Catenaa, Wednesday, March 04, 2026- Bank of America upgraded its outlook for Tesla as it remains bullish on the company’s robotaxi and autonomous efforts.
In a long and wide-ranging note, BofA analyst Alexander Perry gave Tesla a $460 price target, based on the investment bank’s sum-of-the-parts analysis.
Tesla shares rose over 3% on Wednesday, yet the stock is still down by over 9% so far this year.
“We view [Tesla] as the current leader in consumer autonomy,” Perry wrote. “We expect TSLA to quickly become a leader in robotaxi services, given its ability to scale more profitably than competitors.”
Perry predicts autonomous vehicles and robotaxis will usher in the next era of mobility and be the “most significant change agent” in the Auto 2.0 landscape, with Tesla at the forefront.
Tesla’s advantages are both technical and structural. From a tech standpoint, while most competitors like Waymo use multi‑sensor fusion approaches (LiDAR/radar/cameras) that can be expensive, Tesla’s vision-only camera approach is “technically harder but significantly cheaper and leverages a unique consumer‑fleet data engine.”
Perry says this means Tesla can scale its robotaxi business more profitably compared to competitors, and its camera-only system uses less energy than multi-sensor arrays, meaning its EVs have more range.
BofA claims a Waymo robotaxi costs $150,000 to make, whereas a Model Y only costs $40,000.
Structurally, Perry believes that when it comes to rideshare, most customers will soon gravitate to robotaxis versus traditional human-driven rideshare operators such as Lyft and Uber due to privacy, safety, and a more pleasant ride experience.
In addition, if and when Tesla ramps up its robotaxi service, Tesla’s cost advantage will be huge compared to human-driven competition.
While infrastructure and servicing costs for a fleet of robotaxis and regular rideshare costs are similar, almost half the costs of a typical $20 ride go to the driver’s compensation (~9.60). Perry wrote that this cost goes away with robotaxis, meaning a huge cost advantage for Tesla and operators like Waymo.
Perry expects Tesla to “quickly scale” its robotaxi deployments and expand to seven additional metro areas in 2026.
