Investor's Corner
Tesla’s Model 3 production ramp is here, and the US auto market is starting to feel it
Since hitting its Q2 target of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week, Tesla appears to have accelerated its efforts to build and deliver the electric car to as many reservation holders as possible. The vehicle’s ramp has been anything but smooth over the past year, but now that Tesla is focusing on sustaining its production of the car, it seems like the results of the Model 3 push are finally starting to bear fruit.
Tesla noted in its Q2 2018 production and delivery report that the Model 3 had a line of about 420,000 reservations as of the final week of June. Deliveries of the Model 3 rose steadily since Tesla started ramping the production of the vehicle. Over Q1 and Q2, sales of the electric sedan increased, culminating in July when Tesla is estimated to have sold as many as 14,250 Model 3 in one month.
With such numbers, the Model 3 became the best-selling electric car in the United States in July, bar none. The rise of the Model 3 was so prominent that last month, it was listed as 7th place in GoodCarBadCar‘s list of America’s Top 20 Best Selling Cars, which included gas-powered vehicles like the Toyota Camry and the Honda Civic. These are vehicles that have held their places in the US’s auto industry for years, and the vast majority of them are more affordable than the Model 3.
Yet, despite this, the Model 3’s sales show that more and more people are starting to commit to Tesla’s electric car. In the company’s Q2 2018 earnings call, Tesla global head of sales Robin Ren stated that the top five vehicles being traded in for a Model 3 were rather surprising, as they were comprised of mostly lower-priced cars such as the Toyota Prius, BMW 3 Series, Honda Accord, Honda Civic, and the Nissan Leaf. Among these vehicles, only the BMW 3 Series is an actual competitor in the midsize luxury segment. The other four are from a more affordable price point.
According to Elon Musk, these trends in the sales of the Model 3 suggest that customers are quite open to spending a little bit more than their usual budget to purchase the electric car. This, Musk believes, is encouraging overall.
“It’s just interesting that people are trading up into a Tesla, so they’re choosing to spend more money on a Tesla than their current car, just based on the trade-in values. A Civic is a very inexpensive car compared to particularly the Model 3 today. So that’s promising from a market access standpoint,” Musk said.
Tesla’s Model 3 ramp appears to be well on its way to sustaining the optimum manufacturing level displayed by the company during its “burst production week” at the end of June. Apart from Tesla announcing that it was able to maintain its 5,000/week Model 3 target in “multiple weeks” in July, the company has also registered an astounding 16,000 new Model 3 VINs in a seven-day period this August. That’s a number that took the company roughly eight months to achieve when the vehicle started production in mid-2017.
As the Model 3 continues to make its presence known in the US auto industry, Tesla appears to be looking into expanding the Model 3’s reach to other countries. Deliveries to Canada have already started in Q2, and just recently, Tesla also announced that it would be offering the Model 3 for viewing in Australia and New Zealand. The company also showcased the Model 3 at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed, where it attracted a good deal of attention from the festival’s attendees.
What then, of competing electric vehicles from other manufacturers? The Model 3’s main rival, the well-reviewed Chevy Bolt, has appears to have plateaued its sales in 2018. Estimates of the Chevy Bolt’s sales this year show that the vehicle has likely sold around 1,100-1,700 units every month since January, putting it below the Model 3’s numbers in 2018 so far. By July, the Model 3 is estimated to have outsold the Chevy Bolt EV 12:1.
Particularly notable is that Tesla’s production ramp for the Model 3 is still just halfway towards its actual target. Tesla aims to eventually produce 10,000 Model 3 per week — a pace the company is seeking to achieve sometime next year. It took a very long time for Tesla to build up the Model 3’s lines to produce 5,000 vehicles per week, but with the milestone achieved, it appears that Tesla’s ramp for its most ambitious electric car is going nowhere but up. Once the Model 3 hits 10,000 per week, even America’s top-selling vehicles like the Toyota Camry could start seeing their sales get taken over by Telsa’s electric sedan.
Tesla has its answer to grow its automotive sales over the next few years, TD Cowen analyst Itay Michaeli says, but it just has to bring it to the U.S.
On Thursday, Michaeli reiterated his $490 price target and the ‘Buy’ rating he already held on Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA). However, its automotive division has struggled to show sequential growth over the past few years, mostly due to its focus on AI and Full Self-Driving. Tesla already axed two of its lower-volume vehicles with the Model S and Model X earlier this year.
However, Tesla does not need to engineer an entire new vehicle to trigger an upward tick in sales; it just has to bring it from China to the U.S., Michaeli said.
He is talking about the Model Y L, a slightly larger version of the all-electric crossover that is already available in China. U.S. customers have been pleading with CEO Elon Musk to bring it to the country since its launch in Asia last year, but he’s not convinced of it because of the advent of self-driving and its importance in this particular market.
The problem is that Tesla owners have been requesting something larger that could fit a typical American family. The Model Y L is slightly larger than the standard Model Y, but some are concerned that it could still be too small to fit what most people might need.
Instead, they have asked for a full-size SUV from Tesla.
Tesla gives big hint that it will build Cyber SUV, smaller Cybertruck
Nevertheless, the Model Y L still presents a great opportunity for Tesla in the U.S., and Michaeli says that there is an additional sales opportunity of about 100,000 units, with demand potential falling somewhere between 60,000 and 135,000 units.
TD Cowen’s note to investors also analyzed that Tesla’s growth could come from a stock perspective as well, positively impacting the stock price, as it has been widely reliant on vehicle sales, even though Tesla has truly phased itself away from that being an important metric.
Tesla stands to gain greatly from the introduction of the Model Y L in the U.S., but only if Elon Musk sees it as a viable fit for the market. Families may need to see Tesla bring something larger to the U.S., or they might be forced to buy from another automaker that offers something that fits is needs for more interior space to haul around the kids.
Elon Musk
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.
SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.
Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.
Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.
Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.
Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
A single line in SpaceX’s amended S-1 just sent Tesla stock down 5% in one day.
A single line buried in SpaceX’s amended S-1 filing is doing more to move Tesla’s stock price than anything Tesla itself has announced in months. The clause, disclosed as SpaceX prepares for what could be the largest IPO in Wall Street history, states that the company “may issue a significant amount of equity in connection with future transactions.” While this may be seen as boilerplate language in S-1 filings, the historical ties between SpaceX and Tesla, and with Elon Musk reportedly discussing a possible merger with close colleagues, investors are interpreting it as something closer to a signal.
The concern among institutional investors like Gary Black, managing director of The Future Fund, pointed directly to the amended filing on X, saying it “strongly suggests more SPCX equity will be issued,” which could potentially be used to acquire Tesla. He estimated such a deal could be 28% dilutive to Tesla shareholders since SpaceX would likely command a significantly higher valuation multiple. Black added that institutional investors he knows hate the idea of a combination because they prefer pure plays over conglomerates, which he said “nearly always gravitate to the lowest common multiple.”
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
The bull case runs the math differently. Tesla influencer and retail shareholder advocate AleXandra Merz pushed back on what she called a widespread misunderstanding of how merger-of-equals deals actually work. Rather than simply splitting the difference between two market caps, a merger exchange ratio is negotiated based on relative fair market values, meaning the lower valued company typically sees its stock reprice upward toward the deal value.
Under her model, SpaceX enters at a $2.5 trillion valuation and Tesla at $1.6 trillion, producing a combined entity worth $4.1 trillion split evenly between both shareholder groups. That implies Tesla’s side of the deal would be valued at $2.05 trillion, a gain of roughly $450 billion from its current market cap. She cited Dow-DuPont and CBS-Viacom as historical examples of how markets reprice both companies toward the announced exchange ratio after a deal is unveiled.
What does a Merger of Equals mean to Elon’s compensation packages?
Well, it changes everything.
Enjoy https://t.co/uekCldyITw pic.twitter.com/kolq1C9qTu
— AleXandra Merz 🇺🇲 (@TeslaBoomerMama) June 1, 2026
The SpaceX S-1 amendments also revealed just how much financial infrastructure already binds the two companies together. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX purchased $697 million in Tesla Megapacks, $131 million in Cybertrucks, and the two companies have shared supply chain resources, and semiconductor fabrication plans since well before any merger conversation became public. A retail poll by Tesla influencer Sawyer Merritt is finding that 36% of respondents do not plan to buy SpaceX shares at IPO and 15.3% saying their decision depends on the valuation.
Do you plan on buying @SpaceX stock at its IPO?
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 1, 2026
Whether the merger happens or not, the amended filing is seemingly moving markets and sharpened a debate that is no longer theoretical. SpaceX is weeks away from trading publicly, and Tesla shareholders are now watching every word of every filing for clues about what Musk plans to do next.
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