'Long runway' for Tesla as drivers wary of self-driving tech

Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang praised electric vehicle maker Tesla (TSLA) during an interview with Yahoo Finance following the chip giant's quarterly earnings release. Huang pointed to Tesla's autonomous vehicle technology, claiming the company is "far ahead" of its competition.

Autoblog Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore joins Morning Brief to discuss Huang's bullish sentiment on Tesla and the challenges with autonomous driving's adoption.

Migliore outlines his timeline before autonomous vehicles will be deployed en masse: "I look at it more of like a five to ten-year time frame where we'll see these chips and then the technologies that they can power phased into different vehicles. And I think you'll see existing autonomous driving systems like Tesla's Full Self-driving, as well as other programs like General Motors (GM) has a feature called Super Cruise. I think you'll see those systems get increasingly more powerful, and then you'll see some of the features that are a little more basic...those features that are a little more like tertiary but still important, get more powerful and more helpful to the consumer. And I think it'll be a longer runway."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Morning Brief.

This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

Nvidia, Ceo Jensen Wong giving credit to the EV maker Tesla.

The CEO telling Yahoo Finance Tesla is best positioned in self driving technology.

Take a listen, Tesla is far ahead in self driving cars.

Um But every single car someday will have to have autonomous capability.

Uh It's it's safer, it's more convenient, it's more, more fun to drive and in order to do that, uh it is now very well known, very well understood that learning from video directly is the most effective way to train these models.

We used to train based on images that are labeled.

We would say this is a, this is a car, you know, this is a car, this is a sign, this is a road and we would label that manually.

It's incredible.

And now we just put video right into the car and let the car figure it out by itself.

And for more, let's bring in auto blog editor in chief Greg Migliori for his reaction, Greg, great to see you.

So, I mean, NVIDIA is perhaps one of the biggest bellwether for the market right now.

But uh Jensen also having some high praise for Tesla there.

Hey guys.

Good morning.

Yeah, he is clearly bullish on Tesla's approach to self driving cars and just the entire business model which, you know, many people, including many investors are, I would raise a little bit more skepticism.

I, I think while many cars will have self-driving capability at some point in the future, I think what we've seen is consumers have been slow to adapt to it even slower than perhaps embracing evs and hybrids.

I think there's some pretty, you know, significant skepticism in the market for autonomous vehicles.

There's gonna be a significant learning curve and Greg tell us a little bit more about that just in terms of when we talk about A I in the auto industry.

WW what is a more realistic viewpoint, then I guess from your perspective and then ultimately, as maybe as we take a longer term approach, what you think that growth and demand is going to look like for some of these chips that obviously are necessary in order to um are critical for these automakers A I goals?

Yeah, I think that's a great question.

I I look at it more of a like a 5 to 10 year sort of time frame where we'll see these chips and then the technologies that they can power phased into different vehicles.

And I think you'll see existing autonomous driving systems like Tesla's full self driving as well as other programs like General Motors has a feature called Super Cruise I think you'll see those systems get increasingly more powerful and then you'll see some of the features.

Uh They're a little more basic things like keeping assist, blind spot monitoring, automatic braking.

Uh those features that are a little more like tertiary but still important, get more powerful and more helpful to the consumer.

And I think it'll be a longer runway.

I think listening to the, the comments there, uh that's a very bullish view and I, I don't necessarily think that's gonna happen in the near term Tesla has perhaps been se itself as one of the de facto full self driving or autopilot.

Um full autopilot plays right now, but the stock has had a rough time this year to say the least.

So how quickly does all of this need to materialize for Tesla for Elon Musk to be able to reap some of those longer term benefits that they continue to sell to investors out there?

Yeah, I think this needs to come to fruition uh at least details of the plan and he's going to reveal some of that uh as soon as August apparently.

So I think if he can articulate his vision for this in a more concrete way by the end of the year, I think investors and consumers will be reasonably patient with him.

I think the reason he took so much criticism earlier in the year is there is skepticism around self driving cars.

I've driven many of them and they are great.

I think they just have very specific uses cases.

And I think Elon is trying to bring this to the masses, which is a much tougher case to make great.

Let's take a step back and just look at Tesla overall right now, we got the European sales numbers out earlier this week showing a decline in demand.

And this comes on the heels of the recent data that we got out from China, just give me just your sense of what that demand picture looks like and whether or not Tesla is really out of the woods yet when it comes to some of those challenges that they have been up against now for quite some time.

Yeah.

So I think Tesla is the, I think they're at a pivotal moment this year.

I think they really need to uh again articulate what they're doing with autonomous vehicles because they've made that a pillar.

I think consumers in the market were more willing to accept just details on the model too or a lower cost model, which is in my mind, kind of a safer play.

It's like just a lower cost car, something perhaps below $30,000 25,000 dollars that people are familiar with.

That's what people were expecting.

So, I mean, naturally Elon Musk does something totally different.

Let's make the cars drive themselves, right.

So I think uh he needs to kind of bring together all these parts of his plan in the next probably 6 to 8 months.

Uh And, you know, sort of explain himself, I think right now, uh he has sort of thrown out some crumbs.

You know, he revealed earlier this week that they're doing more, uh advancing the semi program, which is significant.

He mentioned earlier this year about the Tesla Roadster.

Uh It's gonna be even quicker than he mentioned.

The 0 to 60 time is just a crazy figure.

So he's sort of giving us little nuggets, little bread crumbs.

But I think in the next year he needs to really bring it all together because the results, the sales figures they've been pretty uneven.

Yes.

Nuggets, bread crumbs and cloaks over top of yet to be announced.

Vehicles, Greg Miglio, we've got a lot for Tesla to ultimately deliver here going forward.

I appreciate you hopping on with us, Greg.

Thank you.