Welcome back to the latest episode of The Future of Automotive on CBT News, where we put recent automotive and mobility news into the context of the broader themes impacting the industry.
I’m Steve Greenfield from Automotive Ventures, and I’m glad that you could join us.
Unless you’ve been on vacation and offline for the past week, you couldn’t have missed that Tesla CEO Elon Musk showcased a two-door robotaxi with gull-wing doors and no steering wheel or pedals at a much-hyped unveiling event last week.
Musk is trying to finally deliver on long-held promises of autonomous cars driving long-term growth at Tesla.
Musk, proclaiming that the future of autonomy is here, traveled to the stage in one of Tesla’s new “Cybercabs” and said production will start in 2026 with the vehicles being available to buy for less than $30,000.
Musk claims that the Cybercab will cost 20 cents a mile to operate over time, using inductive chargers that will not require any plugs. The vehicle is supposed to rely only on cameras and artificial intelligence, without the need for other hardware (like LIDAR) that other robotaxi players use.
Musk also showcased a larger, self-driving vehicle – called the Robovan – an electric, autonomous vehicle roughly the size of a bus, designed for transporting people around high-density areas. It will carry up to 20 people at a time and also transport goods.
For all the hype, glitz and fanfare, how did the market react to the event?
Elon Musk’s promises were, as is usual with him, pretty inflated, and short on actual details. The harsh reality is that the road to self-driving taxis will be long, and Tesla will have tough competition along the way from players like Waymo and Cruise, never mind innovation coming out of China.
The stock price had run up pretty aggressively in anticipation of big, significant news at last week’s event. The stock had soared almost 70% since mid-April, largely in anticipation of the news.
Yet, Musk was light on specifics, leaving investors questioning how the carmaker expects to achieve its ambitious goals.
The underwhelming event sent Tesla’s shares down 9.3% at the market open last Friday, the day after the event, wiping out $69 billion of market value in Tesla’s biggest intraday decline in more than two months.
Elon Musk is undisputably one of the geniuses of our era. But a majority of his net worth is tied to his Tesla holding. And in order to fund some of his side projects like X (formerly known as Twitter), SpaceX, StarLink, X.AI and his plans for colonizing Mars, he is going to need to continue to keep Tesla’s stock price healthy, despite an overall softening in demand for plug in EVs.
As a result, I expect the Tesla hype engine will continue.
So, with that, let’s transition to Our Companies to Watch.
Every week we highlight interesting companies in the automotive technology space to keep an eye on. If you read my weekly Intel Report, we showcase a company to watch, and take the opportunity here on this segment each week to share that company with you.
Today, our new company to watch is Tractor Zoom.
Tractor Zoom is changing the way the industry researches, values, and manages the purchase of farm equipment and heavy machinery.
By partnering with over 2,250 auctioneer and dealer locations nationwide, they’ve built the fastest-growing and most transparent heavy equipment database that allows buyers to easily find and finance the equipment they need online, while also helping banks, Farm Credits, dealerships, and other organizations quickly and accurately value equipment based on real market data, in real-time.
Tractor Zoom makes it easy to browse, filter, find, and value heavy machinery based on each customer’s unique needs, all from the palm of their hand.
Tractor Zoom helps farmers, Farm Credits, banks, dealerships, and other organizations make data-driven decisions by providing transparency into over $10 billion worth of equipment sales transactions every year.
If you’d like to learn more about Tractor Zoom you can check them out at wwwtractorzoom.com.
So that’s it for this week’s Future of Automotive segment.
If you’re an AutoTech entrepreneur working on a solution that helps car dealerships, we want to hear from you. We are actively investing out of our DealerFund.
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Don’t forget to check out my book, The Future of Automotive Retail, which is available on Amazon.com. And keep an eye out for my new book, “The Future of Mobility”, which is almost done, and will be out soon.
Thanks (as always) for your ongoing support and for tuning into CBT News for this week’s Future of Automotive segment. We’ll see you next week!
