Elon gets hype
Tesla's robotic future
Good morning, electric explorers. This is your Stock Market Rundown for October 18th, 2024. Thanks for joining me, once again. Let’s dig in:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: CYBERCAB COUNTDOWN
A taxicab with no annoying radio blaring, no death-defying swerves through traffic, and no driver on an hour-long phone call to his in-laws in Karachi. Ah… how peaceful.
That’s the vision of self-driving robotaxis—urban transportation without the inconvenience or expense of a human driver. A handful of competitors are already on the nation’s roads: you can sit back and enjoy a self-driving ride courtesy of Google’s Waymo in San Francisco, or Amazon’s Zoox in Las Vegas.
Now, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has thrown his car keys into the ring. In a splashy event last week, Tesla unveiled its prototype robotaxi, dubbed the “Cybercab”.
The sleek two-seater has gull-wing doors—very Back To The Future—and no steering wheel or pedals, since you don’t need those with no human at the wheel. Musk also showcased a van version that seats 20, and looks like a cross between a school bus and a UFO.
Some Wall Street analysts scorned the event as “sci-fi smoke and mirrors”, since Tesla still doesn’t have a fully-operational automated driving system. The stock slumped as Elon made hand-wavy promises but failed to nail the specifics.
But hey, even if Elon isn’t the most reliable guy when it comes to timelines, he’s a superstar at building hype. Fans at the event were stoked to exchange high-fives with a crew of humanoid robots that were trotted out to serve drinks. Okay, they were being remote-controlled, but still—having C3P0 mix you an Old Fashioned? The future is now.
Despite the hype—and Musk’s dreams of making self-driving electric vehicles accessible to the masses—Tesla’s technology still lags behind competitors. That means Tesla-branded autonomous taxis are still three to four years away from hitting the streets. Might want to hang onto your bus pass.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Credit rating firm Equifax missed estimates due to the mortgage market slumping. If buying a house is in your future, don’t forget to have those library fines from 2018 expunged from your credit report.
Netflix beat revenue estimates last quarter as the streaming TV provider added more than five million subscribers last quarter. Obviously, nobody wants to miss Cake Week on The Great British Bake-Off.
Essilor Luxottica, the world’s biggest sunglasses maker, missed expectations due to a decline in Chinese consumer spending. Customers aren’t keen to splurge on Ray-Bans if the price of pork buns is rising faster than their income.
After being hit by multiple fierce storms in the past month, Florida homeowners are discovering that renewing their homeowners’ insurance is tougher than locating a beach chair blown away by Hurricane Milton.
That’s it for today, compadres; let’s circle back for more next week. Yours in capitalism, The Axe
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