Investor's Corner
Tesla sets record vehicle production, $2.7 billion revenue, Model 3 on track for July production
Tesla released its first quarter 2017 earnings after the closing bell on Wednesday, surprising Wall Street with record production, delivery and revenue numbers. The electric car maker reported revenue of $2.7 billion in GAAP revenue, with $2.28 billion from automotive revenue. The GAAP net loss was $2.04, with non-GAAP loss of $1.33 a share, much larger than expected. This quarter compares well with Q4’16, when TSLA surprised Wall Street after posting a fourth quarter earnings loss of 69 cents a share, and revenue of $2.28 billion. The complete text of the Tesla First Quarter 2017 Update letter can be seen at the end of this article.
Revenue
In the letter, Tesla announced that “Q1 GAAP and Non-GAAP loss from operations improved from Q4.” As in the previous quarter, the estimates between analysts varied widely. According to a consensus poll with analysts conducted by FactSet, Tesla was expected to report a GAAP loss $1.15 a share in the quarter compared with a loss of $2.13 a share in the year-ago period, and an adjusted loss for one-time items of 83 cents. Estimize, a crowdsourcing platforms that polls analysts, hedge-fund managers executives and others, expected a loss of just 17 cents a share. E*trade provided its usual estimate range from its poll of analysts: 0.230 | -0.812 | -1.690 (High | Mean | Low), also with an average of about 82 cents.
Model 3
Many analysts have suggested that eyes would be focused intensely on Tesla’s upcoming milestones, particularly its progress on its Model 3 sedan. In the letter, Tesla announced that “Model 3 vehicle development is nearly complete as we approach the start of production. Release Candidate vehicles, built using production-intent tooling and processes, are being tested to assess fit and finish, to support vehicle software development and to ensure a smooth and predictable homologation process. Road testing is also underway to refine driving dynamics and ensure vehicle durability.” Additionally, “simultaneously, preparations at our production facilities are on track to support the ramp of Model 3 production to 5,000 vehicles per week at some point in 2017, and to 10,000 vehicles per week at some point in 2018.” 
The company also reported record high orders in Q1 for its Model S and X vehicles. The big run up to the stock in 2017 started when Tesla reported first-quarter deliveries, just over 25,000, on the high end of expectations. Investors will be listening for additional information about the status of the Model 3 manufacturing during the First Quarter 2017 Financial Results Q&A Conference Call scheduled for 2:30 pm PT today. The run up of the stock is also due to the fact that many on Wall Street believe that Tesla has worked out some of its manufacturing kinks and is on track to start delivering to employees the first few Model 3 sedans in July, as promised.
Cash
In the letter, Tesla announced that “Q4 to Q1 cash increased by over $4 billion. Cash at the end of Q4 2016 was $3.4 billion. Tesla raised more capital in the quarter with its March $1.5B Offering of Common Stock and Convertible Senior Notes.
TSLA Stock
Tesla shares have been going though the roof, up 80% to a record close of $322.83 on Monday, since the December low when they closed at $181.47. The past three weeks has experienced a string of record highs and the stock has traded above $300 for the better part of April, with an intra-day high of $327.66 on Monday. From a technical perspective, the sky is the limit, and while the shares have been overbought since the beginning of the year when they were trading at $214, there does not seem to be any bad news that can stop the stock from going up. This week TSLA market cap, again, topped GM as the most valuable car maker in the US with a value of over $52B vs. GM’s $50B.
While TSLA stock has soared, traders short selling TSLA have lost $3.7B in 2017, far more than has been lost shorting any other U.S. stock. This is more than the combined losses of short sellers in Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX), according to financial analytics firm S3 Financial Partners. Short bets against TSLA have grown to $10.1B from $8.7B at the start of April, when the more recent TSLA run started. “Momentum” traders are riding TSLA stock up and making incredible returns, especially on options, while “fundamental” traders hold onto their shorts and actually continue to build on them, hoping that the shoe will eventually drop.
As reported by Reuters in “Einhorn, nursing losses on Tesla, says investors ‘hypnotized’ by Musk”, hedge fund manager David Einhorn said on Wednesday that “Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital hedge fund bet against Tesla shares during the first three months of year, racking up losses on its short position. Greenlight did not disclose its current position on Tesla.” Unfortunately for David and other short sellers, barring a delay on delivery of Model 3, the momentum traders may still have the upper hand, at least for the rest of 2017. Today’s session ended up closing 2.55% lower at $310.76. Looking at the extended trading action after the close, the initial reaction to the numbers for Q1 2017 is nil: stock moved to $312. Expect an uneventful opening on Thursday.
Tesla First Quarter 2017 Update http://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TSLA_Update_Letter_2017_1Q.pdf
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Elon Musk
The real reason Elon Musk wants every car connected to space
Elon Musk says all cars will eventually need Starlink to handle massive AI bandwidth demand.
Elon Musk is making the case that satellite internet, not fiber or cellular towers, will end up wired into every car on the road. In a string of posts on X, the SpaceX CEO wrote that all cars will have Starlink in the future and called satellite connectivity the only way to get super high bandwidth to billions of vehicles.
The posts started with Musk endorsing a Cloudflare forecast that traffic generated by autonomous AI agents will soon dwarf traffic generated by humans browsing the internet, a shift he described as not a close call at all. From there he narrowed the argument to infrastructure, writing that the only system that can support the insanely fast bandwidth growth needed by AI is Starlink, before extending the logic to cars specifically.
AI agentic Internet traffic will obviously VASTLY exceed human usage. Not a close call at all.
Cloudflare’s forecast is accurate. https://t.co/VztgrinN5k pic.twitter.com/Wo4FiRKjPU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s own hardware decisions. On July 20, Tesla confirmed the Cybercab would ship with a Starlink V5 terminal built into its roof, the first time the company had put satellite hardware in a production vehicle. A day later, Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, explained the connection wasn’t there for safety and that Cybercab’s driving stack runs entirely on onboard cameras and compute, while the satellite link exists for navigation, customer service, and fleet management instead. Musk followed with his own post about the feature, saying riders would be able to watch 4K streaming video during rides.
By July 22, Musk had already said Starlink would extend beyond Cybercab to Tesla’s full lineup. Sunday’s posts push that same logic outward again, this time framed as a requirement across the industry rather than a feature specific to Tesla, and tied directly to the bandwidth AI systems are expected to consume.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
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The AI argument has been building on SpaceX’s side for months. The company has an FCC filing pending for a third generation Starlink constellation, and it has separately proposed Starmind, a constellation of up to a million satellites designed to run AI computation directly in orbit rather than just relay data. Musk has said he expects space to become the cheapest place to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Starlink and Starmind serve different jobs inside that vision, one moving data and the other processing it, but Sunday’s posts treat vehicles as one more category of hardware that will eventually need both.
None of this changes anything for Tesla owners today. Cars already on the road keep running on LTE and Wi-Fi, and Tesla hasn’t outlined a retrofit path for existing vehicles. The July 22 commitment applies to future production, not the fleet already delivered. What Musk added on Sunday is the reasoning: satellite connectivity isn’t a Cybercab novelty, it’s a bet that ground based networks won’t keep up with how much data cars, robots, and AI systems are about to generate.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
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Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.
Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.
Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.
Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.
TESLA: U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division granted Tesla a Temporary Restraining Order and Writ of Replevin in its dispute with Angstrom Automotive (Case No. 6:26-cv-00477).
The order authorizes… https://t.co/E1DKcQSxMn pic.twitter.com/LR8aAiV2Og
— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 5, 2026
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The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.
Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.
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