The days when it seemed Elon Musk could do no wrong are long over. Some of the controversies surrounding the world's richest person comes from his everywhere-everything-all-at-once celebrity status, not to mention his brazen business stances and willingness to amplify misinformation and conspiracy theories, most recently hurricane relief efforts.
But the latest round of disapproval comes from investors who were unimpressed with Tesla’s much-hyped “We, Robot” cybertaxi reveal last Thursday night. How unimpressed were they? Tesla’s already battered stock dropped more than 8% after markets opened on Friday. Musk arrived at the invite-only event at Warner Brothers movie studio in Burbank, California in a self-driving Cybercab, which looks like a smaller and more rounded version of the blocky Cybertruck, reports Forbes Richard Nieva. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals inside and has doors that open upwards. Musk said Cybercabs would go on sale by 2026 and cost less than $30,000, but he’s known to have been wildly inaccurate with timelines. (Nieva writes Musk has promised a fleet of robotaxis every year since 2019.)
Tesla is not the first company to work on robotaxis, and stories of the problems self-driving vehicles face have been in the headlines for more than a year. Cruise’s self-driving taxis had their permit to operate in California revoked earlier this year after incidents involving pedestrians, while Alphabet venture Waymo has been slowly ramping up its technology and partnerships as it slowly deploys more vehicles on the roads in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Forbes’ Alan Ohnsman writes that Waymo is much closer to launching a self-driving taxi than Tesla.
Musk’s new vision for Tesla seems to have robotaxis at its center—not more affordable electric vehicles, which Tesla reportedly put on the backburner to develop the Cybercab. Analysts found Thursday night’s presentation underwhelming, vague and lacking detail. And Tesla’s original business of creating electric vehicles has been slowing down, with its stock dropping earlier this month on lower-than-expected Q3 car deliveries. It seems clear that investors want something different from Tesla right now—or at least focus on personal vehicles and not self-driving taxis. The company is scheduled to deliver its quarterly earnings next week, so we’llthe company will have another opportunity to see how far Elon Musk’s choices are from those of investors.
The business and investor community relies on Crunchbase’s detailed data and statistics when looking at startups, funding and opportunities. When Chief Product Officer Megh Gautam came aboard just over a year ago, his goal was to integrate AI into the platform to make this data both more useful and user-friendly. I talked to him about Crunchbase’s AI journey, and an excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.
Edwin Lopez sorts the money in the cash register at Frankie's Pizza in Miami.
Headline consumer price index inflation in September was 2.4%, the lowest rate since February 2021, according to reports last Thursday. Even though the lower rate looks promising, some analysts are still wary of the U.S.’s economic progress. Economists forecast a 2.3% inflation rate, so while inflation overall is moderating and coming down to policymakers’ target 2%, there are many who think it should be happening faster. This is the first time inflation figures have missed economists’ projections........