Will Tesla Cybercab electrify the stock?
10/30/2024 22:28Tesla investors are looking for new avenues for growth.
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The EV revolution is just heating up for some automakers, but Tesla (TSLA), a pioneer in the space, has a “soup of things” going for it that will likely propel the company and its bottom line ever higher.
“There’s this huge opportunity curve out there [for them],” Bank of America senior auto analyst John Murphy shared with Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi on his Opening Bid podcast (video above; listen in below). “[Or a] frontier of all these things that can go right potentially for the company.”
One of those potential growth opportunities: a robotaxi fleet Tesla has dubbed Cybercab.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is fresh off from reporting surprisingly strong third quarter earnings and giving upbeat updates about coming initiatives, including the production timeline for Cybercab.
The finished product — showed off earlier this month at a glitzy evening event at a Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California — will be a battery-powered, autonomous robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals. It is currently being beta tested in the Bay Area, where Tesla employees hail rides using an app and are taken from place to place in vehicles that still feature safety drivers.
Eventually, the safety driver will fade away as the Cybercab clears regulatory hurdles, leaving the vehicle to control and drive itself and snatch business way from Uber, Lyft, and traditional cabs.
Once the vehicles are green-lit for both safety and speed, Murphy said, they will likely revolutionize the way we travel.
Musk envisions producing two million to four million Cybercabs a year, he told analysts on the company's latest earnings call.
“People start spreading out, and a lot of the real estate in the country that is underutilized could actually be utilized,” Murphy said. “You could create this great economic growth.”
As for highways, a speed safe Cybercab could reduce travel times due to its ability to be both fast and safe. “The speed of travel is coming down [now],” he said. “Because traffic is going up."
If somebody could travel at double the speed, their "capacity utilization on the road gets cut in half and it creates more space.”
Murphy thinks the cars will begin to be used in 2025 in Texas, followed by California. Over time the product stands to be a real money maker, per Murphy.
“[We’re] looking for over 20% earnings growth next year in 2026,” said Murphy, who rates Tesla's stock a buy.
Murphy added he is reevaluating his stock price of $265 amid the post-earnings surge in value.