Ford CEO Jim Farley says Waymo’s approach to self driving makes more sense than Tesla’s. Ford has said it plans to partner with a self-driving software company once the technology is farther along.
Ark Invest Brett Winton believes in the negotiations between Ford and Waymo and Ford and Tesla, that Tesla wants Ford to pay Tesla to use the Tesla self driving system while Waymo is willing to pay Ford to use the Waymo technology. Ford has not yet committed to either systems and is waiting for the systems to further mature.
Ford has a market valuation of $43 billion. Ford has a net income of $5 billion.
Waymo is owned by Google. Google has a valuation of $2.16 trillion. In October 2024, Waymo raised $5.6 billion at a valuation of $45 billion.
Tesla has a valuation of $1.04 trillion.
Translation:
-Waymo wants to pay us
-Tesla wants us to pay them https://t.co/hTZHdzTIid— Brett Winton (@wintonARK) June 28, 2025
Waymo’s $5.6 billion cash infusion provides a runway of 2.5–4 years at current burn rates. This means 1.5-3 years left at this point. To reach breakeven, Waymo must increase its paid ride volume and fleet size by approximately 6–7 times, reaching 17–22 million rides per quarter and operating 6,000–15,000 vehicles. Significant improvements in operational efficiency, higher revenue per ride, or reduced costs would be required to accelerate breakeven or extend runway further. If there is more competition from Tesla and other companies, then the margins and per ride revenue could shrink and make breakeven impossible.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Waymo simply doesn’t have a self driving technology that Ford can license and build into its product line so it’s a false dichotomy. Waymo may be negotiating to use Fords instead of Jaguars as platforms to add $50k of LiDARs and compute to as it enters the dramatic last phase of its cash burn before Chapter 7. To Ford in corporate deliberately obtuse mode this is attractive. It’s not a total commitment it’s a new customer.
Making the licensing deal with Tesla would be entirely different and it’s a complete commitment to a future. In that case Ford would be accepting that it would be building what amount to low profit generic hardware that runs Tesla software much like PC’s running Windows. Tesla would likely sell the license services at cost (AI5 boards, consulting) and even kick back a small share of the software profits. Fords would have Tesla inside and become alternative flavors of Tesla Robotaxi from which Tesla derives the lions share of profits – in exchange for being allowed to continue to survive on the margins of selling hardware.
I don’t get how he gets all the way to: “Waymo want to pay Ford”. A much simpler explanation is that Waymo is willing for Ford to pay less than Tesla wants, or that Ford wants to supply cars to Waymo for their self driving taxis.
Yes the approach is different. Tesla made the customers pay for FSD even though the technology was not even remotely ready. They continued to sell FSD even when the shortcomings were so blatant that they were forced to rename it FSD SUPERVISED. Waymo, despite having a better product than Tesla, knows that it still requires development, and waymo is willing to contribute to the development costs in a partnership. Tesla wants everyone (customers and car manufacturers) to be paying beta testers for an half baked system.
Remember that despite all the fanfare Tesla has drivers driving (slowly) in the Vegas loop where they literally controlled all the variables since it’s construction