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Tesla Robotaxi, Autonomy, and Insurance drive new price target from ARK Invest

Credit: Reddit | u/hairy_quadruped

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ARK Invest has upgraded its price target and outlook for Tesla through 2025, projecting massive gains as the automaker continues to dominate the electric vehicle market. ARK analysts now believe that Tesla’s outlook is even better than before, boosting its price target from $1,400 in 2024 to $3,000 in 2025. The new figures depend on Tesla’s rollout of Robotaxi, a fully-autonomous vehicle, and its expanding insurance initiative.

ARK released a new report on March 19th that outlined the firm’s real-world expectations for Tesla. Already holding the reputation as one of Tesla’s biggest bulls, ARK revised its price target by pushing its forecast forward by one year from 2024 to 2025. Also, ARK became even more bullish by boosting its outlook from $1,400 in 2024 to $3,000 in 2025. ARK wrote:

“Last year, ARK estimated that in 2024 Tesla’s share price would hit $7,000 per share, or $1,400 adjusted for its five for one stock split. Based on our updated research, we now estimate that it could approach $3,000 in 2025.”

Credit: ARK Invest

The key updates ARK made to its model were that it refined the estimates for Tesla’s capital efficiency, the addition of Tesla’s Insurance initiative, which is set to open in more U.S. states shortly, new assumptions for the possible rollout of Robotaxi, and the probability that the automaker successfully achieves fully autonomous capabilities within the next five years.

Production Expansion

ARK’s general outlook on Tesla remains extremely bullish. The firm wrote that it believes the company can expand its production and sales capacities between 5 and 10 million vehicles by 2025. The additional year of growth capability due to the newly-revised price target, along with several other metrics, has ARK projecting massive sales figures within four years. Coming off its biggest year in terms of sales, where Tesla managed to deliver 499,650 cars in 2020, this would roughly project a between 10x and 20x growth in four years. It doesn’t seem far-fetched as Tesla continues to roll out more efficient production methods thanks to manufacturing efficiencies. Additionally, the supplemental production figures from Giga Texas and Giga Berlin also indicate that Tesla will be in prime position to expand its production metrics considerably within the next several years.

Credit: ARK Invest

Currently, Tesla projects each of its three active production facilities to produce approximately 1,050,000 vehicles per year.

Tesla Insurance

Meanwhile, Tesla’s Insurance program has been added to ARK’s new projection. While the in-house insurance initiative is only currently available in California, documents show that Tesla drivers in several other U.S. states are set to have it available to them. Tesla’s “better-than-average” safety profiles, thanks to an increased focus on passenger safety, Tesla has the ability to use real-time data to offer insurance in its vehicles, ARK said. This could increase pricing dynamics and lower customer acquisition costs, thus increasing margins. “In our bull case, ARK estimates that, as robotaxis ramp, Tesla’s insurance revenues will be incorporated into a platform fee. Insurance boosts our price target by roughly $60 in 2025,” Tasha Keeney of ARK also wrote.

Tesla Robotaxi and Fully-Autonomous Vehicles

Tesla’s human-driven and fully-autonomous ride-hailing services also provided a substantial boost to ARK’s general outlook for 2025. “In our bear case example, ride-hail could add an additional $20 billion to Tesla’s operating profit by 2025, increasing our price target by about $500,” Keeney said. The rollout of a fully-autonomous service could be preceded by a human-driven service, providing a highly-profitable recurring revenue stream and limiting the downside of the possible failure of a fully-autonomous service.

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Tesla bull Cathie Wood talks Robotaxis and ARK Invest’s greater conviction in TSLA

The possibility of a fully-autonomous vehicle coming from Tesla is around 50% for 2025, increasing from the 30% projection ARK held for 2024. Tesla’s increased focus on Neural Networks along with a quickly-growing vehicle fleet gives the automaker the possibility to scale an accurate and effective Robotaxi service, opening up the door for additional cash flow. ARK added that:

“If 60% of its vehicles equipped with Autopilot were to serve as robotaxis, Tesla could generate an additional $160 billion in EBITDA in 2025. In our bull case, ride-hail would account for the majority of Tesla’s enterprise value in 2025.”

ARK states that its bearish outlook shows Tesla shares could be worth around $1,500. Meanwhile, its bull case projects $4,000 per share. Interestingly, ARK’s projections do not model Tesla’s energy storage or solar business, nor did it include the recent $1.5 billion bitcoin investment, which has given Tesla significant profitability.

ARK’s full report is available here.

Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.

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Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Elon Musk

SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock

Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.

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Concept rendering of SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell overlooks the company’s Hawthorne, California headquarters as an American flag flies over the campus at sunset.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”

The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.

A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.

Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.

How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”

The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.

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Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla has a Cybercab problem nobody saw coming

Tesla’s Cybercab line now builds robotaxis faster than Tesla can deploy them, Lars Moravy says.

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Tesla’s Cybercab line in Texas can now build the two seat robotaxi faster than the company can put it into service, according to Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering. “We don’t run every day because the line can run so fast. It’s currently outpacing our deployments,” Moravy said in a new Cybercab deep dive from Munro Live. “So, it’s a bit of a race right now. Who’s going to go faster? Right now the manufacturing line’s ahead.”

Tesla’s official Robotaxi account shared a Cybercab analysis video on X on Monday, calling it a “Cybercab engineering deep dive.” Moravy’s comments go further than what he told analysts on the Q3 earnings call last week, when he said the Cybercab line’s listed capacity of more than 125,000 units a year undersells what it can actually run.

The tour shows where that speed comes from. Tesla’s unboxed process splits the Cybercab into front, rear, side and center modules that are built and tested on their own before they meet on a short final line. That final line has just 25 fully automated stations, which Tesla’s team estimated is a fifth to a tenth of what a Model Y needs. The full line is about 78% automated, the framing line is already at 100%, and the layout uses roughly 50% less floor space per vehicle. The stated goal is “100% automation in 10 second cycle time,” or one finished Cybercab every 10 seconds.

Tesla also deleted the paint shop. Only the side modules are coated, and the exterior panels get their color inside the molding machine. Engineers said the car is designed to run at least 500,000 miles, which matters for a vehicle that will spend most of its day carrying riders.

The battery got the same treatment. The Cybercab uses an 88S6P pack of 4680 cells in a steel enclosure, a first for Tesla, with each module potted separately so a single failed module can be swapped instead of the whole pack. Wireless battery management boards replace a wiring harness, and new contactors are fast enough to drop the pyro fuse entirely. Tesla’s battery director graded the pack an A minus, compared with a D for the Model Y structural pack and a B minus for Cybertruck. Up front, the drive unit runs an 11:1 gear ratio versus roughly 9:1 on most Teslas, since the Cybercab does not need a high top speed.

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The deployment side is now the bottleneck Moravy described. Tesla had more than 50 Cybercabs working the Formula 1 weekend in Austin, and Texas records show 463 Cybercabs registered. Tesla said on its earnings call that Cybercab service will launch in Dallas next month, and Moravy said the company is aiming to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of 2026. Every unit built so far has gone into Tesla’s own fleet since the line moved into volume production in April.

Munro Live also asked when it could get a Cybercab to tear down. Tesla’s answer: “Not yet.”

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Elon Musk

Tesla Q3 2026 Earnings results: in-line revenues, slight beat on EPS

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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the third quarter of 2026, marking a reasonable performance on the various financial metrics. Tesla still plans to hold a call that will field investor questions at 5:30 p.m. ET, 4:30 p.m. CT.

Here’s where Earnings came in:

  • Total Revenues: $28.046 reported vs. $28.34B expected
  • Non-GAAP EPS: $0.48 reported vs. $0.45 expected
  • Operating Margin: 2.6 % reported vs. 2.5% expected
  • Operating Income: $718M reported vs. $721M expected
  • Free Cash Flow: $1.531B reported vs. ~-$4.51B expected

Major Takeaways

Full Self-Driving (Supervised)

“FSD (Supervised)⁴ attach rate continued to grow, reaching over 75% of new vehicle deliveries in North America – our most mature market – a nearly twenty percentage point sequential increase. We believe that FSD is driving demand in markets where it is available, and we continue to work with regulators to get it approved in other markets.”

Tesla Semi

“We began volume production of Tesla Semi, our Class 8 heavy-duty truck. The top variant can go 500 miles at full 82,000 lbs gross combination weight while achieving an efficiency of 1.7 kWh/mile. That efficiency allows the Tesla Semi to use a third of the energy used by a comparable diesel truck to haul the same payload. In a transportation market where energy is one of the largest components of total cost per mile, this will provide a meaningful advantage to Tesla Semi operators.”

SI Compute

“We plan to reach 400 MW of SI training compute by the end of the year, supporting the development of both vehicle and humanoid robot autonomy software. Additionally, we continued construction for the Austin Fab, where we plan to start commissioning equipment in 2027.”

Robotaxi

“We began deployment of Cybercab into our Robotaxi fleet in Austin. We reached nearly two million cumulative unsupervised miles for our Robotaxi service as of the end of the quarter. Operating hours in Austin are now 6am to midnight, and we expect to reduce wait times via increased fleet supply and improvement of Robotaxi orchestration algorithms. Grok is available in Cybercab with access to Grok Bot and Connectors, which allows users to manage their inbox, calendars, files, chats and tasks – all hands free via voice command – making Cybercab a mode of transport, a productivity space and, with our entertainment options, a second living room.”

Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.

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