Investor's Corner
Tesla stock: Morgan Stanley pumps the brakes and lowers PT ahead of earnings
Analysts at Morgan Stanley pumped the brakes on Tesla stock by lowering its price target ahead of the automaker’s Earnings Call late this week.
Tesla shares are down 15 percent so far this year. Over the past year, shares are up 66 percent, but moving into 2024, some bulls are remaining cautious.
Morgan Stanley is one of them. In a note to investors released on Monday, analysts at the firm noted there are several factors that could spell trouble for global demand, including increased competition, pricing instability, and slowing demand for EVs.
Tesla will report Earnings on Wednesday. The company reached its 1.8 million unit delivery goal in 2023. It also dominated EV deliveries in the United States and Europe and was toward the top of the list in China. It launched the Cybertruck, a new Model 3 design, and has plenty of other catalysts moving into 2024. However, an ever-changing landscape, more competition, and other factors have Morgan Stanley proceeding with increased caution for the year.
In a note from analysts at the firm, they wrote about the potential risks for the stock this year:
“Global EV momentum is stalling. The market is over-supplied vs. demand. We anticipate Tesla’s 2024 outlook to be cautious on volume and profitability…Tough sledding for EVs but we remain OW on AI and robotics optionality.”
Adam Jonas listed several risk factors for the stock in the note, which include price cuts, weakening or expiration of EV incentives, excess capacity in China, residual value risks, and fleets cutting EV concentration.
Price Cuts
Tesla is still working on pricing stability, which improved greatly throughout 2023 but still offered some concern for investors. Less expensive EVs equate to increased adoption, but it also puts pressure on margins and profitability for the company.
Tesla has already cut prices in China and Europe this year, which is concerning from Morgan Stanley’s standpoint:
“Tesla has already announced price cuts in China and Europe that matched or exceeded our prior expectations of price reductions for the full year 2024. The German Tesla price cuts came merely days after Tesla announced production cuts at Giga Berlin related to Red Sea shipping issues. Lower production is usually positive for prices. This suggests the European EV situation is changing quite rapidly.”
Expiration/Weakening of EV Incentives
In the U.S. especially, Tesla is adjusting the narratives that surround some of its vehicles and their eligibility for EV tax credits. Two Model 3 configurations lost the tax credit, and as it is one of the best-selling EVs in Tesla’s lineup, it is not a positive, although the car is still affordable.
Morgan Stanley is also skeptical about the future of the IRA, stating it looks to be “increasingly uncertain.”
Some consumers are in need of these incentives to purchase the vehicle, and even if they are not a necessity, they are a benefit. It could sway many consumers in the direction of other vehicles. It is important to note that Volkswagen, BMW, Audi, and Ford also lost tax credit eligibility on some of their EVs.
Excess Capacity in China
Morgan Stanley said its Chinese team noted sales cannibalization, increased battery capacity and inventory, and the expiration of “certain local stimulus measures” as reasons Tesla may feel the heat.
Residual Value Risks
Price cuts from OEMs have pressured EV residuals, and dealerships are less bullish on electric cars than ever. Jonas writes that residual value volatility “hurts the value proposition for consumers and creates uncertainty around leasing partners who don’t want to hold this risk.” This includes Tesla.
Tesla’s leasing penetration is in the low single digits globally, Morgan Stanley notes.
Fleets Cutting EVs
Hertz made a drastic announcement earlier this month, stating it would backtrack its massive commitment to EVs as it did not properly account for the cost of damages. One-third of its EV fleet is being sold off, and a portion of the proceeds will go back into combustion engine vehicles.
Other companies are doing this as well on a smaller scale. Fleets offer a few advantages, including a large boost to orders for EV makers. Hertz planned to buy 100,000 Teslas, for example.
They also give drivers an opportunity to drive EVs before buying. While this will still be available, it will be less widespread.
Price Target Downgrade
Morgan Stanley moved its price target to $345 from $380.
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.
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.
However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.
Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.
Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.
Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.
He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.
Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.
Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.
That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.
🚨 These are the first-ever FSD safety statistics out of the Netherlands, showing it was over 3.5x safer than human driving on Dutch roads.
The most recent numbers out of Tesla for North America show:
-Over 5.5 million miles between accidents for Teslas using FSD
-660k miles… https://t.co/XKlRzgSGEh pic.twitter.com/HX6kzh0ZKc— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.
“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
