Investor's Corner
Tesla Grabbing Sales From German Car Makers
A report from Germany says Tesla is taking sales away from German car makers in the luxury car segment of the market. It say plug-in hybrids are a dead end.
[Source: @dennis_p via Teslarati App check-in]
Professor Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer is the director of the Center for Automotive Research in Germany. He has written a report entitled “Tesla Asserts Itself In The Luxury Class,” in which he says the big three German car makers have wasted money on plug-in hybrids — which he calls a blind alley. They are also losing sales in the most profitable end of the luxury market to Tesla, he says.
“In a lot of markets we are seeing Tesla doing better than the BMW 7 series, Mercedes S class, Audi A8 and Porsche Panamera. Tesla can boast real innovation and customers with big money are trying it. I’m not sure if Tesla will be successful in the long term but when they broaden the line we will see if it can bring revolution to the car industry.”
Are plug-in hybrids really a blind alley as Professor Dudenhoeffer suggests? A report in Forbes says IHS Automotive recently looked again at its medium to long range forecasts and raised its prediction for electric vehicles in 2020 to just over 1% of the global market. It says that figure will only increase to 1.5% by 2025.
By contrast, IHS says global market share for hybrids and plug-in hybrids will be 7% in 2020. It expects that figure will rise to 16% by 2025 as upcoming US and European regulations require all cars to have better fuel economy and lower carbon dioxide emissions.
But Dudenheoffer doubts those forecasts are correct. He says plug-in hybrids are not proving popular with buyers and are seen as not environmentally friendly because they often use internal combustion engines to get where they are going. He points out that even in markets like Germany and Switzerland, where there are no subsidies for electric vehicles, the Tesla Model S is stealing sales from the Mercedes S class.
“I think plug-in hybrids are the wrong direction and will not be successful. The costs are too high. The weight of the car is too high,” Dudenhoeffer told Forbes. “I think environmentalists and governments will come to the conclusion that plug-in hybrids are not real progress.” His remarks are targeted specifically at Mercedes, which has 3 plug-in hybrid models on sale already and promises to add 7 more soon.
Tesla is doing an excellent job of disrupting the traditional German luxury car manufacturers. The real battle will come when it adds the Model 3 to the mix. It’s one thing to steer customers away from buying an S Class or 7 Series. It’s something else entirely to take sales away from mid-market models, where shoppers have many more choices and the price competition is fierce.
Tesla’s electric cars versus the other guys’ plug-in hybrids. Who will win that fight? The answer will not be entirely market driven, because government regulations will skew the results. That may give an advantage to plug-ins, at least temporarily. The car business will undergo transformative change in the next five years. Tesla has always shown an amazing ability to recognize and adapt to change and that may be its ultimate weapon in the upcoming battle.
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SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
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The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.
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
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— 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.
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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.
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