To The Moon

When $Tesla Motors(TSLA)$ CEO, Elon Musk announced that Tesla robotaxi will be unveiled on 08 August 2024, market seem to take this news positively as seen from the date (05 April 2024) to yesterday (08 April) trading.

The day session of Tesla trade was significant promising, we have seen such consistent upwards trade from Tesla. Its shares was already sinking before Tesla reported anemic quarterly delivery figures on 02 April 2024.

With reuters reported that Tesla would be shelving its plans for cheaper EV, this send the share further down, CEO Musk did try to clarify but the denial does not seem to help.

Tesla Turned Around After Narrative Change

On 05 April late afternoon, Tesla announced the unveiling of robotaxi, it help to push the shares after hour trading on Friday, and this continue into 08 April with a close to 5% jump. If you have been following how Tesla’s strategy played out, the events generating buzz have a good effect on its share price.

The splashy nature will bring investors back to focus on Tesla’s future instead of current pain points. Even though the products shown so far would takes years to materialize into actual production, we can see that this strategy work quite well than traditional advertising (which Tesla does not favour).

Failed Prediction About Autonomous Vehicle

When we look at the robotaxis, we need to remind ourselves on the more than one decade of failed predictions about autonomous vehicles by Musk. So as investors, I would personally think that we need to remain rational and curb some of our enthusiasm with Tesla and its various product announcements.

I believe we have already witness how the hype or speculation is widening with reality. We also need to understand that the EV market as a whole is very bleak.

Let us look at how Tesla product milestones has progressed over the years in the next sections.

Tesla Product Milestones

Since the inception of first Tesla vehicle, Roadster in March 2008, we saw Model S announced just 3 months later in June 2008. But after that we saw the next model X unveiled almost 4 years later.

While Model S was officially released, it was not until June 2013 that Tesla announced the Battery swap station. 2 years later in April 2025, we have the Powerwall announced. Until now, we seem to be able to deduce a pattern on the announcement and production completion.

Older model seem to come out when incumbents begin to catch up, so it is more on the hype rather than more innovative EV, like in September 2015, when Model X was released 3 years after it was unveiled.

When Tesla started work on the system it markets as Autopilot in 2013, Musk estimated it would be able to handle 90% of the miles customers drove within a few years. In October 2015, when Autopilot was introduced for Model S, then in 2016, Musk alluded to autonomy in a second iteration of his master plan for the company, and Tesla started selling a feature called Full Self-Driving, or FSD.

In March 2016, Model 3 is unveiled, then one year later Model 3 was officially released. For another 2 years, there is no news except that In 2019, Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen shattered the glass window of a stainless-steel prototype. In February that year, Model Y was unveiled. Then Cybertruck was unveiled in November 2019.

In 2019, Musk declared that 1 million Teslas would soon be on the road and fully capable of driving themselves. He first hinted at plans for a dedicated robotaxi three years later.

A similar pattern has played out with other Tesla products. Take the Semi, which Tesla showed at its design studio near Los Angeles in 2017. Years later, the Semi is still only in pilot production.

In December 2020, Model 3 becomes the best selling EV worldwide, then in November 2023, Cybertruck went into production, but we could spot the Cybertruck sparingly in cities like Austin and Los Angeles, but sales are so low that Tesla has yet to break out figures in its quarterly reports. In December 2023, Model Y becomes best selling EV worldwide, but the FSD (Full Self-Driving) still could not measure up to its name after eight years.

Stay Tuned

Tesla has suggested that its next-generation vehicle platform will underpin both a cheaper car and the dedicated robotaxi, and the vehicles are expected to be similar: one will have a steering wheel, the other would not.

Tesla has rolled out the latest version of FSD in recent weeks to a growing number of consumers, some via free trials. On 05 April, the company announced that customers had collectively driven more than 1 billion miles using the feature.

From how FSD progress is moving fast, so there might be a chance that Tesla would focus on FSD, before going back to the cheaper car. The promise of full autonomy has long been a way Tesla has set itself apart from rivals.

Tesla charges $12,000 for FSD in the U.S., a tidy sum that could offset some of its recent price-cutting — but only if Tesla can convince more customers the feature is worth it. Actually in order to maintain the market leadership in the EV space, Tesla needs both cheaper cars and full self-driving, but more emphasis should be on FSD.

Actually software and services business model contribute better to earnings than manufacturing. Whether Tesla ambitious moonshot will have investors willing to support, will have a clearer picture when we look forward to Tesla first-quarter 2024 earnings report in 23 April 2024.

I personally think that we should take the robotaxi hype in stride but also be aware of the existence of a fully autonomous driving system, because this could be a future lucrative new revenue stream but only if this system materialized.

Summary

If we go through what Tesla has been doing on the product development side, it looks like robotaxi might not be such a good strategy to boost what it need for the share price.

Whether we would see Tesla cheaper car soon will be less important, I think the FSD system materialization might be something that could be both beneficial for Tesla in terms of revenue and also investors confidence.

Appreciate if you could share your thoughts in the comment section whether you think Tesla should focus on FSD if they decide not go for cheaper car production.

@TigerStars @Daily_Discussion @Tiger_Earnings @TigerWire appreciate if you could feature this article so that fellow tiger would benefit from my investing and trading thoughts.

Disclaimer: The analysis and result presented does not recommend or suggest any investing in the said stock. This is purely for Analysis.