Key Points

Tesla's Robotaxi service began carrying riders in Miami on Friday, its first market outside Texas and California.
Tesla's own roadmap lists Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix, and Las Vegas as the next markets in preparation.
Shares jumped almost 7% on Monday.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) Robotaxis began picking up passengers in Miami on Friday, marking the company's first market outside Texas and California. The service starts modestly in a geofenced area of western Miami-Dade County, reportedly stretching from West Miami toward Doral, while downtown and Miami Beach remain excluded for now.

The day before, Tesla reported 480,126 second-quarter deliveries, up about 25% year over year, yet the stock fell 7.5% anyway. Shares are recovering some ground on Monday as investors look for signs that the Robotaxi business could gain momentum.

Is the Robotaxi business scaling fast enough to deliver that lift?

Cybercab. Image source: Tesla.

The map is filling in

The Robotaxi service is barely a year old. Tesla launched it in Austin last summer with safety monitors aboard, began removing them, and has been adding markets since. Miami serves as a logical next test bed with its flat roads, year-round driving weather, and heavy visitor traffic that favors ride-hailing.

Notably, Miami extends the Robotaxi footprint beyond Tesla's home states for the first time. According to the company's first-quarter update, Tesla lists Austin, Dallas, and Houston as ramping unsupervised, operates with safety drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area, and lists Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix, and Las Vegas as markets with preparations underway. Friday converted the first of those five from planned to live.

Yet Tesla still has not reached meaningful scale, at least not enough to significantly strengthen the bull case for the stock. The Austin fleet is still reportedly measured in dozens of vehicles, with the unsupervised portion even smaller. Early riders across markets have described long waits and occasional software issues. Availability also remains limited to specific service areas in Tesla's dedicated Robotaxi app, another sign this is a controlled rollout rather than a mass-market service.

What a city launch cannot fix

The market's frustration that has left shares in the red for the year arguably is not about Tesla's expanding Robotaxi service. The company's first-quarter operating margin was just 4.2%, on revenue that grew 16%.

Additionally, the stock's valuation remains difficult to justify. With $1.10 in earnings per share over the past 12 months, the stock trades at more than 380 times earnings, a price that arguably makes sense only if autonomy becomes a large, profitable business on a reasonable timeline. Growth in the teens is not what investors are paying for. Autonomy is.

Ultimately, a launch in Miami shows progress. But investors still need more concrete evidence to know Robotaxi can become material to results soon. Tesla has not disclosed Robotaxi revenue, ride volumes, utilization, or per-mile costs. Investors, therefore, are still mostly left in the dark.

We will likely know more on July 22, when Tesla is scheduled to report earnings. If Tesla opts to provide more data on the Robotaxi program and more details about its plans and its potential economics, investors will have more data points to gauge just how much this Robotaxi business may be worth to the overall business.

So, can Miami rescue the stock?

Based on the stock's sharp rebound on Monday, the initial phases of a rescue may already be underway. But shares are still down almost 7% year to date. To fully recover, Tesla will likely need more upbeat news on its Robotaxi program, news that starts making it sound like the program will soon start contributing meaningfully to Tesla's financial results.

The rollout cadence is encouraging, with five markets live and four more queued, and Tesla is executing the expansion it laid out for investors. But with a price-to-earnings ratio of about 380, the growth stock needs autonomy to start showing up in the financial statements, not just on maps.