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Tesla’s stock price rose enough on Friday to wipe out its loss for the year and bring its gain for the week to 27%.

Shares of the electric vehicle maker closed Friday at $251.55. They ended last year at $248.48, and proceeded to fall as low as $138.80 in April.

The latest rally was sparked by a better-than-expected deliveries report for the second quarter on Tuesday. While deliveries still dropped 4.8% from a year earlier, the falloff was less steep than the first-quarter decline, and gave investors reasons for optimism heading into the second half.

In April, Tesla shares hit a 52-week low after a string of troubling developments. Sales in the core automotive business fell in the first quarter, the company downsized through sweeping layoffs and there were reports that Tesla had scrapped plans to soon produce a low-cost family car at its Texas factory.

Tesla is set to deliver second-quarter financial results after the bell on July 23. Automotive gross margins are likely to be in focus.

Since last year, Tesla has been offering extensive discounts and incentives to attract customers to its aging lineup of EVs, including its popular entry-level Model 3 sedans, Model Y crossover utility vehicles and its more expensive flagship Model S sedans and Model X SUVs.

In late 2023, Tesla started selling its angular Cybertruck. A Tesla Cybertruck account on social media site X posted on Thursday that the truck had become the bestselling fully electric pickup in the U.S. in the second quarter.

Ford reported sales of its fully electric model, the F-150 Lightning, totaling 7,902 in the second quarter and 15,645 through June of this year.

Tesla did not respond to CNBC’s request for more information.

Beyond the upcoming earnings report, Cantor Fitzgerald analysts wrote in a note on Tuesday that they expect a marketing event — Tesla’s Robotaxi Day — early next month to be a catalyst for the stock.

“TSLA has previously disclosed plans for a Robotaxi (or Cybercab), which the company plans to unveil on August 8,” they wrote. “Although we don’t expect this segment to launch prior to 2027, we do expect it to be a meaningful business segment for the company over the long term.”

Still, Cantor Fitzgerald expects Tesla to deliver fewer cars this year than last. The firm has a price target of $230 on Tesla and recommends buying the stock.

While Tesla has bounced back, it is lagging behind the broader market for the year. The Nasdaq is up 22% in 2024, and the S&P 500 has gained 17%. Tesla is now up 1.2%.

A recent Axios Harris poll found the company is experiencing brand deterioration that is at least partly due to Musk’s “antics” and “political rants.” A New York Times survey out this week also said Musk’s “polarizing statements” and “political activity” are driving away some “left-leaning consumers.”

Tesla is also still years delayed in delivering software that can turn its existing vehicles into self-driving cars. Musk announced on Oct. 19, 2016, that all Tesla cars being produced at that time had the necessary hardware to make them self-driving. But in late June, he said another hardware and sensor setup is on the way to enable that capability.

WATCH: Tesla deliveries are being ‘overanalyzed’

LONDON — A somewhat strange and ironic political shift has gripped Europe over the last few years.

In the formerly Brexiting, euroskeptic U.K., the pendulum has just swung back to the center-left Labour Party, which comes to power after a mammoth election win, ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule.

A different picture is playing out in much of Western Europe — and in countries that disdained Brexit and the U.K.’s populist trend in recent years over the last decade or so. These states are now seeing their own electorates shift to the right, with nationalist, populist and euroskeptic parties riding high in voter polls and entering the corridors of power.

While the U.K. and mainland Europe are heading in different directions politically, analysts say that the driving force behind changing patterns at the polls is fundamentally the same: voters are desperate for change.

“There’s an anti-incumbency mood again in Europe,” Dan Stevens, professor of politics at Exeter University, told CNBC. No matter who the incumbent is, Stevens said, “there’s just a general dissatisfaction and want for change.”

Tapping into the zeitgeist among British voters, the U.K.’s Labour Party used “change” as its rallying cry for voters ahead of Thursday’s general election, which it won with a landslide.

The shift to the left comes after a tumultuous period in British politics during the last series of Conservative governments, with immigration concerns and euroskepticism culminating in the 2016 referendum to leave the European Union. More challenges followed throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine and a cost-of-living crisis. By the time the British election was called, Brits were just fed up, analysts said.

The U.K. is not alone in looking for a political change of scenery. A similar shift has been observed in much of Western and Eastern Europe in recent years, with hard-right populist and nationalist parties upsetting and unseating the old political establishment.

Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and France have all seen far-right parties — such as Fratelli d’Italia, the Party for Freedom, Alternative for Germany or National Rally — rise up in opinion polls or win elections.

Such parties often emerged as protest factions, standing on an anti-immigration or euroskeptic platform, but they’ve since taken a more mainstream approach to attract a wider section of the electorate, who are concerned over broader universal issues such as jobs, education, health care, national identity and the economy.

The latter issue is a particular driver of voting change, with rising food and energy costs and declining disposable household incomes having the most direct and decisive impact on voters.

“If you have very poor economic performance, then you would expect the political pendulum to swing, and when it swings it, it goes to the other side from where it is at present. … It is swinging because people are hard up and aggravated. It’s as simple as that,” Christopher Granville, managing director of EMEA and global politics at TS Lombard, told CNBC, signaling that the turn of tide has not favored incumbent leaderships.

“Of course, there’s a huge debate about the extent to which the respective governments are responsible for this poor economic performance. … You can argue that they’ve been disastrously incompetent or you can argue that they’ve been innocent victims of external shocks, such as the energy crisis provoked by the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis etc,” Granville added.

“Wherever you stand on that debate, the reality is the same, that the voters wants to swing the pendulum.”

Many political experts pin the rise of the hard right in Europe on voters wanting to protest against the political status quo and its often long-standing establishment figures and parties.

“Right wing and hard-right parties are not only winning because of immigration, yes, that’s their signature topic but they have been able to win because they attract a coalition of voters voting for them for different reasons,” Sofia Vasilopoulou, professor of European politics at King’s College London, told CNBC.

“They have a number of groups who are what I call ‘peripheral’ voters who tend to vote with them because of a lack of trust in politics, lack of trust in institutions, fatigue with the status quo,” she said. “It’s a kind of a protest against politics in general, and there’s quite a lot of voters that they get because of that.”

Political analysts point out that, although far-right political parties in France, Germany and Italy made gains in the recent European Parliament elections, they also did not perform quite as well as expected.

Furthermore, the center-right European People’s Party — made up of Christian democratic, conservative parties across the EU — still retained its dominance in the parliamentary chamber, winning 188 seats.

But right-wing alliances performed well overall: the European Conservatives and Reformists group, led by Italy’s right-wing leader Giorgia Meloni, saw strong gains, taking its total number of seats in the Parliament to 84, and coming in third place after the S&D socialist alliance. The far-right European parliamentary group Identity and Democracy, led by France’s National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, now has 57 seats.

Both right-wing groups now face another far-right rival with the announcement of Hungary’s new alliance, Patriots for Europe.

India and China have agreed to intensify efforts aimed at resolving their longstanding border issues, according to a statement by India’s External Affairs Ministry.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, and his Indian counterpart, S. Jaishankar, met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday.

“The two Ministers agreed that the prolongation of the current situation in the border areas is not in the interest of either side,” the statement read.

The Asian giants have been at loggerheads on the border issue for several decades.

“[Jaishankar] highlighted the need to redouble efforts to achieve complete disengagement from the remaining areas in Eastern Ladakh and restore border peace and tranquility in order to remove obstacles towards return of normalcy in bilateral relations.”

India and China share a 3,500 kilometer (2,170 mile) Himalayan border. To the west, China controls 38,000 square kilometers of territory that India also claims. To the east, India holds 90,000 square kilometers that Beijing says belongs to China instead.

Wang said the two countries should “properly handle differences” for stable relations and should come together to “oppose unilateral bullying, resist camp confrontation,” according to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Earlier this year, the U.S. had weighed in on the India-China border issue, drawing a sharp response from Beijing.

“India-China relationship is best served by observing the three mutuals – mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interests,” the statement from India’s External Affairs Ministry read.

In June 2020, 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers died in a faceoff in the western Himalayas. Although no shots were fired, this was the biggest loss of life in combat between the two countries since 1967.

In March of this year, tensions between the two countries heightened once again when China claimed that the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh was part of southern Tibet, referring to the territory as Zangnan.

India refuted those claims, declaring that Arunachal Pradesh had always been part of the South Asian nation.

“The claims are ludicrous to begin with and remain ludicrous today. Arunachal Pradesh is a part of India, because it is a part of India, and not because some other country says it is a part of India,” Jaishankar said, responding to a query by CNBC during his visit to Singapore in March.

— CNBC’s Vinay Dwivedi contributed to this story.

President Joe Biden insisted Friday that his damaging debate performance against former President Donald Trump was just a “bad night,” and not an indication of a more serious health condition.

“I was exhausted,” Biden told ABC News‘ George Stephanopoulos, in his first face-to-face TV interview since his raspy and disconnected debate last week.

“I didn’t listen to my instincts, in terms of preparing, and [had] a bad night,” said Biden, who also referred to his performance as a “bad episode.”

When Stephanopoulos noted that Biden had returned from an overseas foreign policy trip in Europe about 11 days before the debate and spent six days at Camp David beforehand, Biden replied, “I was sick, I was feeling terrible.”

Asked if he watched the debate later, Biden briefly paused and then said, “I don’t think I did, no.” He said repeatedly that his performance was “nobody’s fault [but] mine.”

Biden also refused to entertain the idea of taking a cognitive or neurological test. “I get a full neurological test every day,” Biden said, referring to the rigors of the presidency. When Stephanopoulos pressed him on why he hadn’t taken had any cognitive assessments, the president replied, “No, no one said I had to.”

The interview came on the same day that Biden defiantly rejected a growing chorus of Democrats, including top donors and allies, who are urging the 81-year-old incumbent to withdraw from the race.

Biden, under aggressive questioning from Stephanopoulos about whether he is capable of either beating Trump in November or serving another four years in the White House, maintained that he believes he is up to both tasks.

“I’m running again because I think I understand best what has to be done,” Biden said in the 23-minute interview.

He appeared to foreclose any possibility of changing his mind, even in a scenario where party leaders and his close allies ask him to step aside.

“I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race,” he said. “The Lord Almighty’s not coming down.”

Biden said he has spoken since the debate with Democratic leaders who did not tell him to withdraw.

But many Democratic lawmakers are still considering their next steps. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is holding a virtual meeting Sunday with the top Democrats on House committees, three sources told NBC News. The group is expected to focus on Biden, one of those sources told NBC.

Less than a half-dozen House Democrats so far have called on Biden to drop out of the race so far, but that number could grow over the weekend.

The president’s remarks to Stephanopoulos echoed his earlier comments on the campaign trail that day.

“I am running and going to win again,” Biden told a crowd of supporters during a speech in Madison, Wisconsin.

“They’re trying to push me out of the race,” Biden told the crowd. “Well let me say this as clearly as I can: I’m staying in the race.”

Biden told reporters on an airport tarmac after the campaign event that he had spoken to “at least 20” members of Congress who are “telling me to stay in the race.”

Biden’s decision could set the campaign on a path of increasing tension with some of its top allies and donors who, spurred by concerns about Biden’s health and abilities, have called for a new nominee to lead the Democratic Party into the November elections.

While Biden sounded consistently louder and clearer in Friday’s remarks and interview than he did in last week’s debate, he still occasionally slurred or fumbled over certain words and phrases.

On Capitol Hill, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a longtime Biden ally, has launched a new effort to convene Democratic senators next week to discuss what Biden’s path forward might be, NBC News reported.

Asked on the tarmac about Warner’s effort, the president dismissed it. Warner, he said, “is the only one considering that. No one else has called me to do that.”

On Thursday, Disney heiress and longtime Democratic donor Abigail Disney told CNBC that she will withhold donations until Biden withdraws.

On Wednesday, a group of business leaders corralled by the pro-Democracy Leadership Now Project urged Biden to step aside.

Editorial boards of multiple newspapers, including The New York Times, have issued the same call.

Questions are now swirling about how an alternative candidate, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, might take Biden’s place as the new nominee.

The Trump campaign and Republican Party, in turn, have started ramping up attacks on Harris.

Harris told CBS News on Tuesday, “Joe Biden is our nominee. We beat Trump once, and we’re going to beat him again. Period.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre held the line in a gaggle with reporters who peppered her with questions about Biden’s capabilities during the flight to Madison.

“He said he had a bad debate,” Jean-Pierre conceded. But “90 minutes should not overshadow his career, his three-and-a-half [year] tenure as president.”

Biden, she added, “is resolute, strong [and] thinking as clearly as he used to.”

But that solid front — buttressed by subsequent statements of support from Democratic governors and other allies — has done little to tamp down the anxieties of Trump’s opponents.

Biden, the oldest president ever to serve and would be 86 at the end of a second term, was already struggling before the debate to boost his limp approval ratings.

National polls have consistently showed a neck-and-neck race, but some surveys gave Trump an edge in the key swing states that carried Biden to victory in 2020. Meanwhile, wide swaths of voters have repeatedly expressed concerns about Biden’s age and fitness for office.

After the debate, polls from major media outlets, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, all showed Trump gaining on Biden.