Tesla and CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday teased on social media the imminent robotaxi service launch. However, an official date for the service has not yet been announced. TSLA shares continued to rebound during Tuesday's stock market action.
Videos circulated on X Tuesday of Tesla Model Y vehicles driving autonomously around Austin, Texas. Musk posted to X that the vehicles are "unmodified Tesla cars coming straight from the factory, meaning that every Tesla coming out of our factories is capable of unsupervised self-driving."
The official Tesla X account also posted on Tuesday a cryptic message with the emoji for a robot and a taxi. However, when X users asked for an official date for the robotaxi service launch, Tesla did not give one.
Musk added that the full self-driving, or FSD, software on these Model Y robotaxi vehicles is a "new version of the software, but will merge to main branch soon."
The hints from Tesla and Musk come as investors expect the EV giant will launch its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, based on a report from Bloomberg.
Tesla is a "known" autonomous vehicle, or AV, operator in Austin as of June 10, according to Austin's Transportation and Public Works website. The EV giant is listed as being in the "testing" phase of autonomous driving operation in the city. For comparison, Waymo is officially listed in the "deployment" phase.
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CFRA Garrett Nelson on Tuesday wrote that he expects Tesla's "launch of an unsupervised robotaxi service later this week to be largely anticlimactic and lacking the fanfare of last October's Robotaxi Day."
"Initially, we see approximately a dozen driverless Model Y's operating with Full Self-Driving technology in a geofenced area of Austin, Texas, with performance supervised remotely. We think the most important measure will be the number of incidents and interventions recorded by the vehicles in the coming months, and how quickly TSLA can dial back remote supervision and expand beyond the geofenced area to other markets," Nelson wrote.
Tesla Stock Rebounds As Trump-Musk Feud Wanes
Tesla stock jumped 5.7% to 326.09 during Tuesday's stock market action, just reclaiming the 21-day moving average. On Monday, shares popped 4.6% to retake their 200-day line as President Donald Trump struck a diplomatic tone when discussing Musk with reporters.
"We had a good relationship and I just wish him well, very well actually," Trump said Monday.
The president added that he "may move" his Tesla vehicle "around a little bit," apparently signaling he will not be selling it. "I have a lot of locations," he added.
Tesla stock dived 14.7% to 295.58 last week, plunging Thursday to round-trip an aggressive entry and undercut key moving averages — including its 21-day exponential moving average, the 200-day moving average and 50-day line — as Musk and Trump traded insults and threats online.
TSLA stock's plunge last week tracked news of the Musk-Trump feud, with Friday's bounce possibly reflecting hopes for lowered tensions. Musk deleted tweets Friday night, suggesting Trump appeared in the unreleased FBI files on financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
"While the situation remains fluid, we believe the disagreement will not help Tesla demand but could potentially (temporarily) alienate multiple sides of the political spectrum," Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote on Friday.
Bloomberg reported Monday that retail Tesla investors put more than $650 million into Direxion Daily TSLA Bull 2x shares last week. The fund delivers twice TSLA's daily return.
This was the largest weekly inflow since the fund made its debut in 2022, according to Bloomberg data.
Tesla Bounces After Musk-Trump Blowup, But Maybe There's More To Thursday's Decline
Market In A Power Trend
TSLA stock is now down about 19% for the year, despite surging on robotaxi bets following the April 22 Q1 conference call. The stock is also down 33 from its all-time high of 488.54.
Tesla stock has a 21-day average true range of 5.49%. The ATR metric, available on IBD's MarketSurge charting tool, gauges the characteristic breadth of a stock's behavior. Stocks that tend to make large jumps or dives in daily stock market action, the kind that can trigger sell rules and shake investors out of a stock, have a high ATR. Stocks that tend to make more incremental moves have lower ATRs.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are now in a power trend. Investors can buy stocks with ATRs of up to 8%, though they should be wary of being too concentrated in high-octane names. Tesla stock needs to recover the 200-day and 21-day lines, according to MarketSurge charts.
Tesla stock has a 68 Composite Rating out of a best-possible 99. The stock also has a 92 Relative Strength Rating and a 59 EPS Rating.
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