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Tesla's Elon Musk updates worldwide Gigafactory naming convention
CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla will start referring to its Gigafactories using the word “Giga” and then adding the mostly understood location name.
The Tesla chief tweeted about the new naming convention Friday night. At the moment, Tesla has three operational Gigafactories and expects to begin construction of a fourth Gigafactory near Berlin soon.
Setting a convention on how Gigafactories will be referred to will help avoid confusion as mainstream media, consumers, and Tesla fans usually refer to these facilities as Giga followed by the number based on the date the factories went online. Others also refer to the factories as Giga followed by either the country or city where the factories are located.
Going with nomenclature of Giga [most widely understood location name] vs Giga #, so Giga Shanghai, Giga Nevada, Giga New York & Giga Berlin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2020
The Gigafactory 1 will now be called Giga Nevada. This facility broke ground in June 2014 just outside Sparks, Nevada and is primarily focused on designing and producing batteries for Tesla. In 2018, the said Gigafactory became the highest-volume battery plant in the world with an annualized rate of roughly 20 GWh. Tesla’s battery acquisitions to help produce batteries that will ultimately extend the range of its vehicles are proving to be well worth their costs as they are helping the brand dominate competitors in the future.
The Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo will now be referred to as Giga New York. This 1.2-million sq. ft facility is key for producing the Solar Roof Tiles and the Powerwall. Tesla is stepping on the pedal this year and begins 2020 by offering its solar customers incentives in its latest referral program update.
Meanwhile, its Gigafactory 3 in China will simply be called Giga Shanghai. Tesla’s first car factory outside of the United State has now achieved a run rate of 3,000 units per week according to the company’s most recent updates. The Shanghai factory will be key in conquering the biggest automotive market in the globe and should help the brand in exploring other markets in Asia.
In the same conversation on Twitter, Musk chimed in on the issues hounding the upcoming Gigafactory 4 in Grunheide which will now be referred to as Giga Berlin. The Tesla chief clarified that its first factory in Europe will not be using 372 cubic meters of water per hour as implied by those expressing concerns that Tesla might cause water supply issues in the community, and the carmaker is also trying to shed light on the confusion that it’s clearing a natural forest to build a factory for its green cars.
“Sounds like we need to clear up a few things! Tesla won’t use this much net water on a daily basis. It’s possibly a rare peak usage case, but not an everyday event. Also, this is not a natural forest — it was planted for use as cardboard & only a small part will be used for GF4,” Musk wrote.
“…Giga Berlin will build sustainable energy vehicles using sustainable energy, so net environmental impact will be extremely positive,” he added.
Tesla hopes to begin construction of the Giga Berlin in March. It is expected to create around 8,000 jobs for locals and and interested workers from across the region. The car factory will produce 150,000 vehicles during its initial phase and is expected to up production to 500,000 units in the future.
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.
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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.”
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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:
“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.
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):
“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.
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull
