Tesla stock remains not a buy ahead of earnings

Key Points - Tesla's core business is struggling. - Meanwhile, the company appears to be falling behind in robotaxis and robots. It's been a tough start to the year for Tesla stock. Its shares are off more than 30% from their highs and down nearly 25% year to date, as of this writing. Despite the dip in its stock price, I wouldn't be a buyer of the stock ahead of its earnings later this month (scheduled for after the bell on April 22). The electric vehicle (EV) maker already reported disappointing first-quarter deliveries earlier this month. The company saw a 6% increase in deliveries to 358,023 vehicles, but that fell well short of the 365,000 analysts had projected. Meanwhile, its energy storage business, which has been a bright spot in recent years, badly missed expectations with deployments of 8.8 GWh. That was down from 10.4 GWh a year ago and badly missed the 14.4 GWh consensus. The company's core EV business has been hurt by the end of the federal EV tax credit and the brand damage done by CEO Elon Musk, with his foray into politics and his time overseeing DOGE (the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency). Meanwhile, the company is seeing increased competition across the board. Competition is fierce in China, the world's largest EV market, as numerous domestic players emerge. And EV upstarts like Rivian are gaining momentum, while legacy automobile makers continue to make strides. The great hope for Tesla Tesla bulls will largely dismiss the problems the company is facing in its core business. After all, an investment in Tesla is about the future. This means autonomous driving, cybercabs, and robots. The problem with this is that these potential opportunities all come from a company that has a terrible track record of delivering on its promises. Musk has said that autonomous driving was around the corner for Tesla for ages, and despite Alphabet-owned Waymo robotaxis zipping around cities around the country, we're still left wondering how many autonomous vehicles are in Tesla's fleet that don't need a safety driver or are being remotely driven. The company supposedly has been giving unsupervised rides in Austin, Texas, since January, but they have been difficult to find in the wild, and the company recently admitted that it will have remote assistant operators directly take over control of its vehicles in some instances. Meanwhile, Musk's promise that it would be operating in eight to 10 cities by the end of 2025 came nowhere close to happening. Avoid Tesla stock Tesla's stock price is completely built on a vision, as its core business continues to struggle. The problem is that the company is falling behind in areas like robotaxis and robotics compared to companies like Alphabet and Amazon. Meanwhile, Musk has become the proverbial boy who cried wolf. By the time Tesla delivers on these promises, it may be too far behind to matter.