Tesla’s Robotaxi Non-Event & GPT-6 Is Here!
Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing
The podcast discusses Tesla's recent robotaxi event, which lacked media access, live streaming, and CEO Elon Musk's attendance, raising questions about the
Key takeaways
- Tesla's robotaxi event was poorly executed with no media access or live stream, suggesting a shift in strategy or declining confidence in the product timeline.
- Despite Tesla's early hype around full self-driving (FSD), the company has failed to license its technology or achieve widespread adoption, unlike competitors offering level 2–4 autonomy features.
Main topics
- Tesla's robotaxi event and strategic missteps
- Autonomous vehicle market competition (Waymo, Mercedes, BMW)
Notable quotes
"If you want to do a publicity event, you should try to get publicity. You should do a live stream."
"They were playing this the way that they wanted to play it. Is it even fair to call it a launch? It really isn't."
Conclusion
While Tesla's robotaxi event failed to deliver new information or excitement, the broader conversation highlights a shift in the autonomous
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:01) Tesla had an event last night and we were not invited. Motley Fool Hidden Gems investing starts now. Speaker 1 (0:09) Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm Travis Holm. I'm joined today by Lou Whiteman and John Quast. And guys, we previewed on the Wednesday show Tesla's event that they had last night about the robo taxi. There's a lot of hype around this. Lou, not only were we not invited, I don't think anybody was invited. No live stream, no nothing. Yeah, I I'm confused here. OK, because I get I don't want to. slam a company for doing a publicity event. Publicity events are very, very important. But if you want to do a publicity event, you should try to get publicity. You should do a live stream. You should just like they hyped this for weeks. There was contests of like if you take a ride in Austin, you can get to go. And then night of the event, Elon Musk didn't even show up. Not only didn't he show up, he. Speaker 1 (1:01) barely had the energy to live tweet it. He did like one retweet or so. Why bother? I just I don't understand. They basically announced that we are actually doing what we announced last year and it'll start rolling up. You know, the whole this could have been an email thing. This could have been a press release, guys. John, is there a more bullish way to look at this? Well. I think that we're talking out of both sides of our mouth here saying there was hype for weeks and then yet it wasn't hyped on the time of the event. I mean, I think that they were playing this the way that they wanted to play it. Is it even fair to call it a launch? It really isn't. It's a slow rollout is what it is. And so I actually think it makes more sense to not overly hype this because we are not going out across the country in all cities with a fleet of hundreds of vehicles. Speaker 1 (1:55) If you do hype it too much, then you set the expectations too high and then there's disappointment by comparison. Isn't that what Elon's been doing for a decade or more, though? I mean, this is the original RoboTaxi. Yeah, the original RoboTaxi event was in 2024. That was two years ago. They started talking about the RoboTaxi, I believe, in 2018 or 2019. Not in its current form, but the idea of the RoboTaxi and having this fleet. Speaker 1 (2:23) We're almost a decade after that, and other companies have much, much bigger fleets. It's just, we are at this point, and the reason that I wanted to bring this up on the show is we are at the point where autonomous vehicles are real. And Tesla was supposed to have this huge first mover advantage. They were supposed to have a huge cost advantage. And once you have both of those things and you have this network effect, now no one can catch up. And it seems like they've kind of... Speaker 1 (2:51) fumbled that. So John, are we at the point where they've really got to put up or, you know, Waymo is out there scaling their vehicles and they're cutting their costs dramatically. I think the hardware, the rumors were the hardware costs for autonomous vehicles. So basically on top of the vehicle itself went from about $150,000 down to about $20,000. This is the way hardware works. It gets less expensive over time. So yes, they have more sensors, but if the... cost differential is very small and coming down, it seems like that advantage that Tesla should have is sort of evaporating in front of our eyes. Yeah. I mean, this is why we all drive Nissan Leafs right now, right? I mean, because Tesla pumpled its first mover advantage, right? I mean, Nissan Leaf came out before Model S, and you could say that it had the first mover advantage, but Tesla is the one that won out in the end. Listen. Speaker 1 (3:45) Call it what you will, but Tesla understands one thing very well. It understands the psychology of the consumer, not necessarily that the best product wins or the first product wins. The most anticipated, the one with the best vibe is the one that wins a lot of times. It reminds me a little bit of the old, I'm a Mac, I'm a PC commercials, right? What was that actually telling us about the specifications of an Apple MacBook? or a Microsoft PC. Really nothing, but one was perceived as a little bit cooler. And I do think that there are people who, when the CyberCab is available a lot more, I think there's going to be a lot of people lining up for CyberCab because that is the one that they want to ride in over a Waymo. It's why my nine-year-old counts Cybertrucks on the road, but I've never told them anything about Cybertruck. Speaker 1 (4:40) We still haven't really explained what the purpose was last night, though. I mean, look, we knew all this before. And yeah, I mean, congratulations. You didn't even get your CEO to show up. This would be like Apple announcing a new phone and then saying the phone's going to be launched in three days. The phone screen launched in two days. Phone screen launched in one day. We're going to do a big, big event for the phone launch. And then just not talking about it right there. You're right, Judd. So there was the Apple versus PC commercial. Apple took the time to spend money to actually get that commercial out in front of people. My just kind of confusion here is, is that they had this event, but then they kind of hid it, which as an investor, I don't know if I should read anything into that or not. They, it's funny, the biggest Tesla advocates coming out of this were like, Speaker 1 (5:29) I don't know why they did this last night. We didn't learn anything. Stock is down 6% on it. It's just very, I don't know. It could turn out being a great product if they get there. And Travis, to your point, I think the bigger fear is, is that, and maybe this is what they're acknowledging. I don't think events work anymore. Events were really cool when nobody had cars on the road and they were just giving you CAD cam images of how cool this was going to be. Right now, I can go out my door and see this in practice. And so for someone to do a PowerPoint presentation about how cool their service is going to be, that might work for kids, but that's not going to work for investors. You actually have to get when you have what was way may have four thousand something. I was just out past three or four of them on the road. I think what's going to impress investors now is. Speaker 1 (6:23) John's right. When that day comes, if they're out there in force with fleets in the thousands all over the U.S., they might have the better, cooler product and might win. But until then, I don't think that these events serve a purpose. I think they're just reminding us the fact that they are behind. Well, John, let's go to the business model, too, because Tesla is still a $1.2 trillion company. It's part of the Mag7. There's a reason that we're talking about this company specifically. And if you look at what the story was for Tesla five years ago, I mean, I remember listening to those conference calls and. Speaker 1 (6:59) Elon Musk and team, that entire team was basically laughing at the entire industry going, you guys are all going to be licensing FSD in the future. You just don't realize it yet. And here we are in 2026. Not only is no one licensing FSD, doesn't seem like anyone is interested in licensing FSD, and everyone else is launching vehicles that are at the very least level two autonomy, you know, where you have this driver assist system a little bit like FSD is today. or going all the way to level four, which is, and even level three, which is what companies like Mercedes have, you know, I think BMW is launching some of those features. These features are really starting to roll out in consumer vehicles on top of the Zookses of the world, the Waymos of the world, Maymobility is another one that's around. So it just seems like the thesis of five years ago is just not playing out. Speaker 1 (7:54) the way that you would think. It is still a cool vehicle. My kids also count Cybertrucks, but that doesn't mean that they've sold a lot of them. I think that mindshare is important when it comes to long-term market share. But to your point, Travis, I heard someone say recently for every mile of road, there's two mile a ditch. And so I do want to stay out of the ditch on both sides. The ditch on one side is to say that Tesla is the... clear market winner and there's nothing you can do about it. And to your point, that's kind of how the executives were talking about it five years ago. The other side of the ditch that I want to stay out of here is that Tesla is irrelevant because Waymo is ahead. I think it's incredibly relevant. Maybe it doesn't. Speaker 1 (8:34) license its full self-driving software to the other car companies. Maybe they do build out there. And in fact, I think that's even more likely that each of these companies is going to have its own driver data that it can build its own models off of. I think that's perfectly reasonable. But there will come a time when things are solved on the regulatory front and we can actually sell. to everyone everywhere. And that is really the big difference when you talk about an iPhone event, right? What were the restrictions on selling an iPhone? None. You could sell to anybody anywhere. Right now, you can't sell a self-driving taxi to anybody anywhere. There are rules. When those regulatory hurdles are cleared, that is when I think that this becomes a lot more meaningful who is taking share. Maybe that'd be a good time for an event. There you go. Speaker 1 (9:24) Well, a lot to talk about with Tesla, but I think this is one of the more exciting spaces because we are seeing more of these autonomous vehicles all over the place. And it is going to be