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Tesla’s ‘leading choice’ for its Europe Gigafactory site is Germany

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In a series of tweets on Monday, Elon Musk casually stated that Tesla’s “leading choice” for the site of its Europe Gigafactory is Germany. According to Musk, the facility would probably be built somewhere on the German-French border, near the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) countries.

A Gigafactory in Europe has been in Musk’s radar for some time now. References to the facility being built in the region were teased by Musk back in late 2016, after the company announced its acquisition of Grohmann Engineering. Grohmann Engineering, now known as Tesla Grohmann Automation, is based in Prüm, Germany, which makes it strategically located for any facility that Tesla builds near the German-French border. With the robotics company nearby, Tesla would be able to scale the manufacturing capabilities of its Europe Gigafactory with relative ease.

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Several areas in Germany close to the Benelux countries actually have thriving car industries. Baden-Württemberg, for one, is home to facilities owned by legacy automakers such as AMG, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Audi. Apart from being the third-largest state in Germany, Baden-Württemberg is also one of the regions in the country with the highest density of electric cars and EV charging infrastructure. Baden-Württemberg is also home to a good number of academic institutions, which could provide Tesla with a sizeable pool of potential employees.

Overall, the prospect of the Europe Gigafactory being set up in Germany stands to benefit Tesla’s customers and other facilities in the region. With the Europe Gigafactory producing battery packs, powertrains, and vehicles, Tesla’s other facilities in the area, such as its Tilburg, Netherlands assembly plant, could increase its capability to roll out electric vehicles.

Ultimately, however, a Gigafactory in Europe would be Tesla’s ticket to saturating the region with competitively-priced vehicles such as the Model 3, and possibly even the Model Y. During Tesla’s Q1 2018 earnings call, Elon Musk noted that all future Gigafactories would be incorporating vehicle production. With its first foray into the mid-sized luxury segment — the Model 3 — already proving to be a formidable competitor in its class in the United States, an aggressive push of the vehicle in Europe could very well put a sizeable dent in the profits of the region’s legacy automakers.

Tesla’s Europe Gigafactory would likely take some time before its construction begins, however. For now, Tesla is focused on establishing the China Gigafactory. The upcoming factory, which will be wholly owned by Tesla thanks to changes in China’s rules for facilities owned by foreign automakers, is expected to be the site where the majority of the Model Y crossover SUV would be produced. Details about the upcoming all-electric crossover SUV have been dropped by Musk during the past few earnings call as well. Back in Q3 2017, Musk asserted that its China facility would not produce the Model S and Model X, but rather, the Model Y and Model 3. During the Q4 2017 call, Musk stated that Tesla would begin investing in the Model Y sometime later in 2018.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know

SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.

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SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.

At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.

SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation

 

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The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”

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Investor's Corner

Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”

Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.

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Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.

While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure

The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.

Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

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Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.

Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.

As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.

Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla Full Self-Driving hits Level 4? One analyst says yes

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.

However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.

Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.

Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.

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Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.

He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.

Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.

Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.

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That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.

Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.

“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.

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