Tesla shares fell Friday after the electric-vehicle maker’s much-anticipated Cybercab launch, leaving some Wall Street analysts with more questions than answers. The stock dropped more than 6%, putting it on pace for its worst day since July 23 — when it plunged 15%. Friday’s decline also wiped out the strong gains from the previous session. Tesla on Thursday launched its purpose-built, two-seat Cybercab in Austin, Texas. The EV with no steering wheel or pedals is now being added to the company’s existing robotaxi service, an an important step in its rollout. TSLA YTD line Tesla YTD Tesla had 45 Cybercab vehicles authorized for driverless operations in the state of Texas out of 420 total registered Tesla vehicles statewide, according to public records on the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles website. But the limited disclosure at this invitation-only event has Wall Street analysts questioning about the scale. The event lacked a public livestream, which was a notable departure from Tesla’s traditionally theatrical product reveals, according to RBC. Wells Fargo analyst Colin Langan said the Cybercab launch “underwhelms,” arguing that the brief event offered few surprises and lacked specifics on fleet size or the rollout timeline. Others, though, remained bullish on the Elon Musk-led automaker. Here’s what Wall Street analysts had to say about the Cybercab launch: Wells Fargo: Underweight, $130 price target “Given the limited update and lack of surprises typically expected at TSLA events, the launch likely fell short of investor expectations. While the stock is down just 2% pre-market, we see more downside risk as the stock was up 5% yesterday (S & P +1%) and 15% in the last 30 days (S & P ~flat).” Barclays: Equal weight, $370 price target “We find the lack of direct communication from Tesla as somewhat disappointing, with questions as to why the event was not streamed. And without any new incrementals on growth/ scaling targets, we believe the event could prove to be less significant a catalyst than some investors had expected.” JPMorgan: Neutral, $445 price target “For the stock, in context of the strong run-up into the event, we expect a modest pull-back given limited details on pace of roll-out and deployment targets (currently ~45 Cybercabs registered in Texas) – our TSLA Robotaxi model continues to expect minimal fleet on the road by the end of 2026, expanding to ~9K by end of 2027 and continuing to inflect into 2028 and beyond.” Morgan Stanley: Equal weight, $400 price target “We believe yesterday’s stock outperformance appropriately reflects the progress the company is beginning to demonstrate in its robotaxi business. Looking ahead, we believe further evidence – through publicly available trackers – that Tesla is continuing to expand the size of its unsupervised Cybercab and Model Y fleet will be key to driving additional share outperformance.” Goldman Sachs: Neutral, $360 price target “We continue to believe that Cybercab will position Tesla well to operate with an attractive cost structure. If Tesla is able to meet its cost targets for Cybercab of $20K to $30K USD at scale, we estimate that it could equate to a $0.05 to $0.30 per mile cost benefit vs. competitor AVs assuming a $50K to $100K upfront cost (assuming no difference in miles over the useful life of the vehicle).” RBC Capital Markets: Outperform, $480 price target “We model only ~40K TSLA-owned CyberCabs by 2030 in the US, with a steeper ramp occurring from 2040 to 2050, when we project annual sales scaling from ~1.6M to ~4.3M units.” Baird: Outperform, $475 price target “Our $475 price target is based on ~74x our 2030 EBITDA estimate discounted back to YE:26 at a 9% rate. This is a premium to large-cap, high-growth peers (mean ~21x, range 4x-127x), which we justify given TSLA’s growth initiatives and competitive moat.”
