How Waymo’s Thrilling Progress Could Ignite the AV Market
Big things are happening right now at Alphabet’s self-driving unit, Waymo – the world’s most important autonomous vehicle (AV) company. And being at the forefront of these impressive developments could help you pick the next batch of superstar tech stocks.
Waymo has been around publicly since December 2016. In that time, it has made substantial technical progress to cement itself as the leading autonomous vehicle effort in the world, even launching AV ride-sharing networks in places like San Francisco and Phoenix. But public-facing progress toward making AVs a ubiquity has been slow…
Until recently.
Over the past few weeks, the sands at Waymo have started to shift in a manner that we believe is consistent with exponential growth. That is, we think the company is gearing up to make 2025 the year that autonomous vehicles take over the roads.
Waymo’s Journey Toward Exponential Growth
This effort all started in June, when Waymo removed the waitlist for its AV ride-sharing service in San Francisco, opening the project to all users. That represented a huge vote of confidence from management that its AVs are safe enough for all.
Over the next few weeks, Waymo scaled up to completing over 50,000 autonomous rides per week, mostly in the San Francisco and Phoenix metros.
Then, a few weeks ago, Alphabet announced that it would pour another $5 billion into its self-driving unit. That’s possibly the single-biggest investment for the AV space yet.
Shortly after – just last week – Waymo said it would start testing its AVs on highways. That marks a first in industry history and is a huge step toward ubiquitous AVs.
And as if all that weren’t enough, Waymo announced just yesterday that it is developing a new version of its AV platform, which includes less cameras and sensors in a roomier car. Presumably, this new platform – dubbed “generation 6” – will be much less expensive, much less clunky, and much more comfortable.
So, in other words… in just the past two months… Waymo has opened its ride-sharing service to all riders in San Francisco, scaled up to 50,000 rides per week, scored a $5 billion additional investment from Alphabet, announced expansion of its car routes onto highways, and revealed a newer, cheaper, sleeker and comfier vehicle design.
Big things are happening at Waymo.
What’s Next for Autonomous Vehicles
Now, we’ve been following this company for a while. And this feels like the busiest, most news-packed two months it’s ever had.
What does that mean?
Well, we think it means that Waymo is about to take over the world…
The automotive world, that is.
Autonomous vehicles were first introduced as a legitimate technological effort in the 1980s, when Carnegie Mellon launched an autonomous vehicle project called “Navlab.” Since then, self-driving cars have seemingly always been five years away from being five years away.
But we believe that is no longer the case.
Waymo’s self-driving cars are on the roads today – in fact, they’re all over them. My family and I just moved to Phoenix, Ariz. And out here in the valley, self-driving Waymo cars are everywhere. It is honestly tough to go anywhere without seeing one of the company’s AVs.
The same has been true for my visits to San Francisco. Between those two cities, Waymo is completing over 50,000 rides per week. That’s incredible!
So, it seems self-driving cars are no longer five years away from being five years away. They are here right now.
The only barrier to them being everywhere in every city? Scaling.
Waymo: Cracking the Code to Autonomous Driving
To successfully scale its operations, Waymo needs to make cheaper cars, expand its vehicles’ driving capabilities, and secure more funding to make more cars.
And it appears to be figuring out all those scaling problems right now.
Waymo’s new AV design will reduce the number of cameras on each car from 29 to 13 and the number of LiDAR sensors from five to four. That should shave a few thousand bucks off the production cost of each car.
The fact that Waymo is now expanding its service to include highways strongly implies that it has cracked the code on autonomous freeway driving. That opens a world of possibilities for Waymo to launch in other cities and even do inter-city transportation.
And with an additional $5 billion in funding from one of the world’s largest tech companies, Waymo should have more than enough cash to make the cars as it needs to launch autonomous ride-sharing services in several new cities next year.
We think that’s exactly what will happen.
The Final Word on Waymo
With all these recent developments, we believe Waymo will launch new autonomous ride-sharing services next year – maybe even in a city near you.
We believe that will mark a watershed moment for the AV industry.
It should also be the moment that AV stocks start to soar on Wall Street.
Of course, Alphabet’s stock should benefit from the coming AV Boom. The titan does, after all, own Waymo.
But in our view, GOOGL stock is far from the best way to invest in the AV Boom.
That’s why we’re analyzing the supply chains of other AV startups. We want to find the companies making the sensors for autonomous vehicles, working on the AI software, developing the chips.
The AV supply chain is rather complex. And we aim to find the best stocks it offers – before the AV Boom takes off in 2025.
And when we find them, we’ll be sure to issue Buy Alerts so you can invest before their prices head to the moon.
Learn more about our research services today.
On the date of publication, Luke Lango did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
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