Tesla chose to build its next Gigafactory production facility in Austin, Texas, and not in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Even though the Oklahoman city that has housed several automotive manufacturing plants in the past didn’t land the electric automaker’s next facility, it is still looking to develop its car industry by bringing in suppliers.
Oklahoma Secretary of Commerce Sean Kouplen said last week that his department had launched a new plan that was geared toward enticing existing automakers to expand their businesses to Tulsa. The “accelerator program,” as The Oklahoman called it, would also aim toward luring the automotive industry to Tulsa.
In the past, the state has been home to several large car companies as a base for vehicle manufacturing. Not only did Ford have an assembly plant in Oklahoma from 1915 through the 1960s, but General Motors also had a manufacturing facility in the state from 1979 to 2005.
The automotive industry accounted for 28,000 jobs in Oklahoma in the past, according to the State’s Historical Society. With demand for cars at an all-time high based on population increases, the possibility for manufacturing jobs in the automotive sector is exponentially higher than what it was several years ago. And although Texas will house Tesla’s new facility, Kouplen maintains the fact that other car companies are more than welcome to come to Oklahoma.
“We’ll take anybody. We believe there is a revolution occurring within the automotive world,” Kouplen said on August 6. “Frankly, we think the tier one and tier two suppliers would be very smart to move to Oklahoma.”
If car companies decide to take a chance on Tulsa, it could help the city with an injection of jobs that have been lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic. TuslaWorld indicates that almost 275,000 jobs have been affected by the presence of the virus.
Tulsa was in the running for Tesla’s new Gigafactory with Austin since news broke in May that the company was planning to open a new production plant. Although it was relatively obvious that CEO Elon Musk wanted Texas based on a poll he posted on Twitter in early 2020, Tulsa had plenty of advantages.
It had a solid economic foundation, it had plenty of engineers willing to work for the company, and it had a lot of enthusiasm from politicians and citizens. The city also went as far as painting a notorious statue of an oil driller with Elon Musk’s face and the Tesla logo on its chest.
TESLA TO TULSA: The Golden Driller is all for Tesla coming to Tulsa. pic.twitter.com/7C6NtPh6Wp
— NewsChannel 8 | KTUL (@KTULNews) May 19, 2020
However, Tesla ultimately chose Austin based on the fact that many of the company’s key executives were more interested in the Texas city.
“When talking to key members of the team that would need to move to Austin from California in order to get the factory going, Austin was their top pick to be totally frank,” Musk said in an interview with Automotive News in August. “That was a big factor in choosing Texas and Austin. Specifically Austin. I guess a lot of people from California if you ask them what’s the one place you’d move outside of California, it’s Austin.”
H/t: The Oklahoman
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.
The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:
Tesla Diner opened exactly 1 year ago. Inspiring that futuristic places like this exist.
It’s our highest usage Supercharger in the world: 21.2 GWh delivered in a year, 1.6k sessions/day.
Top 10 Superchargers by energy delivered: https://t.co/9YvJ8lw696 pic.twitter.com/koB3AUJHws
— Max (@MdeZegher) July 21, 2026
On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.
Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.
Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand
Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
