Hey, if you're already on my work here and today we've got a variety of news from other automakers, including some very interesting comments from Stellantis's CEO. We've also got an effort from other automakers to maybe temper Tesla's success in charging and a few other stories as well. We'll keep it quick because right after this, I think we're going to be able to wrap it up in time. Right after this, there is going to be a Falcon Heavy launch, the largest commercial communication satellite launch ever. So that should be in about 10 minutes, so we'll hopefully roll right into that.
All right, looking at the stock Tesla today down 3.10% of a percent, or yeah, a third of a percent. While the NASDAQ was down a tenth of a percent, Tesla closing at $264.35 on the day. Right, so we did have the FOMC meeting, so not much action in the NASDAQ or in Tesla today, which I think I'll take as a win on Indy Day that there is an FOMC meeting. Of course, interest rates increased by 25 basis points as were the widely held consensus expectations going into the meeting. And if we look at the FOMC meeting statements, no real differences from the last time, other than obviously last meeting they had maintained rates, this time they raised rates. So nothing too crazy.
Same thing with the FOMC press conference. I took a couple of notes. We'll just run through those quick, but again, nothing too surprising in that press conference either. Powell basically saying they're going to continue to go meeting by meeting in terms of their assessment on whether they'll maintain rates from here or continue to increase. He said that the June CPI report came in better than expected for a change, he specifically noted. But it was just one report other than that. He said things pretty much came in in line with expectations. Noted that core CPI is still high, although headline has been coming down nicely. And then in terms of the context of whether or not they're going to continue on the every other cadence, like we have now seen for two meetings, so not much of a cadence. But he said that it makes all the sense in the world to slow down now that rates are in a more restrictive territory, but again, continuing to emphasize they'll make those decisions meeting by meeting. There's no preset plan. Even if they do have one, he's not saying that at this point. And he said they can be they can afford now to be a little bit more patient with where things are at, but also resolute in their goals of returning inflation to their 2% benchmark. He said rate cuts won't be this year. At least that's their current expectation. So the FOMC staff is no longer forecasting a recession. That's probably one of the things that's getting the most attention out of the comments. And he said they're saying they're starting to see the beginnings of disinflation without much softening on the labor market. So he feels like his base case or his expectations or hopes rather may be still be may still be aligned with sort of the soft landing type of scenario that he has talked about for quite some time. So again, nothing too crazy coming out of that meeting today, which I think is is usually a good thing.
Alright, so first up, let's talk about some news in charging. We've talked a lot about adoption of the North American charging standard. A lot of automakers jumping on board with that, but looks like people aren't quite quite ready to seed that completely yet. Seven major automakers announced today that they are forming a new company to provide EV charging specifically in the United States.
This is going to be GM's, Delantis, Hyundai, Kia, Honda, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. So these brands, according to Reuters, represent about half the US vehicle market. Obviously Tesla is about 60% of the EV market. So that would be talking about overall vehicle market, but definitely a big chunk of companies here. They plan to roll out 30,000 chargers in North America.
However, they did not specify how much they're going to invest individually or collectively. They didn't have a name for the new company. They didn't say what time period this would be over. So I think Tesla is at right around 20,000 chargers probably already. So by the time they get to 30,000, certainly Tesla would have exceeded that bar at that point.
So it's interesting. We'll see what kind of efforts these companies put up and if they'll actually use the NACS standard in this, and it's more just to sort of protect the network effect that maybe Tesla's going to generate off their charging network, or if they'll try to make a play for more of the CCS-style charging. With some of the automakers on this list already having adopted NACS as standard in their vehicles, I would have to assume that these would include NACS as well, which would be good news for Tesla with more charging options being available.
So we'll see what comes with that, but interesting timing, certainly, given their most recent news on charging. And then an interesting call out from Twitter, I think the accountant on Twitter noting that Tesla has disclosed in the 10Q. We talked about a lot of takeaways from here, but didn't quite notice this one. Tesla disclosed a $76 million negative impact from the net of cash acquired from business combinations.
So what this would mean would potentially be an acquisition. The acquisition that we had rumored in the second quarter was Wifirion. I believe is the pronunciation for that, which handles wireless charging. Primarily it sounded like more so for robots and things like that in factories, but obviously Tesla could have broader ambitions with some of that technology, although that would certainly be useful for Tesla as well, especially as we start to think about potentially things like Optimus being utilized in Tesla's factory.
So as my read on this is that this was a cash acquisition. It's maybe a little bit higher than what we'd expected, but it's mostly not something that's impactful on Tesla's balance sheet. A couple other quick Tesla notes. We've been talking about this F-150 wrap for a couple days. It seems like each day that goes by we get a clearer photo of the wrap. So Gregor Chuck on Twitter sharing a photo of the F-150 wrap.
I believe I'm looking at this now and I'm thinking maybe it's photoshopped. It kind of looks like that. I don't know if that's like artifacts from compression. Sometimes the cyber truck can kind of just look like that, but definitely interesting to see that in a little bit by their resolution. If this is accurate, I'm starting to doubt it now. It's accurate enough to I think express what it looks like though.
And then we have an update from Joe Tagmire. He saw the cyber truck out and about at gigatexus. I won't show that video because I think we've all seen enough of the maybe not, but we've seen plenty of the cyber truck videos now. But just a quick update on the Gigafactory Texas expansion looks like they're now taking out windows on the south end of the building in preparation for that expansion work that we had talked about before.
So it'll be interesting to see the process of that. I'm sure Joe will keep us well updated as Tesla continues with that expansion. And then getting into the comments from Stellantis. So Carlos Tavares, Stellantis' CEO. I believe this was during their earnings call. Noted that Tesla's operating margins have fallen as we have talked about, but he said, quote, they are entering my world, the world of tight pricing, cost competitiveness, and the operational issues that a big company like ours may face.
And quote, adding that the result of the fact that Tesla is now entering my world is that their profitability moved from more than 17% in the first half of 2022 to 10 and a half percent in the first half of 2023.
Which it's partially true. Like obviously that's been an impact as Tesla has grown their, you know, annual vehicle output. It's compressed margins a little bit, but we've also seen interest rates tighten in that period. And of course, Tesla during this period had, I would say, very significant demand and supply and balance, which probably temporarily pushed these up pretty clearly in hindsight. So a lot of other things other than just, you know, what to far, how Tavares puts it here in terms of Tesla entering his world.
So interesting to see these comments. Stellantis actually did pretty well. They're just an even margin was about 14.4%. I believe in the second quarter that may be a first half number. But he used that to mention that Tesla used to be more profitable than Stellantis, but now they are less profitable than Stellantis. But the important context that's missing out of all of this is that Tesla is obviously trying to grow production at 50% a year, while also working on other projects like Energy Storage, all their AI business spending a billion dollars this year on dojo. Things that Stellantis is not trying to do. And those things that they are for going right now, while they may help their operating margins momentarily, are certainly not going to lead them to the places that Tesla is going to long term.
I think if you gave Tavares the option of being able to cut his operating margin, you know, by seven points and then be able to grow 50% a year, he would probably take that option, or I think at least would be wise to take that option if presented it. But it's obviously not quite that simple. So, although the comparison here on the same sort of line item, it's really not quite the fair comparison to make. And again, I think it almost highlights how impressive Tesla's margins are, that they're doing all of these things and still being able to grow. And then just another quick thing on Stellantis, as the UAW negotiations start, the UAW president was a little bit critical of Tavares because he was not at their opening meeting. So it looks like a little bit of, you know, tension arising early in these conversations. So we'll keep an eye on how those go. But in the interest of time, skip on that for now. I want to get to the SpaceX launch.
Volkswagen and X-Beng. So they have announced today an intent to partner. So this is no framework agreement. Doesn't mean that it's necessarily finalized yet, but pretty significantly far along in the negotiating process. Enough to announce it. That they do plan for a long-term collaboration between the two companies and Volkswagen also made an investment or plans to make an investment of $700 million in X-Beng. So pretty significant in terms of this partnership. And I think not too surprising. We've talked for a long time about how these partnerships are likely to happen. This has always been the business model in China outside of a course, Tesla, with their wholly owned factory.
But it's a common situation for automakers to be partnering with domestic automakers in China. And I think over time we'll see those partnerships grow and kind of expand outside of China, where China is probably going to bring that EV tech and production and all of those things, and low prices, where other companies can leverage that and provide their brand. So I don't know that that's the real intent here, but it'll be interesting to see where that partnership goes over time. X-Beng jumped a lot on that news today.
And then we also have an update from Waymo. Of course, they continue with their autonomous development. They say that they are refocusing their efforts on ride hailing, specifically focusing on that portion of the business. As they make that focus decision, it sounds like they are pushing back their timeline on their commercial and operational efforts on trucking, as well as most of their technical development of that business unit as their press release says today. So kind of an interesting update. You'd think that maybe it would be a little bit easier to implement on things that have fixed routes and very consistent schedules and all of those sort of things, but Waymo kind of going in the other direction in terms of their focus.
All right. I think that's it. So we've got here coming up real quick, the Falcon Heavy launch. I don't know if they've started that yet. Looks like T minus four minutes. Right on time for people to jump over to that stream. I don't have an audio feed set to come through here. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to set that up today, but hopefully people will jump over there and check out that SpaceX launch in just a few minutes. All right. That'll wrap it up for today. So as always, thank you for listening. Make sure you subscribe and sign up for notifications. You can also find me on Twitter slash X at Tesla podcast and we'll see you tomorrow for the Thursday, July 27th episode of Tesla Daily. Thank you.