Tesla keeps hyping robotaxis as its future. But it’s trailing rival Waymo in a field yet to prove profitable

Nothing is more important to Tesla than its ambitious plan for self-driving “robotaxis.” But even as it hosts an event for its Cybercab service Thursday, it still has a long way to catch up to the competition in an industry where few have made any money at all.

It’s a little unclear what, exactly, Tesla is launching Thursday, and the company is not saying much beyond its invitations to the private event. But the public first got a look at the Cybercab at a glitzy Hollywood event two years ago, and prototypes have been seen in cities across America since then.

Even if the company pulls off the technological feat that would be full Cybercab service, however, it might run into a much larger issue – profits.

Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.

The company has been running a robotaxi service using its Model Y SUV since June 2025, sometimes with a company employee behind the wheel. More recently, its robotaxis have run without a driver in the some cars.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has arguably banked the company on the Cybercab’s success. He predicted last year that the company’s robotaxi service would be available to half of the American population by 2025, and told investors in January that the company will eventually “make several times more Cybercabs per year than all our other vehicles combined.”

But Tesla only offers unsupervised rides in six cities in Texas and Florida, and investors may have grown skeptical of Musk’s confident predictions.

Shares of Tesla ( TSLA ) are up only 7% over the last six months and closed Wednesday down more than 20% year-to-date.

“Investing is about betting on the future,” said Bryant Walker Smith, an expert in autonomous vehicles and an affiliated scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. “Tesla is very good at selling that future. But at least with respect to automated driving everywhere and all the time, the company has been far less successful at actually delivering it.”

And if Tesla wants to be successful, it also has a long way to go to get past a key rival: Waymo, the self-driving car service from Google parent Alphabet.

Waymo said in March that it was up to 500,000 paid rides in its driverless cars a week and that number had doubled in the previous year. The company rolled out its service in three more cities – Denver, San Diego and Tampa – on Tuesday, bringing it to 14 cities in which it provides driverless rides. And it said that through March, it had provided 220 million miles of driverless rides to customers since it began in 2018.

Tesla, on the other hand, said in July it had provided 380,000 cumulative miles of unsupervised rides in its robotaxis, less than 0.2% of Waymo’s stated total.

Even if Tesla roll s out Cybercab service nationwide, it’s not even clear that it would be profitable. The challenge is less technological and more economic, Smith said.

“If you set aside development and hardware costs, you have the ongoing operational costs,” he said. “How do you compete with a Uber driver who might be making under minimum wage to provide and maintain their own car, to clean it and do all the other services that Waymo and Tesla may ultimately have to pay real people real money to do?”

It could also prove difficult to get Americans to give up their personal cars and use only ride sharing, whether human or driverless, Smith said.

And even for those who decide to purchase only rides rather than a personal car, “capturing market share in an already-saturated market for ride-hail” will be a challenge, said Anthony Townsend, a senior research associate at Cornell Tech University and author of “Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car.”

So far, neither Waymo nor Tesla’s robotaxi service have reported financial results.

Waymo has said it sees a “path” to profitability but has not said when that will be achieved. Alphabet includes Waymo under its “Other Bets” segment of the company, which lost $3.9 billion in the first half of this year on revenue of only $793 million, down from $823 million a year earlier.

Telsa insists it will have a cost advantage over rivals like Waymo because its cars cost less. It uses only cameras to guide the car, rather than the lasers and radar that are part of Waymo’s driving system. But it has also run into far more problems getting regulatory approval to expand its service. Any driverless car company faces the challenge of a regulatory maze, Townsend said.

“It’s also not clear yet which company has the strongest business model,” he said.

对特斯拉来说，没有什么比其雄心勃勃的自动驾驶“机器人出租车”计划更重要的了。但即便特斯拉周四举办了其Cyber​​cab服务的活动，在这个鲜有企业盈利的行业里，它要赶上竞争对手还有很长的路要走。

目前还不清楚特斯拉周四究竟要发布什么，除了邀请函之外，该公司并未透露太多信息。但两年前，特斯拉在好莱坞一场星光熠熠的活动中首次向公众展示了其Cyber​​cab概念车​​，此后，该车型的原型车也出现在美国各地的城市中。

即使该公司成功实现了提供完整的 Cyber​​cab 服务的技术壮举，它也可能遇到一个更大的问题——利润。

特斯拉方面未回应置评请求。

该公司自2025年6月起开始使用其Model Y SUV运营无人驾驶出租车服务，有时由公司员工驾驶。最近，部分无人驾驶出租车已实现无人驾驶。

特斯拉首席执行官埃隆·马斯克可以说将公司的未来寄托在了Cyber​​cab的成功上。他去年预测，到2025年，公司的无人驾驶出租车服务将覆盖一半的美国人口，并在今年1月告诉投资者，公司最终“每年生产的Cyber​​cab数量将是我们所有其他车辆总和的数倍”。

但特斯拉目前只在德克萨斯州和佛罗里达州的六个城市提供无人驾驶服务，投资者可能对马斯克的自信预测产生了怀疑。

特斯拉（TSLA）股价在过去六个月仅上涨了7%，周三收盘时今年迄今已下跌超过20%。

“投资就是押注未来，”斯坦福大学法学院互联网与社会研究中心附属学者、自动驾驶汽车专家布莱恩特·沃克·史密斯表示，“特斯拉非常擅长兜售未来愿景。但至少在实现随时随地自动驾驶方面，该公司在实际交付方面远未取得成功。”

如果特斯拉想要获得成功，它还有很长的路要走才能超越其主要竞争对手：谷歌母公司 Alphabet 旗下的自动驾驶汽车服务公司 Waymo。

Waymo在3月份表示，其无人驾驶汽车的每周付费乘车次数已达50万次，比上一年翻了一番。该公司周二在丹佛、圣地亚哥和坦帕三个城市推出了服务，使其无人驾驶服务覆盖的城市达到14个。Waymo还表示，截至3月份，自2018年推出该服务以来，已累计为客户提供了2.2亿英里的无人驾驶出行服务。

另一方面，特斯拉在 7 月份表示，其无人驾驶出租车累计提供了 38 万英里的无人驾驶服务，不到 Waymo 所宣称的总量的 0.2%。

即使特斯拉在全国范围内推出Cyber​​Cab服务，能否盈利也尚不明朗。史密斯表示，真正的挑战不在于技术，而在于经济。

“撇开研发和硬件成本不谈，还有持续的运营成本，”他说道。“你如何与优步司机竞争？他们可能收入低于最低工资，却要自己提供和维护车辆，清洁车辆，以及提供所有其他服务，而这些服务最终可能都需要由真人来做，比如Waymo和特斯拉可能不得不花真金白银雇佣真人来完成。”

史密斯表示，要让美国人放弃私家车而只使用拼车服务（无论是人工驾驶还是无人驾驶），也可能很困难。

康奈尔科技大学高级研究员、著有《幽灵之路：超越无人驾驶汽车》一书的安东尼·汤森德表示，即使对于那些决定只购买网约车服务而不是购买私家车的人来说，“在已经饱和的网约车市场中抢占市场份额”也将是一个挑战。

截至目前，Waymo 和特斯拉的自动驾驶出租车服务均未公布财务业绩。

Waymo表示已看到实现盈利的“路径”，但并未透露何时能够实现。Alphabet将Waymo归入其“其他投资”板块，该板块今年上半年亏损39亿美元，营收仅为7.93亿美元，低于去年同期的8.23亿美元。

特斯拉坚称，由于其汽车成本更低，因此在成本方面将优于Waymo等竞争对手。特斯拉仅使用摄像头来引导车辆，而Waymo的驾驶系统则采用激光和雷达。但特斯拉在获得监管部门批准以扩展服务方面也遇到了更多困难。汤森德表示，任何无人驾驶汽车公司都面临着监管迷宫般的挑战。

“目前还不清楚哪家公司的商业模式最强大，”他说。