Investor's Corner
Tesla releases Q2 2018 production numbers: 28,578 total Model 3, 5,031 in one week
During the final week of the second quarter, Tesla managed to produce 5,031 Model 3 and 1,913 Model S & X. Tesla’s Q2 2018 production totaled 53,339 vehicles, a 55% increase from the first quarter, making it the most productive quarter in the company’s history so far. Model 3 production, which reached a total of 28,578 units, also exceeded the combined Model S and X production of 24,761 vehicles during Q2 2018.
Q2 deliveries totaled 40,740 vehicles, of which 18,440 were Model 3, 10,930 were Model S, and 11,370 were Model X. As noted by Tesla, both orders and deliveries for the flagship luxury sedan and SUV were higher in Q2 than a year ago. Tesla also expects its overall target for 100,000 Model S and Model X deliveries in 2018 to be unchanged. Â
1 team pic.twitter.com/2SB8H6stjT
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 2, 2018
Tesla managed to produce almost three times the number of Model 3 in Q2 than it did in Q1 2018. According to the company’s vehicle production and deliveries report, the GA3 line within the Fremont factory is expected to have the capability to hit a production rate of 5,000 Model 3 per week on its own. Augmented with GA4, the Model 3’s newest assembly line set up in the massive sprung structure on the grounds of the Fremont factory, however, Tesla noted that it was able to hit its production target for the compact electric car faster.
With the 5,000/week mark attained, Tesla is now looking to increase its production capacity for the Model 3 even further. According to the company, it expects to increase its manufacturing rate to 6,000 Model 3 per week by late next month. Tesla also reaffirms its guidance for positive GAAP net income and cash flow in the upcoming third and fourth quarter, regardless of external challenges such as a weakening dollar and higher tariffs for vehicles imported into China.
As of the end of Q2 2018, Tesla had 11,166 Model 3 vehicles and 3,892 Model S and Model X in transit to customers, with deliveries expected to be scheduled sometime early in the third quarter. According to Tesla, the high number of vehicles in transit was primarily due to an increase in production during the end of Q2 2018. Remaining net Model 3 reservations as of the end of Q2 stood at roughly 420,000, despite Tesla having delivered 28,386 Model 3 vehicles to date. Tesla expects more orders for the compact electric car to ramp once more as test drives for the Model 3 start getting offered in galleries in the near future.
Tesla’s most recent milestone comes as a huge victory for the electric car maker. Over the past year, Tesla struggled to ramp up the production of the compact electric sedan, with CEO Elon Musk dubbing the endeavor as “production hell.” During the second quarter, however, Tesla dug deep in order to overcome its production challenges, with the company resorting to unorthodox solutions, such as air-freighting robots from Europe and setting up a new assembly line in a sprung structure, in order to improve its chances of attaining its Q2 0218 production goals. As noted by the company in its recent report, however, the hardship over the past 12 months has been well worth it.
“The last 12 months were some of the most difficult in Tesla’s history, and we are incredibly proud of the whole Tesla team for achieving the 5,000 unit Model 3 production rate. It was not easy, but it was definitely worth it.”
Tesla’s delivery numbers, particularly its 5,000 Model 3 per week milestone, has been received warmly by the company’s investors. As of writing, Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) is trading up 5.30% at $361.16 per share.
Tesla’s production and delivery report for Q2 2018 can be accessed here.
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Investor's Corner
Tesla Full Self-Driving hits Level 4? One analyst says yes
Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.
However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.
Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.
Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.
Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.
He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.
Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.
Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.
That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.
🚨 These are the first-ever FSD safety statistics out of the Netherlands, showing it was over 3.5x safer than human driving on Dutch roads.
The most recent numbers out of Tesla for North America show:
-Over 5.5 million miles between accidents for Teslas using FSD
-660k miles… https://t.co/XKlRzgSGEh pic.twitter.com/HX6kzh0ZKc— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.
“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.
Investor's Corner
Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done
Tesla’s Model Y just became South Korea’s best-selling car, beating every domestic model in May.
Tesla did something last month that no foreign car has ever done in South Korea by outselling every vehicle in the country, domestic or imported, finishing the month with Model Y as the single best-selling car across the entire Korean market. According to data from the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association released on June 4, the Model Y recorded 8,762 units sold in May, pushing the Kia Sorento into second place at 7,836 units and the Hyundai Grandeur into third at 5,183 units. It is the first time an imported vehicle has outsold every domestic model on a single-month basis.
Tesla imported 10,866 cars into South Korea in May, making it the top import brand for the fourth consecutive month. BMW followed at 6,555 units, less than two-thirds of Tesla’s total, while BYD registered just 1,032 units. The combined domestic sales of GM Korea, Renault Korea, and KG Mobility last month totaled just 7,019 units, meaning a single Tesla model outsold three Korean automakers combined.
Tesla FSD earns high praise in South Korea’s real-world autonomous driving test
South Korea has historically been one of the hardest markets for foreign automakers to crack. Hyundai and Kia together control close to 70% of the overall market and carry deep consumer loyalty built over decades. Tesla’s path into this market was an uphill battle due to high import duties, limited service infrastructure, and early skepticism about charging networks. In 2024, the Model Y was the best-selling imported car in South Korea with 18,717 units for the full year. By 2025, after the Juniper refresh, it cleared 50,000 units and took the top spot among all EVs.
Year to date, Tesla has a 250.8% increase in the country over the same period last year, and now holds a 30.8% share of the entire imported car segment for 2026. EVs as a category represented 48.6% of all imported passenger car registrations in May. As Teslarati has reported, the Juniper refresh brought meaningful improvements to range, interior quality, and ride refinement that addressed the most common criticisms of earlier Model Y versions. Those upgrades appear to be resonating in markets like South Korea where buyers compare Tesla directly against high end domestic competitors.