Steve Wozniak, the technologist who co-founded Apple Computer with the late Steve Jobs, said there’s “way too much hype” around Tesla, the electric car maker founded by billionaire Elon Musk.
“If [Tesla says] something is going to happen, don’t quite count on it,” Wozniak said in an interview at the Money 20/20 conference this week in Las Vegas, according to CNBC.
While Musk has been at the forefront of developing a mass-market electric car, his company has a history of missing sales and production goals. Those disappointments have been short-lived, though, with investors bidding up the stock by 60% in the past 12 months. Tesla has declined about 17 percent in the past month from a record high of $389.61 on September 18.
Wozniak said Tesla’s promotions about self-driving cars are inaccurate.
"Tesla has in people's mind that they have cars that will just drive themselves totally, and it is so far from the truth, so they have deceived us," Wozniak told the audience.
Musk in October 2016 said all Teslas would be equipped with the hardware necessary for full self-driving capability. It also showed off a “summon” feature allowing owners to call their Teslas with a tap on a smartphone, "even if you are on the other side of the country."
Wozniak drives a Tesla and said he downloads its latest firmware when available.
"Sometimes Teslas are dangerous because of what they call 'autopilot,'" Wozniak said. "You get thinking, 'Oh, it is easy, I can reach over and not look for a few seconds,' and that is the second your car drifts over the line."
Meanwhile, hedge-fund manager David Einhorn told investors that value investing may be dead and Amazon and Tesla killed it.
"The market remains very challenging for value investing strategies, as growth stocks have continued to outperform value stocks. The persistence of this dynamic leads to questions regarding whether value investing is a viable strategy," Einhorn wrote in an investor letter Tuesday obtained by CNBC.
The performance of U.S. growth stocks has been almost three times better than that of value stocks in the past 10 years. Index fund giant State Street Global Advisors describes the period as “the longest period of underperformance for value since the late 1940s.”
Einhorn specifically mentioned its short sales of Tesla and Amazon. The trades will be profitable when those stocks sink.
"Given the performance of certain stocks, we wonder if the market has adopted an alternative paradigm for calculating equity value," he wrote.
"What if equity value has nothing to do with current or future profits and instead is derived from a company's ability to be disruptive, to provide social change, or to advance new beneficial technologies, even when doing so results in current and future economic loss?" he asked.
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