Morgan Stanley More Bullish on Tesla Robotaxi After Giga Texas Visit

Morgan Stanley just gave Tesla's autonomous vehicle program one of its most concrete endorsements yet — and this one came with a factory tour. Following a visit to Gigafactory Texas and meetings at a TMT conference, the firm's analysts said they are incrementally more positive on the outlook for robotaxi and Cybercab production, specifically calling out Tesla's progress in solving one of the trickiest real-world problems in autonomous driving: getting passengers in and out safely.

📊 Key Figures

Metric	Value	Context
MS Price Target (TSLA)	$415.00	Equalweight rating reiterated
Cybercab Production Start	April 2026	On track per MS assessment
Current U.S. Fleet (est.)	50–150 vehicles	MS estimate as of March 2026
Projected U.S. Fleet (2026)	~1,000 vehicles	Morgan Stanley forecast
Global Fleet Target (2035)	Up to 1 million	Morgan Stanley long-range projection
Expected Cybercab Price	Under $30,000	No steering wheel or pedals
Near-term CapEx Cash Burn	~$8 billion	MS estimate, rising CapEx phase
Commercial Service Target	Late 2026	Austin, TX — regulatory-dependent

Why Pickup and Drop-Off Is the Hard Part

It's easy to assume that highway driving is the toughest challenge for a self-driving car. In practice, the messiest scenarios happen at low speeds — pulling up to a curb in a busy downtown block, waiting while a passenger fumbles with a door, or navigating a parking lot entrance shared with pedestrians and cyclists. These are the edge cases Morgan Stanley specifically flagged as an area where Tesla has made meaningful progress.

For a fully unsupervised robotaxi — a vehicle with no steering wheel, no pedals, and no safety driver — getting these scenarios right isn't optional. It's the entire product. A Cybercab that can handle a hotel drop-off at rush hour or a crowded airport pickup lane is a commercially viable service. One that can't is a liability. Morgan Stanley's analysts walked the factory floor and came away believing Tesla is closer to the former than many skeptics assumed.

The Fleet Math: From 150 to 1,000 in One Year

The scale jump Morgan Stanley is projecting for 2026 is striking. The firm estimates Tesla currently operates somewhere between 50 and 150 unsupervised robotaxis in the U.S. By the end of 2026, they forecast that number reaching approximately 1,000 — a roughly 7–20x increase depending on where the current baseline actually sits.

That growth isn't just a business metric. Each additional mile driven by an unsupervised Cybercab feeds real-world data back into Tesla's autonomy model. More miles means faster model improvement, which in turn accelerates the path to personal unsupervised FSD for existing owners. The robotaxi fleet and the consumer FSD product are on the same learning loop — they improve each other.

Drone footage captured in early March 2026 already showed 25–30 Cybercab units active at Giga Texas, including vehicles at crash testing facilities and units being prepared for transport to various U.S. testing sites. That physical evidence aligns with Morgan Stanley's on-the-ground assessment.

Cybercab: What the Vehicle Actually Is

For owners less familiar with the Cybercab specs: this is a two-seater purpose-built for autonomous operation. No steering wheel. No pedals. It will be manufactured using Tesla's "unboxed" production process — a cost-reduction strategy that assembles large sub-sections of the vehicle simultaneously rather than sequentially along a traditional line. Tesla has priced it at under $30,000, which, if achieved at scale, would make it one of the most cost-competitive autonomous platforms on the market.

Production is on track to begin in April 2026 at Giga Texas, with initial commercial service in Austin targeted for late 2026, pending regulatory approvals. Expansion to other markets follows from there.

🔭 The BASENOR Take

📰 Deep Dive

What makes this Morgan Stanley note different from typical analyst commentary is the sourcing: this wasn't a desk-bound model update. Analysts physically visited Giga Texas and attended a TMT conference where Tesla presumably presented. First-hand factory access produces a different quality of signal than parsing press releases, and the firm came away with a specifically technical observation — edge case progress around passenger pickup and drop-off — rather than a vague sentiment upgrade. That specificity matters.

The Equalweight rating deserves a closer read too. Morgan Stanley isn't calling this a slam dunk. Maintaining Equalweight while raising optimism on the robotaxi outlook suggests the analysts believe the market has already priced in a meaningful portion of the autonomous upside, but that execution risk remains real. The ~$8 billion near-term cash burn estimate is the counterweight — scaling Cybercab production, building out the Terafab chip factory (set to launch at Giga Texas on March 21), and developing Optimus Gen 3 simultaneously represents an enormous capital commitment with returns that are still years away at scale.

The 1 million global robotaxi projection by 2035 is the long game. Between now and then, the more important number for existing Tesla owners is how quickly the unsupervised fleet grows from hundreds to thousands of vehicles — because that's the data engine that will determine how fast personal FSD improves. Austin in late 2026 is the starting gun. Watch the fleet count, not just the headlines.

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Sources verified at publish time. Spotted an inaccuracy? Email editorial@basenor.com.