Investor's Corner
Tesla to cut back presence in Hong Kong if Musk’s “beacon city” fails to adopt new EV incentives , says report
Tesla has reportedly submitted a letter to Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, stating that it would reduce its presence in the country if previous tax credits for electric car buyers are not reinstated. The removal of a full registration tax waiver on electric vehicles was implemented last year by the HK government, causing a significant drop in electric car sales in the region of China.
Without the tax credits in place, electric vehicle prices have shot up by 50 to 80 percent in Hong Kong. Tax relief was also capped at HK$97,500 (US$12,466.35). These changes have ultimately caused the prices of vehicles like the Tesla Model S to increase significantly.
Since the tax credits were pulled out, Hong Kong saw a steep decline in the number of new EV registrations. In April 2017, the first month following the removal of the tax waivers, no registrations for electric cars was filed, causing companies such as Tesla to take heavy blows in sales. Tesla for one, only sold 32 Model S and Model X from April to December 2017, a massive decline from the 2,078 Model S and Model X it sold from April to December 2016.
In a statement to the South China Morning Post, an anonymous source claiming to have knowledge of the matter stated that Tesla is attempting to push back against the HK government. According to the source, the Silicon Valley-based electric car maker and energy firm is urging Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to rethink the country’s position in the EV tax waiver issue. If the government does not budge, Tesla would reportedly begin scaling back its operations.
“Scaling down Tesla’s operation in Hong Kong is a natural and logical consequence if the number of customers has dwindled prompted by a reduction of government incentives. Without government support, who is willing to invest in green technology?” the source said, according to the Post.
While Hong Kong has maintained that the removal of the EV tax credits was due to traffic congestion and the fact that the majority of electric car owners were members of the upper class, critics of the government have speculated that the state had simply backed down amid pressure from legacy car makers. The Asia-based publication appears to have confirmed this recently, with another anonymous source from the local car industry stating that Tesla had simply gotten too successful in Hong Kong.
“The sale of Tesla cars in one month was equal to the annual sales figure of some petrol car brands. They all complained that the rapid growth of Tesla these few years had made their lives really difficult,” the source said.
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Prior to the removal of the tax credits on electric vehicles, Hong Kong was one of the leaders in the electric car revolution in Asia, thanks in no small part to Tesla’s entry into the country. In a statement back in 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressed his optimism about Hong Kong being a leader in emissions-free transportation, calling Hong Kong a “Beacon City” for electric vehicles.
Musk’s statement definitely rang true, with electric car sales in the country experiencing a surge that saw registrations reach well into the thousands every year. By the time the Hong Kong government decided to discontinue the EV tax credits last year, there were 10,589 registered private electric cars in the region, with 2,964 of the registrations being filed in March 2017, the month right before the waivers were discontinued. A significant number of the country’s electric cars were Tesla Model S and Model X.
Below is a video of Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaking at a special event in Hong Kong in 2016.
https://youtu.be/12FVtZh5SLs
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.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
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— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
