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Tesla Model 3 drive unit production reportedly hits 10k/week amid end-of-Q3 push

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Despite facing a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission about his “funding secured” tweet last August, Elon Musk appeared to be in light spirits on Friday, expressing his gratitude to the Tesla community for their help, at one point even posting a “Don’t Panic” reminder on his Twitter page. Musk reportedly rallied Tesla’s workers as well, stating that the company has achieved a notable milestone in its ongoing Model 3 ramp — the production of over 10,000 drive units in one week.

In a series of letters to employees following the release of the SEC’s lawsuit, Elon Musk reportedly urged Tesla’s workers to pay no attention to distractions. One of the letters, a copy of which was reportedly obtained by Bloomberg, stated that Tesla’s Model 3 drive team had produced “more than 10,000” units in a seven-day period. Musk reportedly praised the Tesla team as well, urging them to push through “one more hardcore weekend” as Q3 nears its close.

“You’re doing an incredible job. Ignore all distractions. One more hardcore weekend and we will be victorious,” Musk wrote.

The Model 3’s drive units are manufactured in Gigafactory 1, Tesla’s expansive facility in Nevada, which is also tasked with the production of the electric sedan’s batteries. The update on Gigafactory 1’s 10,000/week Model 3 drive unit production comes amidst news that Tesla’s battery partner Panasonic is aiming to complete three new battery cell assembly lines in the facility earlier than expected. This was related by Yoshio Ito, head of Panasonic’s automotive business, who also noted that the bottlenecks in Gigafactory were primarily due to the Japanese company’s incapability to produce enough batteries to meet Tesla’s demand.

Panasonic’s new battery assembly lines are not the only upgrades set to be installed in Gigafactory 1. After a tour of the facility, analysts from Worm Capital stated that Tesla is also expecting the arrival of new machines from Grohmann Automation, all of which are designed to boost the facility’s production capabilities. During the Gigafactory 1 tour, Tesla head of investor relations Martin Viecha reportedly noted that the new Grohmann machines would help battery module production become “three times faster, and three times cheaper.” The new Grohmann machines are expected to be sent to Gigafactory 1 by the end of Q3 or the beginning of Q4.

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Tesla might be on track to produce and deliver a record number of Model 3 to reservation holders this quarter, but the ramp of the vehicle remains only partly complete. Ultimately, Tesla aims to produce as many as 10,000 units of the electric sedan per week, including the highly-anticipated $35,000 Standard Range RWD Model 3, which is expected to start production sometime in 2019. If the emails obtained by Bloomberg are accurate, then it would mean that Tesla’s Model 3 drive unit production has taken a definitive step forward.

Considering Tesla’s 10,000/week milestone with its Model 3 drive unit production, as well as the upcoming upgrades to Gigafactory 1 in the form of Panasonic’s new battery cell assembly lines and Grohmann’s new machines, Q4 2018 is shaping up to be a historic quarter for the electric car maker.

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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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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