A white Waymo robotaxi with a spinning sensor on its roof driving down a San Francisco street
Photo: Waymo Jaguar I-Pace in San Francisco / Dllu, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
vizmaya desk · Nov 9, 2026

Two numbers decide who wins the robotaxi race.

One is 2 million.
One is 4 million.
Only one comes with the word "week" after it.

Guess which. Then see what Wall Street paid for the other.
A silver Tesla Cybertruck, a boxy steel pickup, parked on a street
Photo: 2024 Tesla Cybertruck / Mr.choppers, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Friday, Nov 6

Elon Musk said the Cybertruck will fade out. A taxi takes its place.

Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production in Texas around mid-2027.
The factory room goes to the Cybercab, Tesla's robotaxi.

Tesla's stock fell 10.77% on Thursday and rose 4.23% on Friday.
It still ended the week down 10.4%.

A car maker is giving up a truck for a taxi. Is the taxi real yet?

Sources: CNN, Yahoo Finance, 24/7 Wall St.

Inside a moving Waymo with nobody in the driver seat and the steering wheel turning by itself
Photo: Waymo Jaguar I-Pace interior / 9yz, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Start from zero

A robotaxi is just three things.

The carWheels, cameras, sensors. It has to be built, and it costs money.
The driverSoftware that sees the road and decides. It learns by driving.
The appWhere you tap "ride". Whoever owns this owns the customer.

Waymo and Tesla make all three.
Uber just rents out the app.

The driver learns by driving. So count the miles.
The first number

Tesla: 2 million driverless miles, ever. Waymo: 4 million, every week.

Tesla's cars with nobody watching have driven nearly 2 million miles in total, as of Sep 30.

Waymo's cars drive about 4 million in one week.
So Tesla's whole history is half a Waymo week.

Dates differ a little: Tesla's total is to Sep 30, Waymo's rate is for 2026. Tesla's has grown since.

Sources: Tesla Q3 update via Tesla North; Waymo co-CEO via Electric Vehicles.

The Fort Worth, Texas skyline with glass towers against a blue sky
Photo: Fort Worth skyline 2025 / Bob 123ehhdee, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
The twist

Tesla is small. But it is sprinting.

8x
miles growth in one quarter
143
square miles, Fort Worth

In early November Tesla opened rides in Fort Worth with no safety monitor in the car.
The area covers 143 square miles.

If 8x happens again, how far does the gap close?

Sources: Not a Tesla App; Tesla Q3 update. Sources differ by a day on the launch date.

The leader's pace

Waymo gives 500,000+ paid rides a week. It promised 1,000,000 by year end.

Rides went from 50,000 a week in May 2024 to 500,000 in March 2026.

The last number we could confirm is from Apr 29.
Doubling in eight months is the ask.

Sources: Alphabet Q1 2026 8-K; Waymo statements via TechCrunch, Bloomberg, Sherwood News.

A white Baidu Apollo Go RT6 robotaxi with sensors on its roof on a Hubei street
Photo: Apollo Go RT6, Hubei / S5A-0043, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
China

China is not watching from behind.

350k+
driverless rides in a peak week, Mar 2026
28
cities, tests included

Baidu's Apollo Go reports over 350,000 fully driverless rides in its best week.
Waymo counts paid rides. Baidu counts driverless ones. The two are close, not equal.

Sources: Baidu Q1 and Q2 2026 filings (SEC 6-K).

Pony.ai

Pony.ai's robotaxi sales grew 691% in a year. It still loses money.

Robotaxi revenue: $12.1 million in Q2, about a third of its $36.2 million total.
Half-year loss: $98.9 million vs $90.6 million a year ago.

It has 1,975 cars. It wants 3,500+ by December.
That means about 1,525 more in six months.

Nov 18 is the test.

Sources: Pony.ai Q2 release and interim report (SEC 6-K).

The huge Tesla Gigafactory Texas building under construction near Austin
Photo: Gigafactory Texas / Larry D. Moore, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
The reveal

The market pays about $160 for each $1 of profit Tesla may earn in 2027.

160x
Tesla price vs expected 2027 profit
-43%
Q3 profit change, to $787M

A high number means buyers expect a big future.
Last quarter was not that future: sales were flat at $28.05 billion and profit fell 43%.

Tesla's price is a bet on the taxi. Miles are the receipts. They are thin so far.

Sources: Motley Fool, Drive Tesla Canada on Tesla's Q3 update. The 160x uses analyst estimates.

The leader is priced for the future too

Waymo is valued at $126 billion. Its whole group sold $372 million last quarter.

Waymo sits inside Alphabet's "Other Bets". That group lost about $2.05 billion on $372 million of sales.
That is about $5.50 lost for every $1 sold.

Other Bets holds more than Waymo, so this is a rough guide.

Sources: Fortune on Alphabet Q3; Sherwood News on the $126B raise.

A Waymo self-driving car parked at the kerb of a city street
Photo: Waymo Self-Driving Car / ajay_suresh, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
The quiet fight

The real prize is the app on your phone.

700
driverless cars on Uber by year end
4.1B
Uber trips in one quarter

Uber's robotaxi plan is tiny next to its normal trips.
Waymo seems to know it: in January 2028 it leaves Uber's exclusive deal in Austin and Atlanta and sells rides in its own app.

Sources: Uber Q3 8-K; TechCrunch, Bloomberg, Nov 4.

A Tesla Cybercab, a small two-door robotaxi, parked at an outdoor shopping area
Photo: Tesla Cybercab at Santana Row / Dllu, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The best case against this story

What if Tesla does 8x again?

Then it reaches about 16 million miles.
That is four weeks of Waymo driving.

So the gap can close fast. But only if Tesla has many more cars on the road, and it has not shown that yet.

We ran the sum twice. We do not trust ourselves with an 8.

Honest gaps

What we could not see.

  • Tesla shares miles. It does not share rides, fares, cars or robotaxi revenue.
  • Waymo's newest ride number we could confirm is from April. It is November.
  • Baidu's Q2 report leaves out the ride count its Q1 report gave. We kept the unconfirmed figure out.
  • City counts disagree by how you count: launched, waitlisted or testing. Tesla's is 6 or 7 depending on the outlet.

We also read most Tesla and Waymo numbers through news outlets, not the original filings. Filings were read directly for Alphabet, Uber, Pony.ai and Baidu.

The payoff · what to watch

A price is a story about the future. Miles are the receipts.

  • Nov 18: Pony.ai reports. Is its fleet on the way to 3,500?
  • Next Waymo update: does the weekly ride count head toward 1,000,000?
  • 2027: Musk says Robotaxi shows in Tesla's results around Q2. Look for a ride count.

Until then, the cleanest comparison is the first one: 2 million miles, ever, vs 4 million, a week.

Sources & method

How we checked this.

Each number needed two independent sources or one primary source. Anything we could not confirm stayed out of this deck. By vizmaya desk, Nov 9, 2026. Data to Nov 8.

Filings: Alphabet Q1 8-K · Uber Q3 8-K · Pony.ai Q2 6-K · Pony.ai interim report · Baidu Q1 6-K · Baidu Q2 6-K.
News: CNN · Yahoo Finance · 24/7 Wall St · Motley Fool · Tesla North · Drive Tesla Canada · Not a Tesla App · TechCrunch · Bloomberg · Fortune · Sherwood News · Electric Vehicles.
Photos (Wikimedia Commons): Dllu (CC BY 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0) · Mr.choppers (CC BY-SA 3.0) · 9yz (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Bob 123ehhdee (CC BY 4.0) · S5A-0043 (CC BY 4.0) · Larry D. Moore (CC BY 4.0) · ajay_suresh (CC BY 4.0).
More from us: all vizmaya stories.