Oct. 11 (UPI) — Tesla shares tumbled in premarket trading Friday morning after investors took a lukewarm view of the debut of the company’s new automated Cybercab concept vehicle the day before.
Shares dropped 5.8% before U.S. markets opened, according to CNBC. One Barclays analyst threw cold water on the presentation, saying it failed to offer any near-term opportunities for the electric automotive giant.
Tesla founder Elon Musk said the Cybercab would start production before 2027 and sell for under $30,000 but would still require a driver in a position to brake or steer, despite touting its self-driving abilities.
“Tesla didn’t show its low-cost model planned for IH’25 production,” Barclays said. “We also didn’t get any near-term update on [Full Self Driving] progress, or data reflecting improvement in the system.
Musk said Thursday he hoped to have unsupervised the full self-driving vehicle running in Texas and California in 2025 in Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. Those vehicles currently require a driver.
“This is a very big deal,” Musk said on Thursday, claiming that self-driving vehicles are 10 to 20 times safer than human-operated vehicles, according to The Verge.com. “It’ll save lives a lot of lives and prevent injuries.
“Think about the cumulative time that people spend in a car and the time they will get back that they can now spend on their books or watching a movie or doing work or whatever.”
Tesla, however, faces self-driving image problems after settling a wrong death lawsuit connected to a man killed using the company’s Autopilot system in 2018. It also lags behind startups like Google’s Waymo and General Motors-supported Cruise in actual on-road testing.