With almost the entirety of Tesla's gargantuan market capitalization now dependent on a favorable outcome for its stated ambitions as they relate to FSD/robotaxi and the Optimus humanoid robot, Wall Street is predictably attuned, churning out a plethora of research over the past few weeks to delineate Tesla's technological progress.
Goldman Sachs Reiterates Neutral Rating on $TSLA, PT $345
Analyst comments: "We update our views on FSD, add 2027 estimates into our model, and break out the robotaxi business in our revenue build. For FSD, we believe that performance has meaningfully improved with V13 based on…
— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine) January 16, 2025
Today, it is the turn of Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney to expound his views on Tesla.
Delaney begins by noting the "meaningfully improved" performance of the just-released version 13 of Tesla's FSD, "based on our own recent demo ride, crowdsourced data, and third-party reviews."
This aligns with the general commentary in the market right now, with George Hotz, the president of comma.ai, recently touting the v13 of Tesla FSD as "really good."
This is what exponential improvement looks like https://t.co/g8lflQkSiY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 13, 2025
What's more, Elon Musk also recently celebrated Tesla FSD's "exponential improvement" in a dedicated X post.
Nonetheless, Tesla is still far behind Waymo, as pointed out by RBC:
"As we understand it, FSD's next version (13.0) is tracking at ~10k miles before intervention, compared to Waymo's 17k level."
Of course, this is not an apple-to-apple comparison. Waymo's robotaxi service is deployed on rigorously mapped out, geofenced routes, while Tesla's FSD disengagement data is sourced from real-world encounters throughout a plethora of driving conditions and settings.
Coming back, Delaney goes on to state in his dedicated investment note that the FSD still needs further improvements:
"We still believe there is significant progress needed for FSD to become a situationally eyes-off product (e.g., on a highway in good weather, or Level 3 autonomy) or allow for eyes-off driving in a wide domain."
Accordingly, the Goldman Sachs analyst now expects Tesla's robotaxi business to "begin commercial operations in 2H26" by using "remote assistance and geofencing," which are "directionally similar to the approaches used by robotaxis on the road currently from competitors."
Delaney then states:
"We believe that the use of remote assistance and a narrow geographic environment could help to improve technical performance compared to Tesla's FSD software on consumer vehicles, although limit the rate of scaling for at least the next few years."
Consequently, Goldman Sachs has reiterated its neutral rating for the EV giant's shares, pegging a $345 price target on the stock.
It is hard to understate how bearish todays MS Adam Jonas “upgrade” report is given how close Morgan Stanley is to $TSLA and Elon / managements thinking. He now forecasts a 5-year DELAY in Robotaxi deployment and almost no fleet deployment for the next 9 YEARS! 1/5 @BradMunchen pic.twitter.com/d8MgDMfGPD
— LostFundamentals (@LostFundamental) January 13, 2025
Do note that Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas recently raised his price target for Tesla shares from $400 to $430. Under the hood, however, the analyst did not appear very bullish. For one, Jonas does not now see any meaningful robotaxi fleet deployment until at least 2032.
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
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