NEW YORK, January 9, 2026, 09:42 (EST) — Regular session
- Tesla shares rose about 1% in early trading, outpacing the tech-heavy Nasdaq-tracking ETF.
- CES announcements around self-driving partnerships and Nvidia’s platform sharpened focus on robotaxi competition.
- Investors are looking to Tesla’s late-January results for updates on autonomy progress and timelines.
Tesla shares rose about 1% on Friday morning, trading at $435.80 as investors weighed new self-driving partnerships unveiled at CES that could help rivals close the gap in advanced driver-assistance and robotaxis.
The spotlight this week has been on Nvidia’s expanded push into automotive AI and a string of tie-ups aimed at cutting development costs and speeding deployment. Nvidia said its next-generation platform will be used by a robotaxi alliance involving Lucid, Nuro and Uber, while Mercedes-Benz said it plans to launch a new driver-assistance system in the United States later this year that can handle city streets under driver supervision.
Morgan Stanley’s Andrew Percoco said Tesla has “a very clear cost advantage” in robotaxis because it leans on a camera-only approach, estimating about a 40% cost edge versus Waymo, but called safety the “key hurdle.” He said that, based on publicly available data in Austin, Tesla was seeing a crash about every 50,000 miles versus roughly every 400,000 miles for Waymo, while cautioning Tesla’s data set is far smaller. Morgan Stanley
That mix — cheaper systems, more partners, and a widening field of players — matters for Tesla because its valuation debate keeps circling back to autonomy. Any sign that competitors can standardize tools and cut the time to market tends to show up quickly in the stock.
But the same story has another edge. If safety does not improve fast enough, or if regulators tighten rules after incidents, rollout plans can stall and investors can lose patience, not just with Tesla but with the whole self-driving trade.
The broader EV backdrop remains unsettled. General Motors said it would take a $6 billion charge tied to pulling back some EV investments, pointing to weaker demand and the end of a $7,500 U.S. tax credit, a reminder that the core car business is still taking hits even as companies sell long-term autonomy plans.
Tesla’s next hard catalyst is its quarterly report. The company has said it will post fourth-quarter results after the close on January 28 and host a Q&A webcast later that day.
For now, traders are watching whether Tesla can keep outperforming on headlines tied to autonomy — and whether January 28 brings anything concrete on robotaxi expansion, safety data and the pace of rollout.
