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Tesla maintains “Overweight” rating from Piper Sandler

Credit: Tesla Asia/X

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Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) received a reiterated “Overweight” rating and a $300 per share price target from Piper Sandler. The firm’s insights came after analysts hosted two events that were focused on Tesla’s energy division and the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) program. 

As noted in an Investing.com report, Piper Sandler’s first event involved a visit to the Lathrop Megafactory, which produces the electric vehicle maker’s Megapack batteries, as well as an FSD webinar with Elias Martinez, the creator of the community tracker that monitors data from Tesla’s FSD program. The firm also urged investors to own TSLA stock ahead of the company’s planned dedicated Robotaxi event this coming October 10, 2024. 

Tesla Energy has seen a notable rise over the past few quarters, with the business seeing record deployment in Q2 with 9.4 GWh of total deployments. Tesla Energy also achieved record revenues and gross profit during the quarter. A lot of this was due to the ramp of the Megapack at the Lathrop Megafactory. 

Piper Sandler analysts had a number of takeaways following their visit to Tesla’s Lathrop Megafactory. Following are five of the most notable. 

  1. Competition is rising in the stationary battery storage market, but global demand remains strong. 
  2. By 2030, the market will need about 2 TWh of batteries. That’s an estimated 20x increase from the industry’s 2023 levels. 
  3. To win contracts, Tesla leverages its ecosystem, which includes its software and inverters, instead of focusing its strategy on offering the lowest prices in the segment. 
  4. Each Megapack battery can weigh over 80,000 pounds. This makes shipping costly, and it highlights the need for local production. 
  5. Tesla Energy operates on a project basis, which leads to fluctuations in quarterly results. 

FSD is steadily becoming an increasingly important part of Tesla’s business. The progress of the program itself has been very impressive, with users reaching 1.6 billion cumulative miles driven with FSD as of the end of the second quarter.

Following are Piper Sandler’s takeaways from its FSD webinar. 

  1. Data submissions to the Tesla FSD community tracker tend to increase in the one or two months following the release of new FSD versions.
  2. Participants in the tracker are generally diligent, level-headed, and objective. They also use FSD regularly. Piper Sandler analysts noted, however, that biased outliers can be identified and removed from the data. 
  3. The latest FSD version, V12.5.x, can travel 220-251 miles between critical disengagements. This represents an improvement over previous iterations. 
  4. Despite v12.5.x seeing some improvements, its overall performance has slightly regressed since its initial release. This was potentially due to Tesla preparing it for Hardware 3.0 vehicles. 
  5. Observing the system’s improvement trend is more useful for understanding FSD’s progress, instead of tracking exact numbers. 

Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet

Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.

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Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.

Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”

The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.

Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.

Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking

The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.

Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Cybercabs narrowly miss deadly Amazon cargo plane crash

An Amazon cargo plane crash near Miami’s airport stopped feet from dozens of Tesla Cybercabs.

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Photorealistic depiction of the Amazon Prime plane crash in Miami on Sep 3, 2026 near a fleet of Tesla Cybercab
Photorealistic depiction of the Amazon Prime plane crash in Miami on Sep 3, 2026 near a fleet of Tesla Cybercab

An Amazon Prime Air Boeing 767 cargo jet overran the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, killing five people and injuring five more. The jet, operated by North Carolina based carrier 21 Air as Flight 7598, touched down around 2 p.m. after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, then crossed the airport perimeter, plowed across NW 67th Avenue and struck multiple vehicles before catching fire, according to the Associated Press.

Photos and video from the scene show the aircraft’s nose stopped within meters of a fenced staging lot holding dozens of gold painted Tesla Cybercabs, the steering wheel free robotaxi Tesla began putting on public roads in Austin last week. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue has confirmed the plane struck “multiple vehicles” but has not said whether any Cybercabs were among them, and neither Tesla nor airport officials have addressed the fleet directly.

The Cybercabs had not yet entered commercial service in Miami. Tesla’s existing Robotaxi operation there runs on modified Model Y vehicles and has been unsupervised since Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the detail on X in July.


Elon Musk offered the briefest of reactions. Replying to a Zero Hedge post about the Cybercabs sitting so close to the wreckage, he wrote a single word: “Weird.” He has not commented further, and Tesla has not issued a statement.

The timing puts Tesla’s newest vehicle near an unrelated but highly visible tragedy just days after its Austin debut, a launch that had already drawn scrutiny from federal regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit how Tesla certified the Cybercab as compliant with federal vehicle safety standards, a process Teslarati covered after the vehicle’s September 3 launch event. That inquiry concerns the car’s lack of a steering wheel and pedals, not the Miami crash.

Investigators from the FAA and NTSB are focused on the plane, not the parking lot beside it. Flight data reviewed by outlets including Simple Flying show the 767 touched down around 170 knots, well above the 135 to 140 knot range typical for the aircraft, though investigators have not determined a cause. Amazon said it is working with authorities and that its priority is the safety of everyone affected.

Whether any Cybercabs were damaged, and what Tesla plans for the fleet parked near one of the country’s busiest airports, remain open questions.

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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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