Investor's Corner
Lost in Translation, Tesla’s Model 3 Marketing Begins
The irony is that this big, non-detailed marketing message has been the sweet spot for the legacy auto OEMs and gas cars, but now is being employed by a young car maker against their rivals.
During Elon Musk’s recent “end range anxiety” press conference, discussion turned to what he thought was the minimum amount of range for an electric car. “200 miles is the minimum threshold for an electric car. We need 200+ miles in real-world, not 200 miles in ‘AC-off, driving on a flat road,” Musk said on March 19th.
Discussion on the web has some fans and enthusiasts wondering whether Musk’s statement was purely discussion, Model 3 marketing or bragging about the company’s current cars. To me, it’s all about be beginning of the Model 3’s marketing campaign and this “little” reference reinforces to the public and media that Tesla Motors has already produced a 200+ mile car in 2012, not 2017.
In effect, Musk is saying “it’s great that Nissan and Chevy are talking about a 200-mile car in 2017.”
Musk is PT Barnum without the big con (…a little con slips out every now and then). The brilliance of Mr. Musk is that his company produced a game-changing vehicle in the right segment while leveraging a new drivetrain technology. First mover latitude to “speculate” on the technology’s future without a ton of pushback. When he talks the alchemy starts: a new car frontier mixes with Tesla Motors mission, image and whatever you want to call it.
Sure, there’s the battery swap hype of some years ago and the follow-through took sometime, but he has been busy.
Related Story >> A Peak into Tesla’s Battery Swap Station at Harris Ranch
But back to the 200+ mile statement, Musk is right on the mark as I drive a MS 60 in the Chicagoland area. The MS 60 has 208 rated miles and during the winter, it will make you think a bit more about your travels, compared to a MS 85 and its 245+ real miles. When it dips below zero, I top out at 194 miles on a full charge. However, I don’t have any issues with my short commute to my house office and the occasional city trips for business, plus we’re a two-car family.
This 200-mile statement is all about marketing and positioning for the Model 3, while being completely honest and accurate.
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Musk said, “Anything below 200 miles isn’t passing grade, most people are looking for 20 percent more than that.” Musk is playing the long game and dropping the seed with early-wave EV buyers that Tesla will be moving toward that number. However, the legacy automakers may hit 200 rated miles..and from recent Nissan reports they won’t even hit 200 miles with their 2017 car.
Musk’s statement did not get much notice, but this story line will pick up momentum. Musk and Tesla will add this to the arsenal for the next two years and say: Who do trust when you buy your first EV car in 2017 or 2018?
The irony is that this big, non-detailed marketing message has been the sweet spot for the legacy auto OEMs, but now is being employed by a young EV carmaker against its rivals.
For the electric drivetrain products, legacy carmakers are adjusting and trying to “educate” car consumers. BMW and Nissan are doing good work in this area, with ride-and-drives and email marketing but GM is out to lunch, marketing-wise…and that’s too bad.
Great cars and excellent marketing is a pretty good combination to have.
*Disclosure: Author is long and owns shares in Tesla Motors.
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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 Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner.jpg)
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
Tesla Model Y L’s new features flexed at unveiling event at Diner
Tesla CEO Elon Musk denies ridiculous Gigafactory Shanghai rumor
![Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner-80x80.jpg)
