Making sense of market moves
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When you picture your favorite day of the year, you might be thinking of your birthday, perhaps Halloween, or maybe the last day of the school year.
For Tesla fanatics investors, Robotaxi Day has—after a major delay—arrived, and they’re acting like it’s Christmas morning.
“We believe Robotaxi Day will be a seminal and historical day for Musk and Tesla and marks a new chapter of growth around autonomous, FSD, and AI future at Tesla,” wrote Dan Ives, Wedbush analyst and Tesla bull in a note yesterday.
The event this evening in Burbank, California, is set to unveil the automaker’s long-teased self-driving car—a new innovation that is arriving at a particularly crucial time for the tech giant.
Tesla, led by notorious CEO and the man frequently at the center of some of the dumbest internet discourses of all time, Elon Musk, has dropped 40% since its peak in 2021 amid slowing demand for electric vehicles worldwide and heightened scrutiny on the company’s self-driving tech.
Shares of Tesla dropped 8% in mid-July after the company announced it was delaying its first Robotaxi Day originally scheduled for August, as some investors suspected the postponement was an indication that the tech wasn’t quite ready for primetime. But shares recovered nearly 5% in early September, when the firm announced its “Fully Self Driving” (FSD) service.
Over the past month, Tesla has managed to drum up enthusiasm among investors, gaining 12%, but that excitement hinges on today’s highly anticipated event.
Robots will drive gains—or crash
To Tesla bulls, Robotaxi Day is the carmaker’s opportunity for a major comeback, and a test of how effectively the carmaker can transition from an EV company to an AI company—a leap Musk thinks will keep Tesla relevant in the coming decades.
“With very few industry events as widely anticipated as this, we believe Musk will address the near-term pain points seen by investors and the company’s long-term vision as Tesla goes through its second transformation not seen since the Model 3/Y production overhaul,” wrote Ives.
Investors will be keenly watching for the timing of the Robotaxi’s rollout, the extent to which its self-driving tech is really autonomous, and any potential regulatory hurdles.
However, not everyone is as optimistic as Ives that the new car will drive shares upward past the event’s initial buzz. “[C]an TSLA live up to expectations and sustain momentum post the event? We are less convinced on this front,” wrote UBS analysts in a recent note.
Even if the Robotaxi doesn’t wow investors tonight, we hope at the very least this new Tesla product doesn’t attack somebody this time.—LB