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.
Investor's Corner
Tesla crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.
Tesla reported it delivered 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.
Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.
For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.
Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.
Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
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