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How Volkswagen’s diesel scandal may change the EV charging landscape
As part of its settlement with federal and state regulators over its diesel emissions cheating scandal, Volkswagen has agreed to invest $2 billion in charging infrastructure over the next 10 years. The money is supposed to come in chunks of $500 million every 30 months. Volkswagen is largely free to decide how and where to spend the money, but a good portion of it will be spent in California, the state with the highest concentration of electric cars.
According to Automotive News, the money may be used for EV charging stations and hydrogen fuel stations, brand neutral ad campaigns to boost awareness of EVs, or zero emission car sharing and ride hailing programs. Some see this as the answer to the chicken or egg dilemma that has plagued electric car sales for the past 6 years. People don’t want to buy a car that can’t be recharged conveniently and companies don’t want to invest in charging infrastructure if there aren’t enough electric cars in use to justify the cost.
Nissan has applauded the deal, saying the money VW invests could provide “much needed” funding to EV infrastructure. It urges VW and regulators to put a priority on installing DC fast chargers. $1 billion would be enough to pay for the purchase and installation of 10,000 of those, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute. Nissan also said the projects should be coordinated at a national level to avoid a “patchwork” of initiatives steered by individual states or cities.
Last week, the Obama administration announced a plan to expand the EV charging infrastructure in the US that would create charging corridors on 48 interstate highways spanning nearly 25,000 miles in 35 states. At a minimum, there would be one charging station every 50 miles along major routes. The proposal would require an alliance of states, utilities, charging companies, and automakers. General Motors, BMW, and Nissan have agreed to cooperate to bring the plan to fruition.
“This could be a very big moment in time where we see a shift from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles,” said Roland Hwang, transportation director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “This could actually be a real game changer.”
When there are two billion dollars on the table, everyone will be anxious to grab a piece of the pie for themselves. Volkswagen is not being entirely altruistic by agreeing to do this. Yes, its investment may benefit its competitors but it will also help Volkswagen sell its own electric cars in America. The company is in the midst of a major pivot away from diesel powered cars to electrics. The money it pays out to settle emissions cheating claims could ultimately work to its advantage.
ChargePoint, the largest private charging network in America, is one of those not pleased with the terms of the deal. It says pumping all that money into charging infrastructure “threatens to destroy the competitive market for ZEV infrastructure” and could create a monopoly for VW. Two Republican lawmakers raised similar concerns in a letter to the EPA last week.
NRDC’s Hwang agrees that the settlement money must be used appropriately. “It’s going to be incumbent upon both the Air Resources Board and the EPA to ensure that VW is investing their money wisely in a way which benefits the entire electric vehicle market and not somehow tuned to assist VW’s business plan.” Expect some wrangling over who gets what to continue.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.
Tesla reported it delivered 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.
Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.
For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.
Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.
Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a photo of himself standing with the Optimus production team inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, arms crossed amid workers in hard hats and safety vests. The image captures a pivotal industrial shift: the same facility space once dedicated to building Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan and Model X SUV is now home to the company’s humanoid robot manufacturing line.
Walking the Optimus production line in Fremont pic.twitter.com/ABS0tuRibW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2026
Tesla’s Fremont Factory, acquired in 2010 from the former NUMMI joint venture between Toyota and GM, has been the company’s original U.S. manufacturing hub since Model S production began in 2012.
The Model X followed soon thereafter. These premium vehicles offered lower annual volumes, recently around 30,000 combined, compared to the high-volume Model 3 and Model Y lines that continue around the site. Over their combined run, the S and X accounted for roughly 610,000 units.
In late January 2026, during Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Elon Musk announced the end of Model S and Model X production in Q2 2026. The final vehicles rolled off the line in early May. Rather than retooling for another vehicle, Tesla chose to convert the dedicated S/X assembly area into a dedicated Optimus Gen 3 production line.
Model 3 and Y manufacturing remains unaffected. Tesla’s official Fremont Factory page now lists Optimus alongside the 3 and Y as core products.
The conversion was executed with remarkable speed. After production stopped, crews dismantled the existing vehicle line and installed entirely new modular equipment—including lines sourced from Germany and dozens of sub-lines for actuators, batteries, and other components—in roughly four months.
Musk described the timeline as “insanely fast,” noting it would be unprecedented for any other manufacturer. Initial Optimus output is expected to ramp slowly due to the robot’s roughly 10,000 unique parts and the brand-new production processes involved. The Fremont line targets an eventual capacity of 1 million Optimus units per year.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Optimus Development Timeline
- August 19, 2021: Optimus (then called Tesla Bot) formally announced at Tesla’s first AI Day. A concept video showed a person in a suit demonstrating the vision for a general-purpose humanoid capable of dangerous, repetitive, or boring tasks using the same AI architecture as Full Self-Driving.
- 2022: Early prototypes displayed. At the second AI Day in September, semi-functional units demonstrated walking across a stage and basic arm movements
- 2023: September videos showed improved capabilities, including sorting colored blocks, precise limb awareness, and holding a Yoda pose.
- 2024-early 2025: Factory integration videos showed Optimus navigating workspaces and handling objects like battery cells.
- January 2026: Gen 3 mass-production activities began at Fremont, with reports of over 1,000 Gen 3 units already operating inside the factory for real-world learning and AI training
- April 2026: Musk confirms Optimus production on converted Fremont line would begin in late July or August 2026. The Gen 3 reveal, originally eyed for Q1, was pushed closer to production start. A second, much larger Optimus factory at Giga Texas is under construction, with volume production targeted for Summer 2027 and long-term capacity of 10 million units annually
- July 1, 2026: Musk’s on-site visit and team photo confirm the Optimus line is operational and the transition is actively progressing
Tesla positions Optimus as potentially its largest project ever, leveraging vertical integration, AI expertise, and car-like manufacturing know-how to scale humanoid robots first for its own factories and later for broader industrial and consumer use.
The Fremont conversion serves as a critical proving ground for this ambitious new chapter in Tesla’s already-rich history.
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.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
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.
Tesla annihilates Wall Street expectations with strong Q2 delivery showing
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
