Elon Musk’s product reveals rarely, if ever, skimp on style. Investors are hope Tesla’s long-awaited robotaxi unveiling on Thursday night at the Warner Bros. studio in Los Angeles will also deliver on substance. You can forgive Morningstar’s Seth Goldstein, an equity strategist and chair of the firm’s electric vehicle committee, for being a bit wary.
At Tesla’s “AI day” three years ago, Musk famously stepped aside to reveal the company’s prototype for a humanoid robot — a dancer sporting a skin-tight bodysuit. (In all fairness, a real version of the “Optimus” robot danced while walking on stage the next year.)
This time around, Goldstein is expecting Tesla deliver to something tangible. After all, he noted, the decision to delay the event initially set for August was supposedly driven by the need to get more prototypes built.
“I would hope we don't have, you know, people in robotaxi outfits jumping around the stage,” he said.
Among mega-cap tech names, no company divides opinion quite like Tesla. For bulls like Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives, Thursday marks a seminal moment in the history of Tesla as not just an electric vehicle manufacturer, but an artificial intelligence behemoth.
“We continue to believe Tesla is the most undervalued AI name in the market,” he and his colleagues wrote in a note Wednesday, “and we expect Musk & Co. to unveil some ‘game changing’ autonomous technology at this event.”
Other Tesla bulls agree with Musk that the robotaxi business will eventually translate to a $5 trillion valuation, up from its current market cap of $750 billion.
Others are much less optimistic. Investor expectations are sky-high, notes Garrett Nelson, a senior equity analyst at CFRA Research. That raises the likelihood of shareholder disappointment and a “sell the news” reaction, he said.
“In our opinion, there is an increasing disconnect between the stock’s lofty valuation and the reality that TSLA’s earnings growth has hit a wall — and intermediate-term growth drivers are unclear,” he wrote in a recent note.
Tesla's "full self-driving" software in focus
Amid a broader EV slowdown globally, Tesla’s delivery numbers have fallen in recent quarters as the company deals with toughening competition, particularly in China. The ramp up in production of its Cybertruck has been slow, CFRA noted. Meanwhile, production of a more affordable vehicle than its current offerings—the Model 3 sedan starts north of $42,000 before subsidies—won’t arrive until at least 2025. Meanwhile, recent earnings calls have been duds, with Musk focusing on long-term aspirations while analysts want to ask about falling revenue and margins.
The stock is, unsurprisingly, down slightly for the year, compared to the S&P 500’s 22% gain. As Fortune’s Geoff Colvin wrote last week, Tesla’s even been knocked out of the so-called “Magnificent Seven”—America’s seven largest tech companies by market cap— by surging semiconductor and software giant Broadcom. While Tesla’s stock sits roughly where it was four years ago, Broadcom’s is up about 290% over that time.
Musk has not been sheepish about staking the company’s future on autonomous software. Currently, what Tesla calls “full self-driving” is considered a level two-plus autonomous product, per Goldstein.
“It’s like the best cruise control you’ve ever had,” he said, “but you still have to be ready to turn off the cruise control and drive the vehicle again.”
The software has been involved in hundreds of crashes, leading to several lawsuits and scrutiny from regulators who say the design of “Tesla Autopilot” has made it especially prone to driver misuse.
Tesla is banking that its approach to autonomous software, however, will differentiate its robotaxi from competitors that have struggled mightily to make this endeavor profitable. A single vehicle from Alphabet-owned Waymo costs roughly $250,000, Goldstein noted, and uses cameras, radar, and lidar to navigate city streets in places like San Francisco. Tesla, however, has gone all cameras, looking to train its AI software to drive and make decisions like a human—but better.
“They kind of wanted to take that approach, which, in theory, will allow them to take the car anywhere someone wants to go all over the world,” Goldstein said.
Goldstein is one of many, however, eager for more details about how Tesla will make Musk’s vision a reality. Otherwise, Thursday’s show could fall flat.
