To The Moon

Tesla’s robotaxi narrative is partly priced in, but not fully. The share price already reflects optimism about autonomy, yet the market still discounts execution risk, regulatory delays and Tesla’s inconsistent FSD rollout pace. Until Tesla demonstrates reliable, scalable Level-4 performance in real fleets, the valuation does not fully embed the “software recurring-revenue” model that the robotaxi story implies.

For the competitive landscape:

Waymo

Waymo leads on safety, validation miles and regulatory acceptance. Its systems operate with high consistency in geofenced areas and have already accumulated meaningful commercial mileage. Cities are more willing to approve a player that prioritises conservative decision-making and redundant sensor architectures.

Tesla

Tesla’s advantage is cost. If its vision-only system proves viable at scale, Tesla can deploy autonomy through existing vehicles overnight, giving it unparalleled fleet size and unit economics. The challenge lies in achieving regulatory approval for a system without lidar and demonstrating statistically superior safety.

Who may win

Short-term and early commercial deployment: Waymo. It is already operating robotaxi fleets with fewer regulatory hurdles.

Medium-term and mass-market scale: Tesla. If Tesla achieves robust Level-4 capability, its fleet leverage and cost structure could drive wide adoption.

The two firms are unlikely to have a single winner. Waymo will dominate high-safety, urban regulated zones. Tesla will dominate broad geographic coverage if its technology matures. The disruption to ride-hailing platforms may intensify once both reach commercial scale in 2026.