Investor's Corner
Elon Musk delivers Tesla Model 3 to owner’s home in test of factory-direct system
Tesla continues to push new initiatives to get the Model 3 delivered to buyers as efficiently as possible. In a recent announcement on Twitter, CEO Elon Musk revealed that the electric car maker has been trying out a new vehicle delivery system that uses enclosed trailers to transport vehicles straight from the factory to owners’ homes. Musk noted that the new delivery system is “super convenient” and a process that ensures vehicles are handed to their owners in pristine condition, despite not having the usual plastic wrap.
The first images of Tesla’s factory-direct delivery system were recently posted online by Devin Scott from Playa Vista, CA, a beachside enclave and tech hub of Los Angeles that’s located roughly 2-miles from the company’s Marina Del Rey delivery center. Scott noted that his vehicle’s delivery became extra special since his Model 3 was delivered by none other than Elon Musk himself.
We tried out a new delivery system using an enclosed trailer straight from factory to owner’s home, so super convenient & car arrives in pristine condition without wasting plastic wrap https://t.co/exNyhb0zOT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2018
With Tesla starting to hit its stride with Model 3 production, producing thousands of vehicles per week, the company must ensure that it does not sit on inventory and end up creating a bottleneck in the delivery of these vehicles. Such a bottleneck appeared to have happened last week, when a Tesla owner reported that a family member was stuck in a delivery center for hours waiting for paperwork to be completed. In response, Elon Musk stated that Tesla is looking to eliminate paper contracts completely. Musk also noted that the company is trying to come up with a system where contracts for the vehicles can be signed digitally, allowing customers to get their cars with a simple tap.
- Tesla Model 3 delivery to customers’ homes. [Credit: Devin Scott/Twitter]
- Tesla Model 3 delivery to customers’ homes. [Credit: Devin Scott/Twitter]
- Tesla Model 3 delivery to customers’ homes. [Credit: Devin Scott/Twitter]
- Tesla Model 3 delivery to customers’ homes. [Credit: Devin Scott/Twitter]
Elon Musk personally delivers a Tesla Model 3 to a reservation holder. [Credit: Devin Scott/Twitter]

Earlier in July, Tesla also introduced a 5 Minute “Sign and Drive” system that expedites the delivery process for Model 3 reservation holders. Under the system, reservation holders are advised to study everything they can about the electric car before their delivery date. This way, Tesla’s staff at the delivery center would only need to cover the basic functions of the vehicle before the customer is given the green light to drive away. As Tesla aims to improve its Model 3 production rate to 6,000 vehicles per week, the electric car maker’s capability to deliver as many cars to reservation holders becomes incredibly important.
Tesla is aiming to hit profitability this Q3 2018. In order to accomplish this, the company would have to deliver as many Model 3 as possible to reservation holders. Considering that Tesla sold its 200,000th electric car in the United States this July, the company has also triggered the phase-out period for the $7,500 federal tax credit granted to buyers of new electric cars. With these factors considered, Tesla would likely push for as many deliveries as it can for the remainder of the year and into early 2019.
Elon Musk
Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get
Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.
Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”
The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.
The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.
Correction, 10 million robots https://t.co/0z4nyQNTzp
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) July 30, 2026
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.
Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.
Elon Musk
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX gets an absolutely crazy price target after rough IPO
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.





