Robotaxi disruption: Tesla, Waymo, China, suppliers, and a potential flaw in the Death Star

The race for robotaxi development and deployment includes, to varying degrees, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), Waymo (GOOG), Amazon’s (AMZN) Zoox, Pony.ai, May Mobility, Baidu’s (BIDU) Apollo, General Motors’ (GM) Cruise, WeRide, AutoX, Aurora Innovation (AUR), and Motional (APTV) (OTCPK:HYMTF). Within the group of robotaxi fleet aspirants, Tesla (TSLA) has been the most vocal about creating a fleet that allows drivers to rent out their personal vehicles to the fleet.

Elon Musk described a robotaxi system that would allow EV owners to add or subtract their car to the fleet whenever you want. “So you can say, like, I’m going away for a week [and] at just one tap on your Tesla app and your car gets added to the fleet, and it just makes money for you while you’re gone,” he previewed. Musk said the Tesla (TSLA) robotaxi fleet could be a combination of Airbnb (ABNB) and Uber to some degree, although Tesla (TSLA) would also own cars in the fleet. “We’ll have a fleet that’s on the order of 7 million that are capable of autonomy. In the years to come it will be over 10 million and 20 million. This is immense,” stated Musk in one of his more optimistic proclamations. “The car is able to operate 24/7 unlike the human drivers,” he added.

However, is there a flaw in the Tesla (TSLA) robotaxi plan? Skeptics have questioned the percentage of Tesla (TSLA) owners that will opt into the robotaxi fleet program, even if they can earn incremental income. The Tesla (TSLA) robotaxi concept was sized up recently by Uber Technologies (UBER) CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. “It’s not clear to me that the average person, Tesla owner, or owner of any other car is going to want to have that car be ridden in by a stranger,” he said. Khosrowshahi also questioned if there would be enough supply during high-demand periods of time. “It just so happens that probably the times at which you’re going to want your Tesla are probably going to be the same times that ridership is going to be at a peak,” he postulated.

Some analysts think the best upside for investors with the robotaxi concept is with suppliers, particularly companies with contracts in China. Companies that mentioned “robotaxi” on their recent earnings calls included Naas Technology (NAAS) (transcript), Innoviz Technologies (INVZ) (transcript), Mobileye Global (MBLY) (transcript), Arteris (AIP) (transcript), Hesai Group (HSAI) (transcript), and MicroVision (MVIS) (transcript).