Tesla Shares Surge Back to Where They Started the Year

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Sep 16, 12:55PM EDT · Published Sep 15, 9:15AM EDT

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Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) shares are nearly back to where they began the year.
However, the EV maker still faces weak sales and falling market share.

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Tesla Shares Surge Back to Where They Started the Year — © monsitj / iStock via Getty Images

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) shares are nearly back to where they were on January 1. The stock is off only 1.9% from the start of 2025. They have surged 22% in the past three months.

The rise from the lows of the period is improbable. Tesla sales have been weak in its three major markets, which are China, the United States, and the European Union. In China, it has more than a dozen local electric vehicle (EV) competitors. In Europe, sales are down by double-digit percentages this year. One reason is that there is controversy about Tesla chief Elon Musk’s involvement with politics in the region.

In the U.S. during the second quarter of the year, Tesla had an EV market share of 48%. While this put it on top of the market, there was a time when the number was close to 80%. Musk’s relationship with Donald Trump, which was strong and then hit a wall, gets some of the blame for the decline. Tesla also faces competition, primarily from Ford, GM, and Hyundai/Kia.

Based on Tesla sales so far this year, there is a chance that total global unit sales could fall sharply from 2024 to 2015. They were down very slightly from 2023 to 2024.

Its stock price was strong in January and February. There was a belief that Musk’s relationship with the president would get Tesla special treatment in the EV market. That optimism dissolved in March as the relationship fell apart. The company also posted poor first-quarter earnings.

Tesla’s share price is based on a battle between two perceptions. The first is that Tesla is just a car company and does not deserve its $1.28 trillion market cap, which makes it the world’s 10th most valuable company. It also helps make Musk the richest man in the world at $419 billion. A new pay package for Musk could take that to $1 trillion in the next 10 years.

The other point of view is that Tesla is an AI and robotics company. If this is the case, it will win the global competition for cars that are completely self-driving. These can be used in individual cars or what Tesla calls its robotaxi. The robotaxi would carry a large number of passengers.

The bull case for Tesla also involves its Optimus robot. The theory is that the company could sell hundreds of thousands of these. Tesla says it will “create a general purpose, bi-pedal, autonomous humanoid robot capable of performing unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks.”

With a little bit of convincing, Tesla could even top its highest share price of the year.

Tesla Stock Price Prediction and Forecast 2025–2030

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.