Election buzz: Tesla soars on expectations of green lights for autonomous driving approvals
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Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) closed the Wednesday session with a gain of 14.7% on volume of over 148 million shares. The EV stock carved out a new 52-week high of $289.59 earlier in the session and is threatening to jump onto the one-trillion dollar market cap list that only includes nine stocks in the U.S.
Deepwater Asset Management analyst Gene Munster said the rally was tied in part to emotion and investor confidence that Elon Musk’s big bet on the autonomous driving could pay off after he was called a “super genius” by Donald Trump in his victory speech early on Wednesday.
Munster said the bullish view on the impact of a Trump Presidency is that the federal government may move more quickly to approve Musk’s autonomous driving plans. “This is important given the regulator side of autonomy is more difficult to move forward than the tech side,” he noted. Crunching the numbers on an accelerated robotaxi launch, Munster said if Tesla (TSLA) gains 50% share of the ride hailing market in the U.S. by 2030, that it could add 20% to Tesla’s (TSLA) operating income in 2030 or about $5 billion.
Autonomous driving check
Developments are happening fast in the autonomous driving industry. Last month, Tesla (TSLA) held its highly anticipated robotaxi event, Chinese autonomous vehicle upstart Pony AI (PONY) filed for an IPO on the Nasdaq, and Uber Technologies (UBER) announced a series of notable AV partnerships. Just last week, Waymo stunned the autonomous driving sector by announcing that its Waymo One service is now providing over 150,000 paid trips and driving over one million fully autonomous miles every week.
Uber Technologies (UBER) inched 0.3% higher on Wednesday, while Cruise parent General Motors (GM) rose 2.5% and Waymo parent Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) gained 4.0%. The iShares Self-Driving EV and Tech ETF (IDRV) fell 2.3% as concerns over government support of the electric vehicle sector outweighed enthusiasm over autonomous driving approvals.