Tesla CEO Elon Musk has failed to deliver on his promise for 2024 vehicle deliveries, even though it was only a slight increase target. This is not a good sign for Tesla, with a Market Cap of 1.3 trillion dollars, as the company is entering its most critical year to date.

Due to the announcement of a series of milestone goals, Musk has accumulated a long list of tasks that must be achieved by 2025 to support Tesla's high Market Cap.

Unfortunately, Tesla has not started the new year with strong momentum. Earlier today, Tesla announced its vehicle delivery data for the fourth quarter and the entire year of 2024. Despite numerous incentives, Tesla only delivered approximately 0.496 million vehicles to customers in the fourth quarter, falling short of the 0.515 million target. This led to a sharp drop in Tesla's stock price on the first trading day of 2025.

Previously, Musk repeatedly promised that Tesla would at least achieve a sales growth in 2024. Now it seems that for Musk, who has been spoiled by success, the goal has clearly not been met. In late January of last year, Tesla warned that it would not be able to replicate the previous year's growth rate of 38% due to developing a new low-cost entry model. Nonetheless, this still left hope for double-digit growth.

Dan Ives, a Technology Analyst at investment bank Wedbush Securities, acknowledges that the market is disappointed by Tesla's historic first annual sales decline, but Ives believes that as long-term investment theories shift from vehicle ownership to providing autonomous taxi services aided by in-car AI, Tesla's quarterly delivery numbers have become relatively meaningless.

A series of new vehicles is planned to be launched in the first half of the year.

As of the time of writing, Tesla's stock price has fallen nearly 7%, and for the entire year of 2024, Tesla delivered 1.79 million vehicles, which is lower than the record high of 1.81 million vehicles sold in 2023, marking the first decline in over a decade. This not only nearly eliminates the gap with BYD but also jeopardizes Musk's forecast of 20% to 30% growth for 2025 made last October.

Ross Gerber, head of the investment fund at investment management company Gerber Kawasaki, warned: "Imagine that once the $7,500 discount (the Trump's administration plan to cancel federal tax credits for electric vehicles) is lost, Tesla's sales will decline. From now on, Tesla will only become harder to sell."

Based on Musk's upper limit of the 2025 goal, Tesla will have to sell 2.35 million new vehicles. To achieve this goal, Musk plans to revive demand by launching a series of new vehicles.

The main new model is the Model Y, which accounts for about two-thirds of Tesla's global sales. This new vehicle, codenamed "Juniper," is expected to feature some styling elements and interior from its sibling model, the new version of Model 3, Highland.

Another new vehicle this year will be the Semi trailer truck. This large commercial truck was officially unveiled more than two years ago, but it was only a "soft launch" at the time, with only a few dozen on the road. 2025 should be the year Tesla completely transforms the freight market, as Tesla has already invested in its Nevada factory to prepare for mass production of the Semi truck.

After several years of delays, the second-generation Roadster sports car is also expected to launch in 2025. Musk stated in February of last year: "You will never find a car like the Roadster among all cars again." Musk promised that this vehicle would be unveiled by the end of December. But the deadline has passed, and Musk hasn't said a word this week.

Finally, Tesla will also launch a low-priced model this year, which is widely expected to be priced at around $0.025 million, although Tesla has not yet confirmed this price.

Last spring, Musk moved the launch date of this low-priced model from the second half of 2025 to the first half, which somewhat boosted confidence in Tesla's growth. However, there has been no information about this low-cost model so far, although Tesla has hinted that the autonomous taxi Cybercab may launch as early as next year.

Full autonomous driving will be launched this year.

As long as Musk can fulfill his promise of full self-driving (FSD) without human supervision, investors may forgive him for missing any of the aforementioned targets.

In April 2019, Musk made a notorious prediction: by 2020, there would be 1 million Tesla autonomous taxis on the road. By this April, almost six years have passed, and Musk has clearly failed to deliver on that promise.

Since then, Musk has been confident that his AI team would find a solution within months, but after another failed update of the FSD software that did not fulfill its initial promise, he had to postpone the date.

However, this time, Musk has invested billions of dollars in building a massive new AI training center near the Texas factory, named Cortex, equipped with tens of thousands of NVIDIA chips. This powerful computing capability is designed specifically for training the neural networks of Tesla's full self-driving system and the upcoming humanoid robot Optimus.

This seems to give Musk enough confidence to state that if regulatory authorities cooperate, he will launch the unsupervised full self-driving system this year in Texas and even in California.

Musk stated last October: "The pace in Texas is much faster, so we will definitely launch it in Texas. Meanwhile, it may also be launched in some other states by 2025, at least in California and Texas."

Currently, the competition in the autonomous taxi market is also quite fierce. Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has established a partnership with Uber, and BYD has also partnered with Uber to provide cars with autonomous driving capabilities for Global customers.

Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth Management and Tesla shareholder, stated: "Theoretically, as long as there is not too much competition, robot taxis can be profitable. But the problem is, competition is fierce, and it is already on the road."

Tesla's stock price reached an all-time high in the last three months of 2024, mainly due to Musk's prescient "full throttle" bet to support Donald Trump's eventual successful presidential campaign.

This not only restored faith in Musk's magical ability to leverage technology trends earlier than competitors, but investors also hoped that the incoming new government would create a regulatory path favorable to Tesla for autonomous driving.

Wedbush Securities Analyst Ives believes that Trump's entrance into the White House will invigorate Musk's robotaxi (autonomous taxi) plans. He stated, "We believe Tesla remains the most undervalued AI company in the current market."

Although Tesla's profits may see a slight rebound this year, Ives' opinion remains somewhat bold. Just two weeks ago, Tesla's stock price had just reached an all-time high of $488, surpassing the total market cap of the entire auto industry. Even after today's slump, its expected PE for 2025 remains as high as 100 times.

Tesla will release its Earnings Reports for the fourth quarter of 2024 on January 30, Beijing time.