After delivering a three-quarter revenue report that did not increase profits, Tesla’s Financial Times Phone focused on the AI business.
On October 23, Beijing time, Tesla released its third-quarter results for 2025, showing that the company's third-quarter revenue was US $28.095 billion, setting a new quarterly revenue high, a year-on-year increase of 11.57%; Net profit was US $1.373 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 36.81%.
In the subsequent earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, "As we bring artificial intelligence into the real world, Tesla and our future strategy are at a critical turning point. I think it is necessary to emphasize that Tesla is indeed a leader in real-world artificial intelligence, and no one can do what we can do in real-world artificial intelligence."
However, Tesla has had little response to products such as the Cybercab, which investors are generally concerned about.
Cybercab is expected to start production in the second quarter of next year, with cautious deployment of Robotaxi
Tesla has begun pushing the first version of FSD 14 v14.1 to North American users this month, which is the first major update to FSD in nearly a year. This version has achieved multiple breakthroughs and is called by many analysts "artificial intelligence has entered the physical world."
As Tesla's progress on unsupervised fully autonomous driving (FSD) becomes clear, Musk said he is "confident in expanding Tesla's production."
Musk noted that he did not want to expand production because of the lack of sufficient clarity about fully autonomous cars, and now, Tesla has a clear understanding of this, it is reasonable to expand production.
"The largest single production expansion will be Cybercab, which will be put into production in the second quarter of next year." In an analyst Q & A session that followed, Musk responded.
Tesla Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja highlighted the advantages of the company’s launch of the Model Y series models (such as the Model YL) as well as the driverless network of Robotaxi vehicles.
Regarding Robotaxi, Musk revealed that it is expected that by the end of this year, at least most areas of Austin will no longer have safety drivers.
Musk also said that he expects Tesla Robotaxi to start operations in eight to 10 metropolitan circles by the end of the year, but previously he predicted that Robotaxi will cover half the U.S. population by the end of this year.
He explained,"We are very cautious about deploying Robotaxi, and obviously even an accident can make global headlines, so we'd better be cautious."
Tesla's new third-quarter safety report released on the same day showed that the frequency of accidents caused by autonomous driving technology was nine times lower than the national average. Reports show that when drivers use autonomous driving technology, an average of one collision occurs every 6.36 million miles. The latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) shows that an average of one car accident occurs every 700,000 miles.
Launching the third-generation humanoid robot in the first quarter of next year, Tesla wants to vertically integrate the industrial chain
Musk also reiterated his forecast for the humanoid robot Optimus that the Tesla Optimus could become the world’s largest-selling product with annual output of one million units, one of the important reasons being the scale advantage of Tesla.
“We look forward to launching the third-generation humanoid robot (Optimus V3) in the first quarter of next year.I think it will be very remarkable,” Musk said, saying the third-generation humanoid robot looks “almost like a human being wearing a robot kit.”
However, he also admitted that bringing Optimus to market will not be easy. Tesla's hands and forearms are a huge engineering challenge, and from an electromechanical point of view, manufacturing forearms is much more difficult than other parts of the body.
Previously, foreign media reports said that production had to be suspended due to Tesla's second-generation humanoid robot's hand and front arm design suffered from serious technical difficulties.
Musk emphasized that Tesla has indeed invested a lot of energy in Optimus, because the robot needs to be very dexterous to function in domestic and industrial applications. Since there is currently no mature industrial chain, if Optimus wants to succeed, Tesla must truly achieve vertical integration of the industrial chain.
Asked by analysts how Tesla would address the design and supply chain challenges of Optimus, Musk replied that it is expected to launch the Optimus production line by the end of 2026, after the launch of the Optimus V3 prototype in the first quarter.
At the end of the conference call, Tesla executives discussed the shareholders 'meeting to be held on November 6, and both Musk and Taneja urged shareholders to approve the board's proposal on Musk's compensation plan.
“The key is that enough voting control is needed to have a strong influence, but not too much so that I can’t be fired once I get crazy,” Musk said.
When Musk also introduced Optimus, he said that Optimus is also the reason why he hopes to have more voting control in Tesla through the new compensation package. "If we form this army of robots, do I at least have a strong influence on it? Not control, but strong influence. In short, that's the crux of the matter."
He added, "I wouldn't feel comfortable forming this robot army without a strong enough influence."