TESLA SEMI GETS BOOST FROM $6 DIESEL; MORGAN STANLEY SAYS EARNINGS POTENTIAL 'UNDERAPPRECIATED'
The newly released Tesla Semi has an ace up its sleeve: $6 diesel. The soaring costs of diesel (and gas more broadly) only strengthen the case for Tesla eventual foray into autonomous trucking, according to a new research note from Morgan Stanley.
"Tesla has become a credible emerging competitor in autonomous trucking," wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco.
Percoco's increasingly optimistic outlook for the Tesla Semi led him to raise the price target on his Tesla bull case by $20 to $840 a share. He called the Semi an "underappreciated driver of earnings growth through 2040."
Morgan Stanley's bull case price target of $840 a share would be a 130% increase from Friday's opening price of 364.20. Morgan Stanley maintained its $400 price target and equal weight rating on the stock, despite hiking its bull scenario.
TeslaTSLA stock was up less than 1% on Friday, according to MarketSurge. Shares have retaken their 50-day moving average but are below their 200-day line.
Tesla Semi Revenue Projections
Once fully autonomous, the Tesla Semi would deliver between 85 cents and $1 per mile in Full Self-Driving subscription fees, according to Percoco's estimates. That would mean a total of $12,000 to $18,000 a month for each operational truck, well above the $100 per month he forecasts for consumer vehicles. Percoco referred to that difference in projected revenue from Semi vs. Tesla passenger cars as "the most important takeaway of this note for a Tesla investor."
Such rosy forecasts "mean small volumes can move numbers," Percoco wrote.
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Tesla finally began mass-producing the Semi in May after extensive delays. Orders for the Semi have started rolling in throughout the year from trucking companies. Tesla said it aims to manufacture 50,000 trucks a year. Percoco estimates that 82,000 Semi trucks will be on the road by 2040. That number of operational Semis would mean $17 billion in revenue for FSD subscriptions and an incremental $7.5 billion in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), according to Percoco.
Crucially, he points out that those numbers don't include the money Tesla would make from the actual sale of the truck or additional fees for using its charging stations.
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Autonomous Driving Still A Work In Progress
However, those estimates rely on Tesla successfully developing self-driving tech for the Semi. Tesla has yet to fully do that for its passenger cars, even though CEO Elon Musk has been promising the technology for years. On an earnings call in July, Musk did concede that autonomy for the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y would take precedence over the Semi.
"Since the total number of units of the Tesla Semi is still low and will continue to be a very small percentage — even by the end of this year — of our total vehicle fleet, it makes sense for us to focus our self-driving efforts on our high-volume vehicles, so Model 3 and Y," Musk told investors.
Musk has said he expects the Semi to have self-driving capability by 2027. However, both he and Tesla have a penchant for pushing back development timelines for products.
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2026-09-11T15:31:16Z