Investor's Corner
Tesla registers more than 7,000 new Model 3 VINs, passes 50k milestone
Tesla has registered 7,237 new Model 3 VINs, its largest single batch to date. The Elon Musk-led company has now successfully passed the 50k milestone for the Model 3, with a total of 51,699 registrations for the vehicle.
The new VIN registrations were shared on Twitter by @Model3VINs, a group that tracks Tesla’s filings for the compact electric car. The latest batch of vehicle identification numbers comes after Tesla’s record-breaking week earlier this month, when the company registered more than 5,000 VINs, followed by another 3,000 a few days later.
#Tesla registered 7,237 new #Model3 VINs. Highest VIN is 51699. https://t.co/rkTbYLwf6U
— Model 3 VINs (@Model3VINs) May 23, 2018
Tesla’s VIN registrations have seen a considerable spike this May. During the end of April, the highest vehicle identification number registered by the company was 33,719. Tesla has registered 17,950 new Model 3 VINs since then — a feat that previously took Tesla months to accomplish, considering that the company was only able to break the 17k barrier on March 23, despite the electric car maker starting production of the vehicle in mid-2017.
Elon Musk mentioned the tracking of Tesla’s VIN registrations for the Model 3 in Tesla’s Q1 2018 earnings call. While responding to a question, Musk explicitly mentioned the community’s close eye on vehicle registrations.
“People track registrations very closely. So at most, any information that we provide would be 1 week or 2 in advance of what will become public knowledge just due to vehicle registrations and shipments that are tracked very carefully,” Musk said.
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Overall, the more than 7,000 new VINs recently filed by Tesla seems to be in line with with production estimates that were outlined in a leaked Elon Musk email last month. In that particular message, Musk stated that scheduled shutdowns of the Model 3 line are crucial to pave the way for Tesla to produce the compact electric car at higher volumes.
Musk’s leaked email further noted that a shutdown in April was expected to enable the company to hit a production rate of 3,000-4,000 Model 3 per week. Another shutdown is expected later this month, which is expected to allow the company to ramp the production of the Model 3 to 5,000-6,000 vehicles per week.
Once Tesla is able to maintain a consistent production rate of 5,000 Model 3 per week, the company would begin manufacturing the electric car’s next two variants — the dual-motor AWD and Performance Model 3. As noted by Musk in a series of tweets this past weekend, the dual-motor AWD Model 3 will cost an additional $5,000. The dual-motor AWD configuration allows the compact electric car to go from 0-60 mph in 4.5 seconds, .60 seconds faster than the long-range RWD variant of the vehicle. The Model 3 Performance, on the other hand, will cost $78,000 with all options except Autopilot, while boasting a 0-60 mph time of 3.5 seconds, a top speed of 155 mph, and a range of 310 miles per charge.
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)
