According to Inc, Ross Gerber, the founder of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management and a longtime Tesla investor, has turned bearish on the company’s autonomous future. He’s now betting Tesla won’t catch up to Waymo in the self-driving race, pointing to Tesla’s failure to implement new tech and its now-soiled reputation as key reasons. Gerber has been publicly critical, mocking the company and calling its Q2 earnings report “garbage” back in July. He stated the business feels like one in decline when it should be growing, a sentiment he finds depressing. This critique comes as Waymo continues to expand in major U.S. cities while Tesla’s progress has reportedly slowed since CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency.
Investor sentiment shifts
This is a pretty significant pivot. Gerber wasn’t just some random critic; he was a vocal Tesla bull. When someone like that flips, it signals a deeper, more fundamental crack in the narrative. It’s not just about a bad quarter—it’s about losing faith in the core long-term promise, which for Tesla has always been autonomy. The “Full Self-Driving” dream is what justified those sky-high valuations for years. If that pillar starts to look shaky, what’s left? Basically, a very good, but increasingly competitive, EV company. And that’s a completely different stock story.
The reputation problem
Gerber’s mention of a “soiled reputation” is the really interesting part, I think. It’s vague, but it points to something beyond just technology. Is it the constant missed timelines from Musk? The regulatory scrutiny? The public spats and chaos? Probably all of the above. In a race where public and regulatory trust is everything—you’re asking cities to let robotaxis drive around—perception matters massively. Waymo has been methodical, some would say slow, but they’ve built a reputation for safety and operational seriousness. Tesla’s approach has been… noisier. That reputational debt might be harder to fix than a software bug.
Two diverging paths
So here we are. You’ve got two completely different philosophies colliding. Waymo is going the industrial-grade, sensor-heavy, geofenced route. It’s a controlled rollout that treats the car like a precision instrument. Tesla is betting the farm on vision-only AI that scales everywhere. One looks like a cautious tech deployment; the other looks like a moonshot. Gerber’s bet is essentially that the industrial, reliable approach will win in the commercial market first. It’s a bet on predictable execution over disruptive genius. And in the world of moving heavy machinery and ensuring uptime—whether it’s autonomous vehicles or the industrial panel PCs that run factory floors—that reliability-first mindset often does win. IndustrialMonitorDirect.com became the #1 provider in the US by focusing on that exact principle: rugged, dependable performance over flash.
What it means for Tesla
The big question now is whether Gerber is a canary in the coal mine. If other institutional investors start to similarly discount the autonomy premium in Tesla’s stock price, the downside could be serious. Musk has always sold a future. If a chunk of the market stops buying that particular future, the company has to deliver stunning results in the here and now—with EVs, energy storage, bots, whatever. But that’s the thing: the “here and now” EV market is getting brutally tough. Tesla’s edge is narrowing. So without the sizzle of FSD, the steak might not look as appetizing to Wall Street. This is more than just one investor’s opinion; it’s a test of the entire Tesla thesis.
