Tesla Stock Rises to Close Out Wild Week. It’s Robo-Taxis vs. Sliding Sales.

Tesla’s week started will but it took a bad turn when European sales figures were published. (Courtesy Tesla)

Tesla stock was rising early Friday to end a roller coaster week for the company.

It started well, with the launch of its robo-taxi service in Austin, Texas pushing shares up more than 8% on Monday. Then they slipped back, and took a big leg down after a disappointing drop in European sales so far this year.

Late Thursday, a top aide to CEO Elon Musk was reported to have left the company. Omead Afshar, who was in charge of sales and manufacturing operations in Europe and North America, parted ways with Tesla less than a year after getting promoted to the role, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

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There’s also new competition for Tesla. Chinese firm Xiaomi launched a new electric sport-utility vehicle on Thursday that undercuts Tesla’s Model Y—one of the top selling SUVs in China.

The company said it sold 200,000 of the vehicles in the first three minutes of sales going live and 289,000 in the first hour, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Coming into Friday’s session, the stock is still up 1.1% over the past five days. It rose 0.5%, to $327.44 in early trading. It’s not just this week that’s been up and down for the shares. Since Jan. 1, the stock has lost 19%, but it has gained 24% in the past three months. They’re still up 65% in the past year.

For all that, the big picture hasn’t changed that much. The company lost its crown as the biggest seller of electric vehicles to Chinese rival BYD last year, and Musk’s foray into politics as the head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency seems to have hurt both sales and the stock.

But Tesla was never just about electric cars. Its future performance is more likely to be determined by self-driving taxis, artificial intelligence software, and humanoid robots. Many Wall Street analysts are optimistic. Mickey Legg at Benchmark yesterday raised his price target for the stock to $475 from $350, as he said the robo-taxi launch “sets the stage for the growth.”

Write to Brian Swint at brian.swint@barrons.com