Tesla regains $55 billion in market value after promising acceleration in cheaper models

The electric car manufacturer Tesla closed more than a tenth higher, despite a weak quarterly report. Investors hope for the soon arrival of a very cheap mass-market model that will allow Tesla to maintain its pioneering lead.

At the close of trading in New York, Tesla was trading

12 percent higher to $ 162.13, good for almost $ 55 billion in regained market value to $ 508 billion. This brings the company’s market value back above the $500 billion mark.

The upsurge is a welcome boost. On Tuesday evening, the company was still more than 40 percent below the New Year’s level. This makes Tesla the worst-performing member of the broad American barometer S&P500 this year.

Today’s revival seems mainly a relief rally. Analysts have been concerned in recent weeks whether the company would shelve plans for a cheap model – popularly called ‘Model 2’ – to focus more on a self-driving robot taxi. “Model 2 is a large part of our volume forecast for Tesla through 2030,” Barclays analyst Dan Levy said previously.

During the analyst call after the figures, CEO Elon Musk indicated that the cheaper version for the general public is in line with the plans for self-driving robot taxis. ‘The core of our story is that we eventually want to have a lot of cars on the road that can drive autonomously.’ A large fleet of cars also provides a large amount of driving data, which can serve to make autonomous driving possible more quickly.

What also helps is that Tesla is marketing itself as a way to capitalize on the optimism about artificial intelligence, because the car manufacturer is investing heavily in it. The company purchased a lot of AI chips and now has ‘no obstacles’ left for training AI models. Musk says that Tesla is also far advanced in applying AI models, because the company had to develop its own AI hardware, the FSD chip, to run the AI ​​models needed for autonomous driving.