SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Tesla Motors Inc. shares have been on a tear since CEO Elon Musk tweeted last week that new features or products will be unveiled Thursday, but are they a good buy at this point?

Musk’s cryptic tweets last Thursday — and the rampant speculation they have fueled since — have pushed Tesla TSLA, +4.42% shares about 9% higher from their Wednesday close. They are still 8% lower from their Sept. 4 peak, when they notched a closing record high of $286.04.

In the tweets, Musk mentioned the “D and something else.”

That could be D for driverless system (or the beginnings of an “autopilot” anti-collision system), possibly in cooperation with car technology company Mobileye N.V. US:MBLY ; a dual motor to deliver all-wheel drive, of particular interest to drivers in cold-weather locales; and the first peek at a Model 3 prototype, to name a few guesses. The company isn’t disclosing anything.

“Tesla is a technology company that happens to have an automobile, that’s the right way to think about it,” said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research. The company has a $385 price target on the stock for the next 12 to 18 months, he added.

Like Apple Inc. and Google Inc., Tesla has its own ecosystem, while other companies think in terms of products, Chowdhry said.

Most analysts that cover Tesla rate it a “buy,” with the average price target on the company being $267.29, according to FactSet. That would be 2% over Monday prices.

Lately even a few of the stalwart Tesla optimists have changed tack.

Last month, analysts at Morgan Stanley said Tesla shares might be worth the $320 price target they have on them, but perhaps “not so quickly and not for some of the reasons we believe are driving the market.”

For Susan Schmidt, head of U.S. equities at Mesirow Financial, investors’ interest in Tesla is representative of interest in general about the auto industry and with the sector’s innovations, particularly with driverless systems, after years of performance dampened by the recession.

“That’s a big boom for the industry overall,” after recent years she said.