Earlier today, we heard about some of the sales troubles that electric car maker Tesla (TSLA) is having in Europe. While this is a big problem, it is not the only one that the brand is facing in Europe. In fact, worker absenteeism is proving to be troublesome as well, and contributing to Tesla shares being down over 6% in Monday afternoon’s trading.
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Reports noted that there were a lot of workers calling in sick at the factory near Berlin. This by itself might not seem like such a problem—sick days exist for a reason, after all—but apparently, the numbers were sufficient to prompt Elon Musk to personally look into the matter.
In fact, that is what he did. He sent out local deputy Andre Thierig to go personally ringing doorbells of workers who called in sick. Apparently there were an unusually high number of workers calling in sick on Fridays, which suggests that not everyone who was sick on a Friday was, in fact, sick. Interestingly, German workers call in sick more than any other class of workers in Europe, a report from the World Health Organization noted back in 2022. Some claim this is due to German workers’ rights laws that allow for full pay for injury or illness by law.
Rising Concern About ADAS
Meanwhile, Tesla’s work in the Full-Self Driving (FSD) field continues apace. While many consider the Advanced Driver Assist System (ADAS) concept a significant help to driving safety, even the FSD system is not yet foolproof. In fact, like Musk himself noted “We just need to be very confident that the probability of injury is low before we allow people to check their email and text messages.”
Basically, right now, FSD is a misnomer. It needs human monitoring, if nothing else, and occasionally human intervention too. In fact, some drivers are actually shutting off their ADAS features—whether FSD, Super Cruise or the like—to get a few moments of “freedom” from a system that will not even allow a brief look to the left.
Is Tesla a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on TSLA stock based on 13 Buys, 12 Holds, and nine Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 109.30% rally in its share price over the past year, the average TSLA price target of $336.71 per share implies 11.35% downside risk.
