In every industry there are trends towards disruption of the industry. Those trends are possible, they may happen, but a number of elements have to exist before it explodes. If you take the example of the wheel. The wheel was founded or invented in early days of people, but the wheel was made from wood, and its use was for agricultural purposes. It took hundreds of years before the wheel was easily made, for carriages there were shock absorbers and roads had to be invented. Most of us use the wheels on our vehicles on a regular basis because all the infrastructure is in place to move around with relative ease.

In an article by Michael Liedtke of Reuters, Waymo (owned by Google) opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles. Waymo started the operation in Phoenix in 2020 and came to LA on a limited group of passengers. The waiting list grew to 300,000 people. Now anyone with a Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around the city of LA.

Waymo says it now transports more than 150,000 weekly trips in its robotaxis, a volume of business that helped raised $5.6 billion from Alphabet, Andreesen Horowitz and T Rowe Price. The company is still losing money, but the potential could be.

The competition includes Telsa is aiming to launch Cybercab in 2026; GM’s Cruise; and Amazon’s Zoox.

The theory is if robotaxis are easy to use and less expensive than owning a car, because for the most part 90% of the time, your car is parked. The result is car sales will go down and riding a robotaxi will be the first choice.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, at the moment robotaxis are back by some of the biggest names in the tech industry because of the learning experience and convergence of big data in the cloud and AI. Notice it needs a number of internal elements to come together as well as the regulations from the government to change. Will the new Trump administration loosen regulations?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.