Gary Black Cites Steve Jobs, Stephen King To Reiterate Importance Of Marketing For Tesla: 'FSD Has A Take Rate Of Just 15%…'

Investor and managing director of The Future Fund LLC, Gary Black, has reiterated the importance of a strong Marketing plan for Elon Musk's EV giant Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) amid a push towards robots and AI.

FSD's Poor Take Rate

In a post on the social media platform X on Monday, the investor quoted Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) co-founder Steve Jobs, who said that customer experience should be the basis of developing technology.

Black shared that many bullish Tesla investors and supporters forget that "a product with great engineering won't sell itself," outlining poor adoption of the EV giant's Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology.

"TSLA FSD has a take rate of just 15% despite huge advances in unsupervised autonomy in 2025," the investor said. He also quoted author Stephen King, who mentioned how a brand was what the customer actually bought, as a product could be manufactured in a factory.

The investor then opined that the EV giant needs to invest in "brand equity and marketing muscle to increase its intrinsic value."

Gary Black's Views On Tesla Marketing

This isn't the first time that the investor has called on Tesla to improve its marketing activities, as he had earlier outlined that the EV giant would need more marketing muscle to ensure it doesn't fall behind its rivals amid a push towards Robots and autonomous vehicles.

The investor had also shared that despite valuation concerns with the company's stocks, he hadn't invoked a short position against Tesla as it is "too good a company" to bet against. However, he did warn that Tesla wouldn't be the only company to solve unsupervised autonomous driving.

Tesla scores well on the Momentum metric, while offering satisfactory Quality, but poor Value. It also has a favorable price trend in the Short, Medium, and Long term. For more such insights, sign up for Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings today!

Price Action: TSLA slipped 0.19% during the After-hours trading session on Monday and is currently valued at $448.10 per share, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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