Tesla (TSLA) released its second quarter results after the closing bell on Tuesday, revealing falling profits for the fourth straight quarter. On the conference call, CEO Elon Musk alluded to its robotaxi initiative, which is scheduled to be unveiled in October.
TD Cowen managing director and senior research analyst Jeffrey Osborne joins Morning Brief to give insight into Tesla’s efforts to roll out a robotaxi and why he believes it may not be enough to beat competition in the category.
“Here we are, five years later, with very little disclosure on what progress they’re making other than just beta software releases and sort of the incremental progress that’s been made. Now, talking about [Full Self Driving] 12.5 on the call, but what we really need to see is the number of interventions that drivers have per mile or per minute, ideally both to get a sense of what is the technical progress. There’s a very controversial approach,” says Osborne.
He ends with: “Last point I wanted to make that Tesla has relative to peers, where they’re only using a camera and the AI computers to solve this problem. Most other car companies around the world are using a suite of sensors coupled with the software. And so, you know, given they’ve been promising this for five years, it’s a bit hard to imagine in my mind that a camera only solution will truly get the company there with the existing fleet of cars, hence why they probably need a purpose-built vehicle that will get more details on October 10 about. “
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This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino
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