Investor's Corner
Wall Street explains why they are bullish on Musk-Trump alliance
Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas released a new research note clarifying why he raised the target price for Tesla Motors (TSLA) to $305 per share. Jonas warns investors who have equated Elon Musk’s new relationship with Donald Trump with a higher stock price. “There is no way to quantify the value (if any) of Tesla management’s advisory relationship with the new administration,” Jonas said.
Instead, Jonas emphasized the congruence between Trump’s desire for American workers to build products in American factories and Tesla’s business model which does both. Tesla is a leader in the automotive segment in both categories. “When you look at the businesses Tesla is in, you see many areas of overlapping interest” with the Trump administration, Adam Jonas told New York Times correspondent James Stewart on Friday. “To the extent the new administration prioritizes the creation of valuable, innovative high tech and manufacturing jobs, Tesla stands at the epicenter of that.”
In fact, the auto industry manufactures relatively few cars that can be truly called “US Made.” According to a chart compiled by Cars.com last year, the number of models of light duty vehicles that qualify for that label has fallen precipitously in recent years from nearly 30 in 2010 to only 8 in 2016.
Another analyst weighing on the Musk-Trump connection is Andrew Hughes, an alternative energy analyst for Credit Suisse. Hughes said solar investors “aren’t nearly as negative as they were the day after the election.” In part, that is because solar power — which up until now has needed significant federal incentives to survive — has become so inexpensive, particularly with regard to coal, that many industry observers think it will survive on its own even if those incentives are eliminated by the Trump administration.
Despite Donald Trump’s antipathy to renewable energy, business is all about the bottom line. If solar costs less than coal, then business is going to switch to solar no matter what the president has to say. Elon Musk is also heavily involved in re-imagining the role of the electrical grid. He sees battery storage as the key to making the grid compatible with renewables like solar and wind.
Musk has gone head-to-head with utility companies, including NV Energy, which is owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway company. In 2016, Musk and SolarCity lost a round when the Nevada PUC enacted new rules imposing monthly assessments on people with rooftop solar systems. In return, SolarCity terminated its operations in the state, laying off hundreds of local workers.
Nevertheless, Musk expects both Tesla with its grid scale batteries and SolarCity with its rooftop systems — including the revolutionary Solar Roof — to play an ongoing part in how people get their electricity in the future. Last fall, just prior to unveiling the Solar Roof, Musk said, “The solution is both local power generation and utility power generation — it’s not one or the other”. He went on to suggest that the proper mix would be about one third residential rooftop power and two thirds power from traditional utility companies.
The US Energy Department stated in its annual energy and jobs report issues earlier this month that “solar technologies, both photovoltaic and concentrated, employ almost 374,000 workers, or 43 percent of the electric power generation work force.” Compare that to the number of workers employed to make electricity from coal. That number is just 86,000 workers. “The jobs data is a compelling argument in favor of the tax credits,” Andrew Hughes said. “I want to believe that Trump won’t kill solar, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty. The big question: Will he take away the tax credits?”
Musk received plenty of blowback when he decided to endorse former CEO of ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson for the position of Secretary of State. That makes him the public face of the fossil fuel industries and theoretically a natural adversary for Musk and his commitment to zero emissions energy. But Elon thinks Tillerson can temper some of the president’s more outrageous plans to extract every last molecule of fossil fuel that can be found on the planet.
Tillerson also advocates for a carbon tax, an idea that Musk strongly supports. According to reports, Musk floated the carbon tax idea at last week’s meeting of business advisors to the president. While Donald Trump did not dismiss the idea out of hand, Musk found little to no support from others in the room.
Trump likes to think big and take bold actions. So does Elon Musk. In some ways, it’s easy to see why the two men might take a liking to each other. Trump is especially interested in space exploration, something that fits perfectly with Musk’s passion for establishing a human colony on Mars.
Job creation in America for American workers, rebooting the traditional utility grid to use modern technology, sending people off to live on other planets. These are all things that interest both men. But cozying up to Trump also exposes Musk to dissatisfaction with some of the president’s less popular plans, like building walls with neighboring countries, sending federal troops into American cities, and banning immigration by people who espouse certain religions. To be successful, Tesla will need a broad base of customers. Musk has been careful to avoid political involvement so far. His association with the new president exposes him to new dangers.
One gets the sense that Musk is willing to accept some of the negatives if he can make progress on his passion for a carbon tax. But if that idea is stymied by Trump and his advisors, Elon’s desire to work with the new administration may cool considerably. Perhaps the most danger comes from the unpredictability and volatility of the new president, who can change course in a heartbeat. Musk will be need to be nimble to avoid getting rolled over by Trump in the future.
The president is scheduled to meet with his council of business leaders today, at which time he says he will provide details about his plant to cut government regulation of business by “75% or more.” That will give Musk yet another chance to evaluate the business acumen of Donald Trump and decide whether his involvement with his plans will pay dividends for him and the companies he leads. As Adam Jonas said in his report, it is impossible to predict how the association between Trump and Musk will benefit either.
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.
However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.
Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.
Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.
Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.
He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.
Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.
Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.
That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.
🚨 These are the first-ever FSD safety statistics out of the Netherlands, showing it was over 3.5x safer than human driving on Dutch roads.
The most recent numbers out of Tesla for North America show:
-Over 5.5 million miles between accidents for Teslas using FSD
-660k miles… https://t.co/XKlRzgSGEh pic.twitter.com/HX6kzh0ZKc— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.
“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
