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Tesla tops Fast Co’s list for Most Innovative Transportation company
Tesla ranked third overall in the list of The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company. Tesla also topped the list of the Most Innovative Transportation Companies of 2020 by the same publication.
The Silicon Valley-based carmaker finished just behind social media platform Snap and tech-giant Microsoft, which finished first and second, respectively. In the transportation sector, Tesla grabbed the top spot while Brightline/Virgin Trains, the first new privately-held passenger rail system in the United States in 100 years, finished second. Software company Swiftly, which helps cities optimize public transit systems using data analysis snagged the third spot.
Fast Company cited Tesla “for proving it’s a mass-market automaker by delivering more than 350,000 cars in 2019. Tesla proved it can compete with Big Auto when it delivered 367,500 vehicles to customers last year—more than double the number of cars it sold in the previous two years. It also opened a new factory in China, and began delivering cars to the world’s largest EV market.”
Aptiv came in fourth and was cited for completing more than 70,000 paid autonomous car rides with Lyft. Electric vehicle charging company Chargepoint got the fifth spot. Kodiak Robotics, Passport, Shipex, Cake, and LM Industries completed the top 10 in the transport sector
The publication highlights the achievements and promising ideas of the biggest and lesser-known industry players, but more importantly, puts the spotlight on how Elon Musk’s car company has been reshaping itself as an industry leader and how it continues to transform the the car industry as a whole.
Scaling up production of its vehicles, focused at the moment on the Model 3 electric sedan and now the Model Y electric crossover is an integral step to achieving Tesla’s mission of fostering a wider adoption of electric vehicles. For 2020, Tesla is aiming to deliver 500,000 vehicles.
While these numbers may sound ambitious to the company’s naysayers, it is a realistic goal with the carmaker eyeing production of 500K units per year in its Fremont factory once upgrades are completed mid-year. Giga Shanghai, according to a recent record of meetings between investors and experts, is expected to hit 170,000 vehicles this year, with an aim to produce 5,000 vehicles per week putting the facility all the way up to to almost 250,000 units annually.
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Aside from its connected cars, it also continues to invest in improving its car battery technologies. Industry leaders and major players are awaiting what Tesla and Elon Musk would announce during its Battery Day in April. It could be about mass production of cheaper batteries or perhaps enhanced batteries for its existing and future vehicles, and while these could spell doomsday for other legacy automakers it opens the possibility of Tesla helping everyone as a supplier of reliable electric vehicle batteries in the future. If that happens, it would be a win-win situation for carmakers and the environment as this would make green cars from different brands more attractive to consumers. Tesla’s innovation is effectively innovation for the car industry as a whole.
Ramping production has indeed turned Tesla into a mass vehicle producer, but more importantly, it brings it a step closer to helping the world achieve a more sustainable future through its products.
“When I think what we have in front of us, the next couple of years, we’ve got Model Y, we’ve got Giga Berlin, Tesla Semi, Solarglass Roof, Cybertruck some very exciting improvements in battery technology,” Elon Musk said during its Q4 2019 earnings call. “It’s hard to think of another company that has more exciting product and technology roadmap. So super-fired up about where Tesla will be in the next 10 years.”
Fast Company’s list of The World’s Most Innovative Companies looked into groundbreaking businesses in 44 sectors across different regions of the globe. The nominated companies were assessed by the publication’s editors and writers based on their innovation and impact, with focus on their accomplishments in the past year.
In a new note to investors on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco said that Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors regarding its Robotaxi rollout, Full Self-Driving software, and Optimus.
Percoco said in the note that, for the most part, investors are still very positive about the direction the company is headed. However, there are some things the firm would like to see, and they have to do with financials.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla bulls are more than convinced that the company’s Full Self-Driving software is proof it can develop physical AI. Financially, however, there are still some questions, especially on elevated spending, which CEO Elon Musk said would occur as the company works to roll out Robotaxi faster and continue developing its Optimus robot.
The latter two are where Tesla will have to prove progress to investors, as Percoco writes that both projects “will require clearer evidence that Robotaxi is scaling and more tangible Optimus proof points to support the ROI on elevated capex.”
Percoco said the second quarter earnings call did not change his long-term thesis of where Tesla is positioned in the AI race, which is out in front. However, there are concerns that weaker gross margins and higher R&D spend will stress financials, and that has “sharpened our (and investors’) focus on measurable progress across Robotaxi and Optimus.”
Additionally, Robotaxi still needs to be proven with more operation in existing cities while maintaining safety but improving how many rides it gives in any given time, he said. For Optimus, Percoco wrote that he is “still looking for evidence beyond commentary around SOP.”
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Morgan Stanley put Percoco in charge of covering Tesla after long-time analyst Adam Jonas transitioned to the automotive side.
Currently, Morgan Stanley has a $415 price target on Tesla and a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock. It is trading at around $330 at the time of publication, which was 2:30 P.M. on the East Coast.
SpaceX’s massive investment in AI will make it a big winner, Argus Research said after the company’s successful earnings call last week.
The firm also upgraded shares to a Buy from Hold and set a $160 price target.
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) is currently recovering from its heavy AI infrastructure investments, as it spent nearly $16 billion in Q2 alone. The company did this primarily by monetizing high-demand GPU compute capacity at a much faster pace than traditional data center economics would suggest.
Company CFO Bret Johnsen said that SpaceX would be able to pay back anything on new deployments within a year.
There are plenty of ways the company can do this:
Leasing excess compute capacity through contracts
SpaceX has already built Colossus and Colossus II, largely for its own model training. However, much of that capacity is already rented out to third parties. It already has major deals with Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI. These partnerships are adding billions per month to SpaceX’s spreadsheet.
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High utilization driven by industry-wide scarcity
The demand for advanced AI training and inference capacity continues to exceed what is available for use. SpaceX can fill new racks quickly after they come online, so the capital deployed converts into revenue with minimal idle time.
Additionally, management and outside observers have described the new compute capital as behaving more like a cost-of-goods-sold than traditional multi-year capex, especially because of this rapid monetization pattern.
Capacity has already scaled from ~0.4 GW a year to 1.4 GW annually by the end of Q2. There are targets of more than 2 GW by year-end.
High incremental margins on the rental business once capacity is online
GPU cloud providers often operate at strong gross margins. SpaceX can monetize capacity that was already partially built or can be added efficiently. This means that incremental EBITDA margins on the rental revenue are usually high. This accelerates cash recovery relative to the gross capital outlay.
Parallel monetization of its own AI software and applications
Beyond pure infrastructure rental, SpaceX also generates revenue from Grok through subscriptions and usage, from X through ads, data, and other related services, enterprise APIs, and the planned integration of the Cursor coding tools acquisition.
These application layers ride on the same compute infrastructure and provide additional high-margin streams that could offset build-out costs. AI-segment revenue overall rose sharply to about $2.6 billion in Q2, according to Motley Fool. This was driven primarily by the infrastructure contracts, but the software side is also partially responsible.
Efficient, large-scale deployment and vertical integration advantages
SpaceX has emphasized the rapid construction of power and cooling infrastructure and favorable cost-per-megawatt economics relative to industry benchmarks in some disclosures.
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Combined with its ability to scale capacity aggressively and the fact that many contracts start generating revenue within months of capacity coming online, the effective payback compresses dramatically compared with more conventional multi-year data-center projects.
SpaceX’s dominant near-term recovery path will turn the AI clusters into a hyperscale-style compute rental business for other leading AI companies while still using a portion for internal models.
Tesla headlights have caused a recall of over 20,000 of the company’s two most popular vehicles, the Model 3 and Model Y, due to the low-beam bulb exceeding the maximum allowed intensity according to federal standards.
Tesla initiated the recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) this morning, stating that the low-beam output “exceeds the maximum allowed intensity in the outer upper-right and outer upper-left areas of the 10U and 90U zone, as prescribed in FMVSS No. 108.”
Tesla sourced the impacted headlights from Marelli Automotive Lighting, a Mexico-based company. The recall impacts 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles and 2017-2023 Model 3 vehicles. It is estimated that every VIN in this recall is impacted by the defect.
🚨 Tesla is recalling 20,349 2020-23 Model Y vehicles and 2017-23 Model 3 vehicles due to an excessively bright headlamp low beam.
Currently, there is no remedy plan in place, as it is still being developed. pic.twitter.com/y34cIO2U0B
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 11, 2026
Typically, Tesla would remedy recalls of this nature through an Over-the-Air software update, which has been a major focus of criticism by the company and its supporters because the NHTSA still refers to it as a “recall,” even though it requires no action by the vehicle owner. The fix is shipped over the internet and downloaded to the car.
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However, there appears to be a potentially different solution for this problem. Tesla has not developed a remedy for this issue, so it could potentially be on the way. The big issue appears to be the fact that these recalled lamps are out of production, and this is an old body style for both vehicles. The headlights and front-end designs are completely different.
Tesla switched to another supplier when the affected headlight design was discontinued. It plans to begin notifying owners of their remedy options by September 15.
Tesla filed a petition protesting the recall to fix the vehicles’ headlight issue, but the NHTSA denied it. Now, Tesla will come up with a solution to fix it.
Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors: Morgan Stanley
SpaceX AI investment gamble will make it a big winner, firm says
