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

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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.

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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.

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:

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“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

Tesla to a $100T market cap? Elon Musk’s response may shock you

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There are a lot of Tesla bulls out there who have astronomical expectations for the company, especially as its arm of reach has gone well past automotive and energy and entered artificial intelligence and robotics.

However, some of the most bullish Tesla investors believe the company could become worth $100 trillion, and CEO Elon Musk does not believe that number is completely out of the question, even if it sounds almost ridiculous.

To put that number into perspective, the top ten most valuable companies in the world — NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Saudi Aramco, Broadcom, and Tesla — are worth roughly $26 trillion.

Will Tesla join the fold? Predicting a triple merger with SpaceX and xAI

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Cathie Wood of ARK Invest believes the number is reasonable considering Tesla’s long-reaching industry ambitions:

“…in the world of AI, what do you have to have to win? You have to have proprietary data, and think about all the proprietary data he has, different kinds of proprietary data. Tesla, the language of the road; Neuralink, multiomics data; nobody else has that data. X, nobody else has that data either. I could see $100 trillion. I think it’s going to happen because of convergence. I think Tesla is the leading candidate [for $100 trillion] for the reason I just said.”

Musk said late last year that all of his companies seem to be “heading toward convergence,” and it’s started to come to fruition. Tesla invested in xAI, as revealed in its Q4 Earnings Shareholder Deck, and SpaceX recently acquired xAI, marking the first step in the potential for a massive umbrella of companies under Musk’s watch.

SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise

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Now that it is happening, it seems Musk is even more enthusiastic about a massive valuation that would swell to nearly four-times the value of the top ten most valuable companies in the world currently, as he said on X, the idea of a $100 trillion valuation is “not impossible.”

Tesla is not just a car company. With its many projects, including the launch of Robotaxi, the progress of the Optimus robot, and its AI ambitions, it has the potential to continue gaining value at an accelerating rate.

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Musk’s comments show his confidence in Tesla’s numerous projects, especially as some begin to mature and some head toward their initial stages.

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Tesla director pay lawsuit sees lawyer fees slashed by $100 million

The ruling leaves the case’s underlying settlement intact while significantly reducing what the plaintiffs’ attorneys will receive.

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Credit: Tesla China

The Delaware Supreme Court has cut more than $100 million from a legal fee award tied to a shareholder lawsuit challenging compensation paid to Tesla directors between 2017 and 2020. 

The ruling leaves the case’s underlying settlement intact while significantly reducing what the plaintiffs’ attorneys will receive.

Delaware Supreme Court trims legal fees

As noted in a Bloomberg Law report, the case targeted pay granted to Tesla directors, including CEO Elon Musk, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Kimbal Musk, and Rupert Murdoch. The Delaware Chancery Court had awarded $176 million to the plaintiffs. Tesla’s board must also return stock options and forego years worth of pay. 

As per Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. in an opinion for the Delaware Supreme Court’s full five-member panel, however, the decision of the Delaware Chancery Court to award $176 million to a pension fund’s law firm “erred by including in its financial benefit analysis the intrinsic value” of options being returned by Tesla’s board.

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The justices then reduced the fee award from $176 million to $70.9 million. “As we measure it, $71 million reflects a reasonable fee for counsel’s efforts and does not result in a windfall,” Chief Justice Seitz wrote.

Other settlement terms still intact

The Supreme Court upheld the settlement itself, which requires Tesla’s board to return stock and options valued at up to $735 million and to forgo three years of additional compensation worth about $184 million. 

Tesla argued during oral arguments that a fee award closer to $70 million would be appropriate. Interestingly enough, back in October, Justice Karen L. Valihura noted that the $176 award was $60 million more than the Delaware judiciary’s budget from the previous year. This was quite interesting as the case was “settled midstream.”

The lawsuit was brought by a pension fund on behalf of Tesla shareholders and focused exclusively on director pay during the 2017–2020 period. The case is separate from other high-profile compensation disputes involving Elon Musk.

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Tesla Litigation by Simon Alvarez

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Investor's Corner

Tesla (TSLA) Q4 and FY 2025 earnings call: The most important points

Executives, including CEO Elon Musk, discussed how the company is positioning itself for growth across vehicles, energy, AI, and robotics despite near-term pressures from tariffs, pricing, and macro conditions.

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Credit: @AdanGuajardo/X

Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Q4 and FY 2025 earnings call highlighted improving margins, record energy performance, expanding autonomy efforts, and a sharp acceleration in AI and robotics investments. 

Executives, including CEO Elon Musk, discussed how the company is positioning itself for growth across vehicles, energy, AI, and robotics despite near-term pressures from tariffs, pricing, and macro conditions.

Key takeaways

Tesla reported sequential improvement in automotive gross margins excluding regulatory credits, rising from 15.4% to 17.9%, supported by favorable regional mix effects despite a 16% decline in deliveries. Total gross margin exceeded 20.1%, the highest level in more than two years, even with lower fixed-cost absorption and tariff impacts.

The energy business delivered standout results, with revenue reaching nearly $12.8 billion, up 26.6% year over year. Energy gross profit hit a new quarterly record, driven by strong global demand and high deployments of MegaPack and Powerwall across all regions, as noted in a report from The Motley Fool.

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Tesla also stated that paid Full Self-Driving customers have climbed to nearly 1.1 million worldwide, with about 70% having purchased FSD outright. The company has now fully transitioned FSD to a subscription-based sales model, which should create a short-term margin headwind for automotive results.

Free cash flow totaled $1.4 billion for the quarter. Operating expenses rose by $500 million sequentially as well.

Production shifts, robotics, and AI investment

Musk further confirmed that Model S and Model X production is expected to wind down next quarter, and plans are underway to convert Fremont’s S/X line into an Optimus robot factory with a capacity of one million units.

Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet has surpassed 500 vehicles, operating across the Bay Area and Austin, with Musk noting a rapid monthly expansion pace. He also reiterated that CyberCab production is expected to begin in April, following a slow initial S-curve ramp before scaling beyond other vehicle programs.

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Looking ahead, Tesla expects its capital expenditures to exceed $20 billion next year, thanks to the company’s operations across its six factories, the expansion of its fleet expansion, and the ramp of its AI compute. Additional investments in AI chips, compute infrastructure, and future in-house semiconductor manufacturing were discussed but are not included in the company’s current CapEx guidance.

More importantly, Tesla ended the year with a larger backlog than in recent years. This is supported by record deliveries in smaller international markets and stronger demand across APAC and EMEA. Energy backlog remains strong globally as well, though Tesla cautioned that margin pressure could emerge from competition, policy uncertainty, and tariffs. 

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