Tesla's Stock Is Making A 'Quiet Comeback' By Surging More Than 30% Since August

Since Musk decided to deeply participate in the election campaign, Tesla, which was previously mired in rumors and various market speculations, seems to have finally gotten a breather: as everyone's attention is focused on the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut, the verbal spat between Trump and Harris, and Apple's latest iPhone, Musk's electric car factory has quietly recouped all of this year's losses in the past few months.

Since August 7th, Tesla's stock price has risen by 30%, and if the time frame is extended to the "past six months", Tesla's increase would be close to 45%. On Monday, Tesla's stock closed up 5% again, and the stock price has risen another 2% in pre-market trading.

In the view of analysts, the highly anticipated debut of the robotaxi and the third-quarter sales data are the main reasons for the most recent lift. In early October, Tesla will announce the delivery volume for the third quarter, and currently, Wall Street analysts estimate that the quarterly sales will grow by 6% compared to last year, reaching about 460,000 electric vehicles. And on October 10th, after several months of delays, Tesla's previously publicized Robotaxi will officially debut.

Barclays analyst Daniel Levy said in a bullish report to investors on Monday that he expects Tesla's delivery volume to exceed this consensus estimate. Levy predicts that Tesla will deliver about 470,000 electric vehicles, which will be an 8% increase from last year. He pointed out that despite the sales performance in China being far behind the competitor BYD, sales in China will rise.

Given the positive data points reported thus far in the quarter, particularly in China, we believe Tesla's sales trajectory is well understood and investors are expecting a stronger result, Levy wrote.

Over the past year, Tesla has faced many high-profile issues - from major safety issues and mass recalls to factory closures, layoffs, and intensified competition in China. In the spring of this year, three senior Tesla executives resigned. However, after the disappointing first-quarter earnings report, Tesla performed better than expected in the following quarter - the second-quarter delivery volume was close to 440,000, easily exceeding analysts' expectations - and price cuts were considered the key factor driving this rebound.

In terms of autonomous driving taxis, Wall Street believes that the event on October 10th will include a demonstration of the latest version of full self-driving (FSD), that is, version 12.5 or higher, as well as a demonstration of fully autonomous driving autonomous driving taxis, or cyber-taxis, driving on a closed/semi-closed course.

Musk is betting that his company can succeed in a difficult market, just as he has done in the space travel and brain chip industries. However, at least for now, the results of introducing autonomous driving taxis into urban traffic have been chaotic and can even be described as disastrous.

For example, Alphabet's Waymo was investigated by the U.S. government after crashes and traffic violations in the spring of this year and recalled nearly 700 driverless cars in June. However, Waymo recently announced a decision to expand its partnership with Uber to bring its taxis to more cities.

General Motors' Cruise (GM) suspended operations after an accident where an autonomous taxi hit a pedestrian and dragged her nearly 6 meters, but now it will also return to the road. At the same time, the previously popular Radish Run has recently been embroiled in rumors of traffic accidents and government emergency stop.

Musk once said that he believes the roads of the future world will be filled with autonomous vehicles, but from the current situation, it seems that the future in Musk's mouth is still far away. Starting on the 10th of next month, Tesla will have its opportunity to prove whether the company can shift public opinion toward the future envisioned by Musk.