In This Story
Tesla should be riding high right now, the electric car maker just unveiled the autonomous car that it has been promising for years, reinvented the bus and pledged to bring humanoid robots to market for the low, low price of $30,000. It isn’t, however, and has instead seen its share price plummet and the enormous wealth of its CEO drop by an eye-watering $15 billion.
Tesla revealed the Cybercab and Robovan concepts last week, with big boss Elon Musk saying that the Cybercab could go on sale before 2027 for around $30,000. All that wasn’t enough to keep Tesla shareholders happy, however, with many wishing Musk had shared more concrete details about what it would take to build the cars, when they could launch and how Tesla will make its self-driving car tech actually work.
As such, stock in the electric car maker began falling quickly after the event. In pre-trading on Friday, analysts said Tesla stock was down five percent and by the end of the day it had dropped nine percent, reports Business Insider. This sharp drop in Tesla’s share price did nothing for Musk’s net worth:
Musk’s net worth — which is partly tied up in Tesla, as he holds about 13% of the company’s stock — goes up and down along with the company’s value. And on Friday, Tesla’s stock sank more than 9% from $238.77 to $217.80 per share.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, updated after the close of trading in New York, Musk’s net worth fell by $15 billion. With a total net worth of $240 billion, Musk remains the richest man on earth.
Forbes reported in July that Musk faced a similar financial hit after the “We, Robot” event was delayed from its original August date, and Tesla stock tumbled about 7%. The company’s stock value had continued its downward trend through early August then rebounded in September — bringing Musk’s net worth to more than that of McDonald’s and Pepsi. However, Tesla shares had not yet returned to the year-to-date high they’d hit in July before the stock slumped again this week.
Tesla’s share price now sits at around $217 per share, compared with the $240 that it was valued at before Musk began unveiling his autonomous creations. Despite the sharp drop in Tesla’s valuation, Musk remains the richest person in the world right now. At the time of writing, his fortune is estimated at more than $245 billion, reports Forbes.
Now, hope of Tesla’s share price rising will rest with the creations Musk unveiled and how quickly he can bring them to market. The Tesla CEO has a history of over-promising and under-delivering when it comes to new products, so the real test of his management will come if the automaker can really bring a self-driving car to market by 2027, but we won’t hold our breath for that one.
A version of this article originally appeared on Jalopnik’s The Morning Shift.