On Thursday, October 10 at 7 p.m. PT, Tesla will reveal its high-profile "Robotaxi" (also rumored to be called Cybercab) at Warner Bros. Discovery Studios in Los Angeles, California.
The event, titled "We, Robot," will be streamed live on Musk's social media X, and it's unclear whether Google YouTube will be livestreamed at the same time, with retail investors also having the opportunity to participate. There are watch parties at Tesla stores in North America.
The day before the event, a mainstream financial media quoted sources as revealing that this "purpose-built self-driving taxi" has doors that open upwards like butterfly wings and two-seaters, and Musk is also expected to discuss the details of autonomous driving of semi-trailer electric trucks.
Tesla's stock price fluctuated lower on Wednesday, opening 2% lower before midday and then turning around and falling again, but it has risen more than 12% in the past month and rose above the key technical level of the 50-day moving average, rebounding 75% from the low point at the end of April.
What to see at the press conference: autonomous driving functions of robo-taxis, robot vans, and semi-trailer trucks?
It is widely believed that the appearance of the robo-taxi sounds consistent with the "early prototype" published last year in "Musk's Biography" by Walter · Issacson, but it is not known how similar it is to the final version.
Musk postponed the robo-taxi reveal event scheduled for Aug. 8 to October, saying at the time it was due to "significant changes to the front design."
Robo-taxis are reportedly different from Tesla's other models in that they can operate the car without the presence of a human driver, and may use a combination of cameras and computing power to enable navigation functions, without the Lidar sensors that self-driving cars like General Motors' Cruise and Google's Waymo rely on, which Musk believes are too expensive and unnecessary.
Other investors believe that Tesla will take the opportunity to unveil another new car, such as a robot van that can carry a dozen or more people or be used as a self-driving delivery van, at the robo-taxi unveiling event.
Musk is also expected to talk about Tesla's plans to develop Full Self-Driving (FSD) for its semi-trailer electric trucks (Semi) and how he sees the technology being used to transport goods, according to two people familiar with the matter. But there won't be any demo videos of semi-trucks using fully autonomous driving at the event.
Musk himself has high hopes for this robo-taxi launch event. He posted on September 11 that the release of the self-driving taxi would be the most important moment since Tesla launched the Model 3, the "civilian god car" nine years ago.
When officially sending out invitations to investors on September 25, Musk said that "this will be an event that will go down in history" and will "officially unveil the mystery of the future of autonomous driving."
What Wall Street thinks: Be wary of the downside risk of "selling facts", the press conference may be disappointing
Gene Munster, managing partner at investment firm Deepwater Asset Management, warned that Tesla's share price could face downside risks due to investor disappointment if the high-profile event was just to showcase some technology that couldn't really be implemented, such as a prototype of a car that couldn't be moved.
Garrett Nelson, an analyst at CFRA, also said last week that "given Tesla's recent share price rally and the possibility of a disappointing press conference, we think the risks are high and the downside risks outweigh the upside risks." Given that Tesla has historically been in a pattern of rising before a major event and then "selling the facts" after the event, analysts are now looking for more visibility into medium-term earnings growth.
And Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush brokerage, a long-term bullish Tesla brokerage, expects Musk to provide an update on his Full Self-Driving (FSD) system and artificial intelligence at the robo-taxi event, including more details on the next-generation platform, Tesla's breakthroughs in FSD and AI, and various strategic stages of the launch of robotaxis in the coming years.
Adam Jonas, a prominent automotive analyst at Morgan Stanley, predicted last week that robo-taxi activity would include demonstrations of the latest version of Full Self-Driving (FSD) version 12.5 or later, as well as "driving demonstrations on closed routes" for robotaxis. He expects the first commercial launch of Tesla's robo-taxi to be in late 2025 or 2026.
But he also tried to pour cold water on overly high market expectations, emphasizing that Tesla currently only has a license to test "supervised" self-driving cars, and does not have a license to test or deploy a "driverless version" of self-driving cars. As for Musk's hint on the second-quarter earnings call that "other products released together with robo-taxis", Da Mo analysts said that it may be more of a promotional nature:
"Can we see electric planes? A ship? Or the latest generation of Optimus robots flipping burgers in Tesla restaurants? Not so sure. But investors should be reminded that such campaigns are designed for a variety of purposes, including recruitment, marketing, and consumer education. "
There are also analysts who point out that Tesla's highly anticipated robotaxi is unlikely to have an immediate positive impact on its financial performance. However, given that there is still a lot of room for growth in the autonomous ridesharing market, its long-term prospects are promising.
According to the editor-in-chief of Electrek, a website that tracks news about Tesla and electric vehicles, Tesla didn't offer too many surprises at the event, and that perhaps the self-driving van was a good surprise, especially given that Tesla is sure to receive some criticism for the fact that the robo-taxi only has two seats, and the company has promised an electric van for years:
"I think the launch of vans will be more impactful than relying on Tesla to solve the problem of autonomous driving first. Because Tesla needs to show not only significant progress in autonomous driving, but also a clear path to achieving that goal in the short term.
But its driver-supervised FSD program, which, according to Musk, was supposed to have unsupervised autonomous driving by the end of each of the last five years, has lost much credibility.
Now, Tesla plans to launch a car 'dedicated to self-driving', which may not have a gas pedal or steering wheel, but has yet to deliver on its self-driving promise on millions of existing cars. This doesn't look good. "
Musk has also said that Musk is betting on Tesla's future on self-driving taxis, sacrificing the development of the much-anticipated $25,000 cheaper electric car, laying off teams focused on other projects, and downplaying the impact of the company's sales slowdown, "so when Musk finally releases a prototype of a robotaxi on Thursday night, he will need to prove a lot of things." "