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Tesla remains volatile towards Q1’s end, analysts remain divided on Model 3 deliveries

(Credit: Vincent Yu/Twitter)

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Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) remains volatile as the electric car maker approaches the end of the first quarter, and as analysts continue to be divided over the company’s capability to deliver the Model 3 to buyers across North America, Europe, and China.

Ryan Brinkman at J.P. Morgan is among Tesla’s skeptics, recently reiterating his Underweight rating for TSLA stock in a note to clients. Brinkman lowered his price target from $230 to $215 per share over what he claimed were reports of delays in shipping the Model 3 to Europe and China. The J.P. Morgan analyst estimates that Model 3 deliveries for the first quarter will number 50,000 units, which are below the FactSet consensus of 54,600. 

“Any delays in delivering vehicles to Europe and China carry the potential for a disproportionate impact on 1Q deliveries (and, hence, revenue, margin, and cash flow), given the already guided back-end-loaded nature of 1Q deliveries,” Brinkman wrote.

Baird analyst Ben Kallo, a longtime TSLA bull, is taking a more optimistic stance. In a note on Thursday, Kallo stated that any updates from Tesla about the $35,000 Model 3 will likely be positive for the stock. Kallo reiterated his Outperform rating on the electric car maker, as well as his $465 price target, which is far ahead of FactSet’s average of ~$335 per share.

“Any update on Model 3 demand/backlog, particularly after the introduction of the $35,000 variant, would be positive for the stock. We think Tesla could provide an updated demand outlook or backlog (especially following the $35,000 model unveil), which we think could exceed expectations and would be positive for the stock,” Kallo wrote.

With Model 3 deliveries starting in Europe and China, and amidst the reduced federal tax credit in the United States, Tesla is fighting an uphill battle. Musk has previously admitted that Tesla might not be profitable this quarter, though he has nonetheless urged the company’s employees to push as many vehicles as possible. In his message, Musk noted that Tesla should aim to deliver as many as 30,000 vehicles in the last two weeks of March.

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Reports from the Tesla community in Europe and China depict an end-of-quarter push that is fully underway, with images and footage of full delivery centers being shared online. A Tesla owner-volunteer from China even shared in a social media post that one delivery center was able to deliver more than 200 Model 3 in one day. The next few days will determine if Tesla will be able to pull another rabbit out of the hat this quarter. If these reports of mass deliveries are any indication, there is a pretty fair chance that Tesla could defy the odds and pleasantly surprise Wall Street once more.

As of writing, Tesla stock is trading -0.07% at $278.20 per share.

Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.

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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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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.

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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.

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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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