With just two weeks to go for Tesla, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Robotaxi unveil event, an analyst painted a bleak picture of the company's self-driving technology.
What Happened: Tesla's FSD, which is now promoted as fully-supervised FSD, is a "safety disaster" and "galaxies away from being anywhere close to the competition," said GLJ Research's Gordon Johnson in a note. Tesla's competitors in this arena are Alphabet, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Waymo and General Motors Corp.'s (NYSE:GM) Cruise.
With Tesla eyeing the rollout of its Fully Supervised FSD in China, the Elon Musk-led company would be up against domestic player Baidu, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:BIDU) Apollo Go.
Johnson referenced reviews by two sources to make his case. Independent lab AMCI Testing, which tried the technology, said the overall performance of Tesla's camera-enabled autonomous-driving software is "suspect." In a report released on Tuesday, the firm said its evaluation showed how often human intervention was required for safe operation. "In fact, our drivers had to intervene over 75 times during the evaluation; an average of once every 13 miles," it said.
While the FSD 12.5.1 was impressive, it is incredibly dangerous for drivers operating with FSD to drive with their hands in their laps or away from the steering wheels, it said. "The most critical moments of FSD miscalculation are split-second events that even professional drivers, operating with a test mindset, must focus on catching," it added.
Johnson also referred to data from Teslafsdtracker.com, which aggregates TSLA FSD driving experiences/data, in real-time from users, which shows that the latest iteration of FSD has a critical disengagement every 130 miles and every 72 miles when driven in a city.
Data reported by competitors to the California Department of Motor Vehicles show that miles to disengagement data for various players are as follows:
- Waymo: 17,311 miles
- Amazon, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Zoox: 177,602 miles
- Pony.Ai (startup): 17,077 miles
- WeRide (startup): 21,191 miles
The metric for Tesla is 13 miles, based on AMCI's statistics, Johnson said, although Tesla doesn't yet report data to California DMV, given its FSD tech is only Level 2.
Why It's Important: Johnson noted that many sell-side analysts assign a valuation of $300 billion to $600 billion for Tesla's FSD technology. In real-time, the value is close to zero, he said, adding that it could be negative, given the "liability of putting something this dangerous on roads."
According to Ark's valuation model, by 2029, robotaxis, which has FSD as its core technology, would account for 63% of Tesla's revenue and 86% of EBITDA.
Future Fund LLC Managing Partner Gary Black, a Tesla bull, said in a recent post on X that Tesla's FSD is not yet close to the 99.99% efficacy needed for unsupervised autonomy.
In premarket trading on Thursday, Tesla rose 2.05% to $262.30, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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