Musk has come to grab the "Didi" business

Author | Chai Xuchen

Edit | Zhou Zhiyu

Since the launch of the Model 3, Tesla has not had a press conference so high-profile in a long time.

On the morning of October 11, after two months of appetite from the outside world, Tesla's "We, Robot" conference was finally held at the Warner Bros. filming base in Los Angeles. CEO Elon Musk said it would be a launch event that would "go down in history."

There is no "PPT", and there is no expected transitional model, Musk directly brought the real car - unmanned taxi Cybercab, unmanned minibus Robovan, and the production version of the humanoid robot TeslaBot into the entrance. He wants to let the market see with his own eyes that Tesla is still the AI pioneer on a par with Google and Microsoft, and can find a landing and monetization scene earlier than them.

It's just that under the cheers of the scene, Musk brought limited surprises, not only did he not provide technical details of Cybercab, but the mass production will wait until two or three years later, and the specific commercial scale in the future has not been mentioned. On the other hand, Waymo, the "overseas version of Didi" next door, has already crossed the milestone of 100,000 orders per week.

Investors were also quick to vote, with Tesla's stock price falling 8.9% from rising more than 5% in pre-market trading. Because Robotaxi, which Musk has high hopes for, is the key to Tesla's sprint scale, and it is a new cornerstone to support high valuation.

Next, will this blockbuster model that "changes the life" for Tesla avoid the difficult birth of "cyber trucks", and can the stock price soar as Musk said?

I'm afraid Musk himself is also difficult to answer for the time being.

Bombing the field

Under the watchful eyes of more than two million people online, Musk was picked up by a Cybercab and drove on the filming locations of "Harry Potter" and "Batman". The unmanned taxi dodged obstacles and a team of bicycles, and was cheered on the way to the stage of the venue.

In line with expectations, the Cybercab is a two-seater, falcon-wing sedan with a streamlined silver body that resembles a "sedan version of the Cybertruck". This ultra-modern tram has no squares

The disc and pedals, even the energy supplement are wireless charging, and the price is less than 30,000 US dollars (about 200,000 yuan) In Musk's opinion, Cybercab is very charming, and he first told the audience a sexy story.

According to Musk, Tesla's FSD will soon evolve into unsupervised and fully self-driving, allowing you to sleep in the car and go straight to your destination. Moreover, unmanned driving can also go out to work, deliver takeaways, help you "lie down and earn", and even the cleaning in the car can be completed by the supporting robot, truly realizing fully unmanned operation.

His ambition is to completely disrupt the existing mobility market.

Musk said that a ride-hailing driver can manage dozens of Cybercabs at the same time, "running these fleets like a shepherd," and a series of operating costs will be reduced by a factor of five, equivalent to 4.4 yuan per kilometer and straight down to 0.9 yuan.

Previously, Musk promised that car owners could earn $30,000 a year with Robotape. The subtext is that Cybercab can pay back in one year at the earliest, which doubles the motivation for everyone's own use or "wholesale" Cybercab, and the impulse "Yang Mou" is obvious.

However, the Cybercab has only two seats, which is difficult to cover high-density areas, so Musk simply made an "unmanned minibus" Cybervan that can carry 20 people, which can accommodate 20 people and can carry both people and cargo. His goal is to reduce transportation costs to 5-10 cents/mile (about 0.2-0.4 yuan/km).

After the debut of unmanned taxis and minibuses, the second chapter of Musk's "grand plan" has taken shape.

Musk mentioned that in the future, whether it is Cybercab, Cybervan or the S3XY series running on the road, they can join the shared fleet, like the complex of Airbnb and Uber, to weave a huge operation network together.

According to the plan, before next year, the Model 3 and Model Y will be upgraded to fully autonomous driving FSD, which will be widely rolled out in Texas and California. However, Cybercab is still on the road to mass production until 2026-2027.

In addition to unmanned vehicles, Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus (TeslaBot), which was dispatched collectively, became the highlight of this press conference. These humanoid AI robots, which have the same origin as Tesla cars, were arranged to be hot DJs and bar attendants at the press conference to interact with the audience.

Musk said that TeslaBot can be a teacher, take care of children, walk dogs, mow the lawn, and shop, and its final price is about $20,000-30,000, which is cheaper than a car. At Tesla's shareholder meeting two months ago, Musk said that humanoid robots will become the main force of the industry, and the number is expected to surpass that of humans, reaching 10 billion to 20 billion units. The future of science fiction to reality seems to be close at hand.

From Cybercab, Cybervan to TeslaBot, Musk used a press conference to sample the world 20 years later, and also opened a new chapter for Tesla as an AI company.

reshape

However, not long after the press conference, investors "changed faces" at the speed of light, Tesla's stock price fell sharply in the night session, and the shares of Uber and Lyft, the rivals that Cybercab wants to subvert, rose 6% and 4.6%.

Obviously, Musk has failed to satisfy the market's appetite.

This "AI show", which lasted less than half an hour, is related to the success or failure of Tesla's counterattack. This battle is very important to it in the "stormy and shaky".

As a beacon of innovation in the industry, Tesla has single-handedly rewritten the script of the century-old automobile industry and is also favored by investors. However, now it is quite lost, and this year it was squeezed out of the list of the "Big Seven" in the US stock market capitalization.

At present, Tesla's car sales still account for 82% of its total revenue, and the essence is still a car company, and what is worse is that the encirclement and suppression from the new domestic forces has made its imagination shrink more and more, not only the market share in China is gradually shrinking, but also under the round of price wars, the gross profit margin continues to decline.

In this context, Musk began to tell investors a new story of AI, trying to convince them that Tesla is still an AI company comparable to giants such as Google and Microsoft, rather than an ordinary car company.

However, in the past few years, the landing rhythm of Tesla's Robotaxi has "jumped tickets" many times, coupled with the fierce pursuit of opponents, which has threatened Tesla's position as the leader of intelligent driving, and the halo of "science and technology master" has gradually dimmed.

Recently, Waymo announced that it will expand its operations in the United States, and the paid rides provided per week have exceeded 100,000 times, and the performance of Waymo, which is backed by Google, is still snowballing rapidly; At the same time in the domestic market, Baidu's Radish Express also completed nearly 900,000 orders of service in the second quarter, and is moving towards the goal of breaking even in the region.

The surprise attack of his peers turned the high-valuation halo above Truss's head into a sword of Damocles that could fall at any time.

You must know that since the official announcement on April 5 that it will release Robotaxi, Tesla's stock price has risen by 45%. During this period, Musk set the flag, he said, "Robotaxi and robotics business can make Tesla a company with a market value of 30 trillion US dollars". It is equivalent to 10 times Apple's market capitalization and even higher than United States' GDP last year.

The market clearly has high expectations for this. At present, Tesla's price-to-earnings ratio is still as high as 67 times, surpassing the seven major US stocks. By comparison, PE levels for Chinese and American automakers are in the single digits.

The extremely high valuation is due to the fact that investors believe that Tesla has more advantages. But Musk must also show real skills to prove that he has continued innovation and profitability. Otherwise, the high valuation that loses support is tantamount to a castle in the air, and a fall is inevitable.

The bet on AI and intelligent driving will be a key battle for Musk to "remake" Tesla. The industry has bluntly said that this may be his last chance to convince investors that Tesla is still innovative and disruptive.

It can be said that this "Robotaxi Day" is not only a technical contest, but also an important declaration of Tesla's market positioning, innovation capabilities and future development strategies, as well as a challenge to its identity.

But it backfired, although there are iron fans "Sister Wood" who firmly sing more, saying that Tesla will grow into a $28.1 trillion self-driving service provider. Market sentiment says something.

Garrett Nelson, an analyst at CFRA Research, said he was disappointed by the lack of clarity on Tesla's near-term product roadmap; Jefferies analysts also noted that Musk did not provide "verifiable evidence" of Tesla's progress in self-driving technology.

The off-the-field long and short battle began, and the internal turmoil was frequent. On the eve of this "go down in history" press conference, Tesla's chief information officer Nagesh Saldi announced his departure, and a number of previous executives, including senior vice president and head of government affairs, have also left, which has added a lot of uncertainty to Tesla.

However, "Iron Man", who has experienced strong winds and waves, is now determined to make Tesla a company that changes the world. As long as these robot "grand plans" can be successfully implemented, Musk will have the opportunity to create miracles again.

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