Is Tesla Stock A Buy In September 2026?
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Tesla is finally moving from promise to product
For years, Tesla’s biggest opportunities existed mostly in the future. Robotaxis were coming. The humanoid robot Optimus was coming. Artificial intelligence would eventually transform the company.
Now some of those projects are beginning to arrive in tangible ways. In its second-quarter earnings release, Tesla said it had expanded its Robotaxi service to seven U.S. markets, and noted that production of the Cybercab has begun. The company also expects to begin production of Optimus soon.
Those aren’t just promises anymore. They’re early-stage commercial products and businesses.
If autonomous transportation becomes a massive market and Tesla captures a meaningful of it, the electric vehicle (EV) business that accounts for most of the company today could eventually serve as the foundation for something much larger. The same is true for Optimus. Humanoid robots capable of performing useful work at scale could open a market that is difficult to quantify today. The potential is enormous.
But potential isn’t the same as earnings.
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NASDAQ: TSLA
Tesla
Premium Feature
Moneyball Superscore
65/100
Today’s Change
(3.98%) $14.08
Current Price
$368.16
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$1.5TMarket cap calculated using publicly traded s outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or dual-class non-traded s. Implied market cap may vary.
Day’s Range
$355.75 – $370.00
52wk Range
$297.38 – $498.83
Volume
333.3K
Avg Vol
41.8M
Gross Margin
18.85%
The Cybercab is an important test
The most important question for Tesla investors isn’t whether the Cybercab can drive itself. It’s whether Tesla can turn autonomous driving into a high-return business. That’s a much higher bar.
Currently, the rollout of those vehicles remains limited. And almost immediately after Tesla began putting passengers into Cybercabs, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit to examine Tesla’s self-certification and investigate whether the unusual vehicle complies with federal safety standards.
That doesn’t mean the Cybercab will fail. But it does mean that its commercialization isn’t simply a matter of manufacturing more EVs. Tesla will need to successfully navigate regulatory, safety, insurance, customer adoption, fleet operations, and economic considerations.
Even the company acknowledged that scaling its Robotaxi arm quickly is not the main priority — scaling safely is. That’s precisely why the next phase of the process could go more slowly than investors want.
Tesla is spending heavily on the future
There’s another reason I wouldn’t chase the stock. Tesla is spending aggressively now, well ahead of its biggest new businesses reaching meaningful scale.
The company expects its 2026 capital expenditures to exceed $25 billion, and says that spending will continue to grow over the next two to three years as it expands its Robotaxi fleet, Optimus production, semiconductor capacity, AI compute, solar power system manufacturing, and other infrastructure.
The impact of these investments is already being reflected in its financials. In the second quarter, the company’s free cash flow was negative $1.1 billion.
The silver lining is that the cash and investments on its balance sheet totaled roughly $44 billion, and it has almost no debt. So, this free cash outflow isn’t creating a balance sheet emergency.
In other words, Tesla can afford to spend heavily, but we have very little clarity about whether these investments will generate long-term holder returns.
That’s where valuation becomes important
With a market capitalization of roughly $1.1 trillion (as of this writing) and trading at a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 12.1, Tesla isn’t priced an ordinary automaker. That valuation assumes Tesla will become much larger.
For perspective, peer automaker General Motors has a P/S ratio of 0.5.
Investors are effectively assigning substantial value to autonomous transportation, robotics, AI, energy, and software businesses that aren’t yet producing anything close to the revenues and profits that it will take to justify this valuation.
That’s what makes investing in Tesla’s stock difficult. If Tesla management is right about the potential of Robotaxis and Optimus, the current stock price could eventually look cheap in retrospect. If they are even modestly wrong about the timing or the potential market opportunities, however, the stock could struggle.
And that’s an important point. Tesla doesn’t need to fail for the stock to disappoint. The stock could suffer if the company merely succeeds more slowly than investors expect.
Should you buy Tesla stock in September?
For me, Tesla is a stock to watch rather than chase.
The company has made genuine progress. A few Cybercabs are now carrying paying passengers. The company’s Robotaxi operations are expanding, and Optimus is moving toward production. Those developments make Tesla’s long-term story more credible than it was a few years ago.
But they haven’t yet proved that Tesla can generate the enormous profits required to justify its current valuation. That’s the distinction investors need to keep in mind.
In short, investors who buy the stock today are paying a premium for a future that is becoming more real, but one that hasn’t fully arrived.
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About the Author
Lawrence Nga is a contributing Motley Fool stock market analyst covering technology, consumer goods, e-commerce, AI, fintech, and China stocks. Before joining The Motley Fool, Lawrence wrote for Motley Fool Singapore and held roles as a lecturer at Kaplan Financial China and Liverpool College of Management Science, a performance analyst at AB Sugar, a financial analyst at BSO China Limited, and manager of supply chain finance at British Sugar. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University and holds credentials from both the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).
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