News
Tesla Semi gets closer to production amid test drive event for reservation holder
If Elon Musk’s initial timeframe for the Tesla Semi is accurate, initial production for the all-electric long-hauler should begin sometime this year. While Tesla has been tight-lipped about where the vehicle would be manufactured, the company appears to be showing confidence that the Semi is getting closer to production. Take, for one, the test drive events that Tesla has been holding with some of the Semi’s reservation holders.
On Wednesday, truck leasing company TCI Transportation shared a post on its official Twitter account. The company noted that they were visited by the Tesla Semi, and that some of its employees were even given test drives on the vehicle. Images from the event show TCI’s employees inspecting the all-electric long-hauler, and everyone in the event sharing a meal together.
TCI Transportation is not one of the companies that announced reservations for the Tesla Semi immediately after the vehicle was unveiled. Instead, the truck leasing company posted about its electric truck order last April, stating that they have ordered 50 units of the Tesla Semi. In its announcement, TCI noted that co-Presidents Ryan and Andrew Flynn were able to take the Semi out for a spin.
-
- Tesla Semi visits TCI Transportation. (Photo: TCI/Twitter)
-
- Tesla Semi visits TCI Transportation. (Photo: TCI/Twitter)
-
- Tesla Semi visits TCI Transportation. (Photo: TCI/Twitter)
-
- Tesla Semi visits TCI Transportation. (Photo: TCI/Twitter)
Tesla Semi visits TCI Transportation. (Photo: TCI Transportation/Twitter)
Perhaps interestingly, TCI’s recent post about the Tesla Semi saw the truck leasing company describe the all-electric long-hauler as a “new Tesla Semi Tractor Prototype,” a curious way of describing the vehicle. In its announcement last year, TCI simply called the vehicle as the “new Tesla Electric Semi truck.” While this difference could simply be a matter of simple syntax, the Semi’s new description from the leasing firm invokes the idea that the electric truck has probably been improved to a degree over the past year.
Tesla, after all, has been doing real-world tests using the Semi’s silver test mule. Not long after the vehicle was unveiled, the Semi had been spotted doing cargo runs or running routes across the United States — and it has not really stopped since. Even the matte black Semi prototype, which was recently wrapped in a stunning red color, has been spotted several times testing on America’s roads.
Through these tests, Tesla continues to refine the electric long-hauler, ensuring that the truck is at its best iteration possible when it enters production. Elon Musk already teased some of these improvements in the past. For example, Tesla initially announced two range options for the Semi — a 300-mile short range variant and a 500-mile long range version. In later statements though, Musk stated that the long-range variant of the Semi would have closer to 600 miles of range per charge.
When the Tesla Semi was initially unveiled, the vehicle attracted a notable amount of skepticism from some established players in the legacy trucking market. Daimler Trucks CEO Martin Daum, for one, infamously even joked that the specs Elon Musk quoted for the Semi suggest that the vehicle defies the laws of physics. In a more recent statement, though, Daum was far less dismissive. While the Daimler Trucks CEO still maintained that Tesla would have challenges breaching the trucking market, Daum nonetheless admitted that Tesla has shown that it has the determination to move forward.
“They’re fun; it’s an interesting market. We take every competitor seriously; Tesla has proved they really have the tenacity to really go through huge losses to capture the market. But trucking is a difficult business. They will learn the hard way; trucking is not like passenger cars where one size fits all. There’s a lot of variety in trucking… the United States is a highly competitive market, so as I said, they’re fun,” Daum said.
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’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.
The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:
Tesla Diner opened exactly 1 year ago. Inspiring that futuristic places like this exist.
It’s our highest usage Supercharger in the world: 21.2 GWh delivered in a year, 1.6k sessions/day.
Top 10 Superchargers by energy delivered: https://t.co/9YvJ8lw696 pic.twitter.com/koB3AUJHws
— Max (@MdeZegher) July 21, 2026
On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.
Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.
Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand
Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.
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.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
