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Tesla’s Gigafactory 3 in China starts preparations with 6-month construction permit

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Tesla’s Gigafactory 3 in China is under a very ambitious timeline, considering that electric car maker is expecting to start producing vehicles on the site sometime in the second half of 2019. So far, preparations for the buildout of the upcoming facility are being put in place, including the construction of a perimeter fence that surrounds the company’s 864,885-square meter plot of land in Shanghai’s Lingang Industrial Zone.

Just recently, documents have emerged pointing to Tesla acquiring a construction permit to start building facilities for Gigafactory 3. The construction permit, which was granted by the Shanghai Municipal Government, is good for two stages of construction and effective for 180 days, starting from December 29, 2018. The contractor for the project was listed as China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Co., Ltd, a subsidiary of China Construction, a large government-owned construction firm.

It should be noted that the involvement of a government-owned construction company bodes well for Gigafactory 3’s buildout. With such parties involved, after all, there is little that could get in the way of the project being completed on time. Thus, for now, at least, it would appear that the speed of Gigafactory 3’s construction would likely depend on how fast Tesla can ship and set up its assembly lines for the upcoming facility. If Tesla can accomplish this, there is a very good chance that China’s first locally-made Model 3 would indeed roll out of Gigafactory 3 sometime in the second half of 2019.

So far, Tesla’s Gigafactory 3 buildout has been seeing notable support from the Chinese government. Last year, China all but changed its rules for Tesla when it allowed the company to be the sole owner of Gigafactory 3. After the project was officially announced, things moved at an even faster pace. Local Shanghai banks were quick to grant low-interest loans to fund part of Gigafactory 3’s construction. Tesla’s bid for the 864,885-square meter plot of land in Shanghai’s Lingang Industrial Zone also went unchallenged, allowing the electric car maker to secure the land it needed for the facility without any problems.

While Tesla attracts some negative publicity in China, the company also gets support and favorable coverage from state media. Last month, for one, local Chinese news outlets reported that the facility’s progress is about one year ahead of its original schedule. Shanghai Mayor Ying Yong and Vice Mayor Wu Qing also addressed Gigafactory 3 during a meetup with Tesla’s leaders in China, where they urged the electric car maker and companies involved in the facility’s construction to expedite the factory’s buildout.

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When Tesla announced its initial timeline for Gigafactory 3, many were skeptical. The company initially estimated that vehicle production would begin roughly two years after construction begins. This was met by many raised eyebrows from Tesla critics and Wall Street, with Consumer Edge Research analyst James Albertine dubbing the timetable as “not feasible.” Tesla eventually adjusted its timeframe for Gigafactory 3 on its Q3 2018 vehicle production and deliveries report. Instead of being more conservative, though, Tesla opted to do the opposite, stating that it is accelerating the construction of the upcoming Shanghai facility.

Elon Musk, for his part, has teased that he would be visiting China soon for the groundbreaking of Gigafactory 3. Once that is done, the progress of the battery and electric car facility would likely move at an even faster pace.

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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Elon Musk

SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch

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SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.

The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.

Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.

SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.

The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.

As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.

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Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get

Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.

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Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]

Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”

The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.

The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.

Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress

Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.

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Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.

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SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.

The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.

SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters

Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.

SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.

With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.

Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.

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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.

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