Cathie Wood-led Ark Invest said on Monday that Tesla Inc’s latest move to allow car sharing on its mobile app brings its user one step closer towards monetizing their electric car and transforming it from a "stranded asset" into a "revenue generating machine."
What Happened:Ark analyst Tasha Keeney said speculation has been rife that Tesla is planning a ride-hailing network after its recent software update that allows owners to share the vehicle with others via the phone app.
A Twitter account that monitors the app store for any new updates on the Tesla app, had last week revealed that the new version of the electric vehicle maker’s mobile app has a feature that allows owners to share cars.
The update appears to enable Tesla owners to allow multiple drivers access to their cars through the mobile app, which was previously only possible through the website.
Ark has previously noted how Tesla could launch a competitive and profitable human-driven ride-hail service before rolling out an autonomous taxi network.
“Such a strategy could add a tremendous amount of training data to its autonomous neural network and lay the groundwork for the routing and payment infrastructure necessary for an autonomous ride-hail service,” Keeney wrote in a note.
The latest update would allow family members, car renters, and professional ride-hail drivers to share virtual keys to their Tesla vehicles, as per the analyst, which could ultimately allow a Tesla vehicle to be transformed from a "stranded asset" into a "revenue generating machine."
Why It Matters:Wood’s money managing firm, which counts Tesla as its largest holding, has previously said it believes the Musk-led company could pose a serious threat to ride-sharing companies such as Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc, once autonomous taxis commercialize.
Musk has previously talked about launching a ride-hailing service with drivers before rolling out an autonomous driving network.
The Tesla CEO has been promising fully self-driven electric cars for years. The company had last week launched another update for the Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta program with focus on vision, object detection, and the precision of movements by the vehicle.
The FSD Beta updates are released every two weeks and are led by an army of Tesla owners, or beta testers, who have exclusive access to the automaker’s newest and most robust releases of its semi-autonomous driving program.
So far only drivers who have a score of 98, 99 and 100 are part of the exclusive club which is likely to expand to lower scores in the future.
Price Action:Tesla shares closed 0.59% lower at $1,009.01 a share on Monday.
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