News
Tesla Battery Day vs. Volkswagen Power Day: How Wall Street reacted
Tesla’s Battery Day and Volkswagen’s Power Day were two similar events that showed how the two automakers plan to combat electric vehicle prices within the next few years. Despite the similarities in the events, Wall Street reacted quite differently to both, with Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) seeing a minimal effect on its stock in the days following. However, Volkswagen’s stock (OTCMKTS: VWAGY) is soaring over 12% on the day after the event.
Tesla Battery Day
Tesla’s Battery Day was a marquee event for the electric automaker. While the previous year’s focus was Autonomy, 2020 saw battery cells as Tesla’s main concentration. During the event, CEO Elon Musk revealed how Tesla would combat battery prices by continuing to source cells from third-party suppliers, but also by developing its own 4680 cells that are produced by the company in-house. Additionally, new structural battery packs are being used to house the cells and also provide a more robust crash response in the event of an accident. The rigidity of the new structural battery intends to take Tesla’s safety ratings through the roof, where they already reside.
Tesla also revealed plans for a $25,000 car, a blueprint to manufacture 20 million cars per year, and a roadmap to massive cuts in battery cell production costs.
LIVE BLOG: Tesla Battery Day and Annual Shareholder Meeting 2020 updates
Despite the developments, Tesla didn’t receive a big boost on Wall Street. Interestingly, despite the massive developments and plans that Tesla had revealed during the Battery Day event on September 22nd, 2020, the stock closed at $424.23. The day following saw an 11% drop in the stock, as it closed at $380.36.
Many didn’t understand the reason for the drop. Tesla bull and investor Jim Cramer, who was at one time bearish on the automaker’s stock, stated that the stock fell simply because Tesla didn’t announce what some were expecting. “They’re just bummed the things they hyped didn’t happen,” Cramer said. “Tesla rolls out a plan to create an electric car for the masses and greeted with a yawn because Musk didn’t roll out a magic battery. This is what happens when you let expectations get out of control.”
Volkswagen Power Day
Volkswagen’s Power Day was, in effect, the German automaker’s version of Tesla’s Battery Day. The company held an event outlining their plans for cell cost reductions, along with plans for six total production plants across Europe. VW also has established several partnerships with European energy companies to roll out an expansive charging infrastructure, among many other developments.
“We aim to reduce the cost and complexity of the battery and at the same time increase its range and performance,” Volkswagen Group Board Member for Technology Thomas Schmall said. “We will use our economies of scale to the benefit of our customers when it comes to the battery too. On average, we will drive down the cost of battery systems to significantly below €100 per kilowatt-hour. This will finally make e-mobility affordable and the dominant drive technology.”
Volkswagen’s Power Day: Six new cell plants, new unified battery cell, charging network partnerships
Volkswagen stock began Monday’s trading session at $28.38. After the developments that VW announced, the stock shot up $1.38, a boost of 4.86%. However, the German company’s stock is enjoying massive gains today, just one day after the big event. After closing at $29.76 yesterday, VW stock has increased another 3.48% at the time of writing, for a total gain of 11.69% as of 2:30 PM EST.
The differences in the presentations and how Wall Street has responded to them are unknown. However, the sheer size of Volkswagen’s production figures could be the main reason for the increased investor response. While Tesla’s rollout of 500,000 vehicles in 2020 was a company best, Volkswagen delivered 9.3 million vehicles last year. For context, VW has also been around since 1937, while Tesla has only produced a mass-market vehicle since 2017.
Tesla is undoubtedly the leader in electric vehicles. Volkswagen, while still working out software kinks, could be considered second-place by some because of the successful adaptation of the ID. family of vehicles in Europe so far. However, it is still admittedly ironing out some software issues with its MEB platform, and it seems somewhat odd that VW’s stock received such a healthy boost in the day following its Power Day event.
What do you think? What is the reasoning for the substantial difference in Wall Street’s reaction? Let us know in the comments below, or Tweet me directly.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to receive improvements to address its two biggest issues, according to a company engineer.
Director of Engineering at Tesla AI, Phil Duan, revealed in a post on X that improvements to both pothole avoidance and navigation “are coming,’ something we have heard many times in the past. However, there are a few things that seem to hint that things might be different this time around.
Improvements on both are coming.
— Phil Duan (@pduan) October 1, 2026
Pothole avoidance, navigation, speed control, and left lane camping are some of the most prevalent and frequently mentioned shortcomings of the Full Self-Driving suite. These are a few of the biggest issues that have kept Tesla Full Self-Driving as a Supervised suite, meaning drivers must remain attentive during operation.
Pothole Avoidance
Pothole avoidance was first mentioned as an “Upcoming Improvement” with the Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 update back in early April of this year. It was listed alongside “Expand reasoning to all behaviors beyond destination handling.”
It’s been six months since we first saw pothole avoidance explicitly mentioned, and it has not moved beyond that and joined the main release notes yet.
Tesla has not shed any light on why pothole avoidance has been such an issue for it to solve, but it also has issues identifying large bumps much of the time, so its modeling of sudden changes in road conditions is likely pretty weak at this particular point. I’ve had more issues with large bumps than potholes, personally, but both are issues that need to be resolved.
This is that big bounce that I mentioned in the quoted post.
It’s just a tad too drastic to take at the speed FSD wants to go over it. You can see me quickly swipe down into Sloth, but I intervened. https://t.co/K20PK9ysBg pic.twitter.com/81Oc82ZJcZ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 2, 2026
It makes sense that things might be pretty close to being released to the public, as we are going on such an extensive period of time between it being mentioned and it actually being deployed.
Navigation
Navigation is likely the most painful part of using Full Self-Driving, as it routinely takes strange routes, has trouble with local rules (like Except Right Turn Stop Signs in Pennsylvania), and sometimes does not realize that maneuvers it is suggesting are against the law. Turning out of my neighborhood, you cannot turn left, yet my Model Y still suggests it roughly 70 percent of the time when I’m leaving.
However, Tesla might be close to a breakthrough on this. With the Summer Update, Tesla added “Preferred Routes” alongside “Automatic Navigation.”
Preferred Routes prioritized roads that the driver had actually taken before, instead of always defaulting to what the vehicle believes is the most efficient path. This has already solved many of my issues. Formerly, I would turn off the Online Routing setting, and that would eliminate most of my complaints with routing, but then you lose out later on the Live Traffic Visualization.
Tesla’s Navigation has improved tremendously thanks to the Preferred Routes release with the Summer Update, but it still could use some polishing, as it still suggests strange routes from time to time, and it also has a lot of issues getting out of a parking lot. I find that those truly confuse FSD sometimes.
News
SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record
Falcon Heavy launched its first NRO mission while SpaceX landed four boosters in one day.
SpaceX closed out one of its busiest days ever with a midnight Falcon Heavy launch from Florida, and the rocket’s two side boosters came home to finish off a landing record the company had never set before.
Falcon Heavy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 11:54 p.m. ET Thursday carrying NROL-97, a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. It was the first time the NRO has flown on Falcon Heavy after 22 missions on Falcon 9, and the first NRO mission bought through the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 contract awarded in 2025, according to Spaceflight Now.
Falcon Heavy lifts off from pad 39A in Florida for the 14th time! pic.twitter.com/uuZLKNTdD7
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
Roughly eight minutes after liftoff, side boosters B1104 and B1072 touched down at Landing Zones 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, setting off double sonic booms across Brevard County. B1104 was flying for the second time and B1072 for the fourth. Both last flew on August 30 on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, making NROL-97 the quickest turnaround between Falcon Heavy missions to date. The brand new center core, B1106, was expended in the Atlantic so the payload could reach its high energy orbit, and SpaceX’s mission page noted the fairing had previously flown on the NROL-95 mission in July.
The two landings capped a record for SpaceX. Earlier Thursday, Falcon 9 booster B1101 returned to Landing Zone 40 after sending the Crew-13 astronauts to the International Space Station, and another Falcon 9 launched the Transporter-18 rideshare with 130 payloads from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Spaceflight Now reported it was the first time SpaceX has landed four boosters in a single day, wrapping up the triple header Teslarati previewed on Wednesday.
Falcon Heavy’s side boosters land on LZ-1 and LZ-2 pic.twitter.com/dBPcNeggFx
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
The mission also brought Landing Zone 1 back for what may be its final landing. SpaceX first landed an orbital class booster there in December 2015, but its lease on the former Launch Complex 13 site ended in 2025 as the company moved Florida landings to new pads at its own launch complexes. With LZ-40 already holding the Crew-13 booster, SpaceX brought LZ-1 back into service for one more night. Launch tracker Next Spaceflight listed NROL-97 as the final expected landing at the site.
NROL-97 adds to a fast growing stack of national security work for SpaceX. The company has flown four Space Force missions from Vandenberg since mid August, several believed to carry Starshield satellites, pushing its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion. Elon Musk was also named this week to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.
The Florida doubleheader stood out for another reason. The Space Coast saw only one launch in all of September as SpaceX shifts more of its East Coast infrastructure toward Starship, which reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 just three days earlier.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported strong delivery figures that beat Wall Street guesses, and they were revealed alongside the company’s second-best quarter in terms of energy deployments ever.
Tesla announced this morning that it delivered 486,532 cars in Q3, while producing 464,391, exceeding analyst consensus, which sat around 462,000 units.
Meanwhile, Tesla reported 13.7 GWh of energy storage deployed for the quarter. That’s the second-best quarter Tesla has ever reported on that side of things.
🚨 Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating expectations at 464,391.
Big Q from the Tesla team, also 13.7 GWh of energy was deployed. pic.twitter.com/olioLWgG7a
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 2, 2026
Vehicle Deliveries
Deliveries were strong, and it was another quarter when Tesla had the opportunity to outshine the Wall Street pundits who are quick to criticize and slow to give credit. Tesla saw a slight decrease in deliveries compared to Q3 2025, but Tesla still had the $7,500 EV Tax Credit to use to help incentivize consumers to pick an EV.
A small decrease of 2.1 percent is pretty telling because it shows Tesla does not need massive federal credits to convince consumers to purchase its vehicles.
It was also the company’s third-best performance all-time in terms of deliveries, trailing that of Q3 2025 with 497,099 deliveries and Q4 2024, when the company handed over 495,570 cars.
We reported several days ago that Tesla Showrooms across the United States were completely bare of inventory or unclaimed units. Many locations also removed Demo Drive units, which had been bought by customers looking to take delivery sooner.
Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong
Energy Generation
Tesla’s Energy Generation performance in Q3 was also very strong, as the company deployed 13.7 GWh of energy storage over the past three months. The only quarter when Tesla reported stronger energy deployment figures was Q4 2025, when 14.2 GWh of energy storage was deployed.
Tesla’s Q3 performance in energy generation has continued to grow each quarter, with the company increasing its deployments by ten-fold since Q3 2021, when just 1.3 GWh was deployed.
It is also nearly double what it was in Q3 2024, when the company reported 6.9 GWh. This is one of Tesla’s quickest-growing divisions, and it flies under the radar with fans and analysts, as many are focused on self-driving or the vehicles themselves.
Tesla Stock
Shares rose 5.07 percent to $372.06 at just after 10 a.m. on the East Coast. This is a rarity for Tesla after a strong delivery report, as positive news usually brings the stock down. Many quarters with extremely robust delivery reports have not been as kind to the Teslanaires of the world.
Tesla says fixes on Full Self-Driving’s two biggest issues are on the way
SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record
