"Star Daily" news on July 24th (Editor: Song Ziqiao)$Tesla (TSLA.US)$,$Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$/$Alphabet-C (GOOG.US)$The second quarter report of Silicon Valley giants was scrutinized in the morning of July 24th Beijing time.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has reported performance that exceeded expectations. Similarly impressive is the big investment in autonomous driving, which is equally eye-catching.

Alphabet's "Other Bets" division, including its self-driving car company Waymo, generated revenue of $365 million this quarter, up from $285 million in the same period last year. CFO Ruth Porat announced on the earnings call that the company will invest $5 billion in Waymo, its subsidiary that is developing fully self-driving cars, for several years. Waymo One, the company’s ride-hailing app, offers self-driving taxi service, or Robotaxi.

Porat said, "The new round of investments will help Waymo become the world's leading autonomous driving company," adding that Waymo is an "important case" for Alphabet's long-term investment.

Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Musk further emphasized the company's promising future in self-driving vehicles during the earnings call and revealed that the company will hold a Robotaxi unveiling event on October 10th. It is expected that Tesla's fully self-driving (FSD) capability will be approved in Europe, China, and other countries by the end of this year.

During the Q&A session of the call, Musk was asked when shareholders could expect to see the "first unmanned taxi" on the road. Musk admitted his past predictions were "overly optimistic" and "drew a cake" again, saying, "If we can't do it next year, I'll 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, calling its business "restricted" and "fragile," and claiming that Tesla's self-driving taxi system should be able to work anywhere in the world, not just in limited geographic areas.

Each of them has its own strengths when it comes to self-driving businesses.

By comparison, the two companies specialize in different aspects of self-driving businesses.

Waymo has launched the commercialization process. According to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, Waymo provides 50,000 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 24/7 service to all 800,000 citizens in San Francisco and was licensed to operate an autonomous taxi service around the clock on part of the highways in San Francisco and routes to the airport.

Tesla's Robotaxi strengths lie in technology and data. It has accumulated over 1 billion miles of FSD mileage and has a large fleet and synergy with its automobile business. It is expected to achieve fully automatic driving more quickly and accurately and achieve low-cost mass production in the future. Musk once said at a shareholder meeting that Tesla's Robotaxi will be a combination of Uber and Airbnb models.

At present, the process of self-driving cars of leading companies at home and abroad is accelerating synchronously. Head-to-end driving represented by Huawei has fully opened the NCA of the city without maps;$Baidu (BIDU.US)$/$BIDU-SW (09888.HK)$Chengluobukua business in Wuhan is expected to achieve a balance of payments in the fourth quarter of 2024 and will become profitable in 2025. Baidu's Apollo ADFM is the world's first automated driving large model that supports fully self-driving, supports delivery and operation of 1500 square kilometers for 3 months, and the speed of regional expansion has increased 6 times. This means that it only takes half a year to prepare for full-area self-driving operation in a new city.

In addition, the top-level design of the integrated car-road-cloud in China is being promoted from top to bottom, which will join forces with the car-road-cloud policy. The two will highly overlap in pilot cities and operational road sections, and more cities are expected to see the establishment of car-road-cloud bidding construction and the opening of self-driving Taxi Robotaxi pilot projects in the future.

However, it is still worth noting that the development of self-driving cars still faces many challenges, such as the long-tail problem in technology and the opening of regulatory policies.

Tesla has postponed the Robotaxi several times. Although Alphabet's "Other" business unit achieved revenue growth in Q2, losses widened from $0.813 billion to $1.13 billion from the same period last year. The conflict between Waymo's operations and local residents still exists, and incidents such as tire punctures occur. Earlier, General Motors' autonomous driving car department, Cruise, announced an indefinite delay in production of Origin, an autonomous driving shuttle for city roads, for carpooling and delivery purposes.

Whether Tesla's Robotaxi can go online as scheduled in October this year is an important observation point.

Editor / jayden