Investor's Corner
Tesla upsells Model 3 Performance as Musk ponders ‘mental scar tissue’ from production ramp
Tesla is starting to upsell the Model 3 Performance to reservation holders, with CEO Elon Musk announcing more exciting aspects of the vehicle on Twitter. Musk’s recent announcements describe the vehicle’s suspension and brakes, as well as the company’s ongoing test drive program for the compact electric car.
According to Musk, the Model 3 Performance will feature a lower ride height helped by the performance suspension system and stronger brakes than non-Performance variants, which would enhance the vehicles’ track capabilities. The upgrade would further bolster claims that Model 3 Performance will outperform all vehicles in its class on the race track, including the BMW M3.
Performance version suspension is 1cm lower & has stronger brakes in upgrade package
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 13, 2018
Equipping larger brakes on the Model 3 Performance is definitely the right decision from Tesla. The car’s stock brakes, after all, are unable to handle hard track driving, as evidenced in a Laguna Seca run by a mostly stock Model 3 earlier this year. With upgraded brakes, the Model 3, even the single motor, non-Performance Long Range RWD version, becomes a formidable vehicle on the racecourse, recently beating Porsche to win a Time Attack challenge in a Canadian racing event.
Overall, Musk’s recent Twitter statements for the Model 3 Performance comes amidst the company’s latest attempt to upsell the vehicle. Tesla, after all, has been putting some extra attention on the Model 3 Performance, with the electric car maker recently showcasing the car’s drifting capabilities in a skidpad testing video. Elon Musk also noted that the company had produced approximately 100 units of the Model 3 Performance to date, which would be used for test drive units in the company’s showrooms. In a recent Twitter announcement, Musk further encouraged reservation holders to test drive the Model 3 Performance regardless of whether they plan to buy the top trim variant or not.
These sure look like the ~100 performance #Model3 that $TSLA says were built for test drives. Question is when will they move off the lot into stores? Or have they already and these are leftovers? Images are from July 10th. https://t.co/PRuKZUvBtf #Tesla pic.twitter.com/SpU3ivTIA7
— RS Metrics (@RSMetrics) July 12, 2018
Tesla’s upselling of the Model 3 Performance comes amidst the company’s push to sustain mass production of its electric car. Since the company achieved its ever-elusive goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week during the end of Q2 2018, Tesla has been ramping the deliveries of the vehicle. Recent signs from Tesla also appear to be teasing that the company would be able to sustain a 5,000/week pace this Q3 2018. Among these are frequent mass VIN registrations, a new 5-minute Sign & Drive delivery program, and recent statements related by Senior Director of Investor Relations Aaron Chew, who reportedly stated in meeting with investors and analysts that the company is targeting a sustained 5,000-6,000/week production pace for the current quarter.
Whether you plan to buy a Dual Motor Performance Model 3 or not, take it for a test drive anyway. It’s like having pure fun jacked straight into your brain whenever you want.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 13, 2018
While Tesla appears to have broken through a massive roadblock with the Model 3, Elon Musk’s recent statements to Bloomberg reveal that the manufacturing feat came at a high price. As noted by Musk in a recent interview with the publication, the Model 3 ramp has been incredibly difficult for him and Tesla, to the point where he feels he developed permanent mental scars from the experience.
“It’s been super-hard. Like there is for sure some permanent mental scar tissue here. But I do feel good about the months to come. I think the results will speak for themselves,” Musk said.
Musk, however, noted that the risks Tesla took with the Model 3 ramp, such as betting the entire company on the vehicle’s success, will likely not be replicated in the future. According to Musk, he does not foresee any bet-the-company situations arising, regardless of Tesla’s upcoming projects and vehicles.
“To the best of my judgment, I do not think we have any future bet-the-company situations. We will still need to work hard and be vigilant and not be complacent because it is very difficult just to survive as a car company. But it will not be the same level of strain as getting to volume production of Model 3,” he 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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