Gary Black said investors are growing cautious about Elon Musk’s goal of deploying unsupervised autonomy across 25%-50% of the U.S. by year-end.
- Black compared the current autonomy hype to projections from 2020-2021 that Tesla would deliver 20 million vehicles annually by 2030.
- The target would have implied 25% global market share, while current forecasts point to 2.8 million deliveries, or about 3% share.
- He argued Tesla is unlikely to dominate the robotaxi market alone, noting companies including Alphabet, Baidu, Pony.ai, WeRide and Amazon are already making progress.
Shares of Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) appear poised to extend their losing streak on Monday after finishing the past three weeks in the red, as debate intensifies over whether the EV maker can dominate the autonomous ride-hailing market.
TSLA stock fell over 2.5% in overnight trading on Sunday, after closing lower for a second straight session on Friday, when the stock declined over 2% to finish at $396.73.
Gary Black Questions Tesla Robotaxi Dominance
Gary Black, managing partner at The Future Fund, said on X that investors appear increasingly cautious about CEO Elon Musk’s promise that Tesla’s unsupervised autonomy could reach 25% to 50% of the U.S. by year-end, noting that only eight vehicles out of roughly 400 Tesla robotaxis currently operate without safety monitors.
Black said the excitement around Tesla’s robotaxi ambitions reminds him of 2020-2021, when some investors believed Tesla would reach 20 million vehicle deliveries per year by 2030, implying roughly 25% of the global auto market.
Current Wall Street estimates suggest Tesla will deliver about 2.8 million vehicles by 2030, or roughly 3% of the market, he noted. He argued that similar assumptions are emerging about autonomy, with some valuation models suggesting Tesla could capture nearly the entire autonomous ride-hailing market.
“To argue no one else can achieve generalized unsupervised autonomy flies in the face of reality,” Black said, pointing out that companies including Alphabet, Baidu, Pony.ai, WeRide and Amazon are already completing about 850,000 fully autonomous rides per week, while Nvidia is preparing to supply autonomous hardware and software stacks to Tesla’s competitors.
Why Tesla Bulls May Be Wrong
Black outlined three reasons Tesla bulls may be overly optimistic about the company’s lead in autonomy. First, he said Tesla supporters “consistently” conflate production with demand, assuming that if Tesla builds autonomous vehicles, consumers will automatically adopt them even without any marketing. Black has repeatedly advocated that Tesla step up its advertising and marketing to reach more consumers.
Second, he said many bulls believe “no other auto manufacturer has the fully autonomous capabilities and vertical integration to drive ride hailing costs to $.20/mile.” “Others have already solved for unsupervised autonomy and are now building scale to achieve profitability,” Black said in an apparent reference to Waymo. “This is similar to 2020-21 when TSLA influencers argued no other manufacturer was sufficiently vertically integrated to produce high quality, long range EVs for $35-$40K - which has proven incorrect.”
Thirdly, he said some investors place strong faith in Musk’s projections, making them reluctant to acknowledge potential risks to Tesla’s autonomy timeline or market share. Musk has previously set ambitious timelines that slipped, including the launch of the Cybertruck and Tesla Semi, while the next-generation Roadster has yet to enter production, and Full Self-Driving (FSD) autonomy has yet to become reality.
Black added that Tesla’s forward price-to-earnings ratio above 200 times already appears to reflect expectations that the company will remove safety monitors from a significant portion of its U.S. robotaxi fleet by the end of the year. “One can love Tesla’s business without loving Tesla’s stock,” he said.
Tesla Moves Toward Unsupervised Robotaxis
Tesla confirmed in December that it had begun offering robotaxi rides in Austin without a safety monitor in the front seat. However, Tesla’s AI software chief Ashok Elluswamy said some vehicles will continue operating with safety monitors for now as the company gradually expands fully unsupervised operations.
Other investors remain optimistic about the long-term opportunity. ARK Investment Management analyst Tasha Keeney said the conversation around autonomous driving has shifted from whether the technology will work to when it will reach individual cities. Keeney added that robotaxi fleets could eventually reduce ride-hailing costs to around $0.25 per mile as the technology scales.
Tesla says its Full Self-Driving (FSD) system has logged more than 8.4 billion miles of driver-assisted driving, though it has not disclosed the cumulative miles driven without a human supervisor. Rivals, meanwhile, have leapfrogged. As of February, Alphabet’s Waymo had logged more than 200 million fully autonomous miles across 10 metro areas, including Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando. China’s Baidu said in October 2025 that its Apollo Go robotaxi service had completed more than 250,000 fully driverless rides per week, while WeRide says its Level 4 vehicles have logged over 40 million kilometers (about 24 million miles) of autonomous driving on public roads.
What Stocktwits Users Feel About TSLA
On Stocktwits, retail sentiment was ‘extremely bullish’ amid ‘extremely high’ message volume.
One user said, “Are 380 P/E car companies with 3 consecutive years of plummeting sales and profits a good choice in a risk-off market environment? I'm just not sure.”
Another user said, “If they pump this green by open and first ten min it’s the easiest short of the day. Absolutely no way in hell this will stay green on a -1000 day in market with a p/e near 400.”
TSLA stock has declined 12% year-to-date.
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