Waymo Could Wreck Tesla’s Most Important Plan

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 28, 11:22AM EST

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Waymo Has Been Around Since 2009
Tesla Is Losing Market Share

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Waymo Could Wreck Tesla’s Most Important Plan — © Waymo Chrysler Pacific... (CC BY-SA 4.0) by Dllu

Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) stock trades at a high valuation for several reasons. Today, this has nothing to do with car sales. Its unit sales in the EU dropped 48% in October. Its market share in the US has fallen, though it still leads all competitors. In China, the world’s largest EV market, its market share has become small. That leaves investors with CEO Elon Musk’s plans for a fully self-driving car and a robotics business, both in early stages.

The robotaxi and fully self-driving car sector has become crowded. The strongest companies are several in China and the US leader, which is Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Waymo division. Waymo is currently in 14 markets, which include one in Japan. It will add 10 to 12 markets soon, and London is among these.

The fact of the matter is that Google has more financial resources than Tesla. Additionally, Waymo has been in the market since 2009 and has clocked millions of miles. It has partnerships with over 100 communities.

Most importantly, Waymo has a partnership with Uber (NYSE: UBER), which could bring its technology to every city in the US and many overseas cities once government bodies approve it.

And that is Waymo’s strength. It can partner with any car company worldwide.

Waymo does not have a manufacturing business as Tesla does. Tesla is like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). It is a walled garden.

In theory, Waymo could be in the global Toyota (NYSE: TM), GM (NYSE: GM), and VW fleets at the same time.

Tesla needs to win the self-driving car race to support its market valuation. Waymo does not have the same challenge. It is not critical to Alphabet’s future. But it is Tesla’s archenemy.

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.