Investor's Corner
Why a Tesla Model Y update during the Q4 earnings call will set TSLA on fire
Tesla is set to report its Q4 2019 earnings after the bell rings to close trading on Wednesday and if the electric car manufacturer announces during the call that Model Y delivery will begin soon, expect TSLA stock to skyrocket.
A stellar Q3 2019 performance helped Tesla stock gain momentum and set up Elon Musk’s electric car brand for its final push in the last few months of 2019. Analysts are optimistic following its historic fourth quarter, when it was able to deliver 112,000 vehicles and produce more than 104,000 units. This helped TSLA rise to a $100 billion valuation, bumping German auto giant Volkswagen on the second spot in the list of the most valuable carmakers in the globe.
UPDATED: Tesla $TSLA shares soar following confirmation of Model Y first deliveries and breakout Q4 2019 results
As for the much-awaited all-electric crossover, the production schedule of the Tesla Model Y has moved up from Fall 2020 to Summer 2020 but all signs hint that it may even come sooner. From several sightings of production-ready Model Y units, the publication of its CARB certification, VINs registration with the NHTSA, and phone calls to future Model Y owners, rumors that the first deliveries of the Model Y will begin in February are highly-likely true.
If the Tesla Model Y premium electric crossover indeed hits the road next month, expect movement in the price of TSLA stock. And the only direction to look is up.
Early delivery of Model Y should scare competitors
Tesla has struggled before in keeping its promises of delivering vehicles to customers on time. Skeptics had a point because every carmaker must do its best to meet the demand and keep their customers happy. Elon Musk and his team fine-tuned kinks in production and proved to critics that they’re taking steps in the right direction as Tesla delivered 367,000 vehicles in 2019 — that’s a 50% jump from its numbers in 2018.
Deliveries of vehicles is an accurate barometer of how Tesla is starting to walk the walk, a clear sign that there’s an improvement in the company’s fundamentals as a whole. Initial production of the vehicle is being handled by Tesla’s Fremont plant in California but the company has also started its Model Y program in China. Giga Berlin will contribute to its production as soon as July 2021, with the facility set to start its operations with the production of the all-electric crossover as well.
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The early delivery of the Model Y to consumers also means that Tesla has underpromised and over-delivered. This is a screaming signal that competitors should worry cause whatever “advanced manufacturing technologies” Elon Musk mentioned when he recently spoke about the Model Y could work wonders for the carmaker. These innovations may be related to a casting machine that can practically cast most of the vehicle’s body in one piece, rigid wiring system, and other technologies that the market will learn about soon.
“Model Y will also have some advanced manufacturing technology that we will reveal in the future. I think it will be exciting to show the kind of manufacturing technology associated with the Model Y and it will be exciting to learn about these technologies,” Musk said.
If these manufacturing technologies take Tesla a step closer to perfecting its production line design, then it can hit its production goals in Fremont, Shanghai, and Berlin in the near future. Of course, this efficiency in Model Y production will have a chain effect across its factories and product lines. Better production means a smaller gap between supply and demand. With better efficiency, trust in the brand can soar and sales go boom.
Tesla Model Y will be king of SUV/Crossover Segment
The Tesla Model Y electric crossover that has a range of 300 miles and an impressive 0 to 60 mph time of 3.5 seconds for its quickest variant is positioned perfectly.
Demand for sedans in the United States has been going down fast in favor of more spacious and more functional rides such as SUVs and crossovers. There were 17 million vehicles sold in the US in 2019 and only 28% of that are cars.
Focusing on the crossover segment, the Tesla Model Y has some formidable competition in the form of the BMW X3, Audi Q5, Audi e-tron, Jaguar I-PACE, and the more affordable Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V.
In terms of price and size, the Model Y is comparable to the rest of the pack but the Model Y will have an option to accommodate seven passengers that others cannot offer. And of course, the other electric crossovers are all from internal combustion engine producers and they’re not doing very well. The Audi e-tron only sold 5,369 units in the US while the I-PACE sold 2,594 units. The picture is similar for other mid-sized SUVs.
With the preference of consumers leaning towards roomier vehicles, the Model Y will further prove the credibility and popularity of Tesla brand.
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Model Y can help push Tesla to sustained profitability
During the Q3 earnings call, Musk was quoted about his expectations of the Model Y.
“I’ve actually recently driven the Model Y release candidate, and I think it’s going to be an amazing product and be very well received. I think it’s quite likely to — this is just my opinion, but I think it will outsell S, X, and 3, combined,” Musk said.
The Model Y is the ultimate bad news for critics and competitors. If Tesla found a way to accelerate production and start delivering its all-electric crossover in February, that just means Model Y sales would be added to the books and help raise the company’s earnings in 2020.
While the Model 3 is the first mass-produced vehicle of Tesla, the Model Y will be the first affordable electric SUV that can help push it to sustained profitability. The electric crossover that starts at $39,000 shares 75% of its DNA with its sedan sibling but even with a higher price tag, the innovations in production that Elon Musk mentioned will push the cost down.
Tesla will not only have a good profit margin for the Model Y in the United States, but there’s also a good chance that its margins will even be bigger in China where the locally-made Model 3 has received a warm reception.
The Palo Alto, California-based company can push the margins for its electric crossover further by doing what it plans to do with the Made-in-China Model 3. Localization of components will be key as this will allow Tesla to push the vehicle’s price down and practically create demand. That will work well, according to analysts from Chuancai Securities, an equity firm in China.
The Tesla Model Y will be a game-changer in the industry. If Model 3 was the straight punch to its competitors, the Model Y will be the power uppercut punch that will knock out its rivals.
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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 Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner.jpg)
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.
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.
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.
Tesla Model Y L’s new features flexed at unveiling event at Diner
Tesla CEO Elon Musk denies ridiculous Gigafactory Shanghai rumor
![Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner-80x80.jpg)
