Electric vehicle giant Tesla (TSLA) made another step forward in its moves to improve its position in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), thanks to a new permit landed in Arizona. Word from the state’s department of transportation says that Tesla now has a permit to operate a “ride-hailing service,” though the robotaxi service will need a couple extra permits. That was enough to give Tesla a fractional boost in Wednesday afternoon’s trading.
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Tesla applied for permits to allow it to operate a “transportation network company” back on November 13. The permits were clearly quickly approved, and less than a week later, Tesla had the permits in hand. Tesla has been working with Phoenix officials to bring autonomous vehicle testing and operations in place, both with and without human drivers.
Meanwhile, reports note that the Austin cars will see human safety drivers pulled from the equation altogether. Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted, “Before we allow the car to be driven without paying attention, we need to make sure it’s very safe. We’re on the cusp of that. I know I’ve said that a few times. We really are at this point.”
Seven Whole Accidents
Meanwhile, reports about the safety of the Robotaxi system are starting to come into frame, and at the same time, look a lot less like public safety concerns and more like performative hand-wringing. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealed that the Robotaxis were involved in four crashes in Austin in September.
Tesla vehicles crash not four hundred times, not four thousand, but four. By way of comparison, the Texas Department of Transportation says that Austin sees an average of 24 crashes a day. Tesla’s Robotaxis are running somewhere around one a week. In fact, Tesla’s entire tenure in Austin has yielded a total of seven crashes overall, reports note.
Is Tesla a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on TSLA stock based on 14 Buys, 10 Holds, and 10 Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 17.31% rally in its share price over the past year, the average TSLA price target of $384.14 per share implies 4.67% downside risk.
