Tesla slides as analysts point to a lack of data and details to support the robotaxi vision

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) peeled off 6.0% in premarket action after investors and analysts reacted to the highly anticipated “We, Robot” event that was held on Thursday night at a Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California.

The electric vehicle maker showed off a Cybercab that had no steering wheel or pedals, a 20-person autonomous robovan prototype, and the next version of the Optimus humanoid robot.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said the event was a disappointment overall because of a lack of data on regarding rate-of-change on FSD/tech, ride-share economics, and the company’s go-to-market strategy for the CyberCab. Jonas said the firm had walked into the event with a number of expectations of what the market might learn that it felt was consequential to the direction and debate around the stock. “Other than the mention of inductive charging, there was no detailed discussion about the capabilities of Cybercab including technology (Inference hardware? Sensor suite? Lidar? L4/L5?), range, safety, utility, flexibility/configurations, etc. Many have remarked that it looks like the ‘Model 2’ prototype repackaged as an autonomous vehicle,” he noted.

Barclays said that the revelations from the event failed to highlight any near-term opportunities for Tesla (TSLA). “As expected, like prior Tesla product unveils, the event was light on the details, and instead emphasized the vision underpinning Tesla’s growth endeavors in AI/AV [autonomous vehicles],” wrote Dan Levy. He also highlighted that Tesla (TSLA) did not show its low-cost model planned for production in the first half of 2025 production.

Roth MKM also walked away underwhelmed from the Hollywood studio underwhelmed. “We see the event as a disappointment with TSLA giving limited evidence unsupervised-FSD is credible in an optical-only system,” updated analyst Craig Irwin.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives was more positive about the event, saying overall Tesla (TSLA) and Musk gave some important details around Cybercab and the timing of unsupervised FSD next year for TSLA models in Texas and California, which is seen as a major data point. “We believe the next-generation platform for Model 2 and Cybercab will be a focal point for investors over the next year as we expect Model 2 in the first half of 2025 production will begin,” stated Ives. He said that seeing Cybercab up close is very impressive, and price points on the vehicle will create a fleet segment that could be a $10 billion annual business at scale over the coming years for Tesla.