Waymo’s Move to Dallas Is a Headache for Tesla

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 29, 9:15AM EDT

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Waymo and Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) robotaxis go head to head in Austin.
Which one will come out on top as the lead autonomous vehicle company in America?

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Waymo’s Move to Dallas Is a Headache for Tesla — © Dallas view (BY 2.0) by Robert Hensley

Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) self-driving car company Waymo is moving into Dallas. That is not good for Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA). Tesla’s self-driving robotaxi is only available in Austin (as well as a few cities outside the United States). Waymo also operates in Phoenix, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, which gives it at least the perception of being the lead autonomous vehicle company in America.

While the robotaxi may be in other cities, Waymo’s footprint is growing as well. However, Tesla’s self-driving software is in Teslas. Waymo has partnerships with Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM), Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, and Stellantis. This demonstrates that Waymo could achieve extremely broad distribution and continue adding more car company partners. The Toyota win was a big one. At the time, Waymo wrote, “Toyota Motor Corporation and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development and deployment of autonomous driving technologies.” Toyota is the largest car company in the world, based on unit sales.

Tesla can still argue it has an important lead over Waymo. Teslas have mapped hundreds of millions of miles on U.S. roads and used cameras to collect data that creates a massive database.

Both companies have a hurdle that could take years to overcome. Most self-driving vehicle use has to be approved by cities. That means it could take years for broad distribution. The only ready solution to that is if the federal government sets standards for where these cars can drive. That is far from a sure thing.

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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.