Could the promised land of the Tesla robotaxi fleets finally be in sight? wonders Green Car Reports. The answer to that question may be affirmative. On December 16, Mizuho reaffirmed its “Outperform” rating on the automaker and raised its stock price target from $475 to $530. This came as a result of the firm’s accelerated developments in the area of autonomous ride-hailing services. “We believe improvement in the Full Self-Driving [driver assistance technology] could support an accelerated expansion of the robotaxi fleet… and potentially earlier elimination of the chaperone,” said analyst Vijay Rakesh.
A safety monitor began accompanying robotaxis in Tesla’s pilot program, but CEO Elon Musk has stated that he hopes to eliminate them by the end of the year, which would be a big step toward fully autonomous driving, putting Tesla more in line with Alphabet’s Waymo, which has already been providing 450,000 fully autonomous rides per week and hopes to reach 1 million per week by the end of 2026. This side by side comparison highlights the opportunity that Tesla has as well as the challenge, as Waymo’s tech integration includes 360-degree Lidar, radar, and high-resolution cameras, plus years of development, versus Tesla’s use of an autofocus camera system.
The engineering competition between these two firms is framed by their sensor designs. The multi-modal array of Waymo provides redundancy in its ability to perceive space, facilitating the performance of complex operations like high-speed lane changes in heavy traffic with remarkably little pausing. Tesla’s system relies on sophisticated processing of the human eye’s visual data from cameras alone, which lowers the cost of hardware but requires unwavering accuracy in software engineering. Their vision-only camera system has encountered difficulties, especially in the situation of glare from the sun. Their just-unveiled patent of a “glare shield” has a textured surface of micro-cones to distribute the glare intensity, together with electromechanical adjustments of orientation to compensate against glare angles.
Operational readiness also depends on the use of AI-powered fleet management solutions. Today’s self-driving ride-sharing solution leverages predictive maintenance and routing to enhance efficiency. Robotaxis software developed by the automaker utilizes FSD to optimize route selection by avoiding highways, following the limitations of the initial Waymo system. As the infrastructure of the city changes through AV pickup areas, improved traffic signal priorities, and upgraded connectivity, the Tesla fleet could use lower decision-making latency.
Market expansion is a second major area that Waymo is currently focusing on, operating in Austin, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and San Francisco, with plans to enter 11 more cities in the U.S. and London in 2026, while Tesla only operates in Austin and select areas in the Bay Area, though it has permits in Nevada and Arizona to commence testing there. The company’s mobile app, introduced in September, has been downloaded more than 529,000 times, at a daily average of 2,790 in the last month, compared to Waymo’s 24,831 daily average, though Tesla has a significantly more limited operating area.
But to an investor, the absence of the safety monitors is more than an insignificant adjustment it evinces confidence in the readiness of the autonomous systems developed by Tesla, as well as a likely reduction in costs per ride. But to expand from tens to thousands will require more than just innovation in order to gain government approvals and win public acceptance in the process.
The incident involving school buses has brought into focus the level of review to which companies providing autonomous services are now subject, with tech giant Waymo issuing a recall in relation to such incidents, in what is seen as part of the broad scrutiny to which companies are now required to be answerable.
Tesla has similarly experienced crashes involving its pilot projects, although the impact was not severe in those cases in order to prevent litigation, based on reports. For those technology-savvy observers tracking the space, the Tesla robotaxi storyline represents something of a high-risk payoff play. If its vision-based autonomy can come close to or surpass the performance metrics of its sensor-laden competitors, then the cost advantages could be significant. This improved target from Mizuho is clearly taking that bullish view that the company’s AI-driven mobility infrastructure will develop quickly enough to gain meaningful traction.
