A Tesla being towed in London (Richard Baker/Getty Images)

Even Tesla bull Dan Ives predicts “very soft” first-quarter deliveries

He estimates that only 30% of that has to do with Musk, DOGE, and brand damage.

3/27/25 12:12PM

Next week, Tesla will release its first-quarter delivery numbers, a closely watched metric for the electric car company and an indicator of how likely this year’s promised “return to growth” will be.

Monthly data has been bad this year and analyst consensus estimates have been dropping. Now, even Tesla bull Dan Ives expects a “very soft rip the band-aid off 1Q delivery number” of 355,000 to 360,000, which would be a 7% to 8% year-on-year decline, according to a new note from the Wedbush Securities analyst. Earlier this year, his firm had predicted 8% growth in Q1.

Ives concedes that some of Tesla’s damage has been the result of CEO Elon Musk’s recent actions.

“Musk leading DOGE has essentially taken on a life of its own as in the process Tesla has unfortunately become a political symbol globally with protests, violence and demonstrations at dealerships and cars keyed, and a massive ‘TeslaTakedown’ day of action planned by protestors for this Saturday, March 29th.”

Interestingly, Ives estimates this quarter’s decline has 30% to do with “Musk/brand/DOGE” and is 70% related to “timing and non-brand headwind issues.” Still, the bull remains bullish:

“We believe 1Q will be the low point and the Street is starting to look through these numbers to better understand the delivery trajectory the rest of the year with much stronger 2H the key as model refreshes are around the corner.”

The analyst consensus estimate on FactSet is still predicting year-on-year growth, with 417,000 deliveries, but that includes many months-old estimates. Estimates made this month — factoring in monthly sales declines around the world, President Trump’s tariffs, Tesla boycotts, among other headwinds — all predict a decline.

Ives maintains his firms “outperform” rating and price target of $550 — nearly double what it’s trading at currently.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

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Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

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TAKING ACCOUNTS

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Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5