[agnosticmantis]

It’s wild that $goog is so undervalued (p/e 27) given Alphabet owns Waymo in addition to everything else, and yet Tesla is so overvalued (p/e 243!!!) despite zero Robotaxis in the near (or far) future and lackluster sales.

Goes to show empty promises and fraudulent showmanship sell better than actual working products that people use.

[Eridrus]

GOOGL is up like 25% over the last few weeks after they resolved the DoJ lawsuit about Search bundling. Clearly there were some investors who thought that was a material risk to the business.

Tesla is clearly a meme stock though, and an example of how the market can say irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

[supportengineer]

I finally capitulated and bought a few shares of TSLA, shorting wasn't working.

[dmix]

If you buy Alphabet stock you're betting on the whole company doing well.

Google makes around $300B a year. Uber's entire business makes around $50B and that took a decade. Waymo would have to become a major business to move Alphabet's stock price in the near term.

Considering Waymo is very likely losing money, experiment very slowly with scaling up, and still raising billions in private capital outside Google... idk. Doesn't seem as simple as buy $goog in 2025.

Otherwise I agree Tesla is a bit of a meme stock.

[azan_]

I think Waymo has huge potential for being much larger than Uber - people are willing to pay more compared to ordinary uber drive just to avoid dealing with taxi drivers and tech will only get cheaper.

[next_xibalba]

Don’t forget that Waymo will always be a much lower margin business than search! Setting aside the decades of R&D expense, those cars require purchasing, maintenance, warehousing, etc.

[mettamage]

I don’t think Waymo is very likely a losing money experiment. I give them a 50% chance to be successful within the next 10 years. Successful being that self-driving cars are able to operate in 50% of the world/terrain types/region types, probably within another 10 years to scale up.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Tesla has 1/3rd the market cap.

If Waymo is a rounding error to GOOG, it's basically a rounding error to Tesla's implied valuation.

So what is Tesla valued in then?

Clearly not car sales, profit, and especially growth in either of those segments.

xAI is supposed to be where all the AI is.

Where is it?

[sashank_1509]

Uber making 50B, probably means Uber is paying drivers around 200B or higher. So that is Waymo’s potential revenue in the long term as it releases in most ride share markets. I think it’s under 1B revenue now, which just shows how much growth ahead is possible. Even if we think Uber will be at least 50% market share in the coming decade, at least 100X growth is left for Waymo. This also completely ignores Waymo creating latent demand, which is wholly possible. I would for example trust a Waymo to drop my kids everyday over an Uber.

[1024core]

Uber also has to pay drivers. How much of that $50B goes to the operator?

Meanwhile, for Waymo, a good chunk of it is profit (after the fixed cost of the vehicle, of course).

[esalman]

Indeed. The richest showman that ever lived and successfully duped both liberal and conservative population and politicians. Well deserved I say.

[spaceman_2020]

Wild that people will call the founder of SpaceX a "showman"

[izzydata]

Deceiving people doesn't mean you deserve your gains.

[spaceman_2020]

Largely because investors fear that Google's new products (especially AI) will cannibalize its massively lucrative ads business.

[hadlock]

Fear is a bit of an understatement

[thatguy1874]

but if they're google's products how would they cannabalize ads biz. would revenue not just shift? or do you believe ai search will be overly adopted but not as profitable?

[exolymph]

Stocks are narrative-driven, and sometimes this aspect swamps the "fundamentals." Keynesian beauty contests all the way down.

[OJFord]

But the earnings of Waymo (or hypothetically Tesla) are nothing in Alphabet as a whole.

If you get a great deal on your house and then massively overpay for some avocados, the latter's going to barely move your overall wealth.

[gerash]

I believe TSLA also represents their humanoid robot segment with some questionable addressable market definitions done by investment analysts. I believe it’s overvalued but they are a forcing function for the other tech companies to push ahead

[ViscountPenguin]

Waymo is a small portion of Alphabets business, while cars are a massive portion of Tesla's. If waymo was seperated out from Alphabet maybe it's p/E would be that high.

[sitzkrieg]

PE has been irrelevant since the dotcom crash if not sooner. us equities are no based in reality

[CGMthrowaway]

Google is just not a risk taker these days. You don't risk you don't get rewarded.

[fastball]

Tesla is literally operating a robotaxi service.

[minwcnt5]

They're operating a Robotaxi service, not a robotaxi service.

If I create a shuttle bus service for my neighborhood and call it the "Space Shuttle", I am not operating a space shuttle.

[FireBeyond]

A whole 15 cars, with "supervisors" in the drivers seat!

And only last week did they even open up the waitlist to non-influencers.

[supportengineer]

Unsafe at any speed

[adrianmonk]

They've managed to automate it but reduce the labor costs by zero in the process. Now that's innovation.

[Rover222]

Because some people read beyond headlines and realize that Tesla will most likely dominate with Robotaxi. Their traditional consumer vehicle revenue could pale in comparison. And Optimus could be another order of magnitude larger.

That’s the optimistic bull case. It’s not impossible.

Tesla will be able to scale Robotaxi much quicker than Waymo can scale.

[nradov]

Why? In principle the basic Waymo technology could be adapted to work on any modern vehicle. They aren't dependent on Jaguar manufacturing capacity to scale up.

[levocardia]

There are about 1,500 Waymo cars in existence, versus about 7,000,000 Teslas in the last seven years.

[aqme28]

But there are 0 Teslas that are as effective at self-driving as Waymo, so they're still ahead.

[Fricken]

The Coca-Cola company sells even more units than Tesla, but if those units don't drive themselves they're moot to this discussion.

[giveita]

Same could be said about Tesla when it started.

[LanceJones]

Overvalued by traditional (PE) means. I've ridden in Waymo (50+) and Austin Robotaxis (12). Tesla has Waymo beat in terms of human-like feel, interior features (sync to your own Spotify, Youtube, etc). When Tesla removes the passenger seat monitor, scaling will happen much faster than Waymo... Tesla just received the initial license for driverless Robotaxi in Nevada. Tesla also produces more Robotaxi-capable Model Ys in ~6 hours as Waymo has cars in service (in total).

[bugufu8f83]

Tesla's self-driving technology is a joke compared to Waymo's and the Tesla brand is extremely toxic now. I see from your other comments that you're big on Tesla (own several and have a son who works there) but as an unbiased observer I cannot fathom them winning this market.

[xnx]

> When Tesla removes the passenger seat monitor

This is a huge jump, possibly still 5+ years away.

[FireBeyond]

> When Tesla removes the passenger seat monitor

They literally moved that monitor to the driver's seat! Progress, indeed.

[CaliforniaKarl]

Waymo does not have YouTube sync, but they do have Apotify sync.