ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood said her firm would add parking tickets to its Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) valuation model after an unsupervised Robotaxi she rode in received a $75 violation during a nine-minute video released Monday.
Wood Adds Tickets To Tesla Model
Wood sat in the front passenger seat as a fully driverless Tesla moved through Austin streets without a safety monitor. When the ticket arrived, she said, "We got $75 ticket," adding, "Wow this..is something we hadn't thought of before. We're gonna have to put this into a new line item in our model for Tesla — tickets."
Wood still compared the ride favorably with her earlier trips in Alphabet Inc.-backed (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Waymo vehicles. She described Tesla's performance as smooth but said the ticket showed a real operating cost that large robotaxi fleets must address.
The Tesla bull later posted on X, "Hey @elonmusk! I recently experienced @Tesla’s@robotaxi fleet in Austin. Smooth ride, no driver. It’s remarkable to see 10+ years of real-world AI training manifesting in a fully autonomous service.” She added saying, “We did discover a new operating expense line item for our Tesla model: parking tickets. Our Robotaxi got a $75 parking ticket. How does Tesla plan to handle parking and traffic violations in a Robotaxi world?”
Robotaxis Drive ARK's Tesla Bull Case
The ride doubled as a real-world test of ARK's Tesla thesis. "When the cost of transportation falls, we'll get more of it," Wood said, echoing Elon Musk's view that adoption could move "slowly, slowly… then all at once."
ARK's older Tesla model treated robotaxis as the company's main valuation driver, projecting autonomous ride-hailing would account for about 60% of expected enterprise value and more than half of 2026 EBITDA in a $4,600 per-share base case.
Tesla last week expanded its driverless Robotaxi service across the Austin metropolitan area, with the company’s unsupervised fleet said to include roughly 21 active vehicles, far below the scale needed for mass ride-hailing.
Regulators Keep Focus On FSD Safety
Meanwhile, regulators remain focused on safety. In March, NHTSA escalated its probe into about 3.2 million Tesla vehicles equipped with Full Self-Driving after nine incidents, including one fatal crash and two injury crashes, tied to reduced-visibility conditions.
Tesla's Austin Robotaxi fleet has reported 17 NHTSA incidents since its June 2025 launch, none involving major injuries. Five low-speed collisions were attributed to FSD, with others linked to separate factors.
Price Action: Tesla shares closed 4.59% higher at $408.95 on Monday, edging lower to $408.78 in after-hours trading.
Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings indicate Tesla stock has a Momentum in the 47th percentile and Value in the 3rd percentile.
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