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NEWS

Market Made It To The Weekend

We made it! The market climbed for the fourth straight day, as traders put a feather in their cap for another week of earnings. Indexes climbed 4-6% out of the hole set by levies on everything, and tech firms reminded us that trade isn’t everything.

Today's issue covers why Google doesn’t sell self-driving cars, trade roundup, and more. 📰

Here’s the S&P 500 heatmap. 4 of 11 sectors closed green, with consumer discretionary (+1.8%) leading and materials (-0.7%) lagging.

And here are the closing prices: 

STOCKS
Google’s Waymo Drives 1M People A Month… Hear That, Elon?

Google parent Alphabet climbed after beating Wall Street estimates again, but the top dog on the Mag Seven was Tesla today. The weird part? While Tesla has promised self-driving cars for a decade, and is climbing on hype for a Summer release, Google already has self-driving cars driving for Waymo. 

Alphabet’s autonomous unit has thousands of cars in San Francisco and Austin, set with Star Wars droid-looking antennas on top. The CEO said on the earnings call they ferry 250k people a week… so what gives?

First, The Market Reaction

Alphabet’s results were good enough to attract analyst upgrades on the stock. Analysts from Bank of America, WestPark Capital, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan upgraded Alphabet’s price targets from $178 to $220. 🤑

The firm also issued a $70B buyback, but Barron’s said not to expect the stock to move. Tesla also received coverage, but it was far more muted: Argus Research and Wedbush upgraded Tesla to a high target of $410, HSBC and Phillip Securities downgraded with a low of $120, Barclays, Guggenheim, and others maintained their positions. 📉📈

Stocktwits users are pretty neutral on the stock.

The Main Issue: Affordability (And Government)

In terms of public valuations, Tesla has a market cap below $1T since the sell-off and demand crunch started in 2025. Alphabet has two stocks, and both are worth nearly $2T, which might explain why Tesla flew today and the Googles fluttered.

Still, with that pile of change, Google can’t figure out how to make money on self-driving cars. CEO Sundar Pichai said on the firm’s earnings call that they are looking into partnership options with ride-hailing services like Uber, and even into selling the cars to consumers. The problem is, Waymo cars are expensive to make, and Musk would say not as sleek as his designs.

During the Tesla Q1 earnings call, Elon Musk criticized Waymo’s driverless tech as “very expensive” and “low volume,” while championing Tesla’s camera-focused systems as a more scalable alternative.

He’s got a point- Google doesn’t sell cars, they strap computers to cars. The Waymo CEO said years ago that a fully outfitted car with expensive Lidar could cost about the same as a Mercedes S-Class, or $180,000. 😱 

Meanwhile, Musk has repeatedly said he wants the average Joe to buy a Tesla cyber cab. Tesla uses cheaper camera driving software, which is allegedly not as effective, but much less expensive. 🧑‍🔧 

And Even If They Could

Self-driving is illegal in most of the U.S., and even the ‘self-driven’ rides Waymo boasts were likely performed in jurisdictions where a tester has to be present, with their hands almost on the wheel.

That Brings Us To Today

Tesla surged 9.6% after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a new self-driving framework to cut red tape. The company plans to launch self-driving cabs in Texas this June and begin producing its Cybercab robotaxi by 2026.

Federal regulations were not the only laws changing: California has revamped its autonomous vehicle rules, asking for public comments on cargo-carrying autonomous vehicle rules. With a “cut regulations with a chainsaw” inclined White House, 2025 might be the time for self-driving players, including Waymo, Tesla, and Amazon’s Zoox, to take the on-ramp. 🏎️ 

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