"$3 trillion by 2027"… Wall Street bets on Tesla robo-taxi [Stocks+]

Tesla, EU and China sales plunge

Wall Street lowers sales forecasts but raises price targets

Dan Ives "Tesla enterprise value $3 trillion by 2027"

Despite continued weakness in Tesla's electric vehicle (EV) sales, the stock remains near record highs. Wall Street's focus is on AI-based new businesses, especially robo-taxis, rather than short-term earnings.

MarketWatch reported on the 23rd (local time) that Tesla's sales within the European Union (EU) through the end of November this year plunged about 39% year-on-year. Deliveries in China also fell by more than 8% over the same period, and U.S. sales are expected to decline by about 9% in 2025.

According to FactSet consensus, Tesla is expected to deliver about 449,000 vehicles in the December quarter and about 1.6 million electric vehicles for the year. If so, Tesla would record a second consecutive year of annual sales decline.

Canaccord analyst George Gianarikas lowered Tesla's fourth-quarter EV sales forecast from 470,000 to 427,000 vehicles. However, he raised the price target from $482 to $551 while maintaining a buy rating. He said, "Looking at recent stock performance, the market is looking beyond this quarter's results to the future."

In fact, Tesla's stock briefly hit an all-time high of $498.83 intraday on the 23rd. This is because Wall Street's attention is focused more on robo-taxis than EV sales. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives forecasts that Tesla could reach an enterprise value of $3 trillion by 2027 through its robotics and AI strategy. That is nearly double the current market capitalization (about $1.6 trillion).

Deutsche Bank also lowered its EV sales outlook for Tesla in a recent report but assessed that "the growth story around robo-taxis remains strong."

Tesla plans to build a ride-hailing service based on full self-driving across the United States to challenge Alphabet's Waymo and Uber. It is currently operating limited ride-hailing services in Austin, Texas and the San Francisco Bay Area, and in Austin has begun driving tests with no driver intervention. The company aims to offer full self-driving service by the end of this month.

However, there is skepticism around the robo-taxi business. Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein said, "The market is attributing an excessively high value to the robo-taxi business," and set a price target of $300. This implies about a 39% downside from the current share price.

Meanwhile, Tesla is concurrently developing humanoid robots and its own AI chips in addition to robo-taxis. Those robots and chips are key elements that will underpin Tesla's technology and data centers and are scheduled to go into production from 2026.

New York=Shin-young Park, correspondent nyusos@hankyung.com