Investor's Corner
The Model Y represents a wiser Tesla and it should wake up the auto industry
It is now just a matter of time before Tesla unveils the next vehicle in its product roadmap — the Model Y. Aimed at the auto industry’s most lucrative segment today, the all-electric SUV and its potential success could definitively establish Tesla’s reputation as a successful carmaker. With this in mind, the Model Y’s 2019 release could be seen as a strategic move for Tesla, since the company is now at a point where it has matured enough to produce a vehicle of such magnitude and caliber as the all-electric SUV.
A competitive segment
The compact SUV segment in the United States is an incredibly competitive market. In 2018 alone, auto sales tracking website CarSalesBase noted that the Toyota Rav4 — the reigning king of compact SUVs — sold 427,168 units in the United States. In second place was the Nissan Rogue with 412,110 vehicles sold, and in third place was the Honda CR-V, which sold 379,013 units during 2019. Each of these vehicles sold so well, their individual sales exceeded Tesla’s record-breaking 2018 sales of 245,240 electric cars, which included 145,846 Model 3.
That said, Tesla’s 2018 sales for the Model 3 were no joke. With more than 145,000 units sold over the year, the electric sedan ended 2018 as the US’ best-selling luxury vehicle, far outselling its closest competitor — the Lexus RX, which also happens to be an SUV. It should be noted that the Model 3 accomplished this feat despite the United States generally preferring SUVs and pickup trucks over passenger cars. With the Model Y, Tesla would be removing this handicap, as the company would be competing in the SUV segment with an all-electric SUV that is bred to dominate.
From the Model 3 to the Model Y
The success of the Model 3 and the tribulations Tesla passed through during the vehicle’s ramp all contribute to help in the production of the Model Y. When Tesla started producing the Model 3, it was a carmaker whose experience was limited to the production of two relatively low-volume premium vehicles, and CEO Elon Musk was still prone to hyper-ambitious goals that border on the unrealistic. As Tesla went through the Model 3’s production challenges, and as the company hit its stride with the vehicle’s manufacturing, the electric car maker matured. This maturity became evident in Tesla’s Q2 2018 earnings call, when Elon Musk showed a notable amount of restraint and humility. Musk’s timelines since then have remained ambitious — though a lot more realistic — as shown in the company’s timetable for Gigafactory 3.
With a more mature Tesla and a more experienced Elon Musk leading the Model Y charge, the electric car maker could escape a considerable amount of the challenges it faced with the Model 3. Musk had expressed his optimism with Model Y production during the recently held fourth-quarter earnings call, when he noted that the vehicle would require much lower CAPEX than the electric sedan. Discussing the upcoming vehicle’s production further, Musk stated that the Model Y would likely see a seamless buildout, considering that it would likely be built in Gigafactory 1. This would be a notable advantage for the Model Y, considering that its battery packs would be made in the same site.
“Three-quarters of the Model Y is common with the Model 3, so it’s a much lower CAPEX per vehicle than Model 3, and the rest is also quite low. Model Y is, I think, 76% was when it got in common with the Model 3. And we’re most likely going to put Model Y production right next to — in fact, it’s part of our main Gigafactory in Nevada. So, it will just be right there. Batteries and powertrains will come out and go straight into the vehicle. So that also reduces our risk of execution and reduces the cost of having to transfer parts from California to Nevada. It’s not a for sure thing, but it’s quite likely, and it’s our default plan. I would expect Model Y will probably be — the thematic Model Y will be maybe 50% higher than Model 3, could be even double,” Musk said.
-
- A Tesla Model Y rendering. (Credit: Reese Wilson/Teslarati)
-
- Tesla Model Y rendering via AutoExpress
-
- Tesla Model Y rendering from Peisert Design
-
- An artist’s render of the Tesla Model Y. [Credit: Miguel Massé/Twitter]
The Tesla Model Y as imagined by concept artists. (Credit: Reese Wilson, AutoExpress, Peisert Design and Miguel Masse)
An impending disruption
The Model Y’s dominance will not be focused solely on the United States, either, considering that Tesla’s Gigafactory 3 in China is expected to manufacture the affordable versions of the all-electric SUV, which would be distributed to the Chinese market. Just like the United States, China is also a market that has a soft spot for SUVs. Such is the reason why the Tesla Model X — rather expensive vehicle that Musk describes as the “Fabergé egg of cars,” — is popular in China. With a lower-cost car like the Model Y in the market, Tesla’s potential in the Asian economic superpower would likely see a boost as well.
It could be said that much of Tesla’s challenges over the years were the result of its own hubris, as evidenced by the Model X’s overloaded tech and the Model 3 ramp’s over-reliance on automation. That said, there’s a good chance that Tesla would not make these same mistakes with the Model Y. With this in mind, it would be wise for veterans in the auto industry to take the upcoming vehicle seriously, and maybe come up with compelling electric cars of their own — not like seemingly converted vehicles like the Mercedes-Benz EQC either, but more like the Porsche Taycan, which was designed from the ground up as EV.
Just as the Model S and Model X caused a disruption on the higher end of the auto market, so would the Model 3 and Model Y. Provided that Tesla manages to produce both vehicles at scale, and provided that the company can release lower-cost variants that can attract a broader audience, the Model Y and its sedan sibling could ultimately become the electric cars that cement the company’s place in the hyper-competitive auto industry.
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
— 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.
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.
SpaceX wants to catch Starship for launch 14, Elon Musk says
Tesla to open source Model S and Model X designs and software
