Tesla CEO Elon Musk pictured in Austin, Texas on April 7, 2022. The electric vehicle company has also been making inroads into battery storage.
Suzanne Cordeiro | AFP | Getty Images
Electric vehicle maker Tesla is set to host an Investor Day presentation at 3 a.m. local time in Austin, Texas on Wednesday. CEO Elon Musk has promised to share his “Master Plan 3” and discuss how Tesla plans to grow in the face of growing competition.
Musk wrote in a Tweeter February 7, 2023, “Master Plan 3, the path to a fully sustainable energy future for Earth will be presented on March 1. The future is bright!”
His ambitious Master Plan Part Two was released in 2016 and has not been fully realized. It had four main objectives:
- “Create stunning solar rooftops with seamlessly integrated battery storage”
- “Expand the range of electric vehicle products to address all major segments”
- “Develop autonomous driving capability 10 times safer than manual driving through massive fleet learning”
- “Allow your car to earn you money when you’re not using it”
On Twitter, Tesla notified shareholders that his presentation will be available live on YouTube, where the company traditionally broadcasts its events, but also on Twitter itself.
Musk acquired the San Francisco-based social media company for about $44 billion in October 2022, selling about $23 billion of his Tesla stock in part to fund the deal. He could reveal more details about how the two plan to work together moving forward.
As CNBC previously reported, Musk allowed myriad executives and engineers from Tesla, SpaceX and Boring Co. to work for him on Twitter.
Ahead of Investor Day 2023, during a Tuesday press conference, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Tesla had agreed to build a large factory in Monterrey, Mexico. He said Tesla had agreed to use recycled water and take other initiatives to address water shortages in the region.
The company is expected to say more about that and its other facilities, including its Shanghai plant and new plants in Austin, Texas, and outside Berlin.
Investors wonder if and when Tesla will finally deliver a new, more affordable electric vehicle, and when the company can finally deliver on its longstanding promise of driverless technology.
In 2020, at a Tesla Battery Day event, Musk teased the possibility of both, saying, “In about three years, we’re confident we can make a very compelling $25,000 electric vehicle that’s also fully self-driving. .”
Musk has been promising a truly self-driving car since 2016. The company still hasn’t completed the all-terrain driverless demonstration, which Musk said would be possible by the end of 2017.
In February, federal vehicle safety regulators in the United States and Tesla announced a voluntary recall of 362,758 vehicles. In a safety recall notice, Tesla and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned that driver assistance software, marketed as Full Self-Driving Beta, could cause Tesla vehicles to disobey the code of the road and could cause accidents. (The company plans to deliver a fix via an over-the-air software update.)
Despite the company’s lags on driverless technology, Tesla shares have rebounded from declines in 2022 and are up more than 60% for the year so far.
According to Ortex, a short-term interest tracker, “After generating $4.5 billion in profits for short-sellers in January, TSLA’s 19% rise in February helped rack up losses for bears from TSLA.ORTEX estimates that TSLA shorts suffered $3 billion in losses for February, the biggest short loss of the month by a significant margin (#2 was NVDA with a $1.5 billion loss for shorts).”
Analysts at Mizuho Securities maintained a buy rating on Tesla shares ahead of the investor day, seeing Tesla in a leading position in a growing market for fully electric vehicles. They wrote, in a note earlier this week, “In the near term, we see continued strength in TSLA’s market share, but we see cheaper competing EVs coming to market as potentially diluting TSLA’s share. TSLA in the US electric vehicle market.”
Currently, the cheapest Tesla available is the Model 3 sedan, which starts at a price of around $43,000, they wrote. Seven models from other automakers are currently priced lower than that, Mizhuo noted.
Cannacord Genuity analysts conducted a survey asking what Tesla watchers predict will be discussed at Wednesday’s Investor Day presentation. Most expected to hear about a “next-generation vehicle platform,” along with details on Tesla’s mining plans and an update to Tesla’s long-term vehicle volume forecast until now. in 2030.
This story is growing, please check back for updates.
— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.