Electric car giant Tesla (TSLA) has been hard at work developing its technology of late, and two items in particular are coming to the forefront. The soon-to-be-released Model Y Juniper and the kind-of-released-right-now Full Self Driving system. However, investors are getting a bit skeptical about the pace of technological development at Tesla and sent shares down modestly in Friday afternoon’s trading.
Full Self Driving is getting a boost from the efforts of “Project Rodeo,” noted a report from Business Insider. A project that has been in play for some time now, Project Rodeo works to move self-driving cars forward by testing the limits of current software and addressing them accordingly. This includes open streets with a range of hazards, such as other vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists.
The Project Rodeo drivers are trained to wait until the very last moment to intervene to give the software as much time as possible to perform its own corrections, the report noted. Indeed, the more time the car drives itself, the more data there is to work with, and that ultimately produces better results.
The Model Y Juniper, Coming Soon
Meanwhile, Tesla is also poised to roll out a new Model Y, known as the Juniper. The reveal is “weeks” away, according to a report from The Independent, and early artist renderings offer some insight into the new model. The artist renderings make it look like a fairly standard four-door sedan, suggesting that the innovations will be mostly under the hood and in the cockpit when they finally emerge.
And just to top it off, replacing a Tesla battery pack just got a little simpler, a Jalopnik report noted. A company called Re/Cell will offer battery pack replacements for the original Tesla Roadster that actually beat Tesla itself on price. Actual costs, though, were not revealed. Moreover, as noted in the report, using a Re/Cell pack will actually improve the Roadster’s performance, as the Re/Cell pack weighs less than the original model.
Is Tesla a Buy, Hold, or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on TSLA stock based on 11 Buys, 16 Holds, and eight Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 13% rally in its share price over the past year, the average TSLA price target of $207.83 per share implies 16.37% downside risk.
