Tesla (TSLA 3.03%) has expanded its robotaxi rollout, and a company executive has teased that another major announcement is coming tomorrow. That news helped shares pop today. As of 2:27 p.m. ET, Tesla stock was higher by 6% to start the week.
The company posted on its social media account that it has officially launched its driverless robotaxi service in Miami, Florida. That is giving investors a clue about what a Tesla vice president was talking about last week when he teased that a big announcement is coming tomorrow.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Austin gigafactory news
Tesla said it has started its robotaxi service in Miami on July 3. That makes Florida the third state beyond Texas and California, but the rollout has been measured. In the post announcing the Miami launch, the company's social media account included a map showing a relatively small geofenced area where the service will be available.
More importantly for investors, though, is what it could mean for the announcement that is coming tomorrow. Tesla vice president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy, appeared on a podcast last week and stated that on July 7, "there will be some cool news about things happening around Giga Texas as part of the scaling effort."
Investors may be jumping into the stock today, believing that the Texas plant will be scaling its manufacturing capacity to prepare for a massive rollout of Tesla's Cybercab for its future unsupervised robotaxi fleet.
NASDAQ: TSLA
Key Data Points
An artificial intelligence (AI) powered robotaxi fleet, along with future humanoid robots, is mainly what has Tesla's valuation so high. Another step toward building out the driverless taxi fleet has investors getting excited.
