What happened

Tesla (TSLA 4.96%) stock galloped out of the gate Thursday morning -- up 2.3% as of 10:25 a.m. ET before falling back around midday -- as the company announced a "Cyber Rodeo" to celebrate the opening of its Austin, Texas, Gigafactory barely two weeks after opening a Gigafactory in Germany.

And no wonder investors are excited. It's starting to get hard to remember all the places Tesla now has Gigafactories up and running.

Artist rendering of a Tesla gigafactory.

Image source: Tesla.

So what

The Austin Gigafactory will initially produce Model Y electric vehicles, and thus contribute to Tesla's goal of building 1.5 million or more EVs this year. Austin will also be the production site for Tesla's much anticipated Cybertruck. Although the precise date for when this production will begin is still unknown, Musk deciding to title today's opening party a "Cyber Rodeo" suggests that Cybertruck might make an appearance at the party in some form.  

It's not just the Austin plant opening that has investors excited, though. The party starts at 5 p.m. ET tonight, but just five hours later, CEO Elon Musk will give a speech at the plant.

You never can tell what Musk will say when he speaks, but any time he does speak, there's the potential for even more news, and I suspect it's this "free call option" upon what Elon might say that accounts for some of today's stock price rise.

Now what

That being said, not all of today's Tesla news is good.

As Reuters reported this morning, Tesla has to recall nearly 128,000 of its Model 3 electric sedans sold in China "for potential faults in semiconductor components that might lead to collisions." As if that weren't bad enough, this problem that's been reported in China may not stay in China. Reuters noted that of the cars being recalled, most -- but not all, only 73% -- were produced in China. This suggests that the same faulty chips that got into those cars may have made their way into Teslas sold in other markets as well.

If Tesla ends up having to do more recalls, in more countries, look out below. More recalls could be coming, and Tesla's stock price could be coming right back down again.