Investor's Corner
Tesla Model 3 production hits 5k/week, 7k including Model S & Model X
Tesla has managed to scale Model 3 production to 5,000 vehicles per week. As noted by Elon Musk in an email to employees, Tesla did not only produce 5,000 Model 3 in seven days; it was also able to maintain the pace of 2,000 vehicles per week for the Model S and Model X.
The signs were already there in the days leading up to the end of the second quarter. This weekend alone, a series of images from workers at Fremont were uploaded on social media, suggesting that the company had hit its all-elusive production goal for the compact electric car. Among the most prominent was a “Model 3 5k Club” banner with signatures of workers from the Fremont factory. Casual snapshots from the facility’s grounds and assembly line, as well as a vehicle labeled “5000th” on its windshield, also suggested that the company had produced its 5,000th Model 3 for the week.
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- [Credit: Tesla Daily/Twitter]
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- [Credit: Tesla Daily/Twitter]
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- [Credit: Tesla Daily/Twitter]
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- [Credit: The Tesla Life/Twitter]
While the images coming out from Fremont incited speculations, they were eventually confirmed by a leaked email from Elon Musk himself. A partial copy of Musk’s email was provided to Teslarati by an anonymous insider.
“We did it!! What an incredible job by an amazing team. Couldn’t be more proud to work with you. It’s an honor. The level of dedication and creativity was mind-blowing. We either found a way or, by will and inventiveness, created entirely new solutions that were thought impossible.
“Intense in tents. Transporting entire production lines across the world in massive cargo planes. Whatever. It worked. Not only did we factory gate over 5,000 Model 3’s, but we also achieved the S & X production target for a combined 7,000 vehicle week!”
The 5,000/week target for the Model 3 has proven to be elusive for the electric car and energy company. During the vehicle’s unveiling last year, Elon Musk estimated that Tesla could attain the milestone by the end of 2017. When the company failed to hit this goal, Tesla opted to move the deadline to the second quarter of 2018, placing a target of 2,500 Model 3 per week at the end of Q1 2018.
The first Model 3 Performance Dual Motor rolls off the assembly line. [Credit: Elon Musk/Twitter]
Tesla did not meet this goal, though it did manage to manufacture more than 2,000 vehicles during the final week of March. During the 2018 Annual Shareholder Meeting, however, Elon Musk announced that Tesla was on track to hitting its 5,000/week target by the end of Q2 2018. Musk’s reassurance ultimately helped push Tesla stock towards a meteoric rise, at one point even coming close to its all-time high.
Tesla’s Model 3 production milestone did not come easy for the Elon Musk-led company. During the second quarter, the company had to shut down the vehicle’s manufacturing twice to make way for upgrades on the production line. New robots and other machinery were also flown in from Europe to Gigafactory 1 in order to help address bottlenecks in the production of the vehicles’ battery packs.
In an unprecedented move this June, Tesla also erected a massive sprung structure on the grounds of the Fremont factory to house another assembly line for the Model 3. The move, deemed “insanity” by critics, ultimately allowed the company to augment its capability to manufacture the compact electric car.
According to a Reuters report, Tesla is now targeting a pace equivalent to 6,000 Model 3 per week within the next month. As noted by Elon Musk in his email to employees, the recently attained milestone might have very well established Tesla as a formidable car maker.
“I think we just became a real car company,” Musk wrote.
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.
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.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
In a striking revelation that underscores the lucrative crossover between Big Tech and space exploration, Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, disclosed a massive $94.1 billion equity stake in SpaceX following the rocket company’s blockbuster initial public offering earlier this year.
The disclosure came in Alphabet’s quarterly filing, marking the first time the long-held private investment has been publicly valued at market prices. Google was an early backer, investing alongside Fidelity in 2015 with roughly $500-900 million at a time when SpaceX was valued around $12 billion.
That bet has delivered extraordinary returns, roughly a hundredfold, transforming a strategic play on satellite internet and launch capabilities into one of Alphabet’s largest assets.
Google, $GOOGL, has said they hold $94 billion in SpaceX, $SPCX, shares after IPO.
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 23, 2026
Of the total holding, approximately $80 billion remains subject to short-term post-IPO lockup restrictions, preventing near-term sales. An additional $14.1 billion faces longer-term restrictions, extending into the third quarter of 2027. This structure limits immediate liquidity but protects against market volatility as SpaceX transitions into public trading.
The SpaceX position contributed significantly to gains in Alphabet’s broader investment portfolio, which also includes a major stake in AI leader Anthropic. Combined, these holdings helped drive nearly $100 billion in investment gains during the second quarter, providing a substantial boost to net income amid ongoing AI spending pressures.
Analysts view the disclosure as validation of Alphabet’s venture strategy beyond its core search and cloud businesses. The investment aligns with deeper ties, including reported multi-billion-dollar deals for AI computing capacity on SpaceX infrastructure. As SpaceX advances Starship flights, Starlink expansion, and ambitious Mars goals under Elon Musk, Google’s stake positions it to benefit from the commercialization of space.
For Alphabet, the windfall highlights how patient, forward-looking bets in transformative sectors can yield outsized rewards. While lockups temper short-term impact, the holding cements SpaceX as a cornerstone of Alphabet’s diversified portfolio in an era where aerospace, AI, and connectivity increasingly intersect. Investors will watch closely as restrictions lift and SpaceX’s public performance unfolds.
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