Investor's Corner
Tesla “ecosystem” of product and services are redefining the auto business
Tesla’s original mission was to electrify the world’s transportation system. Along the way, that expanded into a reboot of the entire automotive industry. By the time it’s all over, Tesla will have redefined not just the way cars are fueled, but the way they are designed, manufactured, marketed and sold.
From the company’s emphasis on self-driving capabilities to its treatment of the vehicle as a computer system, with a unified operating system and over-the-air software updates, Tesla has made important advances, and the lessons have not been entirely lost on the legacy automakers. There are already signs that the Tesla way of doing things is starting to influence the global giants in several areas.
Like other tech pioneers such as Apple, Tesla sees the automobile as part of an “ecosystem” of products and services, and forward-looking execs at other automakers are beginning to see things this way too. The electric vehicle will not be simply a plug-in replacement for the legacy gas-burner, but rather a part of a new paradigm that includes charging infrastructure, vehicle autonomy, new ownership models and renewable energy. Automakers around the world are investing in charging networks, makers of self-driving tech and transportation service providers like Uber and Lyft. Some have explored partnering with solar installers to offer package deals to customers.
Also like Apple, Tesla understands that it isn’t selling just a product, but rather an “ownership experience.” When you look at automobile ownership as an overall experience, you’re bound to come to the conclusion that there are certain parts of the experience that people really dislike, and smarmy car salesmen are near the top of the list. Another obvious conclusion is that the car buying experience is hopelessly outdated.
We’ve been banking online for decades and buying consumer goods without setting foot in a store. Even the process of buying and selling real estate has moved online to a great extent. When it comes to buying a car, however, we still have to drive all the way out to the airport road and endure a long and tedious sales ritual that hasn’t changed much since the 1960s.
Tesla’s efforts to make car-buying more pleasant date all the way back to the Roadster days, as former Tesla VP George Blankenship explained in depth in a recent talk. The company’s direct-to-consumer sales model is loved by auto buyers, hated by politically powerful auto dealers, and surely envied by the legacy automakers who, for better or for worse, are firmly bonded both legally and financially to their existing system of independent dealerships.
The Tesla sales model saves money by cutting out the middleman, it gives the company near-total control over the way its vehicles are presented to buyers, and it gives buyers a direct relationship with the automaker. As a recent article in Fortune points out, it also delivers another unprecedented benefit: it brings buyers (and their money) into the car-buying process before the company builds a single vehicle.
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“They managed to sell so many Model 3s, even before the Model 3 was in its final design stages,” says Tim Huntzinger, an automotive designer who teaches at the ArtCenter College of Design in California. “It was almost like they were doing Kickstarter for cars. They were able to bring in hundreds of millions in revenue before actually creating final tooling for the vehicle.”
“That’s huge for the automotive industry,” said Huntzinger. “For the entire history of the automotive industry, you had to spend millions or hundreds of millions to even turn a cent. Many companies have gone out of business that way.”
And the benefits of this system don’t just flow one way – Huntzinger believes that buyers are empowered by being involved in the process earlier. “To get feedback from customers early in the process – that’s totally new and totally different. The purchasing experience is so different [from what] we’ve all been forced into with the dealership model. It’s super-refreshing to see the customer being put first.”
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Note: Article originally published on evannex.com, by Charles Morris
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.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
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Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
SpaceX gets an absolutely crazy price target after rough IPO
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