Investor's Corner
Auto experts reveal why Tesla’s batteries hold a comfortable lead in range
One of the reasons why the narrative of the “Tesla Killer” has effectively died is due to the pervading lead that Tesla holds over the competition in terms of range. Amidst the long-predicted entrance of competing vehicles from established automakers including Audi, Jaguar, and Porsche, Tesla’s vehicles have proven to be vastly superior in range, as evidenced by the Model S Long Range, which can last 370 miles in between charges.
Take Tesla’s very first car, the original Tesla Roadster. The vehicle featured Tesla’s efforts at creating a desirable all-electric sports car, and it showed in the Roadster’s robust 245-mile range. There weren’t even Superchargers when the Roadster was released, but the car proved that EVs could comfortably go beyond the 200-mile mark, and then some more. Interestingly, even modern EVs from veteran carmakers are finding it hard to match the Roadster’s 245-mile EPA range. The Audi e-tron, for example, just has 204 miles of range per charge, while the award-winning I-PACE has an EPA rating of 234 miles per charge.
This, according to veteran auto experts Sandy Munro and Mark Ellis of Munro & Associates, has a lot to do with Tesla’s all-electric platform and the company’s proprietary battery tech. Tesla is only 16 years old, and thus, it only has a fraction of the experience that its rivals in the auto market has. Yet in the EV segment, Tesla is among the veterans, having worked solely on electric cars since Day One.
All-Electric
As such, vehicles that Tesla releases such as the Model S, Model X, and Model 3, are designed as EVs from the get-go. In contrast, carmakers such as Mercedes-Benz and Audi opted to convert existing platforms for EV production. This reduces costs, but it is a double-edged strategy in the EV segment, which is starting to gain serious ground in several key markets. “If you’re designing something radically different, or if you want to have something that’s going to be a world-beater in the marketplace, that parts bin is the worst thing imaginable,” Munro said.
This could be seen in the difference between the Porsche Taycan and a vehicle such as the Mercedes-Benz EQC. Porsche opted to design the Taycan from a clean sheet, and the result was an all-electric sports car that can attack the track just as aggressively as the next 911. It even has a frunk like a Tesla, albeit smaller. Mercedes, on the other hand, opted to base the EQC on its existing GLC platform, and the result is an EV that still has echoes of its internal combustion roots. Between the two vehicles, it is easy to see which carmaker put more effort, and it shows. Today, it appears that the non-Tesla EV community is far more excited about the Taycan than they are for the EQC.
Mark Ellis, a senior master of lean design and battery consultant, notes that this is a key advantage that is inherent in Tesla. “One of Elon Musk’s big advantages is, basically, that the vehicle is designed to be an electric car. Musk designed every aspect of this car to be as efficient as possible,” he said.
The Secret Sauce
Apart from their all-electric design, Tesla’s secret sauce for its vehicles lies in their batteries, from the design of the pack to the chemistry of the cells themselves. Comparing the Model 3’s battery pack to those found in other EVs such as the Chevrolet Bolt EV, Nissan Leaf, Jaguar I-PACE, and BMW i3, Ellis stated that Tesla’s battery pack is superior, especially with regards to the placement of battery cells in relation to the current collectors. “It’s the best design of any battery pack I’ve seen so far,” he said.
But this is not all. Ellis added that Tesla’s cylindrical cells have inherent advantages compared to the prismatic or pouch cells used by the competition. Prismatic cells, for one, expand and contract as they charge and discharge, which means that manufacturers using them have to design their battery packs with the necessary parts to handle the expansion and contraction process of the cells. These add unnecessary weight to a battery, which Tesla’s packs don’t have to deal with.
Ultimately, Ellis explained that Tesla’s battery cells simply have a higher energy density than those utilized by its competition. Tesla was able to achieve this because its batteries have superior chemistry, the consultant said. Part of the reason behind this is the fact that Tesla as a company does not really stop innovating. Tesla’s Automotive President Jerome Guillen hinted at this in a previous interview, when he said that the company’s batteries are never frozen since they are always in a state of improvement. “We are improving the design of the cell. The design of the cell is not frozen. It evolves, and we have a nice roadmap of technology improvements for the coming years,” Guillen said.
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Range is something that is one of the most important factors consumers consider when purchasing an electric car. With the number of EV charging stations not yet on par with the number of gas stations on the road, it is pertinent for customers for many car buyers to acquire a vehicle that can go the distance. Tesla’s long-range vehicles, together with the company’s Supercharger Network, are a perfect fit for these types of customers.
Elon Musk
The real reason Elon Musk wants every car connected to space
Elon Musk says all cars will eventually need Starlink to handle massive AI bandwidth demand.
Elon Musk is making the case that satellite internet, not fiber or cellular towers, will end up wired into every car on the road. In a string of posts on X, the SpaceX CEO wrote that all cars will have Starlink in the future and called satellite connectivity the only way to get super high bandwidth to billions of vehicles.
The posts started with Musk endorsing a Cloudflare forecast that traffic generated by autonomous AI agents will soon dwarf traffic generated by humans browsing the internet, a shift he described as not a close call at all. From there he narrowed the argument to infrastructure, writing that the only system that can support the insanely fast bandwidth growth needed by AI is Starlink, before extending the logic to cars specifically.
AI agentic Internet traffic will obviously VASTLY exceed human usage. Not a close call at all.
Cloudflare’s forecast is accurate. https://t.co/VztgrinN5k pic.twitter.com/Wo4FiRKjPU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s own hardware decisions. On July 20, Tesla confirmed the Cybercab would ship with a Starlink V5 terminal built into its roof, the first time the company had put satellite hardware in a production vehicle. A day later, Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, explained the connection wasn’t there for safety and that Cybercab’s driving stack runs entirely on onboard cameras and compute, while the satellite link exists for navigation, customer service, and fleet management instead. Musk followed with his own post about the feature, saying riders would be able to watch 4K streaming video during rides.
By July 22, Musk had already said Starlink would extend beyond Cybercab to Tesla’s full lineup. Sunday’s posts push that same logic outward again, this time framed as a requirement across the industry rather than a feature specific to Tesla, and tied directly to the bandwidth AI systems are expected to consume.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
The AI argument has been building on SpaceX’s side for months. The company has an FCC filing pending for a third generation Starlink constellation, and it has separately proposed Starmind, a constellation of up to a million satellites designed to run AI computation directly in orbit rather than just relay data. Musk has said he expects space to become the cheapest place to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Starlink and Starmind serve different jobs inside that vision, one moving data and the other processing it, but Sunday’s posts treat vehicles as one more category of hardware that will eventually need both.
None of this changes anything for Tesla owners today. Cars already on the road keep running on LTE and Wi-Fi, and Tesla hasn’t outlined a retrofit path for existing vehicles. The July 22 commitment applies to future production, not the fleet already delivered. What Musk added on Sunday is the reasoning: satellite connectivity isn’t a Cybercab novelty, it’s a bet that ground based networks won’t keep up with how much data cars, robots, and AI systems are about to generate.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.
Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.
Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.
Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.
TESLA: U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division granted Tesla a Temporary Restraining Order and Writ of Replevin in its dispute with Angstrom Automotive (Case No. 6:26-cv-00477).
The order authorizes… https://t.co/E1DKcQSxMn pic.twitter.com/LR8aAiV2Og
— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 5, 2026
The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.
Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.
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