Investor's Corner
Tesla 2024: What analysts are saying about outlook for the New Year
Tesla closed out 2023 with a bang, reporting record deliveries for a calendar year and eclipsing the 1.8 million unit production goal that was set at the beginning of the year.
Now, 2024 is here, and analysts are putting into scope what could come from Tesla this year. There are a lot of rumors of what the automaker could bring to the table this year, including its rumored $25,000 vehicle, revamps of the Model 3 coming to the United States, and a new version of the Model Y hitting the scene. Tesla will also look to ramp up production of the Cybertruck this year.
Tesla Model 3 Highland delivery from Fremont expected by the end of Q1 2024
Analysts are split on what they expect from Tesla in 2024, while the bulls are being bulls and the bears are being bears. What else should we expect, right?
But for what it is worth, in order to get a well-rounded perspective of what might be on the way, we are looking at both sides of the argument, highlighting what Tesla’s supporting analysts are expecting from the company in 2024. Inversely, we will also look at the more pessimistic analysts, and why they feel 2024 could be the most challenging year for Tesla yet.
Bullish Sentiments
Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas is one of the bulls in the Tesla story, and he projects roughly 2.25 million vehicle deliveries this year.
Additionally, Jonas feels that the true indication of Tesla’s dominance will be felt outside of China, where it has struggled to keep up with domestic automakers. Instead, the focus is in the United States and Europe:
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“Outside of China, we struggle to see anyone who can compete with Tesla at this stage. We don’t think it’s a coincidence at all that Tesla’s ‘stepped up’ engagement with foreign countries comes at a time when China has surpassed Japan as the largest exporter of passenger cars.”
Jonas maintained a $380 price target on the stock.
Meanwhile, Jefferies reiterated a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock but raised its 12-month price target to $255 from $210 after reporting its 2023 volume.
A note from analysts at the firm stated that, although there were no significant changes in volume, there was a decrease in leasing adoption and above-expected delivery numbers for “Other Models,” meaning Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck. These could indicate an easier 4680 battery production ramp, or, perhaps, a better-than-expected Cybertruck ramp-up as the early months of the project continue on.
Analysts from Jefferies wrote (via Investing):
“High deliveries of Cybertrucks in Q4 may not help 2023 profitability and we continue to see the vehicle as Off-Mission. Still, it would suggest an earlier or smoother ramp manufacturing 4680 cells or trucks than feared.”
Bearish Narratives
The Bear argument is one that many firms continue to maintain, and Deutsche Bank is one, especially as the firm sees a “large downside risk” on Tesla stock moving forward.
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Analysts from the firm see guidance of 2.1 million units being realistic, as well as a veer-away from the 50 percent CAGR over the mid-term.
The risk comes from reduced volume forecast due to market assumptions, pricing pressures, the Cybertruck’s potential impact on Tesla’s strong margins, and an elevated tax rate in China.
Additionally, Toni Sacconaghi believes the auotmaker could fall 40 percent this year, especially as margin pressure comes to the forefront. He also believes Tesla will “disappoint on volumes.”
Sacconaghi said in December Tesla was the best stock to short heading into the New Year, and while he reiterated his $150 price target on the stock, the analyst seems to share the same sentiments as Deutsche Bank. Margins are the focus for bears in 2024, and Tesla has some of the best in the automotive industry for years.
Tesla shares were down roughly 3.75 percent at the time of publish, trading around $239 a share.
Disclosure: I own Tesla shares.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
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— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
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Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
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Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
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