One of the most impressive things about Tesla’s stellar Q3 2021 vehicle production and delivery results was the fact that the company was able to hit new records in the middle of a chip shortage crisis. The effects of the chip crisis are substantial, with fellow American automaker General Motors laying the blame for its 33% year-on-year drop in sales to “semiconductor supply chain disruptions and historically low inventories.”
Tesla’s strategy to weather the semiconductor shortage is no secret. In its Q2 2021 Update Letter, Tesla stated that its team “demonstrated an unparalleled ability to react quickly and mitigate disruptions to manufacturing caused by semiconductor shortages.” Tesla was able to do this by using software and new microcontrollers to build its vehicles. The chip shortage still adversely affected Tesla, but not to the same degree as its peers in the automotive sector.
While Tesla’s Q3 2021 production and delivery results are proof that flexibility and a notable degree of vertical integration are key to weathering the global semiconductor crisis, it also shows that the auto sector is in dire need of some innovation. This was explained by Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger in a statement to Fortune last month. According to Gelsinger, the chip shortage in the auto sector is partly due to the fact that most cars today still use chips that are, in a lot of ways, already primitive.
When the pandemic hit, big-ticket items like cars were pushed back while sales of home consumer devices increased. By the time the auto segment bounced back months later, chipmakers like Intel had already reallocated their capacity. And since dozens of chips for vehicles’ systems like electronic brake systems typically rely on obsolete technology, automakers found themselves with very little supply of components such as transistors that can be anywhere from 45 nm to 90 nm in size.
According to the Intel executive, he has been bombarded with requests to invest in new production capacities for semiconductors that were, at best, state-of-the-art when the original Apple iPhone launched in 2007. If carmakers used newer chips, however, then the semiconductor shortage would not be as detrimental to the auto sector.
“I’ll make them as many Intel 16 [nanometer] chips as they want. It just makes no economic or strategic sense. Rather than spending billions on new ‘old’ fabs, let’s spend millions to help migrate designs to modern ones,” Gelsinger said.
The use of updated chips is something that seems inherent in companies like Tesla, as well as newcomers to the production EV market such as NIO, Rivian, and Lucid. In a way, the Intel executive’s statement rings true. There is very little incentive to ramp the production of obsolete chips, after all, especially if newer, better ones are available. Legacy automakers would just need to be bold enough to innovate. This is something that was specifically highlighted by ARK Invest Founder Cathie Wood recently, when she noted that EVs actually need more chips than regular cars.
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Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
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Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
Tesla has expanded the footprint of a massive safety feature worldwide with a recent Software Update labeled as 2026.20.6. The expansion of the “Blind Spot Warning While Parked” feature represents the more widespread availability of the feature, which aims to prevent “dooring.”
Dooring is when a driver or passenger opens a car door into the path of an oncoming road user, usually a cyclist or motorcyclist. It is among the most common types of cycling accidents, the League of American Bicyclists says.
For this reason, Tesla created a feature that warns occupants not to open the door because an object is approaching. The feature will sound a chime, and it will also delay the opening of the door to prevent an incident.
The release notes state (via Not a Tesla App):
“If you attempt to open a door while an approaching object is detected in your blind spot (for example, a bicyclist approaching from behind) a chime sounds, and your door will not open upon initial button press. Wait a short time and press the button a second time to override the warning.”
Tesla initially rolled out this feature back in 2024 with the Model 3 “Highland.” However, it remained with the Model 3 exclusively for over a year; that was until Tesla added it to the Cybertruck this past Spring.
Now, it is making its way to the new Model Y, 2021 and newer Model S, and 2021 or newer Model X.
The prevention of dooring incidents could eliminate many injuries to cyclists, especially in an urban setting. Dooring accounts for 10-20 percent of bike-related crashes in major cities, and over 17,000 dooring-related incidents were treated in the U.S. over the course of a decade. These usually involve fractures, contusions, and head trauma.
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull
