A quarter of lower profit and higher bills
Tesla’s third-quarter net profit fell 43 percent from a year earlier to $787 million, according to Ars Technica’s reading of the company’s results. Revenue came to $28 billion, almost the same as in 2025.
Under the hood, the mix shifted. Automotive revenue slipped 3 percent to $20.6 billion. Solar panels and storage batteries, a line that had been growing, dropped 16 percent to $2.9 billion. Services and other revenue, which covers parts and Supercharger use, grew by a third to $4.6 billion and cushioned the blow.
The costs are the detail that matters. Operating expenses rose 39 percent to $4.8 billion, which pulled the operating margin down to 2.6 percent from 5.8 percent in the third quarter of 2025. Capital expenditure jumped 110 percent to $4.7 billion. Free cash flow fell 62 percent to $1.5 billion.
The Roadster, nine years on
Tesla announced the second-generation Roadster in 2017 and said production would start in 2020. On October 15, at a SpaceX testing facility in Texas, Elon Musk finally showed three versions of it. One, the Rocket trim, can briefly fly using cold-gas thrusters. “Turns out the future does have flying cars,” Musk declared, per Time. Tesla’s own website, as ever, carries the fine print: the Rocket is “not approved for public road use.”
Musk says production will begin in 2028. Tesla’s quarterly update makes that date look no firmer than the earlier ones, Time noted. The Roadster is still listed as in “design development,” its manufacturing region is marked “TBD,” and no production capacity is disclosed. Kalshi’s prediction market gives Tesla a 48 percent chance of starting Roadster deliveries before 2029.
Reservations are open all the same. The Performance and Thrust versions can be held for $50K and $250K. The agreement admits that Tesla cannot guarantee “when your vehicle will actually be delivered or if it will be delivered.” That has happened before: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman waited seven years for his Roadster before asking for his $50K deposit back.
Sources
Photo: Planet Labs, Inc. (CC BY-SA 4.0)
