Tesla Stock Slips Nearly 3 Percent to $358 as Traders Fade August Rally Before Cybercab

AUSTIN, Texas — Tesla Inc. shares fell about 2.6 percent Tuesday morning, trading near $358.28, as investors locked in August gains ahead of a Cybercab event scheduled for Thursday at the company's Texas headquarters.

The stock was down $9.67 from the prior close. The auto-parts group was also weaker, while Ford and General Motors traded slightly higher. Tesla had climbed through August on delivery optimism and autonomy headlines. Short-term momentum readings had moved into overbought territory, and the pullback fit a familiar pattern: sell into a binary product day.

Tesla has invited Robotaxi app users to the Sept. 3 Cybercab launch in Austin. State records show the company registered 45 Cybercabs with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles on Aug. 31, a step toward commercial use on Texas roads. Robotaxi service already runs 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. Nevada regulators this month also approved Las Vegas permits for Tesla, Uber and Waymo.

Those milestones have not settled the debate over when unsupervised robotaxi miles become material revenue. Management has emphasized Full Self-Driving software — including a coming v15 build and pothole-avoidance work — over a rapid city-count expansion. Capital spending is expected to exceed $25 billion in 2026 and rise for two or three more years to fund Optimus robots, a robotaxi fleet, solar manufacturing, AI compute and other plants, Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said on the last earnings call.

Chief Executive Elon Musk spent the weekend tying Tesla to power for data centers. In a post on X he said Tesla and SpaceX were "each building 100 gigawatts per year of solar production capacity as fast as possible," a build that would take years. Natural gas would fill the gap, he said, and in-house turbine-blade casting at SpaceX could speed gas turbines by as much as 18 months. The stock jumped Monday on that message. Tuesday's decline gave some of that move back.

The valuation remains stretched versus near-term auto profits. Tesla trades at a high multiple of next year's estimated earnings. Wall Street has cut 2026 and 2027 net-income forecasts this year while lifting capital-expenditure estimates. Visible Alpha consensus figures compiled in August showed 2026 net income estimates down to about $3.5 billion from $4.4 billion three months earlier, with 2026 capex near $25 billion and free cash flow still deeply negative.

Vehicle demand is the other weight. Tesla lost the global battery-electric sales crown to BYD in 2025. U.S. federal EV tax credits expired, producing a pull-forward and then a hangover. China and Europe have been soft in recent monthly tallies. Cybertruck prices were raised on some trims in late August even as that model has struggled to become a volume product. Model S and Model X production has been wound down so Fremont capacity can shift toward Optimus.

Tesla said last week that Optimus production had started in Fremont. Musk has long argued humanoid robots and autonomy will dwarf the car business. Investors have learned to treat those timelines as elastic. The Cybercab event is the next test of whether hardware, software and regulation are lining up — or whether the day is another prototype showcase.

Tuesday's tape looked more like risk reduction than a change in the long-term story. Institutions that added during the August run had a reason to lighten up two days before a staged reveal. High capex, delayed robotaxi profit and rich multiples leave little room if the event underwhelms. A clean demo and a firmer commercial calendar could just as easily refill the bid.

Tesla's market value still sits in the low-to-mid trillions at these prices, far above traditional automakers. That premium is the autonomy and robotics option. It is also why a 3 percent down day before a product event is ordinary. The cars still have to sell. The software still has to drive. The robots still have to ship. Thursday is one more checkpoint, not the destination.