Investor's Corner
Tesla’s impending made-in-China Model 3 assault should scare critics
Earlier today, Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) received yet another negative outlook from Wall Street. This time around, it was Barclays analyst Brian Johnson, who reduced his price target for TSLA to a very conservative $133 per share. According to the analyst, his low price target is due to demand for the Model 3 stagnating in the United States and the company lacking a path to significant profitability.
Such a conclusion, which is likely driven by Tesla’s lower-than-expected numbers in the first quarter, is shortsighted at best and flat-out inaccurate at worst. There is an elephant in the room with all the negativity surrounding Tesla’s capability to survive and thrive this year, and it comes in the form of a gargantuan factory whose shell was all but completed in the span of five months in Shanghai. Tesla is poised to start producing the Model 3 at Gigafactory 3 later this year, and this development could shift the winds back in the electric car maker’s favor.
The potential of Gigafactory 3 or the advantages it could give Tesla has been strangely absent in a notable number of critical analysis surrounding the electric car maker as of late. Considering the negative narrative surrounding Tesla and Elon Musk today, this is no surprise. Tesla critics appear to have largely dismissed Gigafactory 3’s progress, as exhibited by skeptics describing the site mostly as a pile of dirt with some digging going on (videos of which are still being distributed today). Such statements have not been accurate since work took off in the Gigafactory 3 site.
Refusing to acknowledge Gigafactory 3’s impending operations, or discounting its capability to help Tesla’s numbers, could be a grave mistake for the company’s critics. Industry experts that actually deal with China on a regular basis, after all, have expressed their belief that Model 3s produced in Gigafactory 3 will be no joke. Take Michael Dunne, the CEO of consultancy firm ZoZo Go, for example. In a recent appearance at Autoline This Week, Dunne noted that Gigafactory 3’s presence would most definitely be a difference maker for Tesla.
“(They’re the) first foreign company to be allowed to own 100% of their operation. They’re in Shanghai. Shanghai will want to make sure they’re a success. The government will make sure that they’ve got their plant built in time and they have everything working. And on top of it all, Chinese consumers really do like the Tesla brand and really admire Elon Musk. So you’ve got a premium market — 2 million units a year — you have the government wanting electrics to succeed, and you’ve got a very strong American brand. So they’d be one to bet on,” Dunne said.
Dunne’s points are largely missed by the persistent “no demand” narrative surrounding Tesla in the United States today. It should be noted that Dunne holds a notable amount of experience with China’s automotive sector, as well, making him an authority on the subject. And it’s not just Dunne either. Automotive teardown expert Sandy Munro, who quite literally analyzed every nut and bolt in the Model 3, previously noted that Elon Musk could make a “gazillion bucks” in China if Tesla sets up Gigafactory 3’s production systems right. “I guarantee it,” Munro said during an appearance at Autoline After Hours. Munro later remarked that a Standard Model 3 produced in Gigafactory 3 could generate 25% gross margins for Tesla.
If there are any valid concerns about Tesla’s Gigafactory 3 operations, it would be on the electric car maker’s capability to set up the facility on time for its target initial vehicle production date, not on the market’s demand for the vehicle. Contrary to what analysts such as Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas have noted (Jonas recently pointed out during an investor call that Tesla is no longer a growth story, and that it is more of a “distressed credit and restructuring story”), it appears that there is still much growth left for the company. It’s just not happening in the United States at present. Between the statements of the Morgan Stanley analyst, who likely looks at the company’s short-term numbers, and Michael Dunne, who is immersed in China’s automotive sector by trade, one would likely be inclined to believe the latter.
Just as Tesla stock experienced a steep drop due to a perfect storm of lower-than-expected Q1 deliveries, negative analyst sentiments, misinformation, and sheer bad luck (such as the company’s delivery troubles in China during the first quarter), the electric car maker might be poised to experience yet another perfect storm with the impending completion of Gigafactory 3. With the Chinese government rooting for its success, and with customers in the country still perceiving the company and its vehicles in a positive light, the electric car maker’s made-in-China Model 3 push might prove once more that it is never wise to underestimate Tesla, and Elon Musk for that matter.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
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.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
