Investor's Corner
Volkswagen’s Tesla-inspired gameplan shoots stock upward for third straight day
Volkswagen stock (OTCMKTS: VWAGY) was sent soaring into growth territory once again on Wednesday morning during early trading hours. Its Tesla-inspired gameplan for cutting electric vehicle battery costs is contributing to more appeal from investors.
On Monday, Volkswagen held its first-ever “Power Day” event, revealing its outline to cut battery costs, increase cell production across Europe, and its plans for a charging infrastructure across its home continent. Volkswagen is just one company on a long list of automakers laying out their multi-year plans to catch up to Tesla, the undisputed leader in EV production and development. “This will finally make e-mobility affordable and the dominant drive technology,” Thomas Schmall of Volkswagen said during the presentation.
Since the event on Monday, Volkswagen’s stock has soared, up $6.80 or 23.96%. At the time of writing, shares of Volkswagen were trading at $35.24.
“This may be driven in part by U.S. retail investors jumping on the electric vehicle train,” Frederic Benizri of Louis Capital Markets told Bloomberg. Benizri believes high short interest in VW’s common shares currently is driving a short squeeze. Still, optimism that the German company could catch up to Tesla in the coming years is also responsible for driving the stock price upward.
Interestingly, Volkswagen’s Power Day event was well-received by investors and analysts, while Tesla’s Battery Day event actually resulted in short-term losses for the Elon Musk-led company. Volkswagen’s large-scale production figures, which could translate to an accelerated rollout of successful and effective EVs, might be the reasoning. However, Volkswagen is still sparring daily with software issues affecting its rollout of the ID.3 and ID.4 electric vehicles, the first two cars to utilize the automaker’s MEB platform for EVs.
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Volkswagen’s Power Day: Six new cell plants, new unified battery cell, charging network partnerships
The alignment between Tesla’s Battery Day and Volkswagen’s Power Day brought forward two companies’ plans for electric mobility expansion in the coming years. Tesla and Volkswagen, while both car companies, share strikingly different goals moving forward as the size comparison between the two automakers is strikingly different. Volkswagen delivered over 9 million cars last year, while Tesla is still working to roll out a broader lineup of production facilities worldwide. With two new manufacturing plants expected to open up this year, Tesla will undoubtedly expand in 2021 and 2022. However, it will be several years until it catches up to the production rates that Volkswagen has achieved.
Nevertheless, quantity isn’t always the deciding factor on which entity is more effective. Tesla has already established itself as a worthy competitor in the automotive field despite less than four years of experience producing mass-market vehicles. As Tesla continues to disrupt the automotive industry through more appealing electrification options than anyone else on the market, Volkswagen’s Power Day showed the German company is putting a full-scale focus on transitioning away from gas-powered cars, a statement that VW has made on many occasions.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is not a Volkswagen shareholder and has no intention of initiating any positions within 72 hours.
In a striking revelation that underscores the lucrative crossover between Big Tech and space exploration, Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, disclosed a massive $94.1 billion equity stake in SpaceX following the rocket company’s blockbuster initial public offering earlier this year.
The disclosure came in Alphabet’s quarterly filing, marking the first time the long-held private investment has been publicly valued at market prices. Google was an early backer, investing alongside Fidelity in 2015 with roughly $500-900 million at a time when SpaceX was valued around $12 billion.
That bet has delivered extraordinary returns, roughly a hundredfold, transforming a strategic play on satellite internet and launch capabilities into one of Alphabet’s largest assets.
Google, $GOOGL, has said they hold $94 billion in SpaceX, $SPCX, shares after IPO.
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 23, 2026
Of the total holding, approximately $80 billion remains subject to short-term post-IPO lockup restrictions, preventing near-term sales. An additional $14.1 billion faces longer-term restrictions, extending into the third quarter of 2027. This structure limits immediate liquidity but protects against market volatility as SpaceX transitions into public trading.
The SpaceX position contributed significantly to gains in Alphabet’s broader investment portfolio, which also includes a major stake in AI leader Anthropic. Combined, these holdings helped drive nearly $100 billion in investment gains during the second quarter, providing a substantial boost to net income amid ongoing AI spending pressures.
Analysts view the disclosure as validation of Alphabet’s venture strategy beyond its core search and cloud businesses. The investment aligns with deeper ties, including reported multi-billion-dollar deals for AI computing capacity on SpaceX infrastructure. As SpaceX advances Starship flights, Starlink expansion, and ambitious Mars goals under Elon Musk, Google’s stake positions it to benefit from the commercialization of space.
For Alphabet, the windfall highlights how patient, forward-looking bets in transformative sectors can yield outsized rewards. While lockups temper short-term impact, the holding cements SpaceX as a cornerstone of Alphabet’s diversified portfolio in an era where aerospace, AI, and connectivity increasingly intersect. Investors will watch closely as restrictions lift and SpaceX’s public performance unfolds.
Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Google’s massive stake in SpaceX will shock you
Tesla’s switch-up on selling Full Self-Driving has paid off big time
