Recently, electric vehicle giant Tesla (TSLA) cleared a new milestone, and one that represents a big step forward by CEO Elon Musk‘s own reckoning. Tesla users have turned to Full Self-Driving for a combined total of 10 billion miles, which passes the line Musk set himself for “safe unsupervised” driving. Investors seemed skeptical, however, and sent shares slipping fractionally in Monday afternoon’s trading.
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New trading tool for TSLA bearsThe functional impact of 10 billion miles is less than you may think, however. FSD (Supervised) remains FSD (Supervised), and Tesla still fully expects that you will babysit your self-driving car at all times. Tesla has also not assumed liability for what happens during full self-driving operations. So while this milestone is more of a conceptual milestone than a functional one, it remains a milestone nonetheless.
Interestingly, Tesla has something of a basis for comparison when it comes to how safe FSD actually is. Tesla notes that its vehicles drive around 5.5 million miles before a major collision. Human-driven vehicles, however, need only 660,000 miles. However, there are also far fewer FSD-equipped Teslas out there than there are regular human-driven cars. It also neglects that most uses of FSD and Autopilot take place on highways, where crashes are generally fewer.
“I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy”
Tesla is something of a difficult pill to swallow in California right now. While it is basically the leader in electric vehicles in the United States right now—which should make it a big deal in California—its CEO, Elon Musk, is nowhere near so prized. In fact, some Teslas are emerging with anti-Elon bumper stickers, including the pithy “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.”
Yet the Model Y is the best-selling car in California, beating out even the Toyota (TM) Camry and Toyota Tacoma. This leaves California with an odd dichotomy of reviling a corporate CEO while cheerfully consuming his products. We had already seen something like this with the Tesla Semi, which California is frantically subsidizing via its voucher program for zero-emission trucks.
Is Tesla a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on TSLA stock based on 13 Buys, 12 Holds, and five Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 39.45% rally in its share price over the past year, the average TSLA price target of $410.21 per share implies 4.86% upside potential.
