Investor's Corner
Tesla shares video of drifting Model 3 Performance during skidpad testing
Tesla has shared a video of the Model 3 Performance during skidpad testing. The short clip, which was uploaded by the Silicon Valley carmaker on Twitter, featured the high-performance variant of the compact electric car burning rubber and drifting around what appears to be a closed area of the company’s test track.
Skidpad tests usually involve accelerating a vehicle until the outermost tires begin slipping. Once this happens, the speed of the vehicle is recorded, and a car’s handling in terms of lateral gs can be derived. Tesla did not mention the skidpad numbers of the Model 3 Performance in its recent post, but vehicles’ figures in the tests are usually correlated with the overall handling of the car. Skid pad tests can be among the most productive evaluations for high-performance vehicles and yield invaluable feedback from experienced test drivers.
Model 3 Performance skidpad testing (🔈on!) pic.twitter.com/YEt8I5jewZ
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 6, 2018
The Model 3 Performance is the top-tier variant of Tesla’s mass-market compact electric car. The vehicle boasts two electric motors, a 0-60 mph time of 3.5 seconds, a top speed of 155 mph, as well as a range of 310 miles per charge. Initially announced with a price of $78,000 including all options such as white seats and premium paint except Autopilot, the vehicle’s sticker price was eventually lowered by Tesla to just $64,000 if fitted with standard seats, non-premium paint, and a top speed limited to 145 mph.
Among the options available for the vehicle is the $5,000 Performance Upgrade, which includes 20″ Performance Wheels, a Carbon Fiber Spoiler, Aluminum allow pedals, and a top speed boost to 155 mph. As we noted in a previous report, the Model 3 Performance will also feature a unique, underlined badge that reads “Dual Motor.”
The first Model 3 Performance Dual Motor rolls off the assembly line. [Credit: Elon Musk/Twitter]
Elon Musk initially announced that Tesla would probably start the production of the Model 3 Performance around July, when the company achieves a steady pace of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week. Midway through June, however, Elon Musk surprised the Tesla community by tweeting a picture of a red Model 3 Performance coming off GA4, a new assembly line set up in a sprung structure at the grounds of the Fremont factory. Musk did not state if the production of the Model 3 Performance had already started, but an image of the compact electric car’s seats that Musk later uploaded revealed that Tesla is already producing white seats for the vehicle.
If Tesla’s recently shared video is any indication, it appears that the testing for Model 3 Performance is well underway. Looking at the way the car moves in the short clip, it definitely seems like the vehicle could live up to Musk’s bold statement that the compact electric car would feature better handling than vehicles like the BMW M3 on the track.
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Tesla is expected to offer the Model 3 Performance as test drive vehicles for the electric car. In a tweet last month, Elon Musk noted that test drives for the Model 3 Performance would likely start sometime in July.
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.
Elon Musk updates the SpaceX timeline for Mars
SpaceX gets an absolutely crazy price target after rough IPO
