Tesla’s Robotaxi Leap Collides With Wall Street Doubts

Tesla ( (TSLA) ) has been popular among investors this week. Here is a recap of the key news on this stock.

Tesla is ending the year with a flurry of headline-making developments that are stirring both excitement and caution in the market. Elon Musk and Tesla’s AI chief Ashok Elluswamy publicly showcased real-world testing of fully unmanned Robotaxis in Austin, with Musk reporting a “perfect” driverless ride and video evidence showing empty front seats as the car navigated traffic. The move suggests Tesla is pushing quickly toward fully autonomous Robotaxi operations, a key pillar of its long-term AI and mobility strategy, and a major part of bullish analysts’ growth stories for 2026 and beyond. At the same time, Tesla is ramping up its energy business, inking a new deal with Matrix Renewables in the U.K. for a one gigawatt-hour Megapack project in Scotland, highlighting how its battery and grid solutions are becoming a more meaningful part of the company’s value proposition. On the consumer side, Tesla is aggressively chasing year-end EV sales with new lease offers on the high-end Model S, though the steep monthly and upfront costs underline its premium positioning and may limit mass-market appeal.

Yet despite the technological momentum and a nearly 45% share price gain over the past six months, Tesla’s stock is at a crossroads around the psychologically important $500 level, with Wall Street sharply divided. The consensus rating on TSLA is Hold, based on a mix of 11 Buys, 12 Holds, and nine Sells in the past three months, and the average analyst price target of about $385 per share implies roughly 20% downside from current levels. Bears point to expected weaker Q4 delivery numbers—consensus is around 440,000 units, down from nearly 500,000 in Q3—pressure from the loss of a U.S. EV tax credit, and concerns that much of Tesla’s AI upside is already priced in, with some targets as low as $247. Bulls, including analysts at Canaccord Genuity and Wedbush, counter that a reset in the U.S. EV market, faster adoption in emerging economies, and future revenue from Robotaxis and the Optimus humanoid robot could unlock multi-year upside, with top targets running to $551–$600. Adding to the risk side of the ledger, U.S. safety regulators have opened a probe into 2022 Model 3 mechanical emergency door releases after a petition and an injury complaint alleged the manual release is hard to find in emergencies, raising regulatory and reputational questions. For investors, Tesla remains a high-conviction battleground stock: rapidly advancing in autonomy and energy, but facing regulatory scrutiny, softer near-term volumes, and an increasingly skeptical valuation debate.