Kalanick's Atoms Eyes Robotaxi Business

Tesla's third-quarter deliveries beat company-compiled analyst expectations by 5.3%, though they declined 2.1% from a year earlier, a drop partly cushioned by Q3 2025's tax credit boost. Seeking Alpha analyst Oliver Rodzianko said the biggest takeaway is that traditional EV demand remains resilient as Tesla pivots toward autonomous taxi services and humanoid robotics as its dominant operating models, while energy storage deployment numbers missed expectations. Rodzianko noted that Chinese rival BYD saw its battery-electric passenger-car sales rise 30.9% year-over-year in the third quarter, underscoring fierce competition in China. Analyst Alexander Grover argued the delivery number is a distraction, since Tesla's valuation assumes unsupervised self-driving at scale, and flagged that Alphabet's Waymo is running more than 500,000 paid driverless rides a week across 15 U.S. metros with LiDAR in its stack, while Tesla still does not disclose how many of its robotaxis run without a safety monitor.

Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in the third quarter, easily surpassing expectations of roughly 461,000 vehicles. While deliveries still slipped 2% from the record 497,099 vehicles delivered a year ago, the sizable beat was encouraging amid lingering concerns over global EV demand. Tesla produced 464,391 vehicles during Q3, meaning deliveries exceeded production by more than 22,000 units, with Model 3 and Model Y vehicles accounting for 478,237 deliveries. Attention now turns to Tesla's full Q3 results, scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 21, after the market closes, with the Zacks Consensus projecting Q3 revenue of $27.61 billion, a roughly 2% year-over-year decline, and earnings of $0.45 per share versus EPS of $0.50 in the prior-year quarter. Tesla stock remains down more than 15% year-to-date and carries a forward P/E multiple of 200X at around $370 a share, the highest in the Mag 7, and lands a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).