Investor's Corner
Tesla Fremont factory building permits reveal facilities and expansion costs
A compilation and analysis of building permits filed by Tesla since July 2016 has revealed that the Elon Musk-led company spent over $51.3 million in construction permits for the Fremont factory over the past two years. Tesla also invested more than $30 million in permits for nearby facilities, including its new offices located at Dumbarton Circle in Fremont’s Ardenwood District.
The breakdown of Tesla’s expenses in the development and continued improvement of the Fremont factory was compiled by BuildZoom, which sorted through the permits filed by the company using its National Building Permit Database. As could be seen in BuildZoom‘s findings, Tesla spared no expense when it came to ensuring that its main factory is optimized to tackle the immense challenge of producing the Model 3 at scale. Below is a table of Tesla’s expenses for the Fremont factory over the past two years. Do take note, however, that the expenses reflected do not account for the cost of robots and other equipment that Tesla purchased for each portion of the 370-acre site.
A table showing Tesla’s permits for its Fremont facilities. [Credit: BuildZoom]
Over the past two years, Tesla had filed several building permits for Fremont that cost over $1 million, among these being a $4.5 million grading and foundation permit for a 104,324-square-foot North GA3 (General Assembly 3) building. Two permits, worth $4.2 million and $2 million, respectively, were listed as “capacity increases” to the North Paint building. Other noteworthy permits include a $1.2 million and $800,000 project for two new facilities — one of which being a sprung structure — as well as a $400,000 “Tesla Sunrise” road with bio-retention system at the factory’s Eastern boundary. Â
As a means to adapt to the mass number of Model 3 reservations it received, Tesla had filed roughly 100 industrial and commercial alteration permits for the Fremont factory since July 2016, costing a total of $16.2 million. Tesla also invested substantially in several key areas of the factory, including its body/assembly line, its paint shop, and its stamping building.
Tesla’s body and assembly building covers one of the largest areas in the Fremont factory. Since July 2016, Tesla spent more than $21.4 million (excluding the cost of machinery) on additions and improvements to the assembly and body area. Permits worth $14.2 million were also filed to develop infrastructure for GA3. Tesla’s stamping building, which houses one of the world’s 35 existing high-end Schuler servo stamping presses, has also seen $809,000 worth of improvements since July 2016. The location of these facilities could be viewed in the image below.
The location of Tesla’s facilities at the Fremont factory. [Credit: BuildZoom]
The electric car maker’s paint shops, both North and South, received $10.2 million worth of improvements since July 2016, including $240,000 spent on fire prevention systems like sprinklers, fire detectors, and other safety systems. Permits also reflected a $5.2 million investment on AFES (Automatic Fire Extinguishing System) for the factory.
Perhaps most interesting in Tesla’s permits, however, were filings referencing “Sprung” and “repack” tent structures that are worth $2.9 million. As revealed by Elon Musk recently, the largest of these tents is now the site of the Model 3’s newest assembly line, dubbed as GA4. Musk has been particularly optimistic about the tent-housed Model 3 line, stating on Twitter that it has a “slightly higher quality” than traditional assembly lines.
With the end of the second quarter just a few days away, Tesla is now working at a breakneck pace in its attempt to hit its all-elusive goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week by the end of Q2 2018. With Musk stating that GA4 is now working, and with sightings of lots filled with Model 3 being reported around the facility, it appears that Tesla is closer to its target than ever before.
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.
Investor's Corner
Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done
Tesla’s Model Y just became South Korea’s best-selling car, beating every domestic model in May.
Tesla did something last month that no foreign car has ever done in South Korea by outselling every vehicle in the country, domestic or imported, finishing the month with Model Y as the single best-selling car across the entire Korean market. According to data from the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association released on June 4, the Model Y recorded 8,762 units sold in May, pushing the Kia Sorento into second place at 7,836 units and the Hyundai Grandeur into third at 5,183 units. It is the first time an imported vehicle has outsold every domestic model on a single-month basis.
Tesla imported 10,866 cars into South Korea in May, making it the top import brand for the fourth consecutive month. BMW followed at 6,555 units, less than two-thirds of Tesla’s total, while BYD registered just 1,032 units. The combined domestic sales of GM Korea, Renault Korea, and KG Mobility last month totaled just 7,019 units, meaning a single Tesla model outsold three Korean automakers combined.
Tesla FSD earns high praise in South Korea’s real-world autonomous driving test
South Korea has historically been one of the hardest markets for foreign automakers to crack. Hyundai and Kia together control close to 70% of the overall market and carry deep consumer loyalty built over decades. Tesla’s path into this market was an uphill battle due to high import duties, limited service infrastructure, and early skepticism about charging networks. In 2024, the Model Y was the best-selling imported car in South Korea with 18,717 units for the full year. By 2025, after the Juniper refresh, it cleared 50,000 units and took the top spot among all EVs.
Year to date, Tesla has a 250.8% increase in the country over the same period last year, and now holds a 30.8% share of the entire imported car segment for 2026. EVs as a category represented 48.6% of all imported passenger car registrations in May. As Teslarati has reported, the Juniper refresh brought meaningful improvements to range, interior quality, and ride refinement that addressed the most common criticisms of earlier Model Y versions. Those upgrades appear to be resonating in markets like South Korea where buyers compare Tesla directly against high end domestic competitors.
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days
