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Tesla Top 5 Week in Review: Model 3, Gigafactory, a brush with the law, and more
The Tesla Model 3 was big news again this week, as Tesla announced a February date for pilot production. Also, no longer will occupied Supercharger stations be so stress-inspiring, as Tesla has an onboard map update that shows Supercharger location availability. With news of a proposed federal import tax a topic of serious discussion, Tesla seemed on the winning side, with its prominent domestic manufacturing. The Gigafactory construction costs rose above $1 billion this week as noted through permits that Tesla filed. And a story emerged in which another Model S driver was detained by police who investigated reports of an abduction, only to quickly ascertain that rear-facing seats were the real culprit. Here are those stories in review.
Tesla to begin pilot production of Model 3 on February 20
Red Tesla Model 3 at the vehicle unveiling event on March 31, 2016 from the company’s Hawthorne, CA Design Center.
As the more affordable all-electric vehicle in the Tesla catalog, the announcement of Model 3 pilot production staring on February 20 brought smiles to a lot of faces. The Model 3 will have a base price of $35,000, and that’s before government tax incentives. The appealing Model 3 price point is just a start: it will offer a range of at least 215 miles. The Model 3 pilot production creates a vehicle that is targeted for demonstration and evaluation, as pilot manufacturing is used to calibrate the assembly line, assess the car against design standards, and confirm quality of outside suppliers’ components. Some Model 3 pilot vehicles will be destined for safety crash tests, while others will generate media visibility. Importantly, strong demand for the Model 3 will push Tesla’s production capabilities, already exceeding 373,000 pre-orders.
Tesla unlocks real-time Supercharger occupancy data on vehicle map
Any Tesla owner will attest to the frustration that happens when you pull up to a Supercharger stall and find that it’s occupied. Knowing what’s happening at Superchargers ahead is newly improved. Tesla owners can now see Supercharger stall availability at a particular moment in time. Owners have already begun to report that data has appeared via the map app in the form of little bars over Supercharger stations that display availability. This is a very important component of Tesla’s overall goal to reduce range anxiety for its customers and to provide the smoothest and easiest vehicle experience of any currently available on the market.
Tesla on the winning end of proposed U.S. import tax
A new study suggests that Tesla would be well-positioned if a proposed federal tax on imports is implemented. Baum & Associates LLC determined that most automakers would need to add thousands of dollars to vehicle sticker prices to compensate for costs incurred with the import tax. Jaguar’s Land Rover would experience the worst case scenario with price increases near to $17,000, as it imports all its vehicles. Companies with significant domestic manufacturing would absorb only the smallest price increases among major automakers, with Ford accruing about $282 per vehicle and General Motors Co. at about $995. With its extensive domestic manufacturing, Tesla is the sole automaker that may be able to keep prices level. The study’s goals were to expose the relative impact of the tax plan on each automaker, according to Alan Baum, founder of Michigan’s Baum & Associates.
Tesla Gigafactory surpasses $1 billion in construction costs: Section D/E addendum filed
Tesla, Inc. has been granted a total of 153 building permits for its Gigafactory to date from the Storey County Community Development Department. In sum, the permits correlate with an estimated $1.03 billion in construction costs. Storey County remitted these permits after receiving $5.58 million in fees from Tesla. Twenty-nine permits are mentioned in an addendum, which total $542.65 million of construction work. Many of the other permits relate to the installation and anchoring of the equipment needed for the factory. Other permits include a nitrogen yard, a thermal energy storage tank, and the Panasonic equipment installed in Section B and C. In addition, the installation and expansion of the contractor accommodation indicated the number of construction workers on site has increased.
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Tesla Model S rear-facing child seats lead to false kidnapping report
Tesla Model S owners who have opted for additional, rear-facing seats are aware that their size and location offers a fun and efficient place for youngsters to sit. The Sheriff’s Department in Newhall, California, who responded to reports of an abduction, didn’t have this same background knowledge about the Tesla Model S. It turns out that “it was not a kidnapping,” according to Lt. Rob Hahnlein, who spoke on behalf of the Sheriff’s Deparment, but, rather, an individual assisting a child into a Tesla. “The new Teslas have a weird back seat,” Hahnlein acknowledged, “and when they put the (child) in the back seat it looked like they were putting them in the trunk.” The Sheriff’s Department noted how they are obliged to investigate every kidnapping report until the situation is resolved. They also detained the Tesla driver at gun point with the child observing from the seats in question.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
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It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
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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News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
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The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
