Investor's Corner
Tesla stock slides 9% amid reports that Elon Musk and board will meet with SEC next week
Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) was down as much as 9%, hitting a low of $305.70 during intraday trading on Friday, amid reports that Elon Musk and the electric car maker’s board of directors are preparing to meet with the Securities and Exchange Commission as early as next week. The upcoming meeting with the SEC will reportedly be focused on how Musk announced and handled the aftermath of his tweet last week, when he stated that funding was “secured” for Tesla’s possible privatization at $420 per share.
The Tesla CEO recently admitted in an hourlong interview with the New York Times that he was getting exhausted, and that the pressure from the Model 3 ramp and attacks from TSLA short-sellers are contributing to his stress. Interspersed with Musk’s interview in the NYT piece were statements from several unnamed sources who alleged that the board had been angry at Musk over his go-private tweets, and that the board was worried about the CEO’s use of the drug Ambien. Honest and raw quotes from Elon Musk, such as his statement that “from a personal pain standpoint, the worst is yet to come” despite Tesla’s progress in its operations, painted a rather gloomy picture of the company — particularly its leader.
Tesla has had to deal with several pieces of negative news this week. Just recently, Tesla’s alleged saboteur and self-proclaimed “whistleblower” Martin Tripp published pictures of supposedly damaged Model 3 battery packs that were reportedly installed on vehicles. The photos, as well as a list of Model 3 VINs allegedly equipped with the damaged batteries, were picked up by several media outlets before Tripp decided to delete his Twitter account. Stuart D. Meissner, Tripp’s lawyer in his countersuit against Tesla, also took on another client — Karl Hansen, a former Tesla security employee at Gigafactory 1, who is also suing the electric car maker.
Hansen’s claims against Tesla rival those of Martin Tripp’s, with the former employee alleging that Tesla did not disclose the theft of $37 million worth of copper and raw materials that were stolen from Gigafactory in the first half of 2018. Hansen also accused Tesla of wiretapping and hacking employees’ computers and mobile phones. Capping off Hansen’s lawsuit was his grandest claim yet — that Tesla did not disclose to law enforcement and the US Drug Enforcement Agency that some Gigafactory employees were involved in drug trafficking. Tesla, for its part, denied Hansen’s accusations.
“Mr. Hansen’s allegations were taken very seriously when he brought them forward. Some of his claims are outright false. Others could not be corroborated, so we suggested additional investigative steps to try and validate the information he had received second-hand from a single anonymous source. Because we wanted to be sure we got this right, we made numerous attempts to engage further with Mr. Hansen to understand more about what he was claiming and the work that he did in reaching his conclusions. He rejected each of those attempts, and to date has refused to speak with the company further. It seems strange that Mr. Hansen would claim that he is concerned about something happening within the company, but then refuse to engage with the company to discuss the information that he believes he has.”
Tesla was also hit with reports alleging that the company was sending workers from GA3 home early despite not meeting the day’s production goal. UBS also claimed in a report that Tesla’s $35,000 Standard trim Model 3 would cause the company to lose $5,900 on every vehicle sold. UBS’ findings stand in stark contrast to conclusions drawn by Detroit veteran Sandy Munro, who estimated that the $35,000 base Model 3 should give Tesla a profit margin of 18% after conducting a thorough teardown of the electric sedan.
Amidst the negativity surrounding the stock, Tesla received some votes of confidence this week. Several Wall Street analysts, including known TSLA bears, raised their price targets for the company. Auto analysts from Evercore ISI also concluded after an extensive tour of Tesla’s Fremont factory — particularly the Model 3 assembly lines — that the company should be able to hit a production rate of 8,000 Model 3 per week with very little capital expenditure. The Evercore ISI analysts further noted that Tesla is well on its way to achieving a steady weekly production rate of 5,000-6,000 Model 3 per week.
With its latest drop, Tesla shares are now down 0.9% in 2018, compared to the S&P 500’s 6% gain. As of writing, Tesla stock is trading -8.19% at $307.97 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
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
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.
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days
