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Investor's Corner

Tesla shareholders vote in favor of keeping Elon Musk as Chairman

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8 years ago

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Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is keeping Elon Musk as chairman of its board. During Tesla’s 2018 Annual Shareholder Meeting, which was held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. PST, shareholders ultimately decided to allow Musk to stay as both CEO and chairman of Tesla’s board of directors.

The results of the vote come as a vote of confidence for Musk, who has battled online criticism on a heightened scale since Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call, where he refused to answer inquiries from Bernstein and RBC analysts due to the questions being “boring and boneheaded.” Apart from this, Musk also continues to battle a consistent stream of doubts about Tesla’s ability to meet its ever-elusive Model 3 production goals.

The challenge to Musk’s authority as chairman of Tesla’s board came in April, when shareholder Jing Zhao, who owns 12 shares of the company’s common stock, submitted a proposal calling for Musk’s removal from his chairman post. According to Zhao, Tesla’s growing size, as well as Musk’s commitments to SpaceX and The Boring Company, might cause “conflicts” down the road. Proxy advisers Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis supported Zhao’s proposal.

During the 2018 Annual Shareholder Meeting, however, the initiative to remove Elon Musk as Tesla’s chairman came to an unsuccessful end, as investors opted to keep the serial tech entrepreneur at the head of the company by “more than a super majority vote.”

In a report on Tuesday, analysts from Needham & Co. stated that Tesla’s Annual Shareholder Meeting would ultimately be all about the Model 3’s production ramp rates. The firm, which has a “Hold” rating on Tesla stock, also stated that it expects Model 3 production to turn profitable by 2019. Needham analysts further indicated that Tesla should see a near-term benefit as it starts delivering the Model 3 Performance, which costs $78,000 with all options except Autopilot.

“Margins and average selling price should see some near-term benefit as Tesla starts delivering the Performance version of Model 3 (fully loaded at $78K), but in order to reach the target gross margin of about 25%, the Model 3 needs to sell all configurations including the base model, which won’t come until 2019 at the earliest. Tesla should be able to generate more than $10K/car it sold, and if Model 3 ramps well in the next few quarters, its cash flow will substantially increase.” the analysts wrote, according to a Barron’s report.

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Tesla is currently attempting to hit a production rate of 5,000 Model 3 per week by the end of Q2 2018. While the compact electric car’s manufacturing has had its setbacks over the past few quarters, recent reports about the Model 3 line are starting to get more positive. In May alone, Tesla registered a record 18,000 new Model 3 VINs, a number that was matched only by the company’s production of the vehicle from mid-2017 to March 2018.

A leaked email from Elon Musk further revealed that the Model 3 line is now at a consistent rate of 3,500 vehicles per week. By the end of May, reports also emerged stating that Tesla is flying in six airplanes’ worth of new robots and equipment from Europe. These robots, which are reportedly set to be installed in Gigafactory 1, are expected to address further production bottlenecks in the Model 3 battery module line.

As of writing, Tesla stock is trading up 0.16% at $291.14 per share during after-hours trading.

Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner

Elon Musk sat beside Trump as AI leaders signed a voluntary White House safety accord.

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2 days ago

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September 29, 2026

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Elon Musk had the seat right next to President Donald Trump on Tuesday as the White House hosted the leaders of America’s biggest artificial intelligence companies for a lunch that ended with a voluntary industry accord on AI safety.

A seating chart Trump posted on Truth Social placed Musk at the president’s left in the East Room, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on his right, according to an Associated Press reporter. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also attended, along with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

After the lunch, Trump told reporters outside the West Wing that the executives had signed “The White House Accord on Superintelligence: A Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities.” Johnson described it as a voluntary statement of principles built on “robust internal controls and layers of internal and external review,” while Zuckerberg said company boards would independently review reports from outside auditors. Trump called the document “morally binding,” said he would name a new AI czar within days, and signed an executive order formally renaming artificial intelligence “super intelligence,” CNBC reported.

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Musk was not in the room for Tesla alone. Since SpaceX absorbed xAI, he runs the company behind Grok and one of the largest AI training operations anywhere. On September 25, he said another 220,000 Nvidia GB300 chips would come online at Colossus 2 within a week, with more expected in November and December.

SpaceX confirms third massive compute deal at Colossus data center

 

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Musk also used the trip to restate his energy ambitions. “SpaceX is aiming together with Tesla to do 200 gigawatts of solar production per year,” he said at an event in Washington. It is the same combined target he laid out that feeds directly into Terafab, the Tesla and SpaceX chip venture that will need enormous amounts of power.

The showing between Musk and Trump has come a long way, since the two had the very public split in mid 2025 after Musk opposed the “Big Beautiful Bill” and left DOGE. They reconciled at Charlie Kirk’s memorial that September, and Trump later called their relationship “good”. Since then, Musk has joined Trump’s China delegation in May and attended last week’s White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

For Tesla, that access to government official could pay dividends. As Teslarati noted in January, federal autonomy rules, NHTSA oversight and a single national standard for driverless vehicles all run through an administration Musk can more easily reach directly as Tesla works to scale Robotaxi and Cybercab beyond Texas.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong

Published

3 days ago

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September 29, 2026

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Credit: @thaichiminh1907/X

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) showrooms have been picked clean ahead of the end of the third quarter of the year, as demand looks to be strong and delivery estimates for new vehicles are pushed into late 2026 and early 2027.

Tesla appears to have sold out of many of its Model 3 and Model Y trim levels in the United States, as only the Model Y RWD and Model Y All-Wheel-Drive are available for delivery before the end of the year.

Additionally, many showrooms are either completely empty or void of all but just one demo unit within the buildings themselves in an effort to bolster what could be one of Tesla’s best quarters in vehicle deliveries in recent memory.

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Additionally, when I spoke to the guys at Tesla Mechanicsburg two weeks ago, when I returned the Model Y L, their third hauler of the week had just arrived, and every vehicle on it, along with every vehicle in their delivery lot, was accounted for and had a name attached to it for delivery.

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Tesla saw a 25 percent increase in deliveries in Q2 compared to the same quarter the year before. The vast majority of the 480,126 units it delivered, 467,762 vehicles to be exact, were the Model 3 and Model Y.

In Q3 2025, Tesla delivered 497,099 vehicles, once again a figure that was dominated by the company’s two mass-market vehicles. Analysts have unusually wide predictions for this quarter, likely because so many firms missed the Q2 delivery figure by such a substantial margin; Wall Street predicted 408,000 cars, while Tesla delivered 480,000.

Goldman Sachs has Tesla slotted for 435,000 deliveries in Q3, while JPMorgan said it anticipates 482,000. The median guess is about 449,000 deliveries for Q3.

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Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.

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SpaceX turned a heralding moment for Starship into its greatest

Starship reached orbit despite losing an engine, deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites on Flight 14.

Published

4 days ago

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September 28, 2026

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SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time on Monday, and for a few nail-biting minutes it looked like it wouldn’t. During ascent on Flight 14, one of Ship 41’s six Raptor engines shut down early, and SpaceX’s livestream host Dan Huot told viewers the team had decided not to commit to orbit. Minutes later, after what Huot described as a lot of conversation in the control room, the final poll came back in favor, and a roughly 19 second burn of a single Raptor pushed the ship into orbit about 170 miles up.

The reversal matters because SpaceX had written the exit ramp into the mission plan. The company said it would only fire the orbital insertion burn if flight controllers confirmed enough backup hardware remained for the deorbit burn, a condition Teslarati laid out ahead of the flight. Losing an engine was exactly the scenario that rule was built for.

Pressing forward fits Elon Musk’s history. Falcon 1 failed three straight times before its fourth launch reached orbit in 2008, with SpaceX nearly out of money, and Starship was developed by flying prototypes until they broke. What changed this year SpaceX going public, and with $SPCX sliding below its IPO price in July when Flight 13 slipped, the short interest climbed significantly, as Teslarati reported at the time. A Starship potentially lost today with revenue generating next-gen Starlink satellites aboard would have landed directly on shareholders.

That pressure showed up after orbit. SpaceX cut a flight planned to last nearly 10 hours to about three, moving splashdown from west of Chile to the North Pacific near Hawaii. SpaceX gave no reason, though Musk said this month the company was being extremely cautious about debris risk. The single Raptor for deorbit worked, and Ship 41 completed its flip and landing burn before breaking apart in the water, an outcome SpaceX expected. Musk has structured SpaceX’s governance to shield long term bets from market pressure.

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The payload is the bigger business story. Musk posted that all 26 Starlink V3 satellites deployed and are “operating nominally.” Each V3 is rated for about 1 Tbps of downlink and 160 Gbps of uplink, so this single launch adds roughly 26 Tbps, about 10 times what a Falcon 9 load of V2 Mini satellites adds. The V3 is too large for Falcon 9, making Starship the only vehicle that can build out the planned 100,000 satellite constellation, at up to 60 per flight once it reaches routine service. Unlike the 20 V3 units on Flight 13, which reentered on a suborbital path, these will raise their orbits and could begin serving customers within weeks and bring in hundreds of millions of additional dollars in projected Starlink revenue.

SpaceX has already begun winding down Falcon 9 Starlink launches from Florida in favor of Starship. Reported targets put Flight 15 as early as October 19, leaving about three weeks to diagnose Monday’s engine shutdown before the next orbital attempt.

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