New York, February 27, 2026, 07:41 EST — Premarket
- Tesla shares were slightly lower in premarket trading after a sharp drop a day earlier.
- A Reuters report said Tesla logged zero autonomous test miles in California in 2025, leaving key robotaxi permits out of reach.
- Investors are also parsing a director’s planned share sale and fresh labor headlines out of Germany.
Tesla shares edged down 0.2% in premarket trading on Friday, after the stock fell 2.1% to close at $408.58 in the prior session. 1
The move follows a Reuters report that Tesla logged zero miles of autonomous test driving on California public roads in 2025 and took no steps during the year to advance the state’s permit process for driverless robotaxis, a key plank in Chief Executive Elon Musk’s pitch to investors. Autonomous-driving expert Bryant Walker Smith said, “Regulators are ready, and they are not.” Musk, on an earnings call in October, said the company was “paranoid about safety.” 2
Why it matters now: much of Tesla’s market value is tied to expectations that it can scale autonomy and sell high-margin driving software. California is the biggest U.S. auto market, and it is also one of the most prescriptive places to try to run a driverless ride-hailing fleet. The permit trail is not optional.
Tesla’s stock has traded with bigger swings as traders react to shifts in the autonomy narrative, which has become more central as the company leans harder on robotaxis and software to drive its next leg of growth.
On Thursday, Tesla’s shares slid 2.11% and traded more than 53 million shares, outpacing the broader market’s risk-off tone in tech. 3
Futures pointed lower into the open, with investors on edge about “all things AI” and waiting for a January producer price index reading due before the bell that could shape bets on the Federal Reserve’s rate path. 4
In Europe, Tesla also drew attention after German union IG Metall said it and Tesla had agreed to set aside, for now, a dispute tied to a labor meeting at the company’s plant outside Berlin. A local union leader said the truce would let workers focus on “the issues” ahead of a works council election next Wednesday. 5
A separate filing added another item for investors to digest. Tesla director Kathleen Wilson-Thompson filed a Form 144 notice to sell 25,731 shares, with an aggregate market value of about $10.53 million, in a plan tied to stock options and a pre-arranged 10b5-1 trading plan, the filing showed. (A Form 144 is a notice of a proposed insider sale.)
The risk for Tesla is that the robotaxi timeline becomes a regulatory problem, not just an engineering one. If the company cannot show concrete progress in California’s system — where competitors such as Alphabet’s Waymo have already won approvals — investors may put a lower multiple on the autonomy story, especially in a market that is already questioning AI payoffs.
Beyond Friday’s inflation data, investors are looking to next week’s U.S. jobs report on March 6 and other earnings late in the season for signals on growth and risk appetite. “There is very little definitive right now,” Kristina Hooper, chief market strategist at Man Group, said of the market’s AI winner-loser debate. 6
