The second quarter reports released by Silicon Valley giants such as Tesla and Google in the early morning of July 24th Beijing time were put under a magnifying glass.
Google's parent company Alphabet has released better than expected performance, and just as impressive as its AI business is its significant investment in autonomous driving.
Alphabet's Other bets division, including its autonomous vehicle company Waymo, generated $365 million in revenue in this quarter, up from $285 million in the same period last year. Ruth Porat, its CFO, announced on the financial report conference call that the company would invest $5 billion for many years in Waymo, a subsidiary of the company that develops fully autonomous vehicle. The ride hailing app Waymo One provides fully autonomous autonomous taxi services, namely Robotaxi.
Polat stated that the new round of investment will help Waymo become a leading global autonomous driving company, and added that Waymo is an important case for Alphabet's long-term investment.
At the same time, Tesla CEO Musk further emphasized the company's ambitious prospects in areas such as autonomous driving during the earnings conference, and revealed that a Robotaxi unveiling event will be held on October 10th. It is expected that by the end of this year, Europe, China, and other countries will approve Tesla's fully autonomous driving (FSD).
During the Q&A session of the conference call, Musk was asked when shareholders can expect the "first autonomous taxi" to hit the road. Musk admitted that his past predictions were "too optimistic" and once again "painted a pie" - "If we can't do it next year, I would be shocked... Tesla will solve the problem of autonomous driving. If you don't believe it, sell your stock
Interestingly, Musk also criticized Waymo's Robotaxi service, stating that its business is "limited" and "fragile," while Tesla's autonomous taxi system should be able to work anywhere in the world, not just within a limited geographic area.
Each has its own highlights
By comparison, both have their own strengths in autonomous driving services.
Waymo has initiated the commercialization process. According to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, Waymo offers 50000 paid trips per week, mainly in San Francisco and Phoenix, and recently expanded to Los Angeles and Austin. So far, it has completed 2 million trips.
Previously, Waymo opened its 24/7 service to all 800000 citizens of San Francisco and obtained permission to operate autonomous taxi services 24/7 in certain areas of the city and on highways leading to the airport.
Tesla's Robotaxi is known for its technological and data advantages. It has accumulated over 1 billion miles of FSD mileage, with a large fleet size and collaboration with the car manufacturing business. It is expected to achieve fully autonomous driving faster and more accurately, and achieve low-cost mass production in the future. Musk once stated at the shareholders' meeting that Tesla Robotaxi will be a combination of Uber and Airbnb models.
At present, the autonomous driving process of leading companies at home and abroad is accelerating synchronously. Represented by Huawei's top intelligent driving, end-to-end fully launched map free NCA throughout the city; Baidu said that the Apollo Go business in Wuhan is expected to break even in the fourth quarter of 2024 and start to make profits in 2025. Baidu Apollo ADFM is the world's first autonomous driving model that supports fully autonomous driving. It supports a delivery and operation period of 3 months for a 1500 square kilometer area, with a 6-fold increase in regional expansion speed. This means that a new city can complete the preparation for fully autonomous driving operation in just six months.
In addition, the top-level design of vehicle road cloud integration in China is being promoted from top to bottom, and Robotaxi will form a synergy with the vehicle road cloud policy. The two will highly overlap in pilot cities and operating road areas, and it is expected to see more cities implement vehicle road cloud bidding and construction, and open up autonomous driving test points Robotaxi in the future.
However, it should still be noted that the development of autonomous driving still faces many challenges, including the long tail problem in technology and the relaxation of regulatory policies.
Tesla has skipped Robotaxi tickets several times. Although Alphabet's "Other Business" division achieved revenue growth in the second quarter, its loss expanded from $813 million in the same period last year to $1.13 billion. And conflicts still exist between the Waymo operating area and local residents, with incidents such as tire punctures occurring from time to time. Earlier, Cruise, the autonomous vehicle division of General Motors, said that it would postpone the production of Origin, an autonomous shuttle bus suitable for urban roads, for carpooling and delivery indefinitely.
Whether Tesla Robotaxi can be launched as scheduled in October this year is an important observation point.