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Tesla board approves purchase agreement for Gigafactory 4 property in Germany

Tesla Gigafactory 4 (Source: Gigafactory_4 | Twitter)

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Tesla’s Board of Directors have approved the contract to purchase the 300-hectare parcel of land for Gigafactory 4 in Grunheide, bringing the electric carmaker a step closer to begin the construction of its European factory in Brandenburg.

The board approval follows a January 9 decision made by the Financial Committee of Brandenburg who approved the sales contract for the site where the Gigafactory 4 will be built. Tesla sealed the deal to buy the area covered by an expansive forest for 40.91 million euros or about $45 million.

The preliminary price of the property can still be amended if an external review comes up with a different value and finds that adjustments are needed, Reuters reported.  The initial pricing puts the price at just 13.50 euros per square meter or about a third of nearby properties. However, one should take note that the land for the Tesla Gigafactory 4 site is not as developed as the Freinebrink Business Park that already has electricity, roadways, and other provisions. The California-based car manufacturer will need to build roads and set up necessary utilities such as electricity and water system to operate the facility.

Over the weekend, there were protesters in Grunheide expressing their worries about the effects of Tesla’s factory on the environment. This was met with an opposing group of Tesla supporters who chanted, “We are here! We are loud because Tesla is building the future for us!” Below is a clip shared by @Gf4Tesla via Twitter:

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Tesla supporters such as 46-year-old local Anke Kranhold welcomes the opportunities Tesla brings to Grunheide.

“I myself have sons and two daughters-in-law who are engineers, maybe in the future they will have the chance to cycle to work instead of commuting to Berlin,” Kranhold said.

Tesla started building access roads in the Grunheide property and are also scanning the area for undetonated World War II-era bombs. The electric carmaker is also working with authorities to move an endangered species of bats that are currently hibernating, as well as other animals in the forest.

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Tesla plans to clear a portion of the forest by the end of February in order to stick to its timeline and begin construction by mid-March. The factory plans to start production by July 2021 with the aim to produce 150,000 vehicles initially and later on ramp-up to build 500,000 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles per year. The first Tesla car factory in Europe may generate 8,000 jobs for locals and nearby countries.

Aside from creating jobs, Brandenburg’s Economic Minister Jörg Steinbach believes Tesla will have a “magnetic effect” in Grunheide and help bring more businesses to the state and because of this, the authorities promised that the company has its support and will consider building another freeway connection, feeder roads, and expand rail capacity to avoid traffic bottlenecks in the area.

A curious soul who keeps wondering how Elon Musk, Tesla, electric cars, and clean energy technologies will shape the future, or do we really need to escape to Mars.

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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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Investor's Corner

SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull

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SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.

“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”

Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12

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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.

It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”

Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.

There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:

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“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”

SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.

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Tesla expands massive safety feature worldwide in latest update

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has expanded the footprint of a massive safety feature worldwide with a recent Software Update labeled as 2026.20.6. The expansion of the “Blind Spot Warning While Parked” feature represents the more widespread availability of the feature, which aims to prevent “dooring.”

Dooring is when a driver or passenger opens a car door into the path of an oncoming road user, usually a cyclist or motorcyclist. It is among the most common types of cycling accidents, the League of American Bicyclists says.

For this reason, Tesla created a feature that warns occupants not to open the door because an object is approaching. The feature will sound a chime, and it will also delay the opening of the door to prevent an incident.

The release notes state (via Not a Tesla App):

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“If you attempt to open a door while an approaching object is detected in your blind spot (for example, a bicyclist approaching from behind) a chime sounds, and your door will not open upon initial button press. Wait a short time and press the button a second time to override the warning.”

Tesla initially rolled out this feature back in 2024 with the Model 3 “Highland.” However, it remained with the Model 3 exclusively for over a year; that was until Tesla added it to the Cybertruck this past Spring.

Now, it is making its way to the new Model Y, 2021 and newer Model S, and 2021 or newer Model X.

The prevention of dooring incidents could eliminate many injuries to cyclists, especially in an urban setting. Dooring accounts for 10-20 percent of bike-related crashes in major cities, and over 17,000 dooring-related incidents were treated in the U.S. over the course of a decade. These usually involve fractures, contusions, and head trauma.

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