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Tesla shares fell 7.5 per cent on Friday, wiping almost $40bn from the carmaker’s market valuation, after Elon Musk’s much-hyped Robotaxi event disappointed investors with a lack of detail about a planned fleet of autonomous “Cybercabs”.
The plunge in the stock left Tesla as the worst performer on the S&P 500. However, the group remains the most valuable car company in the world, with a market capitalisation of almost $700bn.
Musk, the world’s richest man, promised the new two-seated vehicle would be available for less than $30,000 and be on US roads by the end of 2026, if it secures regulatory approval.
But he did not provide details on the technology behind the robotaxis, nor how he would bring down the cost of the self-driving vehicles.
“We found Tesla’s Robotaxi event to be underwhelming and stunningly absent on detail,” said Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi. Information about “new products, offerings, and timeframes were absent, and product introductions were largely consistent with expectations”, he added.
At the glitzy “We, Robot” event at Warner Bros Studios in Los Angeles on Thursday, Musk also unveiled a prototype for a 20-person Robovan and predicted that artificial intelligence-powered Optimus humanoid robots would be “the biggest product ever of any kind”.
But the unveiling focused more on design, branding and his idiosyncratic vision of the future and less on the technology advances needed for Tesla to achieve it.
Jefferies analyst John Colantuoni described the event as “toothless” and predicted rivals such as Waymo and Uber would benefit as a result. He added that “Tesla did not provide verifiable evidence of progress” towards the technology needed, “which makes it difficult to assess feasibility of the targets outlined at the event”.
Uber stock rose 9 per cent on Friday.
Tesla’s shares had risen 45 per cent in anticipation of the unveiling since Musk announced a “robotaxi day” on April 5.
Musk has said the group’s pivot to autonomous driving and AI could take its valuation as high as $5tn, about seven times its current market value.
Another disappointment for investors was Musk’s failure to unveil a more affordable electric vehicle, known unofficially as the Model 2, which will be priced at $25,000, to revive its ageing product portfolio.
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