Tesla Scrapping Affordable EVs for RoboTaxis?
Tesla canceled its long term plans for a inexpensive electric car according to Reuters reporting Friday. Instead, the company will focus on developing self driving robo-taxis. Tesla Chief Elon Musk responded to a user on twitter that Reuters was lying, raising the stock form -5% to -3% on the day.
The news comes during a shakeup in the Tesla stock. Once a proud member of the Magnificent Seven, $Tesla (TSLA.US)$ has fallen 40%+ in about a year.
Tesla has cut prices on its own vehicles by up to 30% in the past six months, in an effort to sell more units, but some believe the demand for EV's has dried up. Monday, the firm said it produced 433,371 vehicles in the first quarter, down from 440,808 in the same period a year ago. Deliveries fell to 386,810, down from 422,875 in the same period last year.
The news comes after $Apple (AAPL.US)$ scrapped the decades long plan toward their own smart car, and fired the 600 member team that had worked on a self driving car. $Hertz Global (HTZ.US)$ fell this week, an early adopter in Tesla vehicles that felt a price target lowering by Goldman Sacks.
Musk had poised the plan for an accessible electric vehicle as the main goal of the company, but has since become focused elsewhere. In the past two years, Musk focused on the purchase and rebuilding of twitter, and most recently AI large language models with the introduction of GROK on X last year. Bloomberg reported Thursday that Tesla was boosting engineer pay to stop poaching to $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$'s OpenAI.
Musk fought for a greater share of control of Tesla in January, asking for 25% or he would go elsewhere. In response, a judge awarded a class action suit on behalf of some tesla investors a victory: Musk would not receive his enormous pay package promised by the board in 2018.
Musk has lost multiple AI leaders at Tesla to OpenAI, including Andrej Karpathy, senior director of AI in July '22 and more recently Ethan Knight, a driving systems engineer that left this week.
Mooers: Do you think a self driving car model for Tesla will bring back demand?
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bullrider_21 : Musk denied the Reuters report. By the time Tesla launches the affordable car, other US and European rivals will also have their affordable cars out.
bullrider_21 : China EVs makers already have the cheap cars now and may capture a large portion of the global market by the time Tesla's affordable car is launched.
Kevin TraversOP bullrider_21: yup, third sentence ; )
bullrider_21 : As for robotaxis, Tesla's removal of Lidar, radar and sensors in favour of cameras only may hinder its efforts. Waymo and Apollo Go already have level 4 robotaxis.
bullrider_21 : Reuters did report many bad news about Tesla which is true. Reuters reported that Tesla gave false high ranges and the range meter showed a high range even though the low was low.
BelleWeather : Good time to buy a great company helmed by a colorful character who makes amazing things happen. It’s on sale! But what’s the deal with the lie?
Alen Kok : Musk should have immigrated to China to be able to fulfill his dream of Mars