For Tesla, yesterday, it was robots; today, it’s full self-driving (FSD).
Tesla (TSLA 5.42%) stock has been on a bit of a roll this week. Shares jumped more than 4% yesterday and popped another 7% in Thursday morning trading. As of 10:45 a.m. ET, Tesla stock was still trading higher by 6.3%.
It’s not because Tesla said it was selling more cars. In fact, yesterday’s jump came when CEO Elon Musk posted about robots, not cars. But today was more closely tied to its core electric vehicle (EV) business. More specifically, the company laid out a timeline for its highly anticipated full self-driving (FSD) rollout.
FSD revenue would juice earnings
Musk posted yesterday that he had visited Tesla’s engineering offices in California. He added, “Most good, some bad. The future is going to be wild. There will be so many robots.” That had some investors buying shares with Tesla’s robotics unit in mind. The company hopes its Optimus humanoid robots will eventually become ubiquitous in factories, warehouses, and even households.
That would add to Tesla’s future earnings power. However, its FSD software is already bringing in revenue from Tesla EV owners using the latest version. That version still requires driver interaction, but software updates are continuously improving the system.
Now, the company posted a timeline on social media for upcoming software updates. Just as importantly, Tesla plans to offer its latest FSD version to customers in Europe and China beginning in the first quarter of 2025.
That would immediately add highly profitable revenue for the company and has investors excited today. An upcoming robotaxi event planned for Oct. 10 will provide more detail about its autonomous driving aspirations.
A concrete software update schedule and added sales definitely grabbed investors’ attention today. The rollout of FSD to China and Europe still requires regulatory approval. But the company expects to clear that hurdle by the end of the year. If the company meets its newly released schedule, buyers of the stock today could be rewarded down the road.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings