Tesla shares fall 6% in premarket after CyberCab robotaxis fails to impress

Shares of electric vehicle makers Tesla Friday's tumble after the company's long-awaited Robotaxi event — where CEO Elon Musk unveiled the firm's CyberCab self-driving concept car — failed to impress investors.

Tesla stock fell 5.8% in premarket trading Friday as of 6:33 a.m. ET.

Musk revealed Tesla's CyberCab concept vehicle — a low, silver two-seater with no steering wheel or pedals — on Thursday night. The plan is for the car to be able to drive autonomously at launch.

The Tesla boss said the company hopes to produce the CyberCab before 2027, but gave no details on where the cars will be built. He said consumers will be able to buy a Tesla CyberCab for under $30,000.

He also said he expects Tesla to introduce “unregulated FSD” in Texas and California next year on the company's Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles. FSD, which stands for Fully Self-Driving, is Tesla's premium driver assistance system, available today in a “supervised” version for Tesla electric cars.

The technology still requires a human driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time.

Reacting to Thursday's event, Barclays analysts said the revelations failed to highlight any near-term opportunities for Tesla, instead prioritizing Musk's vision for a fully autonomous driving future.

“As expected, like previous Tesla product unveilings, the event was light on details and instead emphasized the vision underpinning Tesla's growth efforts in AI/AV. [autonomous vehicles]” Barclays' US Autos and Mobility team wrote in a note early Friday.

“Yet there were no updates indicating near-term opportunities. Tesla did not show the low-cost model planned for 1H'25 production,” they added. “We have also received no near-term updates on data reflecting FSD progress or system improvements.”

Analysts at Piper Sandler said in a separate Friday note that “most trading-based firms will be affected by the rollout of robo-taxi.”

“We would not be surprised if the stock sells off in the coming weeks, as pre-event momentum fades,” the investment bank's analysts said in a note.

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley suggested that Musk failed to make the case that Tesla was an AI company during the event. Analysts at the bank noted that Musk did not mention any details on improvements to Tesla's FSD system, nor did the billionaire elaborate on rumored plans for a tie-up between Tesla and Musk's AI company xAI. Musk has previously denied such reports.

The event “disappointed overall in several areas: lack of data on FSD/tech, ride-share economics and go-to-market strategy,” analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note on Friday.

“We were overall disappointed with the content and details of the presentation. As such, we expect TSLA to be under pressure after the event,” they added.

While self-driving cars are expected to take a few more years to become a mainstream reality on public roads, regulators are concerned about the safety features embedded in such vehicles.

Among the few companies that have successfully launched self-driving cars on public roads is Google's Waymo, which has offered its robotaxi service to the general public since June.

— CNBC's Lora Kolodny and Michael Bloom contributed to this report