Tesla has opened its Say Q&A portal for the Q3 2026 earnings call, scheduled for October 21, and the questions investors are lining up have almost nothing to do with the quarter’s numbers.
The company already reported 486,532 deliveries and 13.7 GWh of energy storage. Wall Street consensus hovers around 43 to 45 cents per share on roughly $27.8 billion in revenue, per Zacks. Goldman Sachs, holding a Neutral rating with a $360 price target, has flatly said the outlook for Robotaxi, FSD, and Optimus will matter more to the stock than the financials themselves.
That framing is hard to argue with. Tesla disclosed last week that more than 300 Cybercabs are now operating in Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, with Dallas named as the next city. The investor conversation has shifted from “when does this launch” to “how fast does it scale.”
Retail shareholders on Say had spent the Q2 cycle asking why Robotaxi growth had stalled and when Cybercab customer rides would begin. Those questions have been partially answered. New ones have taken their place.
The sharpest of them involves NHTSA. The federal safety agency has demanded sworn answers from Tesla explaining how the pedal-free Cybercab was certified against existing motor vehicle safety standards. Responses are due October 30, nine days after the earnings call.
Whether an analyst raises the issue live is uncertain. But a federal inquiry into whether Tesla’s most visible product complies with the law is not something that quietly stays in the background.
Say’s voting system ranks questions by the number of shares behind each vote, which gives institutional holders outsized influence over what management actually addresses. Last quarter, one institutional question focused on how Tesla and SpaceX would divide duties at the planned Terafab facility. That kind of structural question tends to surface again when the stakes get higher.
Investors have until 4:00 p.m. EDT on October 20 to submit and upvote. Tesla will release results after the close on October 21, followed by a live webcast at 4:30 p.m. Central.
The timing creates a secondary wildcard. Tesla’s rescheduled Roadster event is set for Thursday, October 15, streaming on X at 7:55 p.m. CT, six days before earnings. If the Roadster emerges with a confirmed production date or the long-teased SpaceX thruster package, it will almost certainly climb the Say voting list before the deadline closes.
Then there is Optimus. The Gen 3 humanoid robot ramp was another top question from retail investors last quarter, and Tesla has offered little public detail since. With Musk continuing to position Optimus as a multitrillion-dollar opportunity, silence on timelines tends to generate pointed questions.
Q2 earnings missed on EPS. The stock absorbed it because the autonomy narrative carried the weight. That same dynamic is in play again, only now the autonomy narrative has a federal regulator asking hard questions about how Tesla got its driverless car on public roads.
The webcast link will go live on Tesla’s investor relations page. The NHTSA deadline will not.
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