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Tesla gets ‘Strong Buy’ rating amid Panasonic’s pledge to ramp Gigafactory 1 battery production

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Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) recently received a vote of confidence from one of Wall Street’s veteran investment research firms. In a note on Tuesday, Zacks Investment Research upgraded Tesla from a “Hold” rating to a “Strong Buy” rating, citing the electric car maker’s strong performance in the third quarter. The research firm also gave TSLA a price target of $381, suggesting an upside of around 13% from the stock’s current price.

In its note to its clients, Zacks Investment Research pointed out that Tesla’s third-quarter figures show that the company is making progress despite meeting several challenges over the past quarters. The research firm further noted that Tesla’s upcoming focus on its energy business bodes well for the company’s potential in the future.

“In third-quarter 2018, Tesla’s earnings per share and revenues surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimates. Also, both earnings and revenues improved year over year. In third-quarter 2018, Tesla produced 80,142 vehicles. This included 53,239 Model 3s, and 26,903 Model S and Model X vehicles. Deliveries to customers amounted to 55,840 Model 3 along with 27,660 Model S and X.

“These numbers are close to estimates and indicate that the company is making good progress despite hurdles. The company is focusing to grow its energy storage deployment and aims to deploy at least three times of what is deployed in 2017. Over the past six months, shares of Tesla outperformed the industry it belongs to. Moreover, over the past one month, the Zacks Consensus Estimates for both the current quarter and current year earnings are moving upwards.”

An upgrade from Zacks Investment Research bodes well for Tesla stock. The research firm, after all, utilizes a quantitative stock-rating system, which relies entirely on mathematics. This means that the company’s findings and conclusions are unaffected by headwinds in Wall Street or any similar external factor. This approach has made Zacks the research firm of choice for over 200 brokerages, as well as numerous Wall Street analysts.

Tesla’s upgraded rating from Zacks comes amidst reports that Panasonic Corp has pledged to ramp the production of its battery cells at Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada. In an announcement on Wednesday, Panasonic reported a decline in its quarterly profit due to the rising costs of its operations in the Gigafactory. Despite this, the Japanese company stated that it was in talks to augment its $1.6 billion investment and take capacity at Gigafactory 1 over the 35 GWh it is expected to reach by the end of March 2019.

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In a statement to Reuters, Panasonic Chief Executive Kazuhiro Tsuga stated that as Tesla ramps its vehicle production, the battery maker will ramp battery production as well. The Panasonic executive further noted that while Elon Musk attracts a substantial amount of noise due to his behavior online, Tesla’s fundamentals seem to be stable.

“Investment for capacity beyond 35 GWh means that Tesla would also need to make substantial investment in vehicle production, so we will closely align with each other. Though Elon’s comments are unpredictable, we will continue to monitor Tesla’s operations to ensure no chaos there and will work in step with the company. But I don’t see the U.S. electric car maker’s business operations have been put into chaos,” Tsuga said.

Since ending the third quarter on a high note, Tesla appears to have hit overdrive with its Model 3 production ramp. In October alone, for example, Tesla registered more than 61,000 Model 3 VINs — equal to the total VINs the company filed during the first 11 months of the electric car’s production. Tesla has also introduced a new Mid Range Model 3 variant this month, which puts the electric sedan closer to its target $35,000 base price.

As of writing, Tesla stock is trading +2.02% at $336.53 per share.

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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Tesla Cybercabs narrowly miss deadly Amazon cargo plane crash

An Amazon cargo plane crash near Miami’s airport stopped feet from dozens of Tesla Cybercabs.

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Photorealistic depiction of the Amazon Prime plane crash in Miami on Sep 3, 2026 near a fleet of Tesla Cybercab
Photorealistic depiction of the Amazon Prime plane crash in Miami on Sep 3, 2026 near a fleet of Tesla Cybercab

An Amazon Prime Air Boeing 767 cargo jet overran the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, killing five people and injuring five more. The jet, operated by North Carolina based carrier 21 Air as Flight 7598, touched down around 2 p.m. after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, then crossed the airport perimeter, plowed across NW 67th Avenue and struck multiple vehicles before catching fire, according to the Associated Press.

Photos and video from the scene show the aircraft’s nose stopped within meters of a fenced staging lot holding dozens of gold painted Tesla Cybercabs, the steering wheel free robotaxi Tesla began putting on public roads in Austin last week. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue has confirmed the plane struck “multiple vehicles” but has not said whether any Cybercabs were among them, and neither Tesla nor airport officials have addressed the fleet directly.

The Cybercabs had not yet entered commercial service in Miami. Tesla’s existing Robotaxi operation there runs on modified Model Y vehicles and has been unsupervised since Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the detail on X in July.


Elon Musk offered the briefest of reactions. Replying to a Zero Hedge post about the Cybercabs sitting so close to the wreckage, he wrote a single word: “Weird.” He has not commented further, and Tesla has not issued a statement.

The timing puts Tesla’s newest vehicle near an unrelated but highly visible tragedy just days after its Austin debut, a launch that had already drawn scrutiny from federal regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit how Tesla certified the Cybercab as compliant with federal vehicle safety standards, a process Teslarati covered after the vehicle’s September 3 launch event. That inquiry concerns the car’s lack of a steering wheel and pedals, not the Miami crash.

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Investigators from the FAA and NTSB are focused on the plane, not the parking lot beside it. Flight data reviewed by outlets including Simple Flying show the 767 touched down around 170 knots, well above the 135 to 140 knot range typical for the aircraft, though investigators have not determined a cause. Amazon said it is working with authorities and that its priority is the safety of everyone affected.

Whether any Cybercabs were damaged, and what Tesla plans for the fleet parked near one of the country’s busiest airports, remain open questions.

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Tesla Cybercab is coming to Asia this month as US service officially begins

Tesla Asia says Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai this month.

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Concept image of Tesla Cybercab in the streets of Hong Kong via Grok
Concept image of Tesla Cybercab in the streets of Hong Kong via Grok

Tesla’s Cybercab is heading to Asia. The official Tesla Asia account posted on X Thursday, inviting Cybercab fans to “Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai.” The post went up within hours of Tesla’s own Cybercab milestone in Texas, where the company said Thursday it had begun offering rides in across Austin.

Exact dates and venues for the Asia tour haven’t been released yet, though Tesla Hong Kong replied to the announcement with “Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong soon,” while Tesla Japan’s response pointed fans to a sign up page for updates. Neither post mentions test rides or a service area, and nothing so far suggests Tesla is launching Robotaxi operations in any of the four cities. Based on how Tesla has run past Cybercab tours, in Europe in late 2024 and at US shopping centers that same December, the Asia stops are almost certainly static displays at Tesla stores or public venues as a means to stimulate buzz for its future driverless ride-hailing service in the big cities.

The timing lines up with Tesla’s only prior Cybercab appearance in the region, a booth at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai last November, which Teslarati covered at the time. At that event, Tesla’s regional general manager for Shanghai framed the car as evidence of the company’s broader mission, a message Tesla has since formalized in its Master Plan Part IV, which states that “autonomous vehicles have the capacity to dramatically improve the affordability, availability and safety of transportation while reducing pollution, particularly in our increasingly dense global cities.” The same document is where Tesla lays out its “sustainable abundance” framing for Cybercab and Optimus alike, describing the two as the hardware behind an AI driven push to cut the cost of transportation and labor at scale.

Whether Cybercab actually operates as a robotaxi anywhere in Asia remains an open question, considering China has already pushed an autonomous ride-hailing market that’s run on homegrown players like Baidu’s Apollo Go and Pony AI. For now, the four city tour reads as a marketing push timed to Austin’s momentum.

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OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership

OpenAI will cut SpaceX-owned Cursor’s model access in November, citing Musk’s history of broken contracts.

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OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced late Friday that it is ending its partnership with Cursor, cutting off the coding tool’s access to its models on November 12. The move comes two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, folding the popular AI coding assistant into Elon Musk’s growing SpaceXAI division.

In a post on its website, OpenAI said the decision came down to trust, not technology. “We cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts,” the company wrote. OpenAI pointed to two specific incidents: X, now part of SpaceX, allegedly breaking the terms of an existing OpenAI contract after Musk bought Twitter.

That lawsuit is the backdrop for all of this. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015, left the board in 2018, and sued Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, arguing they abandoned the company’s nonprofit mission for profit. A federal jury sided with OpenAI in May, finding Musk waited too long to sue rather than ruling on the merits of his claims. Musk said at the time he would appeal to the Ninth Circuit, calling the outcome a “calendar technicality” rather than a real judgment.

Elon Musk breaks silence on OpenAI trial decision

SpaceX’s interest in Cursor predates that verdict by weeks. The company first struck a deal with Cursor in April, securing an option to acquire it for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for joint development work instead. As Teslarati reported at the time, the logic was straightforward: Cursor was paying retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its most direct competitors, every time a developer used its product, while SpaceX had idle capacity on its Colossus supercomputer, roughly the equivalent of a million Nvidia H100 GPUs, that Cursor could use to train its own models instead. SpaceX exercised the option in June, days after its own IPO, and the deal closed in mid-August.

Once it closed, Musk moved fast. On an all-hands call with more than 1,000 Cursor employees, he reportedly told staff that SpaceXAI’s Grok was playing catchup in the AI race, unlike Tesla and SpaceX in their own markets, and singled out Anthropic as the company to catch. Cursor CEO Michael Truell now reports directly to Musk inside SpaceXAI.

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Elon Musk admits he was ‘clearly wrong’ about Anthropic

Losing OpenAI’s models leaves Cursor leaning harder on Anthropic’s Claude, which has its own compute agreement with SpaceX, and on Cursor’s in-house Composer model, the one SpaceX’s compute was supposed to accelerate in the first place. OpenAI framed the November deadline as maximum notice under its contract, and said it wants to “go above and beyond” to help developers through the transition. Whether Anthropic makes the same call is now the open question in AI coding.

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