Elon Musk Aims to Rally Tesla Shareholders Around Long-Term Vision at Investor Day

Tesla has suggested it might provide updates on a grab bag of topics, from manufacturing plans to its long-awaited Cybertruck pickup and in-house battery cell efforts. The event comes a day after Mexican President

Andrés Manuel López Obrador

said the company plans to build a manufacturing plant in the northern Mexican industrial hub of Monterrey. 

Top of mind for Wall Street is how—and when—Tesla may roll out a new, less expensive passenger car that would extend the company’s reach into the mass market. The cheapest Tesla currently available in the U.S. is priced above $40,000.  

Tesla shares have rebounded nearly 70% in the past two months after a punishing 2022, as the company has demonstrated an ability to stoke demand by flexing some of its financial muscle. Tesla slashed vehicle prices in January, some by nearly 20% in the U.S., in the face of higher interest rates and economic uncertainty. It has since nudged some prices back up.  

Those price changes have pressured rivals, some of which have responded by offering their own discounts or price cuts. 

Tesla’s stock-price increase has returned shares to $205.71, around the level where they were trading last fall but roughly half of their record high. The recent rally also helped Mr. Musk return to the top of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index this week after he relinquished the unofficial title of world’s richest person in December.  

Now, investors are looking for clarity on how Tesla intends to keep its edge longer term. The company aspires to sell 20 million vehicles a year by 2030, up from around 1.3 million in 2022. (

Toyota Motor Corp.

was the top-selling auto maker globally in 2022, having sold 10.5 million vehicles.)

Key to Tesla’s success, many on Wall Street believe, will be introducing a more affordable electric car. Tesla currently offers four passenger models, with a fifth—the Cybertruck—expected to roll out later this year. The least expensive of those vehicles starts at $42,990 in the U.S., before taxes and fees. 

In September 2020, Mr. Musk outlined plans to produce a $25,000 car that he said would be ready in about three years. In January 2022, however, he played down those efforts, saying the company had enough on its plate and wasn’t working on the car. 

Mr. Musk, with his customary pageantry, has promised an event not just for Tesla shareholders, but for “investors in Earth,” where the company will chart a path to transitioning to more sustainable forms of energy. 

That vision is expected to be presented in the form of a “Master Plan 3,” he has said. Prior iterations have served as mission statements for the electric-vehicle maker, spelling out Mr. Musk’s strategic vision and explaining the rationale behind certain decisions.

The first plan, released in 2006, laid out Tesla’s ambition to make a high-end electric sports car that would help drum up interest in battery-powered vehicles—and help finance more affordable models. The second came a decade later, soon after Tesla offered to buy home-solar company SolarCity in 2016. That document described Tesla’s rationale for seeking to acquire the solar firm, where Mr. Musk served as chairman. It also explained Tesla’s efforts to develop autonomous vehicles and, eventually, enter the ride-hailing business. 

Tesla has yet to develop autonomous vehicles. Its advanced driver-assistance technology, known as Autopilot, is designed to help drivers navigate certain scenarios, such as matching the speed of surrounding traffic on the highway. The system has come under scrutiny from U.S. auto-safety officials and others. 

The company also is working on a humanoid robot dubbed Optimus. Mr. Musk has suggested the robot could help Tesla make cars more efficiently.

Write to Rebecca Elliott at rebecca.elliott@wsj.com