The robotaxi fight just stopped being polite. The debate is no longer about whether autonomy works — the question now is who owns the economics of the future ride-hailing market. And as Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), Alphabet Inc‘s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Waymo, and Uber Technologies Inc (NYSE:UBER) collide, the battlefield is shifting from engineering milestones to business models that can scale profitably.
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Tesla: Narrative As A Weapon
Tesla is back, shaking the table. The company says it expects to remove safety drivers in large parts of Austin by year-end and aims to operate robotaxis in up to 10 metro areas.
JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth notes that announcements like these have become a volatility trigger for rideshare stocks, even though Tesla trails Waymo's roughly 100 million fully autonomous miles and much higher trip volumes. In Anmuth's view, Tesla's power lies in momentum — the ability to move markets through regulatory wins and aggressive positioning, even if commercial deployments are still far behind.
Read Also: Tesla’s Robotaxi Revolution Is Still Downloading
Waymo: Scale Over Showmanship
While Tesla grabs headlines, Waymo is racking up territory. Anmuth highlights that the Alphabet unit plans to triple commercial deployments from five to fifteen U.S. markets in 2026, while also extending freeway service across Phoenix, LA, and the Bay Area.
Crucially, he points to airport access — roughly 15% of Uber's mobility revenue and a higher-margin segment — as a battleground Waymo is positioned to dominate.
If airports become the proving ground for robotaxi economics, Anmuth argues Waymo's discipline may matter more than Tesla's noise.
Uber: The OS Strategy
Uber shares have slid roughly 13% since earnings, and Anmuth attributes the pullback to worries about slower margin expansion and concern that Uber may eventually need to spend more on AV assets. But he remains constructive, highlighting Uber's strategy to integrate more than 10 AV deployments by the end of 2026 through partners including WeRide and Baidu Inc (NASDAQ:BIDU) — rather than building fleets itself.
In his view, Uber is aiming to become the operating system for autonomy, while others burn capital manufacturing hardware.
Call it three philosophies: Tesla accelerates, Waymo standardizes, Uber orchestrates.
And as Anmuth sees it, 2026 will expose which one is building a business — and which is building mythology.
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Image created using artificial intelligence via DALL-E.
