By Anthony Di Pizio
Publication Date: 2026-01-14 10:31:00
Tesla’s long-awaited robotaxi is facing competitive threats before it even hits the road.
Tesla (TSLA 0.44%) stock rocketed to a new all-time high in 2025, even though its electric vehicle (EV) sales saw their largest plunge in the company’s history. Normally, that would be very strange, but investors are placing early bets on the future success of Tesla’s upcoming product platforms, like the self-driving Cybercab robotaxi.
Some Wall Street firms, including Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management, predict the Cybercab will create extremely valuable business opportunities in areas like autonomous ride-hailing, which could send Tesla stock soaring over the long term — even from its present sky-high valuation.
However, the Cybercab already faces stiff competition, and it hasn’t even hit the road yet. At the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week, Nvidia (NVDA +0.36%) unveiled a new family of artificial intelligence (AI) models that will transform its existing DRIVE platform, and potentially make autonomous vehicles a reality for almost any car company in the world. Here’s why that’s very bad news for Tesla.
Image source: Nvidia.
Nvidia’s self-driving platform is already very popular
Around 90% of Nvidia’s revenue comes from its data center business, where it sells industry-leading graphics processing units (GPUs) for AI development. But the company also has an automotive segment headlined by its DRIVE platform, which includes all of the hardware and software a car…
