Elon Musk Bloomberg Qatar Economic Forum

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks via video call during Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum on May 20, 2025 (Karim Jaafar/Getty Images)

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Tesla’s Elon Musk doubles down on “a major rebound in demand” without giving evidence

Saying something aloud doesn’t make it true.

Rani Molla

5/21/25 10:39AM

Tesla CEO Elon Musk asserted in a second interview yesterday that his electric car company has turned a corner after producing dismal results last quarter, telling CNBC reporter David Faber, “We’ve seen a major rebound in demand.” Earlier in the day, he told Bloomberg’s Mishal Husain that vehicle sales had “already turned around.”

Both times Musk provided little in the way of evidence.

Here’s the CNBC exchange, which happened right after Musk shared his standard line that the true value of Tesla is in autonomy and robots, and right before had to leave the call for another appointment:

Musk: ...we’ve seen a major rebound in demand at this point. I feel comfortable with—
Faber: You have seen a major rebound in demand?
Musk: Oh yeah.
Faber: You really believe — you have seen that?
Musk: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look for most people, I mean, when you buy a product, I mean, how much do you care about the political views of the CEO? Or do even know what they are?

Musk came back for a second part of the interview, but the host didn’t pick up the same line of questioning. Musk didn’t provide any details about that demand rebound.

Of course there’s the possibility Musk has internal data that shows a bounce-back in demand, but it’s also worth noting that saying something doesn’t make it true — especially in the case of Musk.

What we do know for sure is that early indicators suggest demand is depressed.

Here are some:

Tesla told its workers it wouldn’t be running the production line next week at its Texas plant, where it produces its bestselling Model Y and its Cybertruck — typically not something you do when you’re trying to keep up with high demand. Business Insider reports that workers were told they could either show up for training and cleaning or use their PTO to take the time off.
When asked about lower sales, Musk continually cites a switch in production to the new Model Y in Q1 as the reason for the softness, as people held off buying it as they awaited the new one. However, demand for the new Model Y also looks soft, as the company is currently offering discounts on it.
April sales data, which represents the first month of Q2, is down in Europe and China, two of the company’s biggest markets besides the US.
While there’s no US data yet, analysts track VIN registrations and dealer inventory, among other data points, to come up with their estimates. The FactSet consensus analyst estimate for Q2 deliveries is 405,000 — 9% below what it delivered last year in Q2. Analysts expect the company to also deliver fewer vehicles in 2025 than it did in 2024, which was itself a disappointing year.
Tesla employees have confirmed the demand problem.

Rani Molla9m

Morgan Stanley expects Tesla to have 1,000 Robotaxis by the end of 2026. Musk had predicted 1,500 by the end of 2025

Ahead of Tesla’s earnings report next week, Morgan Stanley has released a note estimating that the company will scale its Robotaxi fleet much more slowly than CEO Elon Musk has said. The firm thinks the automaker will have 1,000 vehicles in its Robotaxi service by the end of 2026 — 500 fewer than Musk estimated a few months ago Tesla would have by the end of 2025.

More key to Tesla’s success, however, will be removing the safety monitors from those rides, which Morgan Stanley says will be a “precursor to personal unsupervised FSD [Full Self-Driving] rollout.” Musk, of course, had also promised to remove safety drivers in Austin by the end of 2025, but driverless rides are still in the testing stage.

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Meta says it’s delivered new AI models internally this month and they’re “very good”

Meta’s last AI model release, Llama 4, was marred by delays and accusations of rigged benchmarks, but the company says the latest models built by its Superintelligence Labs team look promising. CTO Andrew Bosworth told reporters at the World Economic Forum that the team delivered new models internally in January and they’re “very good.”

Bosworth didn’t specify what the models are, though The Wall Street Journal has reported that Meta is working on a large language model and an AI image and video model code-named Avocado and Mango, respectively.

Exclusive: Meta's new AI team delivered first key models internally this month, CTO says

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Two charts that show why Amazon is building a giant physical store

This week Amazon received approval to build a hybrid big-box store and fulfillment center outside Chicago that’s roughly twice the size of a typical Target. Why would the e-commerce giant want to wade into a costly and cumbersome physical store, especially after earlier brick-and-mortar iterations like Amazon Go have failed?

There are at least two reasons. First, despite e-commerce’s rapid growth, the vast majority of retail purchases still happen in physical stores, according to Census Bureau data:

Second, Amazon’s own customers regularly shop at competing big-box retailers: Consumer Intelligence Research Partners found that 93% have also shopped at Walmart. And as Amazon pushes further into groceries — a category still dominated by in-person shopping — CIRP estimates that basically all Amazon customers buy groceries elsewhere.

Jon Keegan

See for yourself just how massive Meta’s Hyperion data center is

It’s hard to overstate just how massive Meta’s Richland Parish, Louisiana, data center site is. Use this tool to compare it to where you live.

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OpenAI rolls out age prediction system ahead of allowing adult content

OpenAI is rolling out a new “age prediction” feature for ChatGPT users. The company will look at various signals from users to predict if a user is underage.

In a blog post, the company said:

“The model looks at a combination of behavioral and account-level signals, including how long an account has existed, typical times of day when someone is active, usage patterns over time, and a user’s stated age.”

If the system suspects the user is a minor, it will reduce content with graphic violence, harmful viral challenges, sexual or romantic role-play, depictions of self-harm, and material promoting “extreme beauty standards, unhealthy dieting, or body shaming.”

If a user is incorrectly flagged as under 18, they will have to submit a selfie to an identity verification service to have the restrictions removed.

An age verification system is part of OpenAI’s plan to reduce harmful mental health encounters with the chatbot, while also allowing ChatGPT to generate “erotica” in the near future.

Our approach to age prediction