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Tesla dips amid Elon Musk’s 12-month vehicle forecast, TSLA coverage observations

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Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) is dropping after the opening bell on Monday, on the heels of Elon Musk’s new guidance for the company’s performance in the following 12 months, as well as a fresh round of criticisms from its dedicated skeptics.

Musk’s estimate came as part of a discussion about the impact of Tesla in the auto industry. In his tweet, Musk stated that there are 2.5 billion cars and trucks on the planet; thus, even replacing 1% of that number will require a production rate of 25 million vehicles per year. “Tesla will make over 500k cars in next 12 months, but that’s a mere 2% of 25M or 0.02% of global vehicle fleet. Car industry slow -> demand >> supply,” Musk wrote.

Apart from Musk’s comments about Tesla’s production in the coming year, the CEO also discussed his disappointment at the coverage the electric car maker has been receiving from mainstream media. Musk mentioned a number of publications in his tweets, including Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. True to form, the Wall Street Journal promptly published a negative piece about Tesla on Monday, criticizing, of all things, how the company “can’t stop dreaming big.”

Tesla has been facing a notable amount of criticism after it released its Q1 vehicle delivery and production report, which revealed that the company showed a roughly 30% decline in electric car deliveries and a 12% decline in production compared to Q4 2018. Tesla’s vehicle deliveries actually grew 110% in the first quarter of 2019 compared to Q1 2018, but these figures mostly got lost in the pileup of negative coverage that the company received after releasing its first-quarter results.

Among the most prominent voices that immediately went on the offensive against Tesla was short-seller and Greenlight Capital CEO David Einhorn, who promptly wrote a letter to investors claiming that “the wheels are falling off” at Tesla, which is allegedly “on the brink” due to slowed demand, “desperate” price cutting, cutting CapEx, layoffs, and the departure of senior executives. Einhorn further blasted the company for allegedly using its customers as “guinea pigs,” while predicting that “without initial surge demand elsewhere, TSLA will struggle to even maintain first quarter unit volumes.”

In response to the Greenlight Capital CEO’s allegations, Fox Business Network’s Charlie Gasparino noted that Tesla’s senior executives remain confident in the company as well as its financial state. Gasparino described the sentiments of Tesla’s senior executives as follows.

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“Bankers are now, when you see sort of controversy like this, people questioning the numbers of Tesla, whether it’s selling enough cars, and particularly their cash position, that’s the signal for bankers to go and pitch financing deals to Tesla, and they are doing it actively as we speak. But what the company is saying is much different than what Einhorn is saying. This is what the company is telling bankers: they don’t believe there’s a need for financing in the near-term. What they describe as near-term, three months, maybe six months. They don’t think that their cash position is eroding as fast as the street and Mr. Einhorn and other people think it’s eroding. They believe in the near-term, that their finances are fine,” Gasparino said.

Tesla’s senior executives reportedly maintain support for Elon Musk as well. “Now, we should also point out that Tesla executives and these are senior executives, the conversation always turns to crazy Elon. They describe him as ‘crazy,’ ‘a handful,’ but here’s the best one: ‘a weird dude.’ But they also say, despite his quirks, they describe him as a genius. They also believe in the company, despite all the competition that’s coming at them from others in the electric car space who are gonna get the sort of government handouts that Tesla got early on. They think they have the best electric car in the world. They are well-poised, they got the right guy leading it, (and it’s) a guy who will work 24/7 to make it work,” Gasparino added.

As of writing, Tesla is trading at -3.08% at $259.46 per share.

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

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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Investor's Corner

SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions

SpaceX reveals plans for one million Starmind AI satellites and calls out operators hiding maneuvers.

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Concept rendering of SpaceX Starmind constellation via Grok
Concept rendering of SpaceX Starmind constellation via Grok

SpaceX has put the largest satellite count it has ever published into writing, and it says that plan only works if every other operator in orbit starts sharing what it knows.

In a new Space Safety page highlighted Tuesday morning by Sawyer Merritt on X, SpaceX said it “plans to operate up to 100,000 Starlink satellites and up to 1 million Starmind AI satellites to meet the growing demand for broadband and supercompute.” Starlink has a little over 11,000 satellites in orbit today, so the target alone implies roughly a ninefold expansion of the broadband network.

Starmind is SpaceX’s orbital AI compute constellation. Elon Musk confirmed the Starmind name in June after an xAI trademark filing surfaced, and in August SpaceX said it was working with Nvidia on the compute payload. The FCC accepted the filing for up to one million satellites back in February.

FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan

SpaceX also released a new render of what a full Starmind constellation could look like. Alongside it, SpaceX VP Michael Nicolls explained why the satellites will not operate on their own. “We need to operate clusters of satellites in tight formation to get enough coherent compute to run AI models efficiently,” Nicolls said. “A cluster will be 10-ish satellites connected with 10 terabits or so of bandwidth between them, and interconnected to the broader constellation.”

That is the most specific detail SpaceX has given on how Starmind will be built. Instead of a million independent servers, the network would work as tightly packed groups of about 10 satellites acting as one compute unit, with Starlink’s laser links carrying results back to Earth.


Packing satellites that close together, at that scale, makes collision avoidance the central problem, and most of the Space Safety page is aimed at other operators. SpaceX said Starlink encountered collision risks with about 650 unique maneuvering third party satellites in 2026, and only about half of them shared data. Over six months, Starlink recorded roughly 164,000 more collision risks where the closest approach came within four hours of an unannounced maneuver.

Some operators keep maneuver plans private over proprietary concerns, while others cannot get government permission to share them. SpaceX called those policies “counterproductive,” saying they “largely only serve to create preventable collision risk between satellites.” Starlink is also offering a free ephemeris sharing and screening platform that returns risk results within a minute, backed by its Stargaze network of 30,000 optical sensors.

The push comes as the Starmind application draws opposition from astronomers and environmental groups. In a September filing with the FCC, SpaceX said each Starmind satellite could weigh up to 4,000 kg, nearly seven times the mass of a Starlink V2 Mini. Musk has brushed off crowding concerns before, telling viewers in June that “space is enormous” and that SpaceX already knows how to run very large constellations safely.

SpaceX’s Starmind page says its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, is designed to produce AI satellites at scale, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla deliveries best Wall Street guesses alongside second-best energy quarter

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Credit: Tesla Europe & Middle East | X

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported strong delivery figures that beat Wall Street guesses, and they were revealed alongside the company’s second-best quarter in terms of energy deployments ever.

Tesla announced this morning that it delivered 486,532 cars in Q3, while producing 464,391, exceeding analyst consensus, which sat around 462,000 units.

Meanwhile, Tesla reported 13.7 GWh of energy storage deployed for the quarter. That’s the second-best quarter Tesla has ever reported on that side of things.

Vehicle Deliveries

Deliveries were strong, and it was another quarter when Tesla had the opportunity to outshine the Wall Street pundits who are quick to criticize and slow to give credit. Tesla saw a slight decrease in deliveries compared to Q3 2025, but Tesla still had the $7,500 EV Tax Credit to use to help incentivize consumers to pick an EV.

A small decrease of 2.1 percent is pretty telling because it shows Tesla does not need massive federal credits to convince consumers to purchase its vehicles.

It was also the company’s third-best performance all-time in terms of deliveries, trailing that of Q3 2025 with 497,099 deliveries and Q4 2024, when the company handed over 495,570 cars.

We reported several days ago that Tesla Showrooms across the United States were completely bare of inventory or unclaimed units. Many locations also removed Demo Drive units, which had been bought by customers looking to take delivery sooner.

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

Energy Generation

Tesla’s Energy Generation performance in Q3 was also very strong, as the company deployed 13.7 GWh of energy storage over the past three months. The only quarter when Tesla reported stronger energy deployment figures was Q4 2025, when 14.2 GWh of energy storage was deployed.

Tesla’s Q3 performance in energy generation has continued to grow each quarter, with the company increasing its deployments by ten-fold since Q3 2021, when just 1.3 GWh was deployed.

It is also nearly double what it was in Q3 2024, when the company reported 6.9 GWh. This is one of Tesla’s quickest-growing divisions, and it flies under the radar with fans and analysts, as many are focused on self-driving or the vehicles themselves.

Tesla Stock

Shares rose 5.07 percent to $372.06 at just after 10 a.m. on the East Coast. This is a rarity for Tesla after a strong delivery report, as positive news usually brings the stock down. Many quarters with extremely robust delivery reports have not been as kind to the Teslanaires of the world.

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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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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.

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

 

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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