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By Joseph White, Global Automotive Correspondent

Greetings from the Motor City!

There’s plenty going on in the World of Cars this week, but really there’s just one thing: Tesla will report second quarter results later today after New York markets close.

That means (most likely) that Elon Musk will make pronouncements on a wide range of topics from his vantage point running the world’s most valuable automaker – the $930 billion sun around which the much smaller automotive planets now revolve.

What will Musk talk about? This edition of the Auto File will help you assemble your Tesla Q2 Bingo Card, and much more, today –

• • What’s on tap at Tesla

  • Tesla takes aim at Volkswagen

  • Carvana wins on Wall Street

The cost of a price war.

Tesla reports Q2 results later today – the webcast can be found here – and investors will be looking for answers to questions. So many questions.

Wall Street analysts expect record revenue, but with the lowest gross profit margins in three years, reflecting the impact of price cuts. They’ll want to know how much further Musk and Co. are willing to depress profit margins in their quest for growth.

Retail investors have a wider range of concerns, from the status of Tesla’s new generation of 4680 batteries to the pricing for the Cybertruck.

Here are some issues Musk could address – or could avoid. Points for each one he addresses. Prizes? We’ll get back to you.

• FSD – Full Self Driving. Musk said in April that Tesla’s automated driving system – FSD – would be ready for full commercial release by the end of this year. That would allow Tesla to recognize thousands of dollars per car in revenue – offsetting the cost of price cuts. Will he double down on that timeline in the face of multiple federal safety investigations of the technology?
• Tesla’s capacity plans. Tesla is driving ahead with plans to add substantial new production capacity in China, Mexico and Germany (see below) – and possibly India, France, Spain and Musk has said Tesla ultimately wants to build 20 million vehicles a year – twice as many as Toyota, the world’s current No. 1 automaker by volume. With warning bells sounding about slowing EV demand, will Tesla slow down?
• Recession? Musk said earlier this year he expected a recession and a difficult year for the global economy. What’s his view now as theS. keeps growing, and China’s economic engine sputters?
• Technology sharing. “Has any automaker approached Tesla to license FSD?” That’s the investor question with the most votes on Tesla’s website as of this morning. It’s a logical follow-up to Tesla’s success at persuading rival automakers to adopt its charging plug standard.
• How much will the Cybertruck cost? And how many does Musk think Tesla can sell? The answers will have an impact on Rivian, Ford, General Motors, Stellantis and anyone else trying to sell pickup trucks or “adventure vehicles” in North America. A cheap Cybertruck could compete with a wide range of vehicles, electric and combustion. An expensive one could be a niche product.
• Governance. Tesla’s board of directors this week agreed to give back $735 million in stock compensation to settle a shareholder suit accusing directors of overpaying themselves. It’s just the latest signal that Tesla’s corporate governance is an Achilles heel.
• Optimus and AI. Will Musk offer an update on the progress of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot project? Will he outline new forays by Tesla into artificial intelligence? Musk just created a new AI venture, separate from Tesla, that could compete for talent with Tesla and his other companies.
• Extra credit if Musk says again that Optimus could be worth more than Tesla’s auto business in future.

Tesla’s Berlin factory.

Tesla wants to expand its Berlin factory to build up to 1 million EVs annually – which would make it Europe’s biggest auto factory, eclipsing Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg complex.

There are plenty of hurdles for Tesla to overcome, starting with local government and citizen concerns about the impact of such a huge operation on water, traffic and infrastructure.

Doubling Tesla’s Berlin capacity will add to the market’s overcapacity, intensifying pressure on other European automakers as the EU economy slows.

Will German unions and politicians allow Tesla (plus Chinese EV makers) to keep battering Volkswagen, a national champion and one of Germany’s largest industrial employers? VW Wolfsburg is already operating at half its 800,000-vehicle capacity, threatening employment levels. VW is previewing more cost-cutting as it tries to boost its share value.

There’s a profit in there somewhere.

Shares in online used car seller Carvana roared ahead by more than 20% Wednesday morning after the company revealed a deal to cut debt by $1.2 billion and reported a pre-tax Q2 profit (albeit with the help of one-time items.)

Carvana’s quarterly numbers are here. The debt deal details are here.

Carvana heavily-shorted shares jumped to as high as $57 in pre-market trading – not far from its 52-week high, but still well below its $345 a share pandemic-era peak in 2021.

When the dust settles and short-sellers have bandaged their wounds, Carvana CEO Ernie Garcia will still have the challenge of delivering consistent profitability. Carvana lost $58 million in the latest quarter.

As if Volkswagen didn’t have enough problems, now investors are warning that CEO Oliver Blume’s ambition to lift VW’s stock market valuation face an uphill slog as long as it remains unclear who will lead the company’s supervisory board.

Investors said they need to know who will step in when the octogenarian descendants of the Porsche and Piech families step aside. VW’s shares are suffering from a “governance discount,” one investor told Reuters colleagues Jan Schwartz and Victoria Waldersee.

Aurora Innovation, the self-driving semi-truck developer, said it will sell $600 million in new shares in a private placement. CEO Chris Urmson had signaled earlier this year the company would need to raise more capital.

Aurora shares skidded, but the good news is that the company found a source of new capital. That’s no small feat given the chill that has gripped the autonomous vehicle industry as timelines for commercial deployment stretched out.

Aurora said in a filing it has $785 million in cash as of June 30 – enough to last about four quarters at current burn rates.

Stellantis has secured chips to support production through 2030 under contracts worth $11 billion, the automaker said. The Stellantis deals – and the fact that the company would announce them – illustrate the profound shift in the way automakers manage semiconductor supply chains after the shortages of the past two to three years.

General Motors is fighting logistics challenges shipping vehicles to dealers, the head of its North American operations told Reuters’ Paul Lienert. GM’s Rory Harvey also said this when asked if low sales so far for GM’s new generation of EVs are a result of production problems at its Ultium joint venture battery factories in the United States: “I’m not sure that I want to be quoted as saying that Ultium is the bottleneck.”

Jaguar Land Rover’s parent company said it will invest $5 billion to build an EV battery plant in the UK. The announcement is a pick-me-up for the UK government’s efforts to compete for EV jobs after the collapse of the Britishvolt battery venture.

Vinfast will start construction of its EV assembly plant in North Carolina next week, the Vietnamese EV maker said. The SPAC that was supposed to take Vinfast public earlier this week said it would delay the proposed IPO/merger, and many investors cashed out.

Nissan is the latest automaker to adopt Tesla’s charging plug standard for North America.

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