Wall Street's latest bulls support Tesla as a "must-hold stock": autonomous driving and humanoid robots have vast "starry sea" potential

According to the Zhitong Finance APP, Rob Wertheimer, an analyst at Melius Research LLC, has become the latest bull on Tesla (TSLA.US). This Wall Street analyst, who recently began covering Tesla, pointed out that the electric vehicle manufacturer has the potential to disrupt the automotive industry and is considered a "must-hold stock"; however, finding reasonable support for its trillion-dollar valuation remains a significant challenge. The analyst believes that Tesla can rapidly improve and scale the deployment of autonomous vehicles, and that autonomous driving will be the first major application scenario of artificial intelligence (AI) in the physical world, giving Tesla a "buy" rating and setting a target price of $520.

"The moment of transformation has arrived," Wertheimer wrote in a report to clients on Monday, "the risks of not positioning in Tesla are equally significant, and we cannot find many investment targets that can be compared to Tesla."

However, since Tesla's autonomous driving technology has not yet achieved full autonomy, and the timeline for technological maturity remains unclear, the assessment of its valuation still carries a degree of "speculation." Additionally, the development trajectory of the company's robotics business (such as the Optimus humanoid robot) is even harder to predict.

For a long time, Tesla's valuation has been a focal point of debate among investors—everyone is trying to determine whether Tesla is merely an electric vehicle manufacturer or a potential AI giant. As for CEO Elon Musk, he has recently been trying to step outside the narrative framework of "electric vehicles" and focus instead on the autonomous driving sector; he even stated that in the future, 80% of Tesla's business revenue will come from the Optimus robot.

To a large extent, Tesla investors have expressed their approval of Musk's vision. Driven by the prospects of AI and the market enthusiasm brought by Musk, Tesla's stock price rose 33% in September. However, as the third-quarter vehicle delivery numbers fell short of expectations, and the long-awaited "affordable electric vehicle" was ultimately priced above expectations (not truly "affordable"), the stock price's upward momentum stalled—this signals that if core automotive sales are weak, Tesla may struggle to support its grand AI dreams.

Wertheimer stated that the target stock price he set is based on the assumption that Tesla will successfully develop a truly fully autonomous vehicle, which would allow it to capture a significant share of the ride-hailing market and further expand its business scale. However, this analyst also pointed out that a large portion of Tesla's market value comes from "products that do not yet exist."

He wrote in the report: "We give a 'buy' rating because we believe that as more and more investors (including retail investors) gradually recognize the revolutionary nature of the Full-Self-Driving experience, the market's attention to this technology will continue to increase."