Charged: Musk says doesn’t support merger between Tesla, xAI

Institutional investors and professional traders rely on The Fly to keep up-to-the-second on breaking news in the electric vehicle and clean energy space, as well as which stocks in these sectors that the best analysts on Wall Street are saying to buy and sell.

From the hotly-debated high-flier Tesla (TSLA), Wall Street’s newest darling Rivian (RIVN), traditional-stalwarts turned EV-upstarts GM (GM) and Ford (F) to the numerous SPAC-deal makers that have come public in this red-hot space, The Fly has you covered with “Charged,” a weekly recap of the top stories and expert calls in the sector.

Click here to check out Tesla’s recent Media Buzz Sentiment as measured by TipRanks.

MERGER: Tesla CEO Elon Musk says he does not support a merger between Tesla and his AI startup xAI, which owns the Grok chatbot and competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In response to a user post on X that asked Tesla investors if they supported a merger between the two companies, Musk replied “No.” On Sunday, Musk had said he would ask Tesla shareholders to vote whether Tesla can invest in xAI, after earlier saying “it would be great” if Tesla could do so.

AUTOPILOT: Tesla has faced many lawsuits over the past five years related to fatal crashes involving cars equipped with its Autopilot driver-assist system, Neal Boudette of The New York Times reports. The automaker has settled some and others have been dismissed, allowing the company to avoid any legal judgements related to Autopilot. However, a new case is set to begin in federal court in Miami and will be the first to go to a jury trial, representing a serious threat to Tesla, its self-driving technology , and its reputation.

TIPPING POINT: Wedbush notes that after leaving the Trump Administration and DOGE a few months ago, Elon Musk is officially launching a new U.S. political party called the “America Party.” The party would caucus independently and that legislative discussions would be had with both parties Musk said. In a nutshell, the firm believes this is “a tipping point in the Tesla story” and ultimately the Tesla Board needs to act now and set the ground rules for Musk going forward around his political ambitions and actions. Tesla is heading into one of the most important stages of its growth cycle with the autonomous and robotics future now on the doorstep and cannot have Musk spending more and more time creating a political party which will require countless time, energy, and political capital, Wedbush argues. The firm has an Outperform rating on the shares with a price target of $500.

EXECUTIVE ORDER: President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to eliminate subsidies for unreliable “green” energy sources like wind and solar in furtherance of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the White House announced. “The Order directs the Secretary of the Treasury to terminate the clean electricity production and investment tax credits for wind and solar facilities and implement the enhanced Foreign Entity of Concern restrictions each as identified in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The Order directs the Secretary of the Interior to revise regulations and policies to eliminate preferential treatment for wind and solar facilities compared to reliable, dispatchable energy sources,” the White House fact sheet stated. Publicly traded companies in the solar energy space include Array Technologies (ARRY), Canadian Solar (CSIQ), Complete Solaria (SPWR), Emeren (SOL), Enphase Energy (ENPH), FTC Solar (FTCI), First Solar (FSLR), JinkoSolar (JKS), Maxeon Solar (MAXN), Shoals Technologies (SHLS), SolarEdge (SEDG) and Sunrun (RUN).

R1 SOFTNESS: Guggenheim analyst Ronald Jewsikow downgraded Rivian to Neutral from Buy without a price target. The firm cites softer long-term R2/R3 assumptions driven by softer R1 sales and negative U.S. Electric Vehicle and Emissions policy changes for the downgrade. Guggenheim remains confident in cost-reduction targets for the R2, the firm no longer has confidence in the required volumes and/or required ASPs to support the prior price target, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Softening R1 demand is a modest negative for R2 and R3 volumes, and the loss of EV incentives is likely to negatively impact long-term ASP and/or volume potential as well, the firm says.

ACQUISITION: Blink Charging (BLNK) announced the company’s acquisition of 100% of the equity of Zemetric, a charging infrastructure company with tailored solutions for fleets, that can extend intelligently to multi-family and high-utilization destination sites. The transaction is expected to close on or before July 11, 2025, subject to customary closing conditions. Zemetric solutions are designed to be highly reliable with interoperability at core. Founded in Silicon Valley by a team of transport electrification veterans in 2022, Zemetric simplifies charging with market-leading hardware, software and service solutions that are designed and built to be interoperable and highly reliable to scale electrification. Zemetric delivered results exceeding baseline projections in its first year of commercial launch. The founding team of Zemetric will join Blink in roles that will add to its current leadership team. Harmeet Singh will be the new Chief Technology Officer. Prior to founding Zemetric, Harmeet served as a technology leader at companies such as Shell and Greenlots and will bring his depth of industry experience to Blink as the company navigates an open charging ecosystem. Bonnie Datta, Co-founder and CCO at Zemetric will be join the team as Senior Vice President of Global Commercial Operations. Kapil Singhi, Co-founder and Engineering Head will assume a senior role in global charger development.