Tesla Stock Is Down This Month But Elon Musk Just Said Robotaxi Expansion Is Coming
Tesla (TSLA) officially launched a limited robotaxi ride-hailing service on June 22 in Austin, Texas, but its been relatively quiet in terms of plans since then. That changed late Wednesday when CEO Elon Musk claimed Tesla plans to expand the service. TSLA stock advanced higher Thursday.
Musk wrote on his social media platform X Wednesday night that the EV giant’s robotaxi ride-hailing service will be “expanding” to a “larger service area in Austin this weekend.” Meanwhile, Musk added that Tesla plans to have robotaxi Model Y vehicles on the roads in the Bay Area of California soon.
“Waiting on regulatory approvals, but probably in a month or two,” Musk wrote on X late Wednesday.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, a longtime Tesla bull, wrote Thursday that Musk’s comments were “positive relative to the recent shift in investor sentiment regarding Tesla’s autonomous vehicle efforts.”
Tesla stock surged 4.7% to 309.87 at the close of Thursday’s stock market after falling about 0.7% to 295.88 on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Musk’s artificial intelligence business xAI launched Grok 4, the latest version of the AI model, late on Wednesday. There was no mention of Grok being integrated into Tesla vehicles during the presentation. However, Musk posted Thursday morning to X that “Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles very soon. Next week at the latest.”
Tesla stock on Monday sank 6.8% to 293.94. The session marked a decisive return to below the stock’s converged 200-day and 50-day moving averages. Last week, Tesla stock fell 2.6% to 315.35, also undercutting those key levels.
The decline leaves what had looked like a possible base-building effort by TSLA shares paused for now.
The stock initially soared after the robotaxi launch. However, overall Tesla stock is down about 4% since the June 22 service release.
Tesla Deliveries Expected To Decline
Last week, the EV giant reported 384,122 second-quarter vehicle deliveries, slightly below analyst consensus but not as low as some feared. The total was down 13.5% compared to a year ago while overall vehicle production ran nearly flat vs. a year earlier, when Tesla produced 410,831 EVs.
Before the deliveries release, Forbes reported that Musk fired Omead Afshar, Tesla’s head of operations in North America and Europe. Afshar began at Tesla in 2011 and, during his tenure, reportedly became one of Musk’s top lieutenants and most trusted allies.
At the end of last year, as Tesla predicted 20%-30% EV delivery growth in 2025, the Q2 consensus was 502,000 vehicles. Analysts forecast full-year deliveries declining 7% to 1.66 million, according to FactSet.
Tesla is now highlighting on its website that the Biden-era $7,500 EV tax credit disappears on Sept. 30 in an effort to drum up vehicle sales in the third quarter.
In a May 20 interview at Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Abu Dhabi, Musk said Tesla was not having any demand issues.
“We’ve lost some sales perhaps on the left but we’ve gained them on the right,” Musk said, referring to where consumers place along the political spectrum. Musk’s involvement with the controversial Department Of Government Efficiency had stirred protests and boycotts among those on the left.
