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Mercedes-Benz launches EQS SUV production in Alabama

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Mercedes-Benz has launched production of the all-electric EQS SUV at its production plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The EQS SUV will be exclusively produced in the United States and will utilize battery packs produced at Mercedes-Benz’s Battery Factory in Bibb County, Alabama.

The launch of EQS SUV production is a “key step” in Mercedes’ goal to manufacture eight all-electric vehicles at seven sites on three continents this year, it said. The Tuscaloosa plant has focused on large SUV production since 1997 and will continue as the German automaker transitions to more sustainable, electric powertrains within its fleet of vehicles.

The Tuscaloosa plant, where the EQS SUV is built, has been upgraded and updated and holds state-of-the-art manufacturing methods to increase efficiency and sustainability. Mercedes based the Tuscaloosa plant’s upgrades on the company’s Factory 56 in Sindelfingen, Germany, “which symbolizes the future of automotive production of Mercedes-Benz.” The automaker said it is already able to produce EVs in large volumes thanks to “early investments into flexible production” and “the use of the state-of-the-art MO360 digital production ecosystem.”

Jörg Burzer, Member of the Board of Management for Mercedes-Benz in Production and Supply Chain, commented on EQS SUV production starting:

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“Our production network is very well positioned for the sustainable and rapid scaling of electric vehicle volumes. With the new EQS SUV joining our production portfolio of all-electric Mercedes-EQ models, we reached another important milestone in our strategy to go all-electric by the end of the decade – wherever market conditions allow. I am absolutely sure that our great Tuscaloosa team will make the electric SUV another global success.”

As previously mentioned, the EQS SUV produced in Tuscaloosa will utilize battery packs from Mercedes’ Bibb County Battery Production Plant. Both facilities are already carbon-neutral in terms of production, Mercedes-Benz said. The Bibb County Battery Plant produces battery systems on a 985-foot-long production line, helping the plant mass-produce battery packs that contribute to the company’s global battery production network.

The three EQS SUV trim levels offer between 381 and 410 miles of WLTP range, as EPA estimates have not yet been released. The vehicle has been tested by the EPA as Teslarati was able to recover Certificates of Conformity from the Agency for the EQS 4MATIC and EQS 450 configurations.

I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

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Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Investor's Corner

Tesla annihilates Wall Street expectations with strong Q2 delivery showing

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress

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Credit: Elon Musk | X

Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a photo of himself standing with the Optimus production team inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, arms crossed amid workers in hard hats and safety vests. The image captures a pivotal industrial shift: the same facility space once dedicated to building Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan and Model X SUV is now home to the company’s humanoid robot manufacturing line.

Tesla’s Fremont Factory, acquired in 2010 from the former NUMMI joint venture between Toyota and GM, has been the company’s original U.S. manufacturing hub since Model S production began in 2012.

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The Model X followed soon thereafter. These premium vehicles offered lower annual volumes, recently around 30,000 combined, compared to the high-volume Model 3 and Model Y lines that continue around the site. Over their combined run, the S and X accounted for roughly 610,000 units.

In late January 2026, during Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Elon Musk announced the end of Model S and Model X production in Q2 2026. The final vehicles rolled off the line in early May. Rather than retooling for another vehicle, Tesla chose to convert the dedicated S/X assembly area into a dedicated Optimus Gen 3 production line.

Model 3 and Y manufacturing remains unaffected. Tesla’s official Fremont Factory page now lists Optimus alongside the 3 and Y as core products.

The conversion was executed with remarkable speed. After production stopped, crews dismantled the existing vehicle line and installed entirely new modular equipment—including lines sourced from Germany and dozens of sub-lines for actuators, batteries, and other components—in roughly four months.

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Musk described the timeline as “insanely fast,” noting it would be unprecedented for any other manufacturer. Initial Optimus output is expected to ramp slowly due to the robot’s roughly 10,000 unique parts and the brand-new production processes involved. The Fremont line targets an eventual capacity of 1 million Optimus units per year.

Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go

Optimus Development Timeline

  • August 19, 2021: Optimus (then called Tesla Bot) formally announced at Tesla’s first AI Day. A concept video showed a person in a suit demonstrating the vision for a general-purpose humanoid capable of dangerous, repetitive, or boring tasks using the same AI architecture as Full Self-Driving.
  • 2022: Early prototypes displayed. At the second AI Day in September, semi-functional units demonstrated walking across a stage and basic arm movements
  • 2023: September videos showed improved capabilities, including sorting colored blocks, precise limb awareness, and holding a Yoda pose.
  • 2024-early 2025: Factory integration videos showed Optimus navigating workspaces and handling objects like battery cells.
  • January 2026: Gen 3 mass-production activities began at Fremont, with reports of over 1,000 Gen 3 units already operating inside the factory for real-world learning and AI training
  • April 2026: Musk confirms Optimus production on converted Fremont line would begin in late July or August 2026. The Gen 3 reveal, originally eyed for Q1, was pushed closer to production start. A second, much larger Optimus factory at Giga Texas is under construction, with volume production targeted for Summer 2027 and long-term capacity of 10 million units annually
  • July 1, 2026: Musk’s on-site visit and team photo confirm the Optimus line is operational and the transition is actively progressing

Tesla positions Optimus as potentially its largest project ever, leveraging vertical integration, AI expertise, and car-like manufacturing know-how to scale humanoid robots first for its own factories and later for broader industrial and consumer use.

The Fremont conversion serves as a critical proving ground for this ambitious new chapter in Tesla’s already-rich history.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’

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Credit: MarcoRP | X

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.”

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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.

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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.

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