Investor's Corner
Tesla’s final Model 3 push for Q3 unfolds as ‘delivery logistics hell’ gets addressed
Over Q1 and Q2, Tesla has exhibited a tendency to expedite its Model 3 production and deliveries in the final month of a quarter. The company did this last March when it was struggling to produce 2,500 Model 3 in a week, and the same strategy was adopted in June as Tesla attempted to hit its then-mythical target of producing 5,000 Model 3 in one week.
This third quarter, Tesla is going for something more ambitious. The company aims to produce 50,000-55,000 Model 3 between June and September while achieving profitability at the same time. To accomplish these goals, Tesla would have to not only produce, but also deliver the Model 3 to as many reservation holders as it can. Such a scenario has resulted in new challenges for Tesla, with Elon Musk dubbing the circumstances as “delivery logistics hell,” which the company is now experiencing just as it left “production hell.”
Earlier this week, Elon Musk admitted to the company’s difficulties in delivering the Model 3 while apologizing to a reservation holder whose delivery had been delayed multiple times. In his response, Musk noted that “delivery logistics hell” should be solved faster than “production hell,” as the issues are far more tractable. Musk also stated that Tesla is making rapid progress in addressing its Model 3 delivery issues.
With less than two weeks to go before the end of the third quarter, reports from the Tesla community are starting to indicate that the company is indeed addressing its delivery challenges. Megan Gale, the reservation holder that Musk responded to earlier this week, recently posted an update stating that the center in her area is getting Model 3 deliveries out in a rapid manner. She was also finally able to receive her Model 3 Performance.
Tesla’s Model 3 delivery push does not seem to be exclusive to the United States, either. Social media posts from Model 3 reservation holders in Vancouver suggest that Tesla is pushing deliveries until 10 p.m. every day, as part of its attempt to deliver the electric car en masse to Canada.
Vancouver #Tesla $tsla is delivering Model 3s until 10pm everyday. Demand is insane. pic.twitter.com/rKHN86wj3z
— Hanky Frunk (@rocketL49) September 19, 2018
Tesla has been laying the foundations for faster deliveries of the Model 3 for the past couple of months. At the beginning of Q3, Tesla started rolling out the 5-Minute Sign & Drive delivery program as a way to expedite the handover process of the Model 3. Elon Musk also announced that the company is looking to eliminate paper contracts in the delivery process. Earlier this month, Tesla also held a “First Come, First Serve” delivery day for Long Range RWD Model 3 units in CA, where first-day reservation holders were able to acquire vehicles that are ready to be driven home.
While it remains to be seen how many Model 3 would be produced and delivered this quarter, both Elon Musk and board member Kimbal Musk have teased that the company would likely surprise the market at the end of Q3. In a letter to employees, Elon Musk noted that Tesla is “about to have the most amazing quarter in (its) history, building and delivering more than twice as many cars as (it) did last quarter.” Kimbal, on the other hand, noted in a recent segment of CNBC‘s Closing Bell that September is an exciting month for Tesla, considering that the number of Model 3 that would appear in US roads within the next couple of weeks would be astonishing.
“This month is an exciting month for us. You know, it’s really gonna blow people’s minds how many Model 3s are gonna appear in America in just the next couple of weeks,” he said.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch
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.
Elon Musk
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.
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.
Correction, 10 million robots https://t.co/0z4nyQNTzp
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) July 30, 2026
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.
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.
Elon Musk
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
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.
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.

