Caixin financial news on October 10th (Editor Liu Rui) in less than 24 hours, Tesla will become the focus of global attention: Tesla will hold the 'Robotaxi Day' event at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. By then, many investors and analysts will see the long-awaited launch of the self-driving taxi Cybercab and other products.

As the 'Robotaxi Day' event approaches, Tesla's stock price has been steadily rising over the past few weeks, almost wiping out the year's decline - this also indicates investors' high hopes for this event.

At 7:00 p.m. local time on Thursday, October 10th (10:00 a.m. on the morning of the 11th in Beijing), Musk's formal appearance with Cybercab will be a key moment determining the future fate of Tesla.

A significant moment deciding Tesla's fate?

As the absolute leader in electric vehicles, Musk once made the market believe that Tesla would always be at the forefront of technological innovation. However, with more and more emerging electric vehicle companies globally in recent years, Tesla's lead seems to be gradually shrinking - even falling behind. This is one of the reasons for Tesla's significant stock price drop in the first half of this year.

And now, the arrival of this 'Robotaxi Day' conference may be Elon Musk's last chance to turn the tide. He needs to use this event to convince investors that Tesla is still a global leader in technological innovation.

The outcome of this event will likely determine whether Tesla will continue to be one of the top seven giants in the US technology stocks, or if it will only become a mediocre electric vehicle company, competing with dozens of other auto manufacturers for global market share in electric vehicles.

In fact, a few months ago, it was Elon Musk's unexpected delay in the anticipated release date of Cybercab that caused Tesla's stock price to plummet temporarily. Over the past few weeks, as the Cybercab release date approaches again, Tesla's stock price has regained upward momentum.

Jay Woods, Chief Global Strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, stated that Tesla's stock price has risen by 12% in the past month, indicating that traders are highly anticipating its latest presentation. However, he also cautioned that investors will have to wait and see if this upward trend will quickly fade once Tesla's presentation officially starts.

"This is the most anticipated event for Musk in nearly a decade. He has been talking about autonomous driving and Robotaxi for 10 years," Woods said, "Now, we can finally see what's under the hood.

Wedbush Securities analyst Ives, a long-time supporter of Tesla, praised, "We believe that Robotaxi Day will be a groundbreaking and historic day for Musk and Tesla, marking a new chapter in Tesla's future development in autonomous driving and AI."

What are the market expectations?

The upcoming Cybercab autonomous taxi to be announced by Tesla will evidently be the absolute highlight of this event.

Further, the latest media reports claim that Tesla's self-driving rental cars will be equipped with two front seats and gullwing doors.

As early as 2016, Musk predicted that he would introduce self-driving cars, and since then, this topic has been mentioned by him almost every year. And now, this concept is finally about to reveal its mysterious side.

Wall Street generally acknowledges that if Tesla's self-driving rental car business is successful, it will bring enormous growth potential. Royal Bank of Canada analyst Tom Narayan suggested that the valuation of Tesla's self-driving rental car business could be as high as $400 billion.

However, to meet market expectations, Wall Street expects to see at least a physical self-driving car, a plan to obtain regulatory approval and drive service implementation by 2026, and a commercial path for Tesla to profit from this business – meeting market expectations may not be easy.

The market expectations are not limited to this. More and more observers predict that Musk may also launch the Model 2 car at the event - a market anticipation that has been building for years.

Market expectations for the Model 2 are as high as the Cybercab, as Tesla's outdated model issues have significantly impacted its sales. According to Ward's Automotive data, as of August this year, Tesla's sales in the USA have dropped by nearly 10% year-on-year. In contrast, by 2023, Tesla's year-on-year sales growth in the USA is 25%.

Market expectations for the Model 2 are as high as the Cybercab, as Tesla's outdated model issues have significantly impacted its sales. According to Ward's Automotive data, as of August this year, Tesla's sales in the USA have dropped by nearly 10% year-on-year. In contrast, by 2023, Tesla's year-on-year sales growth in the USA is 25%.

Wall Street expects Tesla to deliver approximately 1.8 million autos in 2024, just about the same as in 2023, far lower than the analysts' forecast of 2.3 million vehicles one year ago.

In this context, if Tesla can introduce the Model 2 priced below $30,000, it will help drive Tesla's sales once again, while expanding the company's potential market.

Robots are also a focus of this event.

Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu said that by 2035, if Tesla can achieve sales of 0.2 million robots per year, each priced at $50,000, then the valuation of Tesla's emerging humanoid robot business could reach $70 billion.

Musk faces enormous challenges.

However, for Musk, it seems difficult to rely on this event alone to meet all of the market's expectations.

Currently, the general concern among Wall Street investment institutions about this event is that Tesla may still need several years to be ready to operate self-driving taxi services.

Compared to competitors' autonomous vehicles (using lidar, ultrasonic, and optical cameras), Tesla's self-driving vehicles only use optical cameras and neural networks. Additionally, the rumored Cybercab may not be equipped with a steering wheel and pedals, fully relying on Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, which means Musk needs to prove the safety of his technology to regulatory agencies.

According to Tesla's FSD Tracker, the Tesla FSD self-driving system can independently complete about 90% of driving, but every 100 miles or so, the driver needs to take over once.

Dan O'Dowd, the founder of Green Hills Software, who has long criticized Tesla's autonomous driving technology, said that Tesla's technical data performance is equivalent to an average of one rear-end collision per month - which means Tesla is far from solving the fully autonomous driving problem.

CFRA Research's senior stock analyst Garrett Nelson pointed out in the report that Tesla still needs to overcome 'numerous technological barriers' - as well as regulatory barriers (which may be harder to overcome) - to potentially become a competitor to companies like Waymo.

In the report, Nelson wrote that Robotaxi may not be launched for several years, and Tesla is 'still far from' introducing high-performance self-driving cars.

What worries Tesla investors even more is that in the self-driving taxi race, other companies have already taken the lead ahead of Tesla: currently, the leading autonomous driving company Waymo has achieved driverless operations in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles in the U.S., as of August 20, Waymo announced that the weekly paid order volume for its Robotaxi service has exceeded 100,000, doubling from May this year. Meanwhile, Cruise, Zoox, and other companies are also catching up, currently in a testing phase.

Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi bluntly stated that Waymo has been cooperating with U.S. regulatory agencies on its autonomous cars for over 10 years, while Tesla has not even started this process.

Could Model 2 also be just a pipe dream?

Moreover, autonomous taxis are not the only issue: many investors are also concerned that 'Model 2' may not be unveiled this year.

Wall Street investment bank Truist Securities wrote in its report: "We recognize that if Tesla announces models to be launched in 2025 with smaller dimensions and cheaper powertrain systems, this event could be a positive catalyst. However, we believe the likelihood of this scenario is relatively low."

Gene Munster, a partner at Deepwater Management, also warned that the Robotaxi Day event is likely to be 'lacking details', especially with expectations for Model 2 possibly being too high - those expecting to truly understand Tesla's Robotaxi progress may be disappointed.

Could the Tesla event bring disappointment?

Looking at Tesla's performance over the past few years, major events by Tesla have often only brought disappointment to investors: whether it was Tesla's first AI event in 2021, or Tesla's AI Day in 2022, Tesla's stock price noticeably declined in the days following the events.

William Blair analyst Jed Dorsheimer said: 'I would not be surprised, and fully expect Tesla's stock price to fall after this event.'

He stated that the trend for most Tesla analysts around major announcements is: as expectations rise, the stock price reaches higher levels, only to be disappointed after the event.

UBS analyst also stated in the report: 'If Tesla demonstrates relative strength before the event, we would not be surprised. But can Tesla live up to expectations and maintain momentum after the event? We are uncertain about this.'