MUSK: TESLA'S VALUE LIES IN ROBOTS, NOT EVS

CEO glosses over firm's stalled sales and makes bold claims for new tech

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has ratcheted the hyperbole to new levels to talk up the earnings potential of new projects such as the Optimus robot and Cybercab autonomous car, even as returns on the core automotive business delivered a "significant" miss on analysts' expectations.

Tesla's quarterly discussions with business analysts have rarely followed the pattern of other listed automotive companies', with Musk preferring to make often unfounded predictions about future launches and milestones rather than give colour to the current balance-sheet numbers.

However, the policy has served him well, with investors pushing Tesla to a $1.28 trillion (£1.0tn) valuation.

But during the firm's most recent earnings call, at the end of January, Musk pushed his fanciful depictions of vast future profit pools generated by Tesla-engineered creations to new heights.

He predicted the humanoid Optimus "will be overwhelmingly the value of the company" and stated revenue from sales could surge "north of $10 trillion". To put that into context, Tesla's revenue from selling electric cars in 2024 was $77 billion (£62bn), down 6% on the year before.