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Gigafactory Is Having An Economic Impact, But How Much?
According to a new report from the Reno Gazette-Journal, when the State of Nevada granted Tesla a package of tax breaks last year, it tied them to regular reports to verify the state was getting the benefits Tesla promised. The package means that Tesla will operate essentially tax free for a decade and then enjoy a substantial tax discount for another 10 years. It includes:
- $725 million in sales tax abatements over 20 years.
- $332 million in real and personal property tax abatements over 10 years.
- $195 million in transferable tax credits.
- $27 million in payroll tax abatements over 10 years.
- $8 million in electricity rate discounts over eight years.
State legislators are closely monitoring the situation. “The information I’ve been watching is whether they’ve been making the investments we were promised and whether they are employing Nevadans like they promised,” Sen. Ben Kieckhefer, R-Reno, said. “And we see from the reports from GOED that those thresholds are being met.” Tesla is obligated to employ at least 50% Nevada residents. So far, the average number of workers being hired has averaged 583 per week, of whom 73% are state residents. There are currently 82 full time employees at the site.
State legislators also want to make sure that Storey County is adequately compensated for the extra public service and educational expenses it will incur because of the activity generated by the Gigafactory. Tesla is obligated to pay the county $881,203 annually to cover those expenses. The county is required by state law to file annual reports with the legislature but so far has failed to do so.
Assemblywoman Theresa Benitez-Thompson said the county needs to do a better job filing its reports. “My intuition would be that there’s been progress in the general community and that the community is happy about what’s going on,” she said. “But we really do need these reports to give us more finite detail on what’s happening with these abatements and what revenue we are not collecting.”
Perhaps the members of the legislature should take comfort in these words from GOED chief Hill. He says his agency no longer has to recruit business to the state. His calendar is full of companies reaching out on their own after hearing about the Tesla project. “We met recently with a really large company — a very household name — looking at an opportunity in Northern Nevada,” Hill said. “They said if Tesla hadn’t picked Nevada, they wouldn’t even have considered it. That opened their eyes.”
Home values in the surrounding “bedroom communities” of Sparks and Fernley have jumped 18 percent and 15 percent respectively since the project was announced. The unemployment rates in Storey, Lyon and Washoe counties have also dropped in the past year.
The state of Nevada has every right to make sure the incentives they offered to attract the Gigafactory to Nevada provide the expected economic benefits, but there seems little danger they won’t materialize. Plunking a $5 billion factory down in the middle of what was a trackless desert is sure to have a strongly positive economic impact. All the necessary reports will have to filed and studied, of course, but in the end the incentives given to Tesla will probably be the best decision Nevada has made since it legalized gambling.
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 has expanded the footprint of a massive safety feature worldwide with a recent Software Update labeled as 2026.20.6. The expansion of the “Blind Spot Warning While Parked” feature represents the more widespread availability of the feature, which aims to prevent “dooring.”
Dooring is when a driver or passenger opens a car door into the path of an oncoming road user, usually a cyclist or motorcyclist. It is among the most common types of cycling accidents, the League of American Bicyclists says.
For this reason, Tesla created a feature that warns occupants not to open the door because an object is approaching. The feature will sound a chime, and it will also delay the opening of the door to prevent an incident.
The release notes state (via Not a Tesla App):
“If you attempt to open a door while an approaching object is detected in your blind spot (for example, a bicyclist approaching from behind) a chime sounds, and your door will not open upon initial button press. Wait a short time and press the button a second time to override the warning.”
Tesla initially rolled out this feature back in 2024 with the Model 3 “Highland.” However, it remained with the Model 3 exclusively for over a year; that was until Tesla added it to the Cybertruck this past Spring.
Now, it is making its way to the new Model Y, 2021 and newer Model S, and 2021 or newer Model X.
The prevention of dooring incidents could eliminate many injuries to cyclists, especially in an urban setting. Dooring accounts for 10-20 percent of bike-related crashes in major cities, and over 17,000 dooring-related incidents were treated in the U.S. over the course of a decade. These usually involve fractures, contusions, and head trauma.
Tesla confirmed this morning that it has sent the first production units, manufactured with no steering wheel or pedals, to on-road testing in Austin, sharing video of the first rides with no human controls.
The lack of steering wheels and pedals in the Cybercab aligns with Tesla’s self-certification of Robotaxi as Level 4 SAE, a platform it plans to make widespread through internal vehicles and customer-owned cars that will operate and generate revenue for individuals.
The start of these engineering tests is a major signal for Tesla, which plans to bring driverless, wheel-less, and pedal-less Cybercabs to market in the coming months. With production already well underway at Gigafactory Texas, where the Cybercab is built, there is some inclination to believe the first public rides could happen sooner rather than later.
Engineering tests of the first production Cybercab have begun in Austin pic.twitter.com/fk3KQvcE8a
— Tesla (@Tesla) June 30, 2026
Tesla’s engineering tests will put the Cybercab in real-world scenarios, testing not only the hardware, but more importantly, the software that drives the car around Austin with nobody supervising it within the car.
This is perhaps the biggest part of the internal testing process, especially prior to allowing regular, everyday people to hail the Cybercab for an autonomous ride. These early rides serve as a true benchmark for Tesla: How many rides can it achieve safely? How many miles did it travel consecutively without needing an intervention? What scenarios challenge the Full Self-Driving suite the most?
The proper precautions have already been put into place as well, as Tesla released the First Responders Guide to Cybercab over the weekend, ensuring that emergency services have 24/7 access to Robotaxi Assistance, as well as other boundaries, such as Geofencing features that can be used to redirect autonomous vehicle traffic due to accidents, road closures, construction, or maintenance.
Cybercab seems genuinely close to being added to the Robotaxi fleet in Austin, but Tesla has prioritized safety throughout this entire process. Therefore, we think it could be months before it truly starts giving rides to the public. People have been frustrated with this, but Robotaxi in Austin has a tremendous safety record so far, so the slow rollout has kept people safe and accidents to a minimum.
The most important thing is that Tesla continues to show consistent progress in the Cybercab’s ramp-up toward fleet addition. A few weeks back, we saw the EPA reward the Cybercab a Certificate of Conformity, allowing it to enter the stream of commerce. Then, we saw Tesla add decals, signaling that it was likely about to start testing it publicly. That has now happened.
The next big move will be the announcement of the first rides, so this Summer should be filled with anticipation.
SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull
Tesla expands massive safety feature worldwide in latest update
