Tesla shares (TSLA) rose nearly 10% on Monday, after Oppenheimer analyst Colin Rusch raised his price target by nearly 60% to $612 per share.
This raise follows on the heels of Piper Sandler Cos. raising their price target to $553 late last week, citing the huge potential for growth in the Chinese market.
In raising his price target, Rusch also commented on China and that Tesla was able to build a factory from the ground up and begin delivering vehicles in less than year. He said that kind of performance puts legacy automakers on notice, and that they need to start paying attention to Tesla before it is too late. “Tesla has really proven to be an existential threat for those companies,” Rusch told CNBC.
Rusch also cited Tesla’s huge lead over the competition when it comes to the number of electric vehicles already on the road which are contributing to Tesla’s neural net and providing millions of kilometers of data every month. With over 600,000 EV’s already in the hands of consumers, that gives Tesla a huge data advantage over other automakers who want to enter the autonomous driving market.
