Tesla

What Tesla does

Tesla designs, builds and sells battery-electric vehicles and battery energy storage systems. It is headquartered in Austin, Texas. Its annual report for 2025 says the company was incorporated in Delaware on July 1, 2003 and became a Texas corporation on June 13, 2024. Its shares have traded on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol TSLA since June 29, 2010. Elon Musk is chief executive.

The company reports two business segments. Automotive covers its vehicles, chiefly the Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV, along with services such as paid Supercharging sessions and insurance. Energy generation and storage covers Powerwall batteries for homes, Megapack batteries for utilities and businesses, and solar products. Tesla says it generally sells directly to customers. The filing lists main factories in Texas, California, Nevada and New York, in Grünheide, Germany, and in Shanghai, China.

Why it matters

Tesla delivered 1,636,129 vehicles in 2025 and deployed 46.7 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy storage products, according to its fourth-quarter 2025 report. The annual report puts revenue for the year at $94.83 billion, 3% less than in 2024. It puts net income attributable to common stockholders at $3.79 billion, down from $7.09 billion. Automotive revenue fell 10%, while energy generation and storage revenue rose 27% to $12.77 billion.

The company says its focus is on bringing artificial intelligence into the real world. The annual report names three efforts: software it sells as Full Self-Driving (Supervised), a ride-hailing service called Robotaxi, and a robot called Optimus that it is working to develop. Robotaxi began in Austin on June 22, 2025 with invited riders, a flat $4.20 fare and a Tesla employee in the front passenger seat, TechCrunch reported. The robotaxi cities tracker follows where the service has gone since.

Recent developments

• October 2, 2026: Tesla reported 486,532 deliveries for the third quarter, 2.1% fewer than the 497,099 a year earlier, and 13.7 GWh of energy storage deployments. Coverage of that report has the full numbers and a comparison with BYD.
• September 2026: Tesla put the Cybercab, a two-seat vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals, on the streets of Austin. On September 4 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had opened an investigation, TechCrunch reported. The agency said the investigation covers the process and technical data Tesla relied on when it certified the vehicle as meeting federal safety standards, according to TechCrunch.
• January 28, 2026: Musk said on an earnings call that Tesla would end production of the Model S sedan and Model X SUV. He said it would build Optimus robots in the same space at its factory in Fremont, California. The Verge reported on October 2, 2026 that both models had been discontinued.
• TechCrunch reported on October 2, 2026 that Tesla had recently launched the production version of its Semi electric truck. It said Tesla had secured up to $30 billion in new lines of credit.

What to watch

• Third-quarter financial results, which Tesla says it will post after the market closes on October 21, 2026.
• The outcome of the federal investigation into the Cybercab. Federal rules require manual controls such as brake pedals, according to TechCrunch. But the Department of Transportation has proposed removing that requirement for vehicles designed to drive themselves, it reported.
• Fourth-quarter deliveries. They will be compared with the 418,227 vehicles Tesla delivered in the last quarter of 2025. That was the first quarter after the $7,500 U.S. federal tax credit for electric vehicles expired on September 30, 2025, a date reported by The Verge.