Tesla stock price sinks after Elon Musk’s ‘We, Robot’ Cybercab event fails to impress

Investors may be wondering if there’s anyone in the driver’s seat at Tesla after CEO Elon Musk led a much-anticipated autonomous driving event that was big on hype but short on specifics.

At a “We, Robot” presentation on Thursday, Musk debuted a new self-driving vehicle called the Cybercab, as well as a bus-sized Robovan concept, but the splashy event did not appear to allay investor concerns that regulatory and safety hurdles will make Musk’s estimated timeline of selling the sleekly designed vehicles by 2027 unrealistic.

Perhaps more crucially, Tesla’s broader pivot to robotics and AI may be seen as coming at the expense of a lower-priced “Model 2” electric vehicle that could broaden the brand’s audience and help Tesla stay ahead of its competition.

Shares of Tesla were down more than 6% in premarket trading on Friday. The stock had risen since Tesla first announced the robo-taxi event in April, but it has generally struggled this year amid a broader slump in EV sales. As of Thursday, shares were down almost 4% year to date.

Last week, Tesla missed Wall Street’s delivery estimates for the third quarter.

Musk has been promising fully self-driving cars for years, but his company has a history of production delays, such as the ones that plagued Tesla’s Cybertruck. Deliveries finally began late last year, but the vehicle has since been recalled multiple times in the wake of seemingly endless design flaws.

Some analysts appeared to be less-than-impressed with Tesla’s robo event, with Jefferies calling it “toothless” and saying it lacked evidence that the technology will actually work, as Bloomberg reported.

The presentation likewise seemed to be a gain for other companies operating in the taxi space. Shares of Uber and Lyft were up 4.93% and 3.14%, respectively, Friday in premarket trading.