Wall Street has been pretty cool on Tesla stock this year, and Thursday’s launch of its highly anticipated robotaxis did little to improve investor sentiment. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas said he was particularly disappointed when he left. Jonas, the company’s head of global automotive and shared mobility research, wrote in a note to clients on Friday titled “”That’s it? Investors have piled into Tesla shares ahead of the “We, the Robots” event in Los Angeles, considered the biggest catalyst for the embattled automaker as a growing artificial intelligence company. But the market momentum has since reversed: the stock plunged nearly 8% on Friday, and has fallen more than 11% this year. By comparison, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are both up around 22% year to date. TSLA Tesla shares are up so far this year. Jonas noted that when investors walked away from the much-hyped event, there was no presentation or update on the latest advancements in Tesla’s Full Self-Driving technology and a lack of information on the rate of change for future iterations. He also said the company didn’t mention its go-to-market strategy, provide insights into the economics of supervised and unsupervised ride-sharing services, or detail Tesla’s new xAI deal with Chief Executive Elon Musk. The much-ridiculed relationship between startups. Instead, after Tesla announced its online taxi, Jonas questioned the car’s capabilities, such as its hardware and sensor technology, its expected autonomy, and its range and safety. The analyst noted that Musk expects to have electric taxis in production “by 2027,” but admitted he was optimistic about the timeline. Musk has repeatedly set visionary goals for shareholders in the past, only to miss his own deadlines. Still, Tesla’s management comments did confirm that ride-hailing prices will be below $30,000, which is largely in line with Jonas’ estimate and confirms Tesla’s ability to leverage its cost-effective hardware, Scalable software and huge user base lead other self-driving car manufacturers. “This demonstrates TSLA’s current theoretical cost advantage over Uber’s current cars and Waymo (with lidar),” Jonas said. “As a result, TLSA is able to deliver an autonomous product at scale faster than any one company, which poses a threat, but nothing happened last night to make it a bigger threat,” Jonas said. In short, the event failed to provide a major bright spot for Tesla’s stock. To be sure, Tesla remains the top pick for Morgan Stanley’s auto coverage. Jonas has an Overweight rating on the stock with a price target of $310, which suggests potential upside of nearly 30% from Thursday’s closing price. Jonas also mentioned that Tesla’s debut of the futuristic Robovan lacks details about technical specifications and cost, and it is unclear whether the large vehicle or the Cybercab will operate fully autonomously on the site. He said Tesla’s demonstration of the Optimus Prime humanoid robot, which Jonas believed relied on human intervention, also did not clearly show “significant progress” in the technology. The analyst is concerned that Tesla is expected to launch fully autonomous, unsupervised FSD for its Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles in Texas and California. He said this was an “important mid-term timeline that can be monitored as a potential validation of TSLA’s unsupervised FSD (end-to-end, camera-only) approach.” Bank of America analyst John Murphy also expressed concern We were encouraged by the FSD timeline provided by Musk, as well as the production target date for Tesla’s electric taxis. He wasn’t as disappointed as many other investors and said the event ultimately lived up to the hype, reiterating his buy rating and $255 price target on the stock. Analysts surveyed by FactSet currently have a consensus hold rating on the stock, with an average price target of $214.16, well below Jonas’s target.
