Investor's Corner
Elon Musk discusses Tesla workers’ unions, UAW in latest tweetstorm
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently discussed the idea of unionization among Tesla’s factory workers.
In a series of tweets this past weekend, Musk explained that Tesla workers are free to form a union anytime. Musk added that he has no power to stop employees from forming a union, considering that California is a pro-union state. Musk, however, clarified that so far, Tesla’s employees “just don’t want to,” considering that the company already offers healthcare and stock options.
Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2018
Musk also clarified allegations which suggested that Tesla let go of employees who were attempting to unionize. According to Musk, only one known union supporter was terminated by the company, and it was due to the former worker’s behavior towards other employees.
About 2% of Tesla, incl salaried & hourly, union & non-union were let go in annual review. Only known union person fired was a guy who repeatedly threatened non-union supporters verbally & on social media & lied about it.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2018
Just recently, it was revealed that the United Auto Workers (UAW) has been engaging in a corporate campaign against the electric car maker. In a recent filing with the Labor Department, the UAW revealed that it spent $422,000 in 2017 on items and services related to its Tesla campaign. Among these are video productions, ads, campaign flyers, and t-shirts. The UAW filing further revealed that it spent more than $130,000 on hotel accommodations near Tesla’s Fremont, CA plant alone, on top of a $52,200 rent for “additional space” in Fremont.
In a statement to Fox Business, Vinnie Vernuccio, a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, stated that the UAW’s efforts against the Elon Musk-led company is evident in the investment that it has placed in its Tesla campaign so far.
“The UAW is clearly doing what’s known as a corporate campaign against Tesla. You see that by the organizing drives out West, but you also see that by their attempts to harm Tesla’s business model out East,” he said.
The UAW has increased its efforts against Tesla since the electric car maker started working towards the mass-production of its Model 3 compact sedan. Back in 2016, UAW president Dennis Williams stated that the organization has widely considered Tesla as a startup company. Once the electric car and energy company announced its plans of producing 500,000 vehicles per year, however, Williams noted that Tesla’s size would put it just behind Volkswagen and ahead of BMW and Mercedes-Benz. With such a production output, according to the UAW, it would be in the best interest of the the company’s workers to have a union.
Tesla and the UAW have not seen eye-to-eye so far. Just last year, Tesla was accused of firing employees that supported unionization. A couple of pro-union Tesla workers at the Fremont factory also alleged unsafe work practices right before the Model 3 production ramp. Earlier this year, a report on Tesla’s alleged misreporting of workplace injuries by Reveal magazine also prompted a fiery response from the electric car company.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership has so far been on a decline over the past few decades, especially in the private sector. Back in 1983, union membership was at 20.1%, a stark difference from the 10.7% overall membership in 2017.
Investor's Corner
Tesla crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.
Tesla reported it delivered 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.
Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.
For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.
Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.
Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
Tesla brings Model Y L ‘Launch Series’ to the U.S. at $61,990
Tesla just told us twice that Model Y L is coming to the U.S.
