Tesla was rated Outperform with a $500 price target by Dan Ives at Yorkville Ives, in his first call on the stock since leaving Wedbush Securities, according to a note obtained by Price Target, an archive of Wall Street analyst research notes.
The target is $100 below the $600 Ives held at Wedbush, where he was among Tesla’s most prominent bulls.
It implied 32.3% upside from Tesla’s $377.81 close on Wednesday, the day of the note, and is the highest of 22 targets tracked by Price Target.
As of publication time, Tesla shares were trading 1.4% lower at $372.69.
“We view Tesla as one of the market’s most important AI and robotics platforms, with a vertically integrated ecosystem spanning electric vehicles, autonomous driving, robotaxis, humanoid robotics, energy storage, charging infrastructure, and proprietary compute and silicon,” Ives wrote.
“While automotive remains the company’s foundation, we believe the next phase of the Tesla story will be defined by monetizing software, autonomy, and physical AI across an installed base few global technology companies can replicate,” he added.
The note did not explain why the target sits below his last Wedbush call. Tesla shares closed 0.8% lower at $377.81 on Wednesday and were trading 1.3% lower at $372.88 in early trading on Thursday.
Autonomy, Optimus and Energy
Ives said Tesla’s combination of driving data, hardware, manufacturing scale and direct distribution creates a flywheel “in which every vehicle can become both a data-gathering node and a recurring-revenue platform.”
“Full Self-Driving is the bridge to that opportunity, increasing software revenue per vehicle today while building the technical and commercial foundation for a scaled Robotaxi network,” he wrote.
Tesla’s Robotaxi service runs without an employee on board in six markets in Texas and Florida, and the company held a launch event for its two-seat Cybercab in Austin on Sept. 3.
Ives said the Cybercab “could materially improve autonomous-mobility economics” through a vehicle built for driverless operation.
In Europe, FSD (Supervised) is approved in eight European Union countries, and Germany said this week it had reached an understanding with Tesla on speed and driver liability ahead of an EU-wide vote.
Ives wrote that Optimus “extends Tesla’s AI stack into the much larger labor and industrial-automation market.”
Tesla has yet to show the third-generation version of the humanoid robot publicly, months after Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk promised a prototype in the first quarter.
Ives called Tesla Energy “another important growth engine,” with Megapack and Powerwall positioned to benefit from rising electricity demand and AI data-center construction.
Tesla deployed 13.7 gigawatt-hours of energy storage in the third quarter, its second-highest quarterly total, while vehicle deliveries fell 2.1% to 486,532 but beat analyst estimates.
Deliveries in the first nine months rose 8.8% to 1,324,681 vehicles.
“In our view, investors valuing Tesla primarily as an automaker risk overlooking the broader strategic picture,” Ives wrote.
Stock Performance
Tesla shares are down about 17% this year, after ending 2025 at $449.72.
At Thursday’s early level, the stock was 25% below its 52-week high of $496.83 and 25% above its 52-week low of $297.38, giving Tesla a market value of about $1.47 trillion.
Tesla reports third-quarter results on October 21.
The median target of the 22 analysts tracked by Price Target is $418, with 12 of 26 analysts rating the stock a Buy, 11 a Hold and three a Sell over the past three months.
8 Years of Tesla Calls
Ives began covering Tesla at Wedbush in December 2018 with an Outperform rating and a $440 target, saying the company had put itself “into an esteemed category of companies such as Apple and Amazon,” according to CNBC.
Four months later, in April 2019, he downgraded the stock to Neutral and cut his target to $275 from $365 after a first quarter he called “one of top debacles” in 20 years of covering tech stocks.
“Musk & Co. in an episode out of the ‘The Twilight Zone’ act as if demand and profitability will magically return,” he wrote at the time.
He returned to Outperform in April 2021, raising his target to $1,000 from $950 with a $1,300 bull case after first-quarter deliveries he called a “paradigm changer.”
Adjusted for Tesla’s stock splits in 2020 and 2022, the $440 initiation target equals about $29 a share and the April 2021 target about $333.
In December 2022, he cut his target to $175 from $250 while keeping Outperform, saying Musk was viewed as “asleep at the wheel” from a leadership perspective.
He raised it to $515 from $400 in December 2024, with a $650 bull case, saying the Trump White House would be a “total game changer” for Tesla’s autonomous and AI story, according to Benzinga.
That target gave no value to Optimus, which he said “could be a major upside catalyst for the Tesla story.”
In January 2025, he lifted it to a Street-high $550, calling the next four years a “golden era” for Musk and Tesla. Ives then cut his Wedbush target to $315 from $550 in April 2025, when Tesla’s shares were near $240.
“Our long standing bull view of Tesla remains, but there is no denying this is a pivotal moment of truth for Musk to turn things around…or darker days are ahead,” he wrote in a note obtained by Price Target.
He said then that Tesla’s brand was “suffering by the day as a political symbol.” Ives raised the target to $350 later that month and to $500 in May 2025, saying that “the golden age of autonomous is now on the doorstep for Tesla.”
He kept the $500 target in July 2025 ahead of second-quarter results, saying investors were seeing more of a “wartime CEO” as Musk focused on Robotaxi expansion in Austin.
In September 2025 he lifted it to $600, saying investors were “underestimating the transformation underway at the company,” Ives wrote in a note.
The analyst kept the $600 target in October 2025 when Tesla launched cheaper versions of the Model 3 and Model Y, priced at about $37,000 and $40,000.
“After a brutal few quarters we are finally starting to see stable demand trends for Tesla,” he wrote ahead of third-quarter results that month.
After those results, he highlighted revenue of $28.09 billion, above the Street’s $26.33 billion estimate.
In December 2025, he called 2026 “a monster year ahead for Tesla and Musk” and said he expected “volume production of Cybercabs starting in the April/May timeframe.”
In January, he said Tesla’s fourth-quarter deliveries of 418,200 vehicles were slightly below the company’s consensus of 422,900 but “much better than the whisper numbers of ~410k,” a note obtained by Price Target shows.
He reiterated the $600 target and Outperform rating as recently as April 2, writing that “AI Remains the Focus for 2026 with Robotaxi Rollout and FSD Updates.”
In that note, Ives pointed to about $20 billion in capital spending tied to new factories for Cybercab, Optimus, batteries and AI compute, and to Tesla’s Feb. 14 decision to make FSD subscription-only, which he said could lift FSD penetration to more than 50%.
Tesla’s shares are about 12% below where they traded before his September 2025 raise to $600.
Ives left Wedbush this year after eight years and co-founded Yorkville Ives, a merchant bank launched in July with Yorkville Securities that also offers independent research.
On the same day, Yorkville Ives also initiated coverage of Rivian with a $20 target, General Motors with $100 and Nvidiawith $300, all rated Buy, according to Price Target.
