Investor's Corner
Tesla Model 3 ramp shows encouraging signs with 16k new VIN registrations in 7 days
Tesla has filed more than 16,000 new Model 3 VIN registrations in the past seven days, in what is yet another encouraging sign that the company is hitting its stride with the production of the electric car. Tesla has been working on sustaining the pace it displayed during its “burst production week” in the last seven days of June, when it manufactured 5,000 Model 3 in one week. These latest VIN registrations, together with updates from Tesla’s executives during the Q2 earnings call, indicate that Tesla is doing just that.
VIN registrations monitored by Twitter group @Model3VINs indicate that Tesla has filed multiple batches equaling more than 16,000 new Model 3 from August 5 to August 12. With the addition of small batches of new VINs this Sunday, Tesla has now registered a total of 98,254 Model 3 since the vehicle’s production started. Together with this notable ramp was an increase in filings corresponding to Dual Motor vehicles, which started picking up in July. Following is a graph showing the rise in Dual Motor VIN registrations as of August 1, 2018.
The Model 3 started production in mid-2017, but its ramp has been nothing but encouraging. When Elon Musk handed over the first 30 vehicles to employees in last year’s Model 3 Handover Party, Musk stated that Tesla would likely hit a production rate equal to 5,000 cars per week by the end of December 2017. Tesla was only able to attain this target on the final week of June 2018, and only by adopting unorthodox strategies such as air-freighting robots from Europe to the United States and building an entirely new assembly line inside a sprung structure on the grounds of the Fremont factory.
Since hitting its 5,000/week goal at the end of Q2, Tesla appears to have attained a breakthrough in the production of the Model 3. This week’s more than 16,000 new Model 3 VIN filings, for example, is roughly equal to the total VIN registrations in the first eight months of the vehicle’s production. VIN registrations over the past few months indicate that Tesla only breached the 16,000-vehicle mark near the end of March 2018.
Even Bloomberg‘s Model 3 production tracker, which has progressively increased its accuracy over the past few months (it was only 2% off Tesla’s actual numbers in Q2), now shows that the company is steadily approaching the 6,000 Model 3 per week mark. As of writing, the publication’s tracker estimates that Tesla is producing 5,824 Model 3 per week.
In Tesla’s Q2 2018 earnings call, Elon Musk stated that the company was able to sustain its optimum production pace during multiple weeks in July. Musk’s statement confirmed speculations last month that Tesla did not let up its push to manufacture the Model 3 at scale since hitting its production milestone at the end of June. These speculations were fueled by initiatives such as the start of test drive programs for the Model 3, a 5-Minute Sign & Drive program, and a ramp in the hiring of employees. The company also registered more than 19,000 new Model 3 VINs in the first two weeks of July.
The news coverage surrounding Tesla over the past week has been dominated by the possibility of the company going private when the stock hits $420 per share. But behind all this is one encouraging sign — the Model 3’s production ramp, which took almost a whole year to hit 5,000/week, finally seems to be going as planned.
Tesla has only released three versions of the Model 3 — the Performance, Dual Motor AWD, and the Long Range RWD variants — but the electric sedan has already made an impact in the US auto market. In July alone, the Model 3 ranked 7th overall in GoodCarBadCar‘s list of America’s Top 20 best-selling vehicles list, which includes popular gas-powered cars like the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord.
Investor's Corner
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
New drone footage shows Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory steel frame nearing completion at Giga Texas.
Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas is closing in on a finished steel frame, according to drone footage posted Thursday afternoon by longtime site observer Joe Tegtmeyer. In the video, Tegtmeyer said structural steel assembly is now about five column grids away from reaching the building’s north perimeter beam, putting the primary skeleton in its final stretch roughly six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March.
The Giga Texas Optimus Factory latest update … construction keeps moving fast!
Steel assembly is now only about 5 column grids from the north perimeter beam. Concrete is going in on the three upper floors, rebar is still being laid for more pours, and footing / grade-beam work… pic.twitter.com/qvFPvwnYzW
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 17, 2026
Tegtmeyer’s footage shows concrete already going in on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade beam footings at ground level. That kind of parallel work, steel rising at one end of the site while concrete sets at the other, is a scheduling approach Tesla used at the original Giga Texas building and appears to be repeating here to save time before the plant’s targeted 2027 production start.
Teslarati has tracked the building’s progress since Tesla confirmed construction was officially underway in May, when the first steel structure went up on what was then bare, reclaimed land. The facility is part of a more than 5.2 million square foot expansion of Giga Texas’s North Campus that Tesla has said will eventually run nearly the length of the existing vehicle factory, over 4,000 feet, while sitting somewhat narrower. Musk has pegged the long term output target at 10 million Optimus units a year once the line is running at full capacity, a volume that would dwarf the one million unit pilot line Tesla is standing up separately at its Fremont, California factory.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The Texas facility sits alongside another major buildout on the same campus. Terafab, the joint Tesla and SpaceX chip fabrication plant that will eventually supply the silicon running Optimus units in the field. Housing robot assembly and chip production on the same grounds is a deliberate supply chain decision, cutting down on the shipping and lead time that would otherwise sit between the two.
Tesla has not given an updated timeline beyond its previously stated goal of bringing high volume Optimus production online at the site in the summer of 2027. Fremont’s smaller pilot line began mass producing the current Gen 3 robot in January, with that plant expected to build tens of thousands of units this year primarily to generate the real world data Tesla needs to refine the robot’s software before Giga Texas ramps up. Six months of visible construction progress, tracked almost entirely through Tegtmeyer’s recurring drone flights, gives the clearest outside look yet at how seriously Tesla is treating that 2027 deadline.
Investor's Corner
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
Tesla and SpaceX sue a small Illinois firm after cease and desist letters over Terafab.
Tesla and SpaceX are asking a federal judge to rule that their planned Terafab chip factory does not infringe a small Illinois company’s trademark, a request that arrives only after months of quiet negotiation broke down this summer.
The dispute traces to May 18, when Tesla filed three U.S. trademark applications for “Terafab” and “Tesla Terafab,” covering semiconductor chips and related chip making services. TERA-print LLC, a nanotechnology company that has held a federal trademark for “Tera-Fab” since 2021, responded five days later with a cease and desist letter. According to the lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, TERA-print argued that Tesla and SpaceX’s use of “Terafab” would confuse consumers familiar with its own trademark, which covers a desktop photolithography printer sold to researchers for sensor and bioengineering work.
What stands out in the filing is the timing of TERA-print’s own paperwork. One day before sending that cease and desist letter, on May 22, TERA-print applied to expand its existing registration to cover semiconductor materials, silicon chips, nanoelectronic devices and AI design services, categories it had not previously claimed. Tesla and SpaceX call that filing opportunistic in their complaint, noting it arrived two months after Tesla’s public Terafab announcement and just days after Tesla’s own trademark applications went in.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
By June 10, TERA-print was threatening to sue for federal trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, the complaint states. Rather than wait to be sued, Tesla, SpaceX and SpaceXAI met with TERA-print six separate times between June and August trying to resolve the dispute directly. Those talks collapsed, and the companies filed for declaratory judgment this week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking a judge to find that “Terafab” does not infringe TERA-print’s mark before TERA-print can file a claim of its own.
TERA-print isn’t backing down. The company told PCMag it discussed a settlement with Tesla as recently as September 2 and feels misled by what it called Tesla’s professed interest in settling. Its CTO, Andrey Ivankin, said TERA-print holds a Defense Department contract to fabricate semiconductors and partially owns Mattiq Inc., an AI company built on TERA-print’s products, and that the company will vigorously defend its rights.
Tesla and SpaceX argue the overlap is superficial. Terafab is planned as a $16.8 billion complex spanning roughly 100 million square feet at the Grimes County site SpaceX confirmed last month, built to produce chips for Optimus robots, Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s orbital data center ambitions, a scale and purpose the companies say no reasonable consumer would confuse with a tabletop lab printer. TERA-print’s product line has stayed focused on lithography tools for biological and sensor research since it registered its mark in 2021.
The trademark fight is the second legal dispute tied to the Terafab project in the past week, following a separate SpaceX suit aimed at keeping company records about the facility out of public view, as KBTX reported. Whether construction proceeds under the Terafab name now depends on a federal judge in Austin.
In a new interview on Wednesday, Tesla uber bull Ron Baron said that anyone looking to buy the company’s stock should do so as soon as they can.
Baron, founder and CEO of Baron Capital and one of Tesla’s most persistent institutional bulls, used a CNBC Squawk Box appearance on Wednesday to deliver a familiar message with fresh urgency: In his opinion, Tesla stock is a buy:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.”
The Baron Capital frontman’s case is built around Full Self-Driving. Tesla reported 1.48 million active FSD subscriptions in the second quarter, up 56 percent year over year, and company officials have said roughly 55 percent of new North American deliveries left with a subscription enabled.
Baron framed that attach rate as proof the product is moving from enthusiast extra to default expectation, and as a reason software, not just vehicle volume, should drive the next phase of value.
His conviction on Tesla shares is not theoretical, as Baron Capital made its first Tesla investment in 2014, after years of meetings that began around the 2010 IPO roadshow. The firm later built a large SpaceX position starting in 2017.
Ron Baron today in new interview on Tesla:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.” pic.twitter.com/Rv5PB0bVZ2
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 16, 2026
Baron said those Musk-led bets have generated about $30 billion of the $71 billion in profits Baron Capital has produced for clients. He put the firm’s current exposure at roughly $25 billion in SpaceX and $5 billion in Tesla. Personally, he described SpaceX as his largest holding, at about $5 billion, with about $1.5 billion in Tesla and additional Tesla exposure through the firm’s funds.
That concentration is also a statement of loyalty. Asked about talk of a SpaceX-Tesla combination, Baron said he had already walked Elon Musk through arguments for and against a deal, then declined to repeat them on air. His public position was simpler: “Whatever you decide is better is what I’m going to support,” he said to Musk.
Baron also said that he picked up the farewell edition of the Model S after Tesla decided to sunset the vehicle earlier this year, calling it his favorite car he’s ever driven.
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
