Will Waymo Self-Driving Car Hurt Tesla?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 2, 8:49AM EDT

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Will Waymo Self-Driving Car Hurt Tesla? — © JasonDoiy / iStock Unreleased via Getty Images

Waymo, the largest shareholder of which is Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG | GOOG Price Prediction), was founded 15 years ago and began developing a complete version of self-driving car software seven years ago. Its commercial robotaxi operates in Phoenix, Arizona, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and it will be offered next month in Austin, TX. It runs 150,000 paid rides per week, totaling over one million miles weekly. It operates with video software and 360-degree cameras that rely on AI Nvidia chips.

The self-driving business is growing rapidly. Last month, Alphabet raised $5.6 billion for Waymo, valued at $45 billion, about the same as Ford’s market cap. While it is hard to forecast which companies will use Waymo, it has deals with Uber and Hyundai. Since most major car companies worldwide are building autonomous driving features, it is hard to say who Waymo’s partners will be.

Tesla has several advantages over Waymo. First, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Mode is on tens of thousands of Teslas. CEO Elon Musk has promised a true self-driving vehicle next year. In other words, Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) self-driving software systems have a massive installed base.

Another advantage Tesla has is that industry experts believe its self-driving projects are ahead of other car companies. Yahoo recently reported that Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, has praised Tesla’s self-driving technology and called Tesla “far ahead” in the field. Since Nvidia is the envy of the AI industry, Huang’s opinions count for a great deal.

Finally, Tesla’s self-driving feature has been available on its cars since 2019. These cars have logged millions of miles well beyond the cities where Waymo is testing. Tesla has massive amounts of real-world data and has had five years to perfect its technology across all of those highways..

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.