getting a trillion-dollar valuation on a struggling car company is to convince everyone that you are not in fact a car company. Tesla Inc. led with that in its latest results announcement, declaring the last quarter — a dreadful affair in financial terms — a “seminal point” in its history. The second quarter apparently kicked off Tesla’s transition from leading in electric vehicles and renewable energy to the new vistas of artificial intelligence and robotics.
We’ve got the first bit of the transition alright, where the old stuff fades. But we are yet to see the other, more exciting bit show up in force. Tesla’s remarkably patient investors, treated to another earnings call that mostly elided discussion of the stuff the company actually sells in favor of stuff it either barely sells or doesn’t at all, now exist almost entirely on a diet of wild promises.