Investor's Corner
Tesla’s Q4 2018 delivery and production report: 63k Model 3 delivered, 86.5k total cars produced
Tesla has released its production and delivery figures for the fourth quarter of 2018, capping off what could only be described as a historic year for the electric car maker. In Q4 2018, Tesla produced a total of 86,555 vehicles, which is 8% more than its prior all-time-high in the third quarter. Deliveries also grew to 90,700 vehicles, a number that’s also 8% more than Q3 2018’s all-time-high.
Tesla’s Q4 production numbers are comprised of 61,394 Model 3 vehicles, in line with the company’s guidance and 15% more than its already notable figures in the third quarter. Tesla also produced a total of 25,161 Model S and X, which is consistent with its long-term run rate of around 100,000 units per year. The more than 90,000 deliveries that Tesla was able to accomplish in Q4 translates to about 1,000 vehicles per day — a notable feat for such a young carmaker. This number is comprised of 63,150 Model 3 (signifying a 13% growth over Q3), 13,500 Model S, and 14,050 Model X vehicles.
Over the course of 2018, Tesla delivered a total of 245,240 vehicles, comprised of 145,846 Model 3, as well as 99,394 Model S and Model X. The company notes in its report that its deliveries in 2018 are almost equal to its total deliveries in all prior years combined. This is despite the electric car maker only producing mid and high-priced variants for the Model 3, and deliveries only being exclusive to North America. Seemingly as a way to highlight the demand for the vehicle, the company pointed out that more than 75% of Model 3 orders in Q4 came from new customers, not reservation holders.
By the end of the quarter, Tesla had 1,010 Model 3 and 1,897 Model S and X that was in transit to customers, which are expected to be delivered in early 2019. The company also notes that its inventory levels remain the smallest in the auto industry, and that its figures for vehicles in transit saw a reduction in Q4 due to improvements in its logistics systems in the North American region.
Apart from reporting record deliveries and production, Tesla also noted that it is rolling out a price adjustment of $2,000 for its vehicle lineup to absorb the reduction of the federal tax credit being granted to electric car buyers. With the adjustments in place, the reduction of the $7,500 federal tax credit to just $3,750 would likely not weigh down customers as much.
While Tesla reported yet another historic quarter that saw the company delivering an average of 1,000 vehicles per day, Wall Street has not taken kindly to the electric car maker’s Q4 2018 results. Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) has fallen more than 7% on Thursday’s trading, partly due to the company’s 63,150 Model 3 deliveries falling slightly short of FactSet estimates of 64,900. Craig Irwin, an analyst with Roth Capital Partners, noted that Tesla’s price adjustments on its vehicles are not helping TSLA stock either.
“The price cut is what’s driving the stock lower, as it openly acknowledges the sunset of subsidy dollars is a material headwind,” he said.
Nevertheless, Baird analyst Ben Kallo noted in a recent report that demand for the Model 3 would likely be strong, particularly as deliveries to other countries are expected to begin this 2019. With regions such as Europe and China expected to start receiving the electric sedan in the next few months, Tesla’s numbers would likely remain healthy in the year to come.
“Importantly, we believe the inventory build is natural as the company ramped production ahead of orders to meet the tax credit step down deadline. We continue to believe Model 3 demand remains strong, particularly as the company has not begun international shipments or introduced leasing options, and are buyers on any weakness,” Kallo wrote.
A link to Tesla’s Q4 2018 full report can be found here.
As of writing, Tesla stock is trading down 7.45% at $308.00 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Investor's Corner
NASA taps SpaceX to launch the telescope that could unlock new worlds
NASA’s Roman Space Telescope heads to orbit this August aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with massive scientific ambitions.
SpaceX is set to play a central role in one of NASA’s most anticipated science missions in years. The company’s Falcon Heavy rocket, currently the most powerful operational launch vehicle in the world, will carry the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into orbit on August 30 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Roman is now in final preparations inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, where on June 26 technicians used a crane to lift the observatory into a specialized stand for fueling and pre-launch testing.
Roman is named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief of astronomy, whose career helped shape how the agency approaches space science.
NASA chose SpaceX Falcon Heavy because of Roman’s needs to reach a specific orbit far from Earth, well beyond where a standard Falcon 9 can deliver it. The Falcon Heavy, which first flew in 2018, has since become NASA’s go-to option for missions that need serious muscle without the cost and complexity of older launch systems.
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Roman will carry a field of view at least 100 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope, meaning it can photograph enormous swaths of the universe in a single shot rather than the narrow slices Hubble captures. That difference in scale is significant. While Hubble reshaped our understanding of the cosmos over 30 years, Roman is built to work faster and wider, surveying hundreds of millions of galaxies at once.
One of Roman’s most compelling capabilities is its potential to discover and photograph planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, and with enough precision to directly image planets that would otherwise be lost. That means scientists could study the atmosphere and surface characteristics of distant worlds rather than simply confirming they exist. Combined with Roman’s sweeping field of view, the telescope could detect thousands of exoplanets, and some of those planets may be in habitable zones where liquid water could exist. No telescope currently in operation has this level of power and capability. That capability alone could change what we know about other worlds, and perhaps finally answer the question: are we the only intelligent lifeforms in existence?
What Roman actually finds once it reaches orbit is an open question, and that is exactly what makes this launch worth watching.
Elon Musk
California snubs Tesla in its newly passed EV incentive that favors Rivian and Lucid
California passed a $135 million EV incentive that rewards Rivian and Lucid while sidelining Tesla
California just drew a line in the EV incentive sand to put Tesla on the wrong side of it. The state recently passed a $135 million program offering first-time electric vehicle buyers a direct incentive with no application required, but the rules were written in a way that leaves Tesla at a structural disadvantage compared to Rivian and Lucid.
The program caps eligible vehicles at $50,000 for new EVs and $25,000 for used ones. That pricing threshold rules out a significant portion of Tesla’s lineup, though some lower-priced Model 3 and Model Y configurations would still qualify. California-based automakers are exempt from the price cap entirely, regardless of what their vehicles cost. Rivian, headquartered in Irvine, and Lucid, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, both benefit from that exemption. Rivian’s R2 starts at roughly $45,000 but has versions above the cap. Lucid’s Air and Gravity start at $70,990 and $79,990 respectively, well above any threshold a non-California company would face.
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Tesla built its reputation and a significant portion of its early market share in California, where EV adoption has consistently led the nation. The company operates its original factory in Fremont, California, and the state was home to Tesla’s headquarters for most of its existence. That changed in 2021 when Tesla moved its corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas. Since then, the relationship between the company and California Governor Gavin Newsom has been openly adversarial, with Musk and Newsom trading public criticism on multiple occasions.
California’s EV incentive landscape has shifted repeatedly in recent years, and Tesla has previously lost eligibility for state-level programs as its vehicles exceeded income-adjusted price thresholds. The federal $7,500 EV tax credit, which Tesla models have qualified for and lost depending on policy cycles, is no longer available after it expired without renewal, making state-level programs more meaningful to buyers than they have been in years.
The practical impact for buyers is more nuanced than the headline suggests. California residents purchasing a Tesla under $50,000 for the first time can still access the incentive. But the exemption written for California-based manufacturers is a structural advantage that rewards where a company plants its headquarters flag rather than where it builds its products, and Tesla moved that flag to Texas.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s newest logo confirms everything about what it’s become
SpaceX officially absorbed xAI under the SpaceXAI brand, completing the largest private merger in history.
SpaceX made its corporate transformation official in May 2026 when Elon Musk posted on X that xAI would cease to exist as a standalone company. “xAI will be dissolved as a separate company, so it will just be SpaceXAI, the AI products from SpaceX,” he wrote.
A new SpaceXAI logo was announced today, visually embedding the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity, which can be seen as a deliberate design choice that signals the merger is not a partnership but a full absorption and XAi a core function of the same company. The same way Starlink is not a separate brand but a SpaceX product. The announcement closed the loop on a process that began February 2, 2026, when SpaceX acquired xAI in the largest private merger in history, valued at $1.25 trillion. SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion.
We are now @SpaceXAI. pic.twitter.com/ema66xDWC9
— SpaceXAI (@SpaceXAI) July 6, 2026
The reason SpaceX bought xAI was stated plainly by Musk at the time of the deal: to build orbital data centers. SpaceX had simultaneously filed with the FCC to launch up to one million satellites designed to function as AI compute nodes in low Earth orbit, escaping what Musk described as the energy constraints limiting AI development on Earth.
xAI provided the AI software stack, with Grok, the X platform, and the Colossus supercomputer infrastructure in Memphis with over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs, while SpaceX provided the rockets, Starlink, and the capital base to fund it. The two companies needed each other. xAI was burning $2.5 billion in losses on $250 million in revenue. SpaceX was generating an estimated $8 billion in profit on $15 billion in revenue and needed an AI narrative to command the valuation it was targeting for its IPO.
What SpaceX has done, regardless of how the orbital AI vision ultimately plays out, is walk into a public market as something no company has been before: a rocket manufacturer, satellite internet provider, AI software company, social media platform, and supercomputer operator under one ticker. Whether that combination is worth $2 trillion depends entirely on which of those businesses you believe in most.
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