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Tesla can reverse a three-decade-old prophecy from Carl Sagan, who said in 1995 that U.S. manufacturing would decline, according to a note for Morgan Stanley.
Sagan, an astronomer, said the U.S. would abandon manufacturing for service and information thirty years ago, but Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley believes Tesla has the ability to counter that point with its interesting position as an AI company, among other things.
Analysts led by Jonas released a note on Tuesday that said:
“The intersection of AI and the physical economy offers the potential to disprove Carl Sagan’s 1995 prophecy.”
Tesla has utilized AI in its factories to help scale the production of its electric vehicles and energy products. What’s interesting is manufacturing, which used to be one of the U.S.’s main trades across the country, has weakened due to some companies exporting manufacturing to other countries.
Morgan Stanley says that this can change:
“Monumental capital flows must fund a new era of intelligent machines made in America.”
The way Tesla has prioritized using AI in its factories started long ago, but CEO Elon Musk admitted that the company was too reliant on it at one point. Now, Tesla collects millions of data points for AI purposes, including for its self-driving efforts and to bolster the performance of its Optimus bot.
Tesla has a lead in vision, language, and actuation (VLA) foundation models, which could pair well with the rapid advancements in AI. This creates the idea that Tesla has incredibly large shoes to fill.
Tesla invites high school seniors to its Manufacturing Development Program
As other companies working on AI and robotics could also play a role, Tesla seems to hold the narrative that most of the advancements in these sectors will have to go through them.
With that being said, Morgan Stanley analysts believe that Tesla’s prowess in various tech fields could be what the U.S. needs to reverse a lack of investment into domestic manufacturing efforts.
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