Since December 2024, Tesla (TSLA), once one of the most popular stocks on stock market and investment platforms, has taken a beating. Its first quarter 2025 results were announced on April 21 and showed a shocking 71% drop in net income and a 39% drop in adjusted income.

There are several reasons for the company’s struggles, including stronger competition, weaker sales than expected and CEO Elon Musk’s political actions. Musk has since left his role in the Trump administration, and the day after the first quarter results were announced, he promised to spend more time at Tesla.

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Time will tell whether that will be enough to reassure investors and restore some of the brand damage that has been done, but there are several positive reasons to be confident about investing in Tesla as a stock in your portfolio beyond its car sales.

Self-driving cars once seemed like only a dream, but now Tesla is entering the market.

Tesla plans to begin testing its robotaxis in Austin this month. As reported by NBC News, the test will be small at first, with only about 10 vehicles, but Musk has said that it will eventually become common.

The outlet reported that this move is an attempt to compete with robotaxi service Waymo and improve the company’s performance.

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Tesla is understandably being cautious about financial guidance for the remainder of 2025. Instead, the company has said it will revisit its earnings guidance for the full year in its second quarter earnings report.

However, it’s promising to note that the energy side of Tesla is showing better performance than its vehicle side. As reported in its first quarter earnings, energy generation and storage revenue rose 67% year over year.

“We achieved a fourth sequential record for Powerwall deployments … Gross margin for the Energy Business improved sequentially … Megafactory Shanghai will be an important asset for meeting global energy storage demand during a time of uncertain cost structure in the U.S.,” Tesla noted in the update.

Tesla has remained popular with DIY investors on investment platforms, per MoneyWeek, and that could be a good sign for long-term shareholder value.

According to MoneyWeek, financial company AJ Bell reported in late April that three times more investors were buying Tesla shares than selling them over the prior month. The stock is still down about 14% for the year as of June 11, but it’s shown a gain of 91% over the past year.