Tesla Motors stock was headed for furthe gains Thursday with autonomous driving helping. The moves comes hot on the heels of the Wednesday share rise which was all about robots.
Shares of the electric-vehicle maker were up 5.4%.
Thursday’s gain was contributed to the company’s announcement that it would start selling its highest-level driver assistance software, Full Self Driving or FSD, in Europe and China in the first quarter of 2025.
A few other updates were announced including parking and reversing with FSD. Cybertruck drivers will have FSD available this month and an updated version of FSD will be available to Tesla drivers in October. Tesla routinely sends updated versions of the FSD software to drivers. Versions starting with 12.5 are the most current. Some Tesla drivers still have versions that start with 12.3.
More drivers able to purchase FSD, which costs $99 a month in the U.S., means more potential high-margin sales for Tesla. It’s also a sign that Tesla believes FSD is improving. FSD is the software and hardware platform that Tesla believes will turn its vehicles into truly self-driving cars one day. Today, FSD still requires drivers to pay attention 100% of the time.
Tesla hosts a Robotaxi Day on Oct. 10, to review some of its self-driving technology. Tesla, using its FSD software, plans to launch a network of self-driving cabs one day.
The Thursday gain follows Wednesday’s 4.8% jump. That increase was partly fueled by an Elon Musk tweet reading: “Just leaving Tesla engineering offices in Palo Alto. Most good, some bad. The future is going to be wild. There will be so many robots.”
The company is working on AI-trained robots that it can both use in its manufacturing and sell. Musk believes the robot operation can rival Tesla’s car business.
While Musk’s tweet appeared to help the stock Wednesday, it didn’t tell investors anything they didn’t already know.
Through early trading Thursday, Tesla stock was still down about 7% since the company reported weaker-than-expected second-quarter numbers on July 23. Shares have fallen about 8% this year.
Declining EV sales have weighed on investor sentiment. Tesla shipped about 831,000 cars in the first half of 2024, down about 7% year over year.
Improving sales growth would help shares, and so would creating truly self-driving Teslas.