Tesla profits were nearly halved in the second quarter of 2024, extending a run of woe for the company, lightened only by a surge in energy generation and storage.

According to figures filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Tesla's revenues were mostly flat, registering barely a 2 percent increase. The company's $25.5 billion in revenue was just above the $24.9 billion for the same period in 2023, although revenue from automotive sales was down from $20.4 billion to $18.4 billion.

However, the figure was bumped up by automotive regulatory credits, which rose from $282 million to $890 million, and a surge in energy generation sales, which rose from $1.4 billion to $2.9 billion.

The company's shares dipped as markets digested the news, with some analysts worrying that Tesla's core car business was under pressure. Others looked to the brighter autonomous future promised by CEO Elon Musk.

In an earnings call, Musk blamed discounting from competitors as a factor making life difficult for Tesla rather than, say, the substantial legal costs incurred by laying off 10 percent of its workforce.

The billionaire tycoon did pay tribute to the contribution made by energy storage deployments before warming to his favorite theme: AI and autonomy.

He said: "We've made a lot of progress with Full Self-Driving in Q2. I would encourage anyone to understand the system better, to simply try it out and let the car drive you around."

And then there's the Robotaxi, the launch event of which was abruptly postponed after Musk decided he wanted changes made. During the call, Elon said the launch had been moved to October 10.

In a rare moment of introspection, Musk admitted of unsupervised Full Self-Driving that "my predictions on this have been overly optimistic in the past." The Robotaxi depends on being able to navigate roads without human intervention, and Musk said he "would be shocked if we cannot do it next year."

The SpaceX supremo also noted the alleged impending arrival of Tesla's robot, Optimus, and said that the first version of the machine would conveniently be for Tesla consumption only - "doing useful things by the end of next year in the Tesla factories." In 2026, he expected to be able to sell version 2 of the device to consumers. We'd hate to suggest he just picked a year out of the air.

"I think the long term value of Optimus will exceed that of everything else at Tesla combined," he said. "I think everyone on Earth is going to want one. There's 8 billion people on earth, so it's 8 billion right there."

It's good to see Musk learning his lessons about being overly optimistic.

The Xitter owner also mentioned opportunities for integrating xAI's chatbot Grok into Tesla's software and said that shareholder approval would be needed before any investment was made.

He posted a poll on X to "test the waters" on whether Tesla should invest $5 billion in xAI. At the time of writing, 68.8 percent of the 635,670 votes were in favor, and 31.2 percent were against. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/07/24/tesla_q2_2024/