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Tesla (TSLA) gets 71% increase on bull case from Wedbush

The Tesla Model Y. (Credit: MotorTrend)

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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is poised for a possible 71% spike in stock price, according to a new note from Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who increased his bull case for the electric automaker’s stock to $3,500 from $2,500.

Ives, who handles TSLA’s evaluation for Wedbush, bases his new increased bull case on the company’s upside in China, which he believes is the key to the stock price soaring higher.

“We believe the production and demand trajectory in China for Tesla remains robust and stronger than expected for 3Q with clear momentum heading into year-end,” Ives said in a note to investors on Sunday, August 23.

Wedbush and Ives’ previous bull case for TSLA stock was $2,500. However, the company’s overwhelming potential in China is cause for a revised bull case, which increased by $1,000.

“The pent-up demand in the China EV market for Model 3’s and recent price cuts are creating a ‘perfect storm of demand’ for Musk & Co. in this key market with increased market share vs. domestic competitors as the Giga 3 success story continues to play out,” Ives added according to Seeking Alpha.

The firm’s current base price target for TSLA stock is $1,900. The revision in the bull case is purely based off of the growth that Tesla has experienced in China since it started delivering the Model 3 in January.

Ives also indicated that Tesla’s success in China in the coming years could be worth more than Wedbush planned initially.

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“With the China growth story, Tesla could now have $35+ of earnings power by 2025/2026 vs. our prior estimate of $20-$25,” Ives also said in the note.

Wedbush believes that the Tesla Model 3 will experience higher margins than the same vehicle in the U.S. and European markets. This could “markedly increase the profitability profile” for Tesla as the company begins to expand to more markets with the construction of its first European Gigafactory. The company is also moving quickly on the development of its second U.S.-based facility.

By 2022, Tesla could have around 40% of its sales attributed to the Chinese market, Wedbush said. This depends on whether the company can keep up with the increasing demand for its vehicles in the country, which is the largest automotive market in the world.

Along with the developments in China, Tesla’s September 22 Battery Day event could also surge the stock even further. Battery Day will outline Tesla’s cell manufacturing strategy, and rumors have circulated that the company will also unveil a million-mile battery that is capable of an extended lifespan thanks to increased longevity. Tesla has been developing its cells with the help of Jeff Dahn and his team of battery researchers in Canada.

Tesla has rallied more than 390% so far in 2020. With increasing demand in China and rumored battery breakthroughs, there seems to be no stopping the momentum that the electric automaker holds currently.

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

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Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Cybertruck

Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight

Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.

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Tesla Cybertruck production resumes after supplier dispute: Credit: Joe Tegtmeyer | X
Tesla Cybertruck production resumes after supplier dispute: Credit: Joe Tegtmeyer | Youtube

Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.

Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.

Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.

Tesla quietly made the Cybertruck even stronger

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The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.

Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles

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SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has cautioned investors shorting SpaceX shares, drawing a direct parallel to the intense short-selling pressure Tesla faced in its early public years.

Responding to reports of elevated short interest in the newly public rocket, satellite, and AI company, Palihapitiya noted that similar dynamics played out with Tesla, where aggressive short sellers ultimately “went broke.”

SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) went public on June 12, 2026, in the largest IPO on record, pricing at $135 per share. Shares quickly surged to an all-time high of $225.64 just days later, briefly implying a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. The stock has since retreated sharply amid valuation concerns, lockup expiration fears, and broader market dynamics.

SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet

By early August, it traded near $108–$125, representing a roughly 50 percent decline from the peak and bringing the market capitalization closer to the $1.5–1.7 trillion range. On August 4, shares closed up more than 9 percent at $125.33 ahead of earnings before facing pressure in after-hours and premarket trading.

Short interest has climbed dramatically. According to S3 Partners data widely cited in market reports, short positions reached approximately 219.3 million shares by late July, about 34 percent of the limited public float of roughly 640 million shares, and represented a notional value of around $24.6 billion.

Utilization of shares available to borrow hit 95 percent, with borrow fees rising. This level of shorting exceeded the dollar value of short bets against Tesla at the time and built rapidly ahead of two catalysts: the company’s first post-IPO earnings and an August 6 lockup expiration that could free up to 911.5 million additional shares.

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CEO Elon Musk has issued warnings of his own. In mid-July, as short interest approached one-third of the float, he posted that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” reiterating his view that the company could ultimately be worth more than Earth if it achieves its goals.

On August 4, just before earnings, Musk responded to the latest short-interest data by saying, “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”

SpaceX delivered its first quarterly results as a public company after the close on August 4. Second-quarter revenue rose 92 percent year-over-year to $7.8 billion, beating consensus estimates near $6.8–6.9 billion.

The net loss narrowed to $541 million, or 9 cents per share, better than the roughly 23–24 cent loss expected. Starlink/connectivity contributed about $4.3 billion (up 66 percent), while the AI business generated $2.6 billion (up roughly 250 percent). Capital expenditures were heavy at $18.4 billion, largely tied to AI infrastructure. Management projected a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end 2026 and outlined a path toward $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030.

The combination of Chamath’s historical reminder, Musk’s repeated alerts, and the company’s ambitious growth targets underscores the high-stakes debate surrounding SPCX. Short sellers are positioned for near-term supply pressure from the lockup, while long-term bulls point to Starlink scale, Starship progress, and AI compute expansion as reasons the bears may ultimately face the same fate as many early Tesla skeptics.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet

SpaceX revealed a new Nvidia satellite partnership, then Musk pledged an exclusive Nvidia hardware commitment.

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SpaceX and Nvidia are now working together on the hardware that will power Musk’s orbital data center ambitions. SpaceX announced on X on Tuesday that it is partnering with Nvidia to design the compute payload for Starmind AI1, the first satellite in a planned constellation built to run AI workloads directly in orbit. Each Starmind satellite will carry Nvidia’s Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, according to the post, which included renderings of the payload design.

The announcement landed hours before SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, where Musk went further, saying the company has committed to building its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware. “We think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it’s the best AI computer, and we greatly value our close cooperation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia,” Musk told investors on the call,. “So we’re exclusive to Nvidia.”

Musk said SpaceX plans to deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 rackscale system, codenamed Kyber, both on the ground and in space. He set a target of 2 gigawatts of compute capacity online by the end of this year, scaling to roughly 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.

SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete

Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that tipped off the project before SpaceX made it official. The idea is massive in scope and instead of moving data down to ground based servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would compute AI workloads in orbit and beam results back to Earth. SpaceX has already filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to one million satellites to support the effort, citing constant solar power and the absence of zoning restrictions as advantages over terrestrial data centers.

The Nvidia exclusivity marks a shift in tone from just two weeks ago, when Musk was busy knocking down a report that SpaceX had ordered $52 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs through Foxconn, calling it fake news at the time. The dollar figure in that rumor may have been wrong, but the underlying direction seems correct. SpaceX’s AI division already leases Colossus compute capacity to Anthropic and Google, and Tuesday’s earnings report showed AI revenue climbing sharply as those deals ramp up.

Nvidia shares rose roughly 3% in Tuesday trading on the news, while SpaceX stock climbed nearly 9% during the day before giving back gains after hours as investors digested the earnings report’s capital spending figures.

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