*By Alisha Haridasani*
Tesla’s first-quarter earnings narrowly beat expectations Wednesday, bringing in $3.4 billion in revenue, up from about $3.3 billion in the previous quarter.
The car maker also posted a net loss of more than $780 million.
The news was positive for the electric carmaker in the areas that seemed to matter most to investors, said Jason Ware, the chief investment officer and chief economist at Albion Financial group. He cited the uptick in car production, specifically. "It seems that they've hit on all of the things that investors were looking for," Ware said in an interview with Cheddar.
The Model 3, Tesla's mass-market sedan was the main focus of the earnings report.
For months, the company was missing its own production targets for that car. The company produced just 1,000 units a week in December, below the company's target of 20,000 units per month. That worried investors that Tesla would run out of cash by the end of the year. (It is reported to be spending $6,500 per minute, according to [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-burns-cash/)). Tesla ended the first quarter with a cash balance of $2.7 billion, down by almost $1 billion from the previous quarter.
The company stated Wednesday that it expects to turn things around. In April, Tesla produced more than 2,000 units per week for three straight weeks, and the carmaker [told shareholders](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-4CW8X0/6176011373x0x979026/44C49236-1FC2-4FD9-80B1-495ED74E4194/TSLA_Update_Letter_2018-1Q.pdf) it aims to more than double that number to 5,000 units per week in two months' time.
In their letter to shareholders, the chairman and CEO Elon Musk and Tesla's CFO Deepak Ahuja reiterated Musk's statement that the company could turn a profit by the end of the year.
But it would have to meet production goals for that happen, though, and the company has fallen well short of *those* in the past.
For the full segment, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/spotify-reports-for-the-first-time-and-tesla-reports-less-of-a-loss-than-expected).
About 780,000 pressure washers sold at retailers like Home Depot are being recalled across the U.S. and Canada, due to a projectile hazard that has resulted in fractures and other injuries among some consumers.
President Donald Trump has fired one of two Democratic members of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to break a 2-2 tie ahead of the board considering the largest railroad merger ever proposed.
Ford is recalling more than 355,000 of its pickup trucks across the U.S. because of an instrument panel display failure that’s resulted in critical information, like warning lights and vehicle speed, not showing up on the dashboard.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is set to lead a protest march on Wall Street to urge corporate America to resist the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The New York civil rights leader will join clergy, labor and community leaders Thursday in a demonstration through Manhattan’s Financial District that’s timed with the anniversary of the Civil Rights-era March on Washington in 1963. Sharpton called DEI the “civil rights fight of our generation." He and other Black leaders have called for boycotting American retailers that scaled backed policies and programs aimed at bolstering diversity and reducing discrimination in their ranks.
President Donald Trump's administration last month awarded a $1.2 billion contract to build and operate what's expected to become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex to a tiny Virginia firm with no experience running correction facilities.
