Tesla just kicked off a special event to show off its robo-taxi tech
- Tesla kicked off its autonomy day on Monday morning at its Palo Alto headquarters.
- Executives including CEO Elon Musk are expected to address investors at the event.
- Wall Street expects the company to give more information on its Autopilot self-driving technology.
- Some experts have warned that Musk's previous comments about Tesla's self-driving software could be unsafe and even unethical.
Tesla's "autonomy day" kicked off on Monday morning at the electric vehicle maker's headquarters in Palo Alto, California, where executives including CEO Elon Musk are expected to give investors more details about the company's self-driving technology, known as Autopilot.
"Tesla is making significant progress in the development of its autonomous driving software and hardware, including our FSD computer, which is currently in production and which will enable full-self driving via future over-the-air software updates," the company said when it announced the event.
Musk took at the stage at approximately 11:43 am alongside VP of autopilot engineering Pete Bannon, as more than 40,000 people watched remotely via the company's live YouTube stream.
Attendees were given red, Tesla-branded badges with sequential numbers, assumably for test rides of the full self-driving functionality.
This post will be updated as the event progresses.
Wall Street wary of any new announcements
Wall Street analyst have warned that there are more pressing issues Tesla investors should be worrying about ahead of the company's first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday.
"While we firmly believe in the long term vision for Tesla and expect self driving autonomous technology will be a linchpin of the company's success," Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, said in a note to clients Monday.
"The Street needs to have a better grasp on the near term demand trajectory in the US for 2Q, delivery logistics for Model 3 in Europe/ China which had been a key culprit for the 1Q debacle, and better understanding of the tenuous balance sheet situation for Musk & Co. going forward for the stock to stabilize."
Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst at Evercore, said he was waiting for specifics before assigning any value to Tesla's self-driving suite.
"We're certain the market is going to get a lot of promises at the investor day tonight, but we'd like to see more proof before assigning a significant value," he said in a note to clients downgrading shares of Tesla from "in-line" to "underperforming."
"The market is assigning very little value to autonomous assets within public OEM's (even when they have direct valuations like GM/Cruise) and the market is not going to give Tesla credit for Musk's promises without very near term KPI's."
Musk's previous comments about Tesla's self-driving capabilities have drawn criticism from some industry experts, who say the billionaire has overhyped certain technologies in a way that could even be unethical.
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