Investor's Corner
Tesla’s Robotaxi unveiling event sets the tone for 2030 and beyond: Morgan Stanley
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed the automaker would bring its Robotaxi to light during an unveiling event on August 8.
The influence of the vehicle and the prospect of fully autonomous technology is much bigger than a single-day event, and Morgan Stanley wrote in a new note to investors that the unveiling could set the tone for beyond 2030.
“We first began writing about the investment considerations of a potential Tesla robotaxi business since we began modeling ‘Tesla Mobility’ back in 2015 when Tesla’s market cap was barely $30bn,” Adam Jonas, lead analyst for Morgan Stanley, wrote. “We had (mistakenly) expected the company to formally launch a highly automated ride-share service back in 2018. Nearly a decade later, we’re still waiting. August 8th will offer some important clues.”
Tesla has fended off bearish tones for the past year, especially as the stock has taken hits due to an increased number of competitors and a decreasing market share in crucial markets like China.
The automaker also stated that its growth this year would lag due to the development of the next-generation platform, which includes the Robotaxi and the rumored $25,000 vehicle.
Since then, Tesla has reported less-than-expected delivery and production figures for Q1, and fended off false reports that it had ditched the $25,000 vehicle in China.
However, in a long-term perspective, these issues are simply speed bumps in what is a long and winding road to what could potentially be the most groundbreaking product in the last 100 years.
Morgan Stanley believes that “Tesla has many attributes that can make it a formidable player (if not an outright winner) in the race to autonomy” and that it believes “the more material commercial scaling of the business would be well beyond 2030.”
The Five Pillars for Tesla’s Robotaxi Unveiling
Morgan Stanley lists five main pillars for the August 8th unveiling of the Robotaxi:
- Recognition that making and selling EVs in a traditional consumer model may not create lasting economic value
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- While many companies are selling cars, few are advancing the entire industry. Tesla needs to show how it will lead the way on August 8.
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- Recruiting Exercise
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- Other Tesla events have been a great way to attract the brightest and smartest talent to the company. This could be the latest edition of Tesla’s recruiting efforts.
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- Path to commercialization of true robotaxis (no steering wheels) at scale will be both long-dated and volatile
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- There are a lot of bumps in the road that will come with this, including legal, regulatory, moral, and ethical factors. Morgan Stanley is bullish on the long-term growth of L4/L5 autonomy, but in the short-term, expect some growing pains.
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- Emblematic of bigger shift Tesla’s business model to real-world/hard-tech AI and robotics
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- This will shift Tesla’s business model from less auto and more AI and software-based.
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- August 8th may reignite the conversation around whether Tesla is worth inclusion in an AI conversation
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- Tesla can capture value with a notable and strong event. However, some may still be concerned about its reliance on NVIDIA.
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Morgan Stanley still holds the same $310 price target and an ‘Overweight’ rating on the stock.
Disclosure: Joey Klender owns Tesla stock.
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Investor's Corner
Tesla crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.
Tesla reported it delivered 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.
Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.
For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.
Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.
Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
Tesla brings Model Y L ‘Launch Series’ to the U.S. at $61,990
Tesla just told us twice that Model Y L is coming to the U.S.
