Self-driving taxis could send Tesla shares up tenfold

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Source: Gasgoo

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Cathie Wood of Ark Investment Management said Tesla’s move into the more profitable business of self-driving taxi platforms would boost its share price by about 10 times. That echoes years of optimism about Tesla’s self-driving business.

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Wood believes the self-driving taxi ecosystem will be worth $8 trillion to $10 trillion globally, with platform providers such as Tesla taking half of that. Speaking on the Tiger Money podcast, Wood revealed that investors are shifting the way they value Tesla, not just as an electric car maker, but also the potential of its self-driving taxis.

 

Wood said: “The autonomous taxi platform is the fastest growing AI project today, and Ark is primarily valuing it based on Tesla’s autonomous driving potential. If we’re right, there’s plenty of room for Tesla’s stock price to grow.”

 

Optimism over Tesla’s efforts to bring self-driving taxis to market has helped its shares recover a 43 per cent fall in the year to April 22.

 

Wood said the self-driving taxi network will provide A “winner-takes-all” opportunity, with providers that can get passengers from point A to point B in the safest and fastest way winning the lion’s share of business. She added that autonomous taxi network providers will be able to capture 30 to 50 percent of the revenue generated by fleet owners on the platform, resulting in “growing explosive cash flows” and profit margins of more than 50 percent. This is different from the “make and sell” or “one-off” business model of traditional car manufacturing.

 

“We think people are missing that: the size of the opportunity, the speed of expansion, and how profitable it will be,” Wood said. She expects Tesla to dominate the U.S. self-driving taxi market.

 

Last week, Tesla had a weighting of more than 15% in the $6.5 billion Ark Innovation ETF. Wood said the fund has taken some profits off Tesla, allowing the stock to trade above its normal cap because they believe Tesla is about to reveal more information about its self-driving taxi project.

 

According to a Bloomberg report on July 18, Tesla has delayed the launch of its self-driving taxi by two months to October, originally scheduled for August, to give the team more time to produce more prototypes. The news sent Tesla shares down 8.4%, their biggest one-day drop since January. But Wood doesn’t mind.

 

“We may be closer to the self-driving taxi opportunity than we are further away, and Musk may want to do better and think it is possible by October,” Wood said. 

 

Fang’s valuation model does not yet take into account Tesla’s potential in China or in humanoid robotics and energy storage. In April, Tesla, which reached a mapping and navigation deal with Chinese tech giant Baidu Inc and met data security and privacy protection requirements, has already received approval in principle from Chinese officials to deploy its self-driving assistance system to China, the world’s largest auto market.