On Monday, investors were excited about a report from a Tesla TSLA 3.69% worker on Saturday.
A tweet from Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s vice president of AI software, on Saturday night said that customers could now start using version 13 of Full Self-Driving, Tesla’s most advanced driving assistance software.
A lot of people who pay $99 a month for FSD software are still on a version that starts with 12.
Part of the release notes said that the new version “improves every part of the end-to-end driving network.” Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, replied to Elluswamy’s tweet with “It’s Alive!”
After the movie came out, videos on X started going around showing Teslas backing out of parking spots. That’s something new.
Investors always keep a close eye on what’s going on in the FSD. Tesla thinks this is the product that will eventually make the millions of Tesla cars on the road truly self-driving.
This means that FSD can drive most of the time, but it always needs to be watched by a person.
When asked in November, Musk said that FSD should be better than human drivers by early 2025. The company also plans to start a robotaxi service later that year.
Tesla trains its cars to drive themselves with AI computers. Analyst Dan Ives at Wedbush thinks that the company’s AI/self-driving potential is worth $1 trillion.
He thinks shares are a good buy and thinks the stock will go up to $400.
In pre-market trading, Tesla stock was up 1.5% to $350.29. Futures for the S&P 500 (SPX) were down 0.6% and futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) were down 0.2%.
As of Monday, Tesla stock had gained about 39% this year, while the S&P 500 had gained about 26%. Almost 37% more people own Tesla stock now than they did on November 5.
Musk backed Donald Trump for president-elect and has agreed to work as a consultant to get rid of waste at the Department of Government Efficiency, which was just created. Investors think that Musk’s closeness to Trump will offer Tesla a number of benefits, including fewer onerous government rules on self-driving cars.
That will help Tesla’s business start up its robot cab service. Of course, rules can’t fix the problem of cars that drive themselves. That’s what Tesla’s tech has to do.
When Tesla starts its robotaxi service, it will go up against Waymo from Alphabet (GOOGL -0.17%), which does more than 150,000 self-driving taxi rides every week.
