Wall Street enthusiasm for robotaxis is downright frothy. Which company will win?

Last week, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives raised his price target for Tesla to a Wall Street high of $600, up from $500, “to reflect our view that an accelerated AI path for the company is now on the horizon and investors are underestimating the transformation underway at the company.”

Tesla’s bull case has always rested on the automation element of its business, the opportunity to get in on a company that can turn cars and electricity into a money machine that overhauls the transportation industry of the country, if not the world.

But as we know, it’s not exactly alone in the robotaxi quest, as there are dozens of other contenders angling for a slice of that pie. But from another perspective, Tesla is alone in that robotaxi quest because it hasn’t forged the kinds of partnerships that have defined the rest of the robotaxi sector.

The other leaders in the robotaxi space, including Uber, Lyft, and Google’s Waymo, are relying on relationships with other companies — autonomous tech outfits, vehicle makers, fleet managers — to help furnish grand ambitions of driving Americans around autonomously.

Waymo has partnered with Uber and Lyft in different markets to manage their fleets or use their existing ride-hailing platforms. Waymo, which also has its own ride platform, Waymo One, creates much of its autonomous tech in-house. It adds that tech to vehicles made by Jaguar Land Rover and Zeekr.

In April, Volkswagen and Uber announced a long-term partnership, with service planned to begin next year in Los Angeles. This month, the first vehicle (of 20,000) from Uber’s partnership with luxury EV maker Lucid was delivered to the autonomous tech maker Nuro.

These relationships — between tech companies, automakers, ride-hailing platforms, and even car rental giants (did you know Avis will manage Waymo’s Dallas fleet?) — reveal a deeply interconnected yet competitive industry: dog-eat-dog, dog-help-dog, dog-help-dog-eat-dog, and so on.

The Takeaway

Currently, Waymo is the biggest robotaxi operation in the US, with more than 2,000 vehicles in service. But autonomous companies and their boosters have much bigger ambitions. Waymo aims to be “the world’s most trusted driver.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk, meanwhile, has said he expects autonomous ride-hailing to be available to “half the population of the US by the end of the year” and believes that Tesla will achieve 99% market share.