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Tesla is considering a significant expansion of its Fremont Factory

The Tesla Fremont factory. (Credit: Tesla)

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Tesla’s Fremont Factory could have its production capacity increased, according to CEO Elon Musk. Tesla is “considering expanding [Fremont] significantly,” Musk said in a Tweet last night.

Following Musk’s heavily publicized jab at President Joe Biden on Tuesday night for not mentioning Tesla in the State of the Union Speech with the likes of Ford and GM, who received Biden’s praise for electric vehicle projects resulting in employment opportunities. While Biden commended Ford for $11 billion invested and 11,000 new jobs and GM for $7 billion and 4,000 new employment opportunities in Michigan, Musk hit back with a valid point.

“Tesla has created over 50,000 US jobs building electric vehicles & is investing more than double GM + Ford combined,” he said, alerting “the person running this account” to give Tesla more credit.

While Biden finally gave Tesla its praise last month, more public figures are called for the President to give the automaker credit. Former Kiss bassist and co-lead singer Gene Simmons said, “Actually, @elonmusk makes a solid point to Pres @JoeBiden. The President doesn’t mention Tesla, perhaps because Tesla is non-union and moved to Texas, a “right to work” state. Give Elon Musk/Tesla its due. They are game changers and should be heralded.”

Musk clarified Simmons’ comment, stating that Tesla still operates its Fremont facility in Northern California. Tesla did move its headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, Texas, late last year. In California, Tesla produces all four of its current vehicles, and the plant has been responsible for handling all demand in North America for several years. The Model S and Model X are also shipped from this plant globally, as Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Tesla’s other active manufacturing plant only produces builds of the Model 3 and Model Y.

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Musk said that Tesla is considering an expansion of the Fremont Facility, which has 5.3 million square feet of manufacturing and office space already. However, Fremont is responsible for such a substantial piece of Tesla’s manufacturing footprint, that the automaker may need to expand operations at the plant to keep up with demand. While the Texas factory is set to begin deliveries soon and Gigafactory Berlin is rumored to be receiving final approval tomorrow, production at both factories could begin before the end of the quarter. Gigafactory Shanghai is also expected to have its capacity doubled, adding to Tesla’s considerable additions to its manufacturing output

Tesla says its current production output for Fremont is 600,000 vehicles annually: 500,000 Model 3 and Model Y with 100,000 Model S and Model X.

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Nevertheless, Tesla will still need more facilities and more manufacturing space. In Fremont over the past several years, Tesla has expanded production lines and made some temporary manufacturing spaces permanent. Tesla’s Sprung Structure, which contained General Assembly line 4.5, was made permanent last Summer, according to filings found by Teslarati.

“This is the final straw,” or is it?

In May 2020, Musk stated that Tesla will move its Headquarters to Texas and its future programs to Texas and Nevada immediately. Unhappy with the treatment at the time, Tesla was working to reopen the factory when the COVID-19 pandemic was affecting businesses nationwide. Musk stated a potential lawsuit against Alameda County would be filed if Tesla’s Northern California facility was not allowed to reopen. Musk said Tesla would move its operations. “If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all,” Musk said, “it will be dependent on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA.”

Several months later, Musk said that Tesla’s headquarters would remain in California “for the short term.” About fifteen months later, Tesla moved its HQ to Austin.

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Evidently, Musk plans to keep Fremont in Tesla’s manufacturing plans and may expand the factory altogether. Interestingly, although Fremont has been a ramped factory for several years and produces all four vehicle models, it contributed less to Tesla’s 2021 delivery figures. Gigafactory Shanghai was responsible for 51.7 percent of all deliveries for Tesla last year, outpacing the Fremont factory.

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.

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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Elon Musk

Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab

Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.

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During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.

Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”

Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators

The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.

A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.

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Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.

The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.

It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.

The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.

This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.

Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results

  • Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
  • Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
  • Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
  • Profit -$ 4.751B

Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.

Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.

In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.

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Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.

You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.

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Elon Musk

Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever

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Tesla FSD 14.3 [Credit: TESLARATI)
Tesla FSD 14.3 [Credit: TESLARATI)

Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.

Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:

Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.

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Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.

Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.

The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:

Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more

Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.

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Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.

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