Tesla Inc. (TSLA) may have just cracked the code on autonomous driving, if CEO Elon Musk's latest comments are any indication. Speaking at an xAI Hackathon via video link Tuesday, Musk delivered what might be the most confident assessment yet of the company's Full Self-Driving technology.
The Big Announcement
Unsupervised FSD is "pretty much solved at this point," Musk declared, adding that Austin robotaxis will lose their human safety monitors within three weeks. That's right—no one sitting in the driver's seat ready to take over. The timeline aligns with Musk's earlier promise that Austin would see fully driverless robotaxis by year-end.
"We're going through validation right now," Musk explained, noting that the initial rollout will use a smaller FSD model. But the really interesting part? He revealed plans for "a model that's an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026" featuring more sophisticated reasoning and reinforcement learning capabilities.
Musk also emphasized the importance of chip fabrication for reaching "serious scale." Tesla isn't just talking about it either—the EV maker has reportedly partnered with Intel Corp. (INTC) to develop TeraFab, a proposed foundry that would give Tesla greater control over its hardware supply chain.
Wall Street Weighs In
Piper Sandler analyst Alex Potter is buying what Musk is selling. In a recent investor note, Potter reiterated his bullish stance on FSD, stating that "Tesla is getting very close to unsupervised FSD." His confidence stems from conversations with the FSD Community Tracker, which reported data showing "a greater than 20x improvement after FSD v14.1.x" was released. Potter maintained his Overweight rating and $500 price target for the stock.
The vote of confidence comes at an interesting time for Tesla. The company recently lost one of its most prominent bulls when Morgan Stanley reassigned analyst Adam Jonas, who had maintained an Outperform rating since 2023. His replacement, Andrew Percoco, wasted no time downgrading Tesla to Equal-weight, making Potter's bullish call all the more notable.
Price Action: Tesla shares climbed 1.27% to close at $445.17, then edged up another 0.05% to $445.40 in after-hours trading, according to market data.