Investor's Corner
Tesla’s ‘Alien Dreadnought’ factory takes a step forward with structural cable patent
When Elon Musk envisioned the Model 3 production line, he saw a factory that was so automated; it looked like it was literally out of this world. In later statements, Musk shared Tesla’s internal name for the automated factory – Alien Dreadnought – a reference to the fascinating, intricate extraterrestrial motherships that are a trope of classic sci-fi franchises. Musk also noted that the Alien Dreadnought should be operational sometime in 2018.
The Model 3 production ramp would eventually teach Elon Musk that his timeline for the Alien Dreadnought was far too optimistic. Since starting the production of the electric car, Tesla has been met with bottleneck after bottleneck in both the Fremont factory and Gigafactory 1. While Tesla was eventually able to find a system that balances robot and human work to effectively ramp the Model 3, Musk would later admit that Tesla overreached when it came to the automation of its production lines. In a post on Twitter, Musk candidly noted that human workers are still underrated.
Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2018
While Elon Musk’s Alien Dreadnought factory might be coming later than expected, the company appears to be paving the way for even more automation in its factories. A recently published patent on Thursday, for one, outlines a structural cable design that is fully optimized for automated manufacturing. In the discussions of the patent, Tesla described the rationale of a structural cable that is rigid by design.
“The structural cable according to the present disclosure is a cable with structural integrity that may be manipulated into place by a robotic arm as part of an automated process while providing reliable data connections to its desired location. As part of the form manipulation, the structural cable preferentially allows manipulation into different geometries allowing for placement that avoids obstacles, and that can be performed in a reproducible manner so as to be implemented as part of an automated process.”
Tesla notes in its patent that traditional cables, due to their non-rigid nature, are best installed by human hands, which connect the appropriate connectors to their respective ports during the production process. The electric car maker notes that this is due to the cables lacking “sufficient structural integrity and rigidity to be easily picked up, moved, and placed by a robotic arm,” as well as their inability to be formed into pre-determined shapes.
“Because traditional cables are not rigid, they may not be easily formed into different shapes and routed to a pre-determined location amidst tight spatial constraints. Routing traditional, flexible cables during manufacturing, for example to connect different components during automobile manufacturing, typically cannot be automated and therefore require humans to place by hand. Such manual placement is time-consuming, tedious, and costly. Hence, there is a need for a structural cable that overcomes the aforementioned drawbacks.”
Tesla’s designs for its structural cable design as outlined in the newly-published patent. [Source: Patentscope]
Tesla intends to work around these compromises by using a rigid structural cable, which could be easily picked up and installed automatically by a robotic arm. By using such components, Tesla would be able to optimize the level of automation in its facilities even further.
“An advantage of this flat cable configuration with known geometries and wires/conductors spaced at known dimensions (and preferably collinear) is that the process of connecting the flat wires/conductors to connectors may be automated through, for example crimping, traditional soldering, or laser soldering. In a specific implementation, encased wires are held on a flat conveyer or with a robotic arm, and the wires are stripped using a stripping attachment so as to preserve the wire spacing. The robotic arm (or another robotic arm) may then pick up a connector and crimp the connector to the wires by pressing down (or utilizing an appropriate tool).”
It should be noted that while Elon Musk’s Alien Dreadnought factory is delayed, the company’s production lines are already heavily automated. Back in the Q1 2018 earnings call, for one, Elon Musk noted that Tesla was able to reduce the time it takes to produce Model 3 battery packs by 94%, from seven hours per unit to under 17 minutes per pack. Tesla has since improved its production lines in the Fremont factory and Gigafactory 1, and this Q4 2018, the company intends to optimize its operations even further. Gigafactory 1, for example, is expected to receive new battery cell assembly lines from Panasonic this quarter. New Grohmann machines, which are expected to improve production, are also expected to go online in the Nevada facility this Q4 as well.
The full text of Tesla’s patent for its structural cables could be accessed here.
Investor's Corner
Tesla crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.
Tesla reported it delivered 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.
Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.
For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.
Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.
Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
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.”
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.
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.
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
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:
“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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