Investor's Corner
Tesla guides EV industry’s shift from niche production to mass market
As Tesla continues to push the boundaries on automation in its factory production line, 2018 could be the year when the company and the electric vehicle (EVs) industry shifts from being seen as niche production to the mass market. Noting that roughly 1.3 million EVs were sold around the world in 2017, a 57 percent increase over 2016 sales, global consultancy McKinsey predicts that EVs’ share of total passenger vehicle sales could reach 30 to 35 percent in major markets like China, Europe, and the US by 2030. In partnership with automotive benchmarking specialist A2Mac1, McKinsey took a deep dive into EV technology, and identified four strategies that automakers should follow to remain relevant as the industry transforms itself.
EVs reached a major milestone in 2017. The main obstacles to mass market adoption have been driving range and price. With the launch of Tesla’s Model 3 and GM’s Chevy Bolt, both of which offer a range of over 250 miles, McKinsey believes that the range issue has basically been solved, and that automakers can now focus on reducing price points, either by increasing design efficiency or reducing manufacturing costs. To be successful at this, McKinsey believes they will need to follow four technical strategies.
1 – Build native electric vehicles
Native EVs – cars built on a custom electric platform, rather than adapted from legacy fossil-fuel vehicles – cost automakers more to develop, but offer multiple advantages. A native EV doesn’t have to be designed around bulky components that are no longer needed, such as drive shaft tunnels and exhaust systems, so it can accommodate a bigger battery pack. The pack can also be placed where it makes the most sense – at the bottom of the vehicle. This “skateboard” design, made famous by Model S designer Franz von Holzhausen, has since been copied by other automakers. Not only does it improve handling by giving the vehicle a lower center of gravity, it also opens up much more space for passengers and cargo.
2 – Push the boundaries of powertrain integration
McKinsey’s benchmarking revealed a continuing trend toward EV powertrain integration: EV-makers are integrating components such as inverters, motor controllers, etc, into fewer modules. One indicator of the increased level of integration is the design of the electric cables connecting the main electric powertrain components (battery, motor, power electronics and thermal management). McKinsey observed a decrease in both cable weight and the number of parts in the latest electric models compared with earlier vehicles.
EV powertrains are inherently more flexible, as the components are smaller, and designers have more freedom to place them in the best positions to optimize space. McKinsey found that the Chevy Bolt seems to use an ICE-like positioning of its powertrain electronics, whereas the Tesla Model 3 integrates most components directly on the rear of its battery pack and rear axle.
3 – Stay ahead in the technology game
Electric vehicle customers tend to be tech-savvy – they expect to have the latest driver-assistance systems, connectivity features and infotainment goodies. This almost obligates EV manufacturers to equip their vehicles with the highest levels of technology available. However, McKinsey sees this as an opportunity, as it creates a great testing field for the new technologies that OEMs and third-party providers are developing.
Vehicle controls are steadily migrating from physical knobs and switches to a more central, smartphone-like user interface. Of course, Tesla’s Model 3 is the ultimate example of this, but most EVs are following the trend of clearing the clutter. “We observed EVs in our benchmark that have as few as seven physical buttons in the interior, compared with 50 to 60 in many standard ICEs,” says McKinsey.
Rimac Concept_One digital controls being demonstrated at Monterey Carweek
Behind the scenes in vehicles’ electronic control units (ECUs), the trend is also toward more consolidation. Legacy autos are controlled by a jumble of different computer systems, often from different suppliers, that talk to each other in limited ways or not at all. Once again, Tesla led the way. In a 2014 interview, Tesla founder Ian Wright told me that his 2008 Volkswagen probably had “sixty or seventy electronic black boxes, 300 pounds of wiring harness, and software from 20 different companies in it.” Tesla’s vehicles use one central computer system. “The major reliability problem with those cars is the electronics and software,” said Wright. “I think Tesla did take a real Silicon Valley systems architecture perspective in designing all the electronics in the Model S.”
In an EV, electronics and software are the heart of the vehicle, and Wright predicted that, as the majors began to produce EVs, they would eventually be forced to adopt a more systems-oriented approach. McKinsey found that this prediction is coming true. Automakers are finding that a centralized approach gives them the chance to own a key control point in the vehicle, helps to save on weight and costs, and may improve reliability. Central, high-power ECUs “could also be the backbone for developing fully autonomous driving.”
4 – Design to cost
Legacy automakers are still struggling to make a profit on their EVs, mainly because of high battery costs (not Tesla, which claims to be earning margins of over 20% on Model S and X sales). Now that the range issue has been more or less solved, McKinsey believes OEMs will need to apply design-to-cost (DTC) strategies to produce EVs at attractive price points while earning decent margins. Fortunately, this something that established OEMs and suppliers are good at, so they may be able to quickly catch up. For example, improvements in battery technology may allow automakers to switch from lightweight but costly aluminum to more cost-efficient steel (a shift Tesla has already made with Model 3).
Can the traditional automakers make money in the volume EV market? Many industry observers are skeptical – one reason for the companies’ reluctance to embrace EVs may be that they see them as a lower-profit proposition. In the first public acknowledgment of this dynamic, Daimler recently announced that it foresees an end to profit growth this year, partly due to the high costs of making the shift to EVs. Certainly, it’s difficult to imagine that any EV will ever yield the prodigious profits of a vehicle like Ford’s F-150 pickup, which has been called the most profitable consumer product in history.
However, McKinsey believes that, if automakers heed its sage advice and take the aforementioned four EV design steps into consideration, they should be able to reduce the higher manufacturing costs of EVs and find their way to a positive mass-market business case. An era of profitable mass-market EVs could be on the horizon, and that would be good news for consumers, the environment – and forward-looking automakers that are willing to take some risks and embrace change.
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Note: Article originally published on evannex.com by Charles Morris; Source: McKinsey / A2Mac1
Elon Musk
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.
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
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.”
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.
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
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.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
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.
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.
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.
🚨 These are the first-ever FSD safety statistics out of the Netherlands, showing it was over 3.5x safer than human driving on Dutch roads.
The most recent numbers out of Tesla for North America show:
-Over 5.5 million miles between accidents for Teslas using FSD
-660k miles… https://t.co/XKlRzgSGEh pic.twitter.com/HX6kzh0ZKc— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
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.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
