Tesla Stock Forecast: TSLA accelerates 15% on Monday after FSD approval

Tesla stock rocketed up 15.3% on Monday.
CEO Elon Musk took a trip to China over the weekend.
Tesla received Chinese approval for its semi-autonomous driving software.
TSLA stock could make a run for the $235-$240 range based on daily chart.

Tesla (TSLA) stock was the stock market’s focal point on Monday after shares of CEO Elon Musk’s EV leader powered higher on news that the executive met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang. Qiang is one of the Chinese Communist Party’s most powerful officials, and Tesla announced that it had received approval to move forward with Full Self Driving (FSD) technology in its Chinese-built vehicles.

Though many traders are sitting still until the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday where the central bank will determine interest rates and declare its strategy toward inflation, stocks indices uniformly rose on Monday. The S&P 500, NASDAQ and Dow Jones all rose above 0.3% but below 0.4%.

Tesla stock news

This announcement surprised shareholders since Tesla has had multiple issues with the Chinese government policy regarding the transfer of its data collected in China back to its US operations for research purposes and in furtherance of its artificial intelligence for autonomous driving.

The Chinese government has relented for now. This is because Tesla has inked a data partnership with Baidu (BIDU), China’s largest search engine. Baidu will handle some of Tesla's data storage issues.

Rolling out FSD in China is thought to be a major competitive advantage for Tesla since other Chinese EV competitors are not as far along with similar technology. Tesla charges a subscription of $99 per month for the service, and take up in China could help Tesla return to a growth trajectory.

Both XPeng (XPEV) and Xiaomi have less-developed driver assistance programs already on the market, and BYD (BYDDY) is working on an offering.

TSLA stock has fallen for the better part of three years, and deliveries contracted YoY in the first quarter — a first for Musk’s company.

Wells Fargo analyst Colin Langan said in a note to clients that TSLA’s share price performance on Monday was a bit overdone.

“The partnership with Baidu helped ease China regulators' concerns over data security,” wrote Langan. “However, there're no details of the partnership in terms of economics & data sharing.”

EV stocks FAQs

What are electric vehicles?

Electric vehicles or EVs are automobiles that use rechargable batteries and electric motors to accelerate rather than internal combustion engines (ICEs). They have been around for more that 100 years, but battery technology research & development was meager for much of the 20th century. Lithium-ion battery technology became advanced enough to produce EVs at scale in the late 1990s and 2000s, and sales have been steadily increasing since then Tesla’s Roadster was unveiled in 2008. EVs are viewed as a means of reducing carbon emissions since battery electric vehicles (BEVs) themselves produce zero emissions. Other vehicles called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) utilize both battery electric power and ICEs as a backup.

What is the market share held by EVs?

EVs are growing from a small base, but they rose from 9% of global new auto sales in 2021 to 14% of the total in 2022. This was a 65% YoY growth rate, and the industry delivered 10.2 million EVs worldwide in 2022. Projections show this number climbing above 16 million in 2023. Across the world, market shares differ greatly among nations. Nearly 88% of Norwegian new car sales in 2022 were EVs. On the other hand, the United States, where much of the modern innovation in EVs was forged, had less than 8% of new vehicle sales go to EVs in 2022. The largest EV market in the world, China, saw 30% of the market go to EVs that year.

Who is the father of the EV?

We know you’re thinking Elon Musk, but he’s probably more like the father of the mass-market, contemporary EV. All the way back in 1827, a Hungarian priest named Anyos Jedlik invented the electric motor and used it the following year to power a vehicle of sorts. French scientist Gaston Planté invented the lead-acid battery in 1859, and German engineer Andreas Flocken built the first true electric car for the public in 1888. EVs made up about 38% of all vehicles sold in the US around 1900. They began losing market share rapidly after 1910 when gasoline-powered vehicles grew much more affordable. They largely died off until new research programs in the 1990s led to gradual private sector investment in the 2000s.

Who are the biggest makers of electric vehicles?

China’s BYD is by far the largest manufacturer of EVs in the world. In 2022 it sold 1.8 million EVs and in the second half of the year made up 20% of the global market. The asterisk given to BYD is that the vast majority of these vehicles are hybrids. Tesla’s 12% market share is often treated as more significant than BYD, because it only sells BEVs and is the most famous EV brand in the world. Volkswagen, BMW and Wuling then round out the top five. As a new sector with heavy investment though, many startups have flooded the market. These include China’s Nio, Li Auto and Xpeng; a Swedish-Chinese manufacturer called Polestar; and Lucid and Rivian from the US.

Tesla stock forecast

Tesla stock has been ricocheting within a downward trending price channel since July 2023. It broke through the lower bound of that channel just this past month, but now the price action has bounced back into the channel again.

If bulls keep up the fervor, then the former resistance ceiling at $205 might give way. That would allow the rally to continue up to the descending topline in the $235 to $240 range.

Support remains at $164 and $154, levels that stem from years-old price action, or the descending lower trendline near $148.

TSLA daily stock chart

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