Tesla surges after Musk goes to Davos and the market likes what he has to say

Yesterday Elon Musk made the rounds at the World Economic Forum, and investors liked what he had to say about Tesla.

Musk now says he thinks the company’s Optimus robots will be for sale to the public “by the end of next year.” According to him, “That’s when we are confident that there is very high reliability, very high safety, and the range of functionality is also very high.”

Musk also said in a post on X that Tesla’s Robotaxis are now operating in Austin without a safety monitor. Tesla has been testing driverless cars in the area for about a month, and Musk had previously said the company would remove safety drivers by the end of 2025.

On a separate topic, Musk was bullish on regulatory approval for what Tesla calls Full Self-Driving technology in markets outside the US. “We hope to get supervised Full Self-Driving approval in Europe, hopefully next month, and then maybe a similar timing for China,” he said.

He’s said in the past that the pending regulatory approval for FSD in Europe is a key reason why Tesla’s sales in the region have been tanking.

What is clear is that the move is good for Tesla’s stock, which is currently up 3.5%, extending its gains after Musk’s tweet. Morgan Stanley said yesterday that it considers the removal of safety drivers a “precursor to personal unsupervised FSD rollout.” Unsupervised FSD is widely considered to be integral to the would-be autonomous company’s value proposition.

The Takeaway

Speaking with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink on a panel, Musk said the robots are currently doing “simple tasks” in Tesla factories, but is confident “they’ll be doing more complex tasks and be deployed in an industrial environment” by the end of this year, before going on sale to the public in 2027. Musk forecasts a future with “billions” of AI robots that “saturate all human needs.”