Oh, Tesla Really Isn't Doing Well….
Tesla's Q3 2025 report is in!
Tesla hasn’t been doing well for a while now. It’s not just the stagnant ageing line-up and the series of big flop projects that have caused this, but also Musk’s ignorant autocratic leadership and his countless broken bullshit promises, as well as his utterly moronic political ambitions. No company can last long under this combined weight, and Tesla’s 2025 Q3 earnings reports prove it has one foot in the grave. However, you wouldn’t know that if you listened to the media, as almost all reports appear to have left out critical context. Because yes, Tesla’s profits are seriously declining, but no one is talking about what that means for Tesla’s future. And yes, deliveries are up, but nowhere near enough. So, let’s dive in.
Deliveries
Let’s start with the deliveries. Every article I have read on this Q3 report uses the fact that deliveries are up as a foil to the fact that profits are down. It’s always a “yes, but.” And, on the surface, the fact that Tesla delivered 462,890 vehicles in Q3 2025, a 7.4% increase from 2024 Q3, seems like a step in the right direction. But this lacks two crucial pieces of context.
A combination of EV tax breaks set to end soon and a series of newer, cheaper and more capable EVs flooding the market has increased US EV sales. Indeed, many reports point to this being the reason why Tesla’s sales jumped. However, total EV sales in the US grew by 40.7% in Q3 2025, compared to Q3 2024, which is far, far more than Tesla’s pitiful 7.4%. With this rapid market growth, we can see that in real terms, Tesla sales are 33.3% below what they should be.
And, when I say “should be”, I mean where investors expect them to be. One of the main reasons Tesla has been valued so highly is because investors expected Tesla to keep its substantial market share as the EV market expanded. But the opposite is happening.
Also, notice how Tesla mentioned deliveries and not sales? While this is common practice for Tesla, it is nonetheless worrying in this context, considering we know Musk is “delivering” unsold Cybertrucks by the truckload to SpaceX and xAI (read more here). We don’t know how many have been shipped off like this, but, earlier this year, Tesla had over 10,000 unsold Cybertrucks in inventory, and Cybertruck sales have fallen even further since then. So, while Tesla has registered an extra 31,893 deliveries in Q3 2025 compared to Q3 2024, there is a possibility that up to a third of these deliveries were Musk buying his own shite goods to make the numbers look a little less embarrassing.
Profit
With this context, the foil to Tesla’s dire profit situation is gone, and we can see the true rot at the core of the company.
Tesla actually missed the very pessimistic earnings target that market analysts predicted by 7.4% (a target of $0.54 earnings per share; Tesla posted $0.50 earnings per share). But the real news was Tesla’s net income, or profit, for Q3 2025, which stands at just $1.4 billion. That is a whopping 37% drop from their 2024 Q3 profit!
Why such a huge downturn in profit when deliveries are increasing?
Well, this might be the smoking gun that Musk has just “delivered” thousands of Cybertrucks to his other companies for free. After all, those 10,000 Cybertrucks should have sold for $800 million. But we do not have any conclusive evidence that this is what has happened.
Truth be told, we know Tesla is having a major cash crisis at the moment.
Tesla has poured a huge amount of money into projects that have been either abject failures or completely cancelled. Cybertruck development cost Tesla $10 billion, and its dismal sales mean Tesla will never get the vast majority of that expenditure back. Likewise, Tesla has spent close to $4 billion developing the Semi, a project which seems to have been cancelled. Tesla has also spent well over $5 billion on its 4680 battery development to enable the Cybertruck and Semi. However, the battery has yet to meet its promised specs or lower prices enough to stay ahead of the market. As such, Tesla still uses third-party batteries for many of its cars. So, while this $5 billion wasn’t completely wasted, it has seriously failed to deliver on its promised returns. Then there is Tesla’s fabled Dojo AI supercomputer, which Tesla dumped billions of dollars into before cancelling it earlier this year. Similarly, we know Tesla was investing heavily — presumably to the tune of billions of dollars — in a more affordable Model 2, but that project got scrapped too.
That is a lot of money to piss into the wind and not get anything back from, and it will no doubt impact Tesla’s bottom line.
But we also know Tesla’s operational costs are getting out of hand, and its margins are shrinking.
Tesla has had to significantly reduce Cybertruck production, as well as international Model 3 and Model Y production, and sales have overall dropped significantly this year. This has a reverse scale of economy effect, making it much more expensive to produce each vehicle. Like all AI companies, Tesla is increasing how much it trains its Full Self Driving (FSD) AI. This means they are dumping billions of dollars into unprofitable data centres, as well as powering them. However, as I have covered before (read more here), this won’t solve the literally fatal problems with FSD. As such, Tesla is making a huge loss selling FSD subscriptions and operating a tiny Robotaxi fleet, and that isn’t going to change soon.
With this as context, it is a miracle Tesla’s profits have only fallen by 37%, and it shows just how much this artificial spike in US EV sales caused by the EV tax credits ending is helping them.
After the AI Bubble
Okay, so what does this drop in profits mean for Tesla’s future? Well, to put it bluntly, death.
Let me ask you a question: why is Tesla valued so insanely highly?
Five years ago, it was because people expected Tesla to keep its market share as the EV market boomed. Now that the value proposition is failing, as it is evident that the EV market is booming, yet Tesla is still being left far behind. Musk needed something else to increase the bottom line.
So, like the grifter he is, he pivoted to the latest fad: AI. Now Tesla is worth so much because of the promise it will dominate the self-driving market and roll out a humanoid robot capable of completely replacing entire workforces. Musk has even said that Optimus will soon account for 80% of Tesla’s revenue!
The trouble is, even Tesla insiders don’t buy this hype. Executives and lead engineers have told Musk that his Robotaxis and humanoid robots won’t work, won’t be profitable, and won’t be able to replace their dependence on EV sales (read more here, here and here). So reality doesn’t back up this speculation — the only thing supporting it is the AI bubble, and this is set to burst any day now (read more here).
So, how much will Tesla be worth after the AI bubble pops, investors no longer believe Musk’s bullshit, and their unprofitable AI is valued at zero?
Well, the company will be valued as an automobile manufacturer, and they are exclusively valued based on their profit. Take Toyota; it currently has a P/E ratio (the ratio of its value to its profit) of 7.69, which is typical of the industry. Now, let’s be wildly generous and assume Tesla continues to post $1.4 billion profit per quarter going forward, despite the fact that this past quarter had major market forces boosting it. That would mean an annual profit of $5.6 billion, and with that level of profit, being valued in line with Toyota’s P/E ratio would put Tesla’s value at just $43 billion. That is equivalent to a 96% drop in value!
For many reasons, Tesla can’t survive a drop in value this extreme (read more here), but it also shows why Tesla’s profit matters. It is the only thing that can keep them functional after the AI bubble pops. And it will pop sooner or later.
The Trillion Dollar Question
But Tesla might functionally die well before then, thanks to this dismal Q3 report.
Musk’s utterly moronic proposed $1 trillion pay packet (read more here) has caused a significant backlash among Tesla investors. This is an issue, as this pay packet has to be approved by shareholder vote on November 6th (side note: could this be why Musk recently bought $1 billion of Tesla stock after years of selling it off, so he can more effectively sway the vote?).
Indeed, huge movements such as the Tesla shareholder group TakeTeslaBack.com are taking off, which advocate for shareholders to vote against the pay packet. This movement already had serious momentum, but many Tesla investors are joining it due to this woeful Q3 earnings report, which is reasonable enough. Would you give $1 trillion to the guy who just tanked profits by 37%, failed to meet even pessimistic revenue targets and failed to deliver on the vast majority of his promised projects?
Musk knows this and is desperately trying to firefight. In fact, he hijacked the earnings call in which this report was presented to lobby for support for his pay packet! If that isn’t illegal, it feels like it should be.
Why does this matter?
Ultimately, Musk is nothing but a lazy, greedy, antisocial little pig. He and his fat cat Tesla backers claim these mind-boggling pay packets are not about compensating Musk but about motivating him to work harder at Tesla. Because, you know, being the wealthiest man in the world isn’t motivation enough? They have also highlighted that it is about control, as Musk is demanding more voting rights in the company (which the package would give him) to feel comfortable enough to develop AI further within Tesla — which just screams, “I want to be an authoritarian douche.”
If you read between the lines, this is a threat. It’s him saying, “Give me all the money and the crown, or I’ll take away the AI hype that makes Tesla so valuable and give it to xAI, where I, and only I, can play with it.” And, as I have already explained, without the AI hype, Tesla crumbles.
This is why such a bad quarterly earnings report couldn’t have come at a worse time. It makes the chances of shareholders voting against the insane $1 trillion pay package much higher. That will make Musk throw all his toys out of the pram, pull the plug on Tesla’s AI hype and instead focus on xAI, leaving Tesla to fall apart, possibly even before the AI bubble pops. Hell, Musk abandoning Tesla’s AI push might even cause the AI bubble to pop!
This is why context is so damn important and why it is so frustrating to see the media at large refuse to dig into this report. Because Tesla’s 2025 Q3 earnings report is utterly damning, not just for the sorry state Tesla is in right now, but for its immediate and long-term future.
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Sources: The Guardian, The Guardian, CNBC, Reuters, Will Lockett, Will Lockett, Cox Automotive, YF, The Register, Investopedia, Drive, Inside EVs, Will Lockett, Reuters
“Hell, Musk abandoning Tesla’s AI push might even cause the AI bubble to pop!” As I was reading your piece, I was thinking just this right before I reached this sentence.