Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Waymo's footprint in autonomous vehicles without onboard safety staff has widened sharply versus Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA).
Gap Between Tesla and Waymo
Waymo operates about 3,500 vehicles and delivers roughly 500,000 paid trips a week compared with Tesla's estimated 40 vehicles and about 4,000 weekly rides, according to data shared by The Future Fund LLC's Gary Black.
The investor said that TSLA looking at the number of autonomous vehicles in operation or the number of cities the company operates in are "deluding themselves," adding that safety monitors in the vehicles make it supervised driving.
This post comes after Tesla recorded a 14.5% post-earnings slide that Black called its worst day since March 2025. As per Black, investors "took to heart management's caution about not scaling up."
Why Tesla’s Autonomy Claims Are Under Scrutiny
Black said the market reaction reflected a reset in expectations after Tesla leadership signaled it would hold back expansion until it had stronger proof the system is safe.
Earlier in the week, Black criticized Tesla's leadership for "overpromise and underdeliver," and said Elon Musk needed to "shore up credibility" on autonomy.
On Tesla's second-quarter earnings call, Musk said the Robotaxi launch pace would be limited by safety and that the company was "going as fast as humanly possible" while making sure it did not "harm anyone at all."
Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla's CFO, said the company plans to keep working through execution issues with a "smaller fleet in a controlled manner" before it meaningfully ramps deployments.
Musk Talks Taxes
Musk recently, during an interview, spoke about the taxes he's paying, saying he'll end up with a quarter of his wealth due to income and estate taxes.
Price Action
Tesla shares declined 14.52% to $319.69 during regular trading on Thursday and surged 1.63% during overnight trading. TSLA shares have declined 28.81% in six months and are down 3.87% over the past year.
According to Benzinga Edge Rankings, Tesla scores well on the Growth metric but poorly on Value. It also fails to provide a favorable price trend in the short, medium, and long term.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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