Tesla Motors stock rose early Thursday as CEO Elon Musk revealed development plans for his company’s self-driving taxi service.
Shares of the electric-vehicle maker added 3%.
The early move came after Musk’s responses on X to a couple of questions about Tesla’s robo-taxi service. “Expanding to a larger service area in Austin this weekend,” explained Musk, adding that launching in the San Francisco Bay Area was likely “in a month or two.”
Musk’s company will need to get a permit to operate in California. Today, it has a permit to test self-driving cars with a safety driver in the state.
Tesla launched its robo-taxi service on June 22 in Austin, Texas. The launch was small with a hand-selected group of riders, and with a safety monitor in the front passenger seat.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment about its plans to expand the pool of riders.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of robo-taxis—or artificial-intelligence-trained self-driving technology—to Tesla. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas assigns roughly $250 of his $410 price target to self-driving technology. RBC analyst Tom Narayan says self-driving cars account for about 60% of his Tesla valuation. Both analysts rate Tesla stock at Buy. Narayan’s target price is $319.
Coming into Thursday trading, Tesla stock was down about 8% since the robo-taxi launch. A spat between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, however, has helped to drive down shares. Tesla stock was up about 24% since the company hosted its Oct. 10 robo-taxi event, where it laid out plans for the service.
When the technology and regulations are ready, Tesla plans to scale the service rapidly by having existing Tesla owners put their cars into a robo-taxi network—a little like Airbnb, but for ride-hailing.