Shares of Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) surged 9% on Monday morning following the EV maker’s pilot launch of its robotaxis in Austin on Sunday after a prolonged wait.
The pilot program offers rides to select users within a limited geofenced area in Austin. The debut rides were priced at $4.20 and included a passenger-seat "safety monitor" person who does not interact with the fully autonomous car, News.Az reports citing foreign media.
However, Tesla only deployed a small group of about 10 Model Y vehicles as robotaxis on Sunday.
According to The Fly, UBS analyst Joseph Spak raised the firm’s price target for Tesla stock to $215 from $190 on Monday while maintaining a ‘Sell’ rating.
The new price target, however, still represents a 33% downside to the stock’s closing price on Friday.
While Tesla appears to be well-positioned, the autonomous ride-hailing opportunity is already priced into the stock, the analyst told investors in a research note.
The firm believes the opportunity is worth about $99/share, which, when considering other parts of Tesla’s business, leaves UBS remaining cautious on Tesla’s overall valuation.
Tesla bull and Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, however, hailed the launch as the beginning of a “golden age.”
Wedbush analysts, led by Ives, reiterated their ’Outperform’ rating and $500 price target on Tesla on Sunday.
"Going into it, we expected to be impressed. Walking away, all there is to say is that this is the future," their note said.
Musk has long talked about steering Tesla away from being solely an EV maker to an AI, robotics, and autonomy company, and the robotaxi is key to this vision. Musk on Sunday said that the launch was a “culmination of a decade of hard work.”
The launch comes as Tesla’s EV deliveries are falling. For the full year 2024, Tesla delivered 1.79 million vehicles globally, marking the first annual decline in more than a decade.
In the first quarter, Tesla reported deliveries of 336,681 units, marking a dip of nearly 13% from the corresponding quarter of 2024 and the company’s worst quarterly performance in at least two years.
