Gary Black Warns Tesla Risks Falling Behind in the Self-Driving Race: ‘Unsupervised Autonomy Is Becoming Table Stakes’

Badar Shaikh

Thu, September 3, 2026 at 2:31 PM EDT 4 min read

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Investor Gary Blackof The Future Fund LLCthinks that Tesla Inc.'s competitors are investing heavily in developing autonomous driving technology, which risks the Elon Musk-led EV giant falling behind in the self-driving race.

Falling Earnings Estimates

Black took to the social media platform Xon Tuesday, quoting a post by a user who questioned his bearish outlook on Tesla. "Earnings revisions are the primary driver of growth stocks" like Tesla, NVIDIA Corp, or SK hynix Inc..

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He then shared that "negative revisions" had crushed Tesla's year-to-date performance. "WS earnings ests for TSLA for that year are lower today than they were 1, 3, 6, 12 months ago," he said, saying future earnings estimates were falling. Black cited Tesla's 2028 estimates.

"Current TSLA earnings est of $3.14 is -5% below where it was 1 month ago, -15% below where it was 6 months ago, and -28% below where it was 12 months ago," he said.

Growing Competitors

Black pointed to investments made by Tesla's competitors. "It's clear to any unbiased observer that TSLA's global competitors are all investing billions in unsupervised economy," he said.

Black said that competitors like Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo, as well as WeRide Inc., Baidu Inc.'s Apollo Goand Amazon.com Inc.'s Zooxwere "completing over 1 million paid unsupervised autonomous rides per week."

He also pointed to Nvidia partnering with OEMs to pursue autonomous goals. "I have argued for at least a year that unsupervised autonomy is becoming table stakes to compete in the global automotive business. Everyone can see that," he said.

Earnings revisions are the primary driver of growth stocks, whether $TSLA , $NVDA , $SKHY , etc. For $TSLA negative revisions have crushed the stock YTD (TSLA -20% YTD, NDX +15% YTD). Pick any year in the future. WS earnings ests for TSLA for that year are lower today than they… https://t.co/jx5GdUoPDi pic.twitter.com/MbNR5aHagU

— Gary Black (@garyblack00) September 1, 2026

Ross Gerber on Cybercab

Investor Ross Gerberof Gerber Kawasaki, ahead of Tesla's Cybercab launch event, said that he was looking forward to the Cybercab unveil, calling it the first "physical AI EV" and that it was not "ugly" like the Robotaxis from Waymo and Zoox.

However, Gerber had earlier expressed skepticism regarding Tesla's Robotaxi scale-up, saying it might be too late by the time the service gathers steam.

Photo courtesy: Shutterstock

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