Investor's Corner
Tesla Gigafactory 3 moves forward with loan agreements from Shanghai banks: report
Tesla is making progress with its planned Gigafactory 3 in China. Not long after it was revealed that Tesla had sealed the deal to acquire an 864,885-square meter plot of land in Shanghai’s Lingang area, reports have emerged from Chinese media stating that local banks have signed low-interest loan agreements with the electric car maker.
The report, published by Chinese media, cited sources familiar with Tesla’s ongoing initiatives, who noted that a number of banks in Shanghai are already preparing to help fund the construction of Gigafactory 3. That said, the financial institutions reportedly providing Tesla with low-interest loans have yet to make formal announcements about their role in the construction of the electric car and battery factory.
Insiders reportedly close to Tesla’s plans for Gigafactory 3 have also related what could be the first glimpse of the facility’s planned operations, stating that the initial vehicle production line in Gigafactory 3 would be designed to manufacture the Model 3. Gigafactory’s vehicle production capabilities will include the final assembly of Model S and Model X vehicles as well, which would allow Tesla to dodge the steep import taxes currently weighing down the prices of its two flagship vehicles in the Chinese market.
Rumor: According to people close to Tesla, the main source of funds for the construction of the Shanghai Gigafactory is the low-interest loans of Shanghai local banks. Currently, banks have signed a loan agreement with Tesla. $TSLA #TeslaChina pic.twitter.com/MCOBn5QtcD
— vincent (@vincent13031925) October 18, 2018
While the pace of developments for the construction of Gigafactory 3 is remarkable, the progress of the project so far should not come as much of a surprise. Over the past few months, after all, Tesla has steadily been laying the foundations for the facility. The Chinese government has also openly supported the construction of the factory, with state media running several segments about how Gigafactory 3 is fully endorsed by the government.
This support was evident in the way Tesla’s loans and land acquisition were secured. China, for one, allowed Tesla to be the sole owner of Gigafactory 3, changing longstanding regulations in the process. Tesla’s bid for the 864,885-square meter plot of land in Shanghai’s Lingang area went unchallenged by any rival bidders as well. With this in mind, Tesla’s low-interest loan agreements with local banks appear to be yet another way for the government to show its support for the company.
In its Q3 2018 vehicle production and delivery report, Tesla noted that it was looking to accelerate the construction of Gigafactory 3, making the project’s already aggressive timeline even more ambitious. Tesla initially plans to have the factory start producing vehicles within two years after construction begins. With the company’s updated timeline, though, Gigafactory 3 could start building electric cars for the Chinese market sooner than expected. Once complete, Tesla estimates Gigafactory 3 to be capable of producing 500,000 vehicles per year.
Gigafactory 3 would become the electric car maker’s first facility that is capable of producing both battery packs and electric cars. During the Q2 2018 earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and CTO JB Straubel noted that Gigafactory 3 – despite its capability to build electric cars – would be less capital-intensive as the company’s other facilities in the United States. Musk even noted that the cost of Gigafactory 3 could be closer to $2 billion at the 250,000-vehicle-per-year rate. Explaining further, Straubel pointed out that the lessons learned with Gigafactory 1 and the Model 3 ramp will all be implemented in Gigafactory 3.
“We found a surprising number of ways to improve efficiency and speed and density as well at Gigafactory 1, and all those lessons will absolutely be shared with Gigafactory 3. In just recent weeks and months, we found some – certain areas of production that have been very capital intensive that we’ve been able to speed up with almost no additional CapEx by maybe 20%, even 25% or 30%,” Straubel said.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
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