Comment by simianwords
Comment by simianwords 9 hours ago
why is Tesla much higher? I thought Tesla's market cap was because of the self driving feature.
Comment by simianwords 9 hours ago
why is Tesla much higher? I thought Tesla's market cap was because of the self driving feature.
Based on the news, I think Waymo will import base vehicle builds from China and then adding the control systems and software to those. So it’s not like they will start making cars.
That sounds right. Unless Waymo considers car manufacturers to be its competition and therefore something to commoditize, it wouldn't make sense for them to get involved in ground-up manufacturing.
And by this point, it seems like an electric-car platform already is close to a commodity, which is another reason for Waymo not to waste capital building another.
They probably see the electronics and software as their product, hopefully they will license it to someone so my next car will have it :). Lidar prices are cheap enough these days (but coming out of China, so who knows with Trump if that will apply to us).
Another approach is Waymo acquires Tesla's auto technology. Tesla sloughs off its dinosaur car business to focus on its new robot mission, and Waymo detoxifies the Tesla auto brand.
Aside from destroying about $1.25 trillion of market cap, this would leave everyone better off.
You don't really maintain electronics, you swap them out when they are detected to be bad. Electric vehicles don't need tune ups or overhauls, it is light maintenance and full on component swaps. Send the defective components back to the factory for refurbishment and/or recycling.
Waymo has 0 need for manufacturing capacity. There are dozens of companies that do that really well at a low margin already that'll be happy for the business. They made a timing mistake by choosing Zeekr for it, which is limiting their expansion at the moment. That's a lot easier/cheaper/quicker to fix by choosing a different partner than by building their own.
Waymo also chose more conventional auto makers such as Hyundai. The Zeekr partnership is not an exclusive. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/waymo-and-hyundai-enter-partn...
Making a driverless car "driver" is clearly much harder than manufacturing cars though. Many companies manufacture cars and have done for decades. On the other hand Waymo is the only company that has actual driverless cars on the road. It took them a very long time. Tesla have been trying for a very long time too and still have a long way to go.
So IMO Waymo has something far more valuable than Tesla. (Obviously the market isn't rational though so I wouldn't necessarily invest based on that.)
The only semi rational thing that could explain it is the robots.
I don’t even think that’s rational, but it may be what’s propping them up.
Last earnings call Musk said Optimus wasn’t doing “meaningful work” at Tesla and as far as I’m aware they haven’t done meaningful work anywhere. I think they’re behind the curve there. Figure AI recently finished an apparently successful feasibility trial of their humanoid robots with BMW and Boston Dynamics has a deal with Hyundai for their Atlas humanoid robots.
I’m not even convinced humanoid robots are going to pan out in general. They only really make sense in a scenario where you’re back porting robotics to factories built for humans. That has value but feels temporary; factories designed to be robotic feel like the future, and there’s no need for them to do the job the same way a human would.
>I’m not even convinced humanoid robots are going to pan out in general.
I want one personally, so it can rake the leaves, mow the lawn, tend the garden, do the laundry and dishes, replace the roof, etc., when I'm old. But they should also be used to pick up litter along the highway, paint over graffiti, etc..
this is something that also never made sense to me - it felt like star wars got it right - for repairs and remedial tasks a trash can (rs-d2) or all the little service droids are more appropriate, but c3p0 or other nurse and protocol droids makes sense to look more humanistic since they serve functions to facilitate human activitiy - but there is no way those functions are numerous enough to be priofitable.
> Boston Dynamics has a deal with Hyundai for their Atlas humanoid robots
Slightly depressing that we're back to replacing the big industrial robots rather than new markets.
I _think_ these are meant to replace humans working alongside the industrial robots rather than the big industrial robots themselves. I don’t work in manufacturing though, and the press releases are too buzzword-y for me to grasp the actual tasks they’re going to do.
I would guess the long term strategy is to do this for economies of scale and then push into new markets opened up by the lower price point. I would guess these are horribly expensive right now, given something like Spot is way simpler and still like $40k
Probably because Tesla sells about a million cars a year, including the worlds best selling car (Model Y) since 2023. The stock consistently performs well as well, I know they outperformed estimates for last quarter. Being positioned well for autonomous driving presumably helps hold the stock up, but I don't think that's the core of the valuation, and Waymo does a fraction of what Tesla does. Waymo is impressive, but their 2025 revenue was ~350 million.
Tesla valuation prices in the minuscule but real chance that Elon is able to pull a unicorn[0] out of his ass at some point in the future.
0: The magical creature, not a 1bn company
Waymo needs $16B to build what Tesla already has: manufacturing capacity. Without that, there are only so many cars they can put on the road. They've proven they can do the rides. But they haven't proven they can do it cost effectively. To scale up and start making a profit, they'll need to start building/buying lots of Waymo cars. That's not going to be cheap or fast. That's going to involve a lot of capital expenses.
Tesla is the other way around. They can definitely make lots of cars and make a profit. But they haven't quite gotten FSD to the stage where it can do rides properly. Supposing they at some point figure that one out, they are very well positioned to start producing vehicles by the hundreds of thousands pretty soon after. That's indeed the premise for their valuation. It's risky but not completely without merit.
Another point to make is that Waymo and Tesla are not going to have this market to themselves for very long. There are quite a few autonomous ride hailing companies serving rides at this point. And while the attention is often on the US, China is moving pretty quickly as well. Several companies competing there in several huge Chinese cities, for example.
On the US side, I think there are a few players that might become competitive soon. Zoox is looking pretty solid. And Rivian is rumored to be pushing autonomy as well. There are a few more players in various stages of technical readiness.
The real battle will be in a few years when we are past the basic "does it work", "is it safe" questions and legal approvals all over the world become more routine. Then it will be all about volume and scaling. That's going to take probably at least until 2030.