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Tesla bull posts 10 actions Elon Musk must do to improve sentiments on TSLA

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Longtime Tesla bull Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities has been pretty vocal about his reservations surrounding CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter activities and their potentially adverse effects on TSLA stock. But while Ives has expressed his concerns about Musk and his leadership of Twitter, the analyst has maintained an overall bullish stance on the EV maker. 

Ives has a $175 per share price target and an “Outperform” rating for Tesla, and in a recent note, Ives stated that CEO Elon Musk must initiate a number of actions to ensure that the negative sentiments surrounding the company are addressed in 2023. These actions cover several decisions surrounding Musk’s activities on both Twitter and Tesla. Among these actions is Musk naming a CEO for Twitter by the end of next month. 

Ives also highlighted that Musk must focus his attention back on Tesla, and he must also stop selling stock carelessly. The Wedbush analyst noted that Musk must formally adopt a 10b5-1 plan. This way, Tesla investors would not be caught off guard by the CEO’s TSLA stock sales. Perhaps most importantly, Ives also argued that Musk’s political statements are affecting Tesla and the EV sector negatively.

Following are Ives’ suggestions

Top 10 Actions Musk Needs to Do at Tesla/Twitter in 2023

  • Name a CEO of Twitter by the end of January.
  • Stop selling stock and no more boy that cried wolf or Pinocchio situation. Formally adopt a 10b5-1 plan so investors know there is no major selling block around the corner as Musk sold roughly $40 billion of TSLA stock the past year.
  • Lay out conservative 2023 delivery and targets given the darker macro. The 50% growth target is not happening in our opinion, with 35%+ delivery growth a more hittable and realistic goal for 2023.
  • Focus attention back on Tesla, not Twitter (goes hand in hand with new Twitter CEO being named). Musk is the hearts and lung of Tesla and vice versa.
  • Announce Cybertruck deliveries will hit the road by the end of 2023. Timing is key here with competition from all angles and worries production woes will push this into 2024. Giga Austin is up and running and now key to hitting this next growth endeavor for Tesla.
  • Board of Directors changes with some more experience around tech and EV leadership. We believe new additions to the Board would be welcomed by the Street at this tenuous time.
  • Buybacks, Buybacks, Buybacks. Announcing a major stock buyback program is important/key for the Street’s confidence and with the stock at these levels a no brainer strategic move in our opinion for Tesla given its massive treasure chest.
  • More financial metrics and transparency around the margin structure at Tesla. We believe this is a hidden gem at the company with more production/sales in China and Giga Berlin and Austin ramping. Long term margin targets will be key for the Street.
  • The more political on Twitter that Musk becomes is a bad thing for selling EV cars to the masses. It’s that simple and this remains a key investor concern.
  • Lay out the strategic plan for Twitter. Right now very simply the fear is Twitter is bleeding money with advertisers fleeing (for now) which means more losses and therefore more Musk TSLA stock sales. Once a new CEO is in place lay out the 3- year strategy of Twitter and what this can become, Super App, “X”, WeChat 2.0, etc.

Ives’ 10 suggestions for Elon Musk have been received quite well on social media, with some Tesla bulls noting that the actions were sound and logical. Others, however, have noted that Tesla would be fine even if Musk does not follow any of Wedbush’s suggestions, as the electric vehicle maker’s fundamentals remain strong

Disclosure: Maria holds TSLA shares. 

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The Teslarati team would appreciate hearing from you. If you have any tips, contact me at maria@teslarati.com or via Twitter @Writer_01001101.

Maria--aka "M"-- is an experienced writer and book editor. She's written about several topics including health, tech, and politics. As a book editor, she's worked with authors who write Sci-Fi, Romance, and Dark Fantasy. M loves hearing from TESLARATI readers. If you have any tips or article ideas, contact her at maria@teslarati.com or via X, @Writer_01001101.

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Tesla Cybercab is coming to Asia this month as US service officially begins

Tesla Asia says Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai this month.

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Concept image of Tesla Cybercab in the streets of Hong Kong via Grok
Concept image of Tesla Cybercab in the streets of Hong Kong via Grok

Tesla’s Cybercab is heading to Asia. The official Tesla Asia account posted on X Thursday, inviting Cybercab fans to “Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai.” The post went up within hours of Tesla’s own Cybercab milestone in Texas, where the company said Thursday it had begun offering rides in across Austin.

Exact dates and venues for the Asia tour haven’t been released yet, though Tesla Hong Kong replied to the announcement with “Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong soon,” while Tesla Japan’s response pointed fans to a sign up page for updates. Neither post mentions test rides or a service area, and nothing so far suggests Tesla is launching Robotaxi operations in any of the four cities. Based on how Tesla has run past Cybercab tours, in Europe in late 2024 and at US shopping centers that same December, the Asia stops are almost certainly static displays at Tesla stores or public venues as a means to stimulate buzz for its future driverless ride-hailing service in the big cities.

The timing lines up with Tesla’s only prior Cybercab appearance in the region, a booth at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai last November, which Teslarati covered at the time. At that event, Tesla’s regional general manager for Shanghai framed the car as evidence of the company’s broader mission, a message Tesla has since formalized in its Master Plan Part IV, which states that “autonomous vehicles have the capacity to dramatically improve the affordability, availability and safety of transportation while reducing pollution, particularly in our increasingly dense global cities.” The same document is where Tesla lays out its “sustainable abundance” framing for Cybercab and Optimus alike, describing the two as the hardware behind an AI driven push to cut the cost of transportation and labor at scale.

Whether Cybercab actually operates as a robotaxi anywhere in Asia remains an open question, considering China has already pushed an autonomous ride-hailing market that’s run on homegrown players like Baidu’s Apollo Go and Pony AI. For now, the four city tour reads as a marketing push timed to Austin’s momentum.

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OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership

OpenAI will cut SpaceX-owned Cursor’s model access in November, citing Musk’s history of broken contracts.

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OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced late Friday that it is ending its partnership with Cursor, cutting off the coding tool’s access to its models on November 12. The move comes two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, folding the popular AI coding assistant into Elon Musk’s growing SpaceXAI division.

In a post on its website, OpenAI said the decision came down to trust, not technology. “We cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts,” the company wrote. OpenAI pointed to two specific incidents: X, now part of SpaceX, allegedly breaking the terms of an existing OpenAI contract after Musk bought Twitter.

That lawsuit is the backdrop for all of this. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015, left the board in 2018, and sued Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, arguing they abandoned the company’s nonprofit mission for profit. A federal jury sided with OpenAI in May, finding Musk waited too long to sue rather than ruling on the merits of his claims. Musk said at the time he would appeal to the Ninth Circuit, calling the outcome a “calendar technicality” rather than a real judgment.

Elon Musk breaks silence on OpenAI trial decision

SpaceX’s interest in Cursor predates that verdict by weeks. The company first struck a deal with Cursor in April, securing an option to acquire it for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for joint development work instead. As Teslarati reported at the time, the logic was straightforward: Cursor was paying retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its most direct competitors, every time a developer used its product, while SpaceX had idle capacity on its Colossus supercomputer, roughly the equivalent of a million Nvidia H100 GPUs, that Cursor could use to train its own models instead. SpaceX exercised the option in June, days after its own IPO, and the deal closed in mid-August.

Once it closed, Musk moved fast. On an all-hands call with more than 1,000 Cursor employees, he reportedly told staff that SpaceXAI’s Grok was playing catchup in the AI race, unlike Tesla and SpaceX in their own markets, and singled out Anthropic as the company to catch. Cursor CEO Michael Truell now reports directly to Musk inside SpaceXAI.

Elon Musk admits he was ‘clearly wrong’ about Anthropic

Losing OpenAI’s models leaves Cursor leaning harder on Anthropic’s Claude, which has its own compute agreement with SpaceX, and on Cursor’s in-house Composer model, the one SpaceX’s compute was supposed to accelerate in the first place. OpenAI framed the November deadline as maximum notice under its contract, and said it wants to “go above and beyond” to help developers through the transition. Whether Anthropic makes the same call is now the open question in AI coding.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada

Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.

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Concept art of a Tesla Cybercab in Las Vegas Strip as rendered via Grok

Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.

The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.

That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.

Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.

Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.

The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.

Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.

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