Tesla shares were lower on Monday and hovered near a critical breakout level.
TSLA – Daily Chart
The price of TSLA shares is hovering near a vital downtrend line after a recent breakout failed to continue higher. This level is essential to the medium-term prospects of the firm.
Ark Invest analysts have been discussing Tesla’s early dominance in the robotaxi race. The firm also touted the early advances of Baidu and Waymo in the space.
Waymo confirmed that its sixth-generation robotaxi, which Geely’s ZEEKR is developing, will cut the number of onboard cameras from 29 to 13 and lidar sensors from five to four. The cost of the new vehicle is also likely to be much lower than the rumoured $100,000, which will be critical for scaling operations. Waymo announced that it has ramped up its weekly autonomous test rides to over 100,000. Baidu said its autonomous ride-hail platform averaged 75,000 rides per week in Q2. However, despite that early progress, Baidu management said that rolling the scheme out nationally and gaining a significant market share could take years.
Ark Invest said that despite Waymo and Baidu being the first-to-market in robotaxi operations, its research believes that Tesla is training its autonomous system with around 70X more data. “As will be the case with most AI (artificial intelligence) projects, Tesla’s data scale advantage is likely to lead to commercial dominance in this winner-takes-most opportunity,” they wrote.
The firm’s analysts added that they will monitor the robotaxi space and are particularly interested in Tesla’s robotaxi event in October.
Investors were slightly on edge on Monday after French authorities arrested the CEO of media platform Telegram.
Some are seeing a clampdown on free speech, and some high-profile people, such as UK politician Nigel Farage, are worried that Elon Musk could be wrapped in a broader enforcement on social media platforms.
Russian-born billionaire Pavel Durov was facing potential prison time for failing to prevent the misuse of his platform for criminal activities. French police detained him when he landed at an airport near Paris on Saturday night.
Farage wrote on X: “The arrest of Pavel Durov is worrying. Telegram is a secure free speech app. It may have some bad actors, but then all platforms do”.
“What next… the arrest of Elon Musk?” Farage added.
Investors will keep a keen eye on the developments with the Telegram owner.
