Tesla stock was rising in early trading on Monday.

Earnings reports for it and its peers are just a few days away. For Tesla, expectations are "low."

Shares of the electric vehicle maker were up 2.3% at $258.03 in premarket trading, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were rising 1.1% and 0.5%, respectively.

Coming into Monday trading, Tesla stock was down 38% so far this year and down 41% since the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration. Shares have moved an average of 4.1%, up or down, since then. In the year before the inauguration, the average daily move up or down was about 2.9%.

"Q1 could benefit from pre-buy in March ahead of tariffs," wrote RBC analyst Tom Narayan in a preview report. Ford Motor and General Motors had solid first-quarter U.S. sales. Dealers might have been trying to avoid tariff hikes. President Donald Trump's 25% car-import tariffs are different from his "reciprocal tariffs" and aren't affected by his 90-day pause announced Wednesday.

Tesla doesn't import any of the cars it sells in the U.S., so suffers less of an impact from tariffs than most auto makers. Narayan said the focus for Tesla will be on the "new affordable model coming in Q2 as well as the Austin robotaxi service coming in June," adding, "Expectations are already quite low, and any positive news could result in upside to shares."

Narayan rates Tesla stock Buy and has a $314 price target for shares. He cut it by $6 this past week.

The average analyst price target for Tesla stock is about $342 a share, according to FactSet. A year ago, it was $192. The average price target peaked at $381 a share in early February before investors started to worry that CEO Elon Musk's political activities were hurting sales. Tesla delivered about 337,000 cars in the first quarter, down 13% year over year and about 40,000 fewer than Wall Street expected.