DOI: 10.25346/s6/fvkhek
title: Self-driving stock data

description: In investing sometimes you have to play the long-game. Sure Robo-taxis are late, yet again. There's been a lot of bad press, Tesla's FSD hasn't evolved as we once imagined (or were led to believe), neither have others for that matter. Argo AI shut down, Embark and TuSimple lost so much of their market cap and Baidu's Apollo program seems to be moving faster than Waymo One, in terms of mass adoption. The demise of Argo AI was painful for the likes of Ford and VW, while the drama between the founders and the board of TuSimple has been a serious blow to the stock price in Excel. So is there still some real play to be had in self-driving stocks? Robo-taxis do not have an easy path to profitability or even full-functioning autonomy. In related news Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio and tech giant Tencent agreed to work together on areas including autonomous driving and high-definition mapping. Major EV companies like Xpeng and GM have serious projects related to making their cars more autonomous, and while GM Cruise does not give me much confidence, it is at least well funded. There are however many much less well-known Self-driving stocks you may have never heard of. Let’s dig into some of the names for your further research. BIDU Baidu Baidu’s stock is down nearly 32% YTD, even though it is one of the best value stocks, and it’s Apollo program could have a first-mover advantage expanding in cities across China. If the student protests expand, and the Hang Seng gets hit, it could be an interesting bargain with exposures to A.I., Cloud computing and advertising it’s a relatively safe stock. During the third quarter, each of Baidu’s self-driving taxis completed an average of more than 15 rides a day in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, CEO Robin Li said Tuesday, according to a FactSet transcript of the earnings call. “According to our knowledge, this number is quite close to the average daily rides for traditional ride-hailing services,” Li said, as reported by CNBC. If robo-taxis “replace” gig-economy drivers first, it might be in China with Apollo. TSP TuSimple TuSimple is a massively funded autonomous driving trucking startup with major internal politics and upheaval. It’s an incredibly risky stock with Chinese leadership that could even be delisted soon. Suffice to say that the stock is down 94% this year. It’s a sad story really for the bearish News we’ve had this year for the future or robo-taxis, smart cars and smart trucks. TuSimple, a leading developer of autonomous driving technology for semi-trucks, said it’s at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange after its cofounders, including its recently ousted CEO, used their majority voting stake in the company to fire independent members of its board of directors. The San Diego-based company said in a filing recently that shareholding companies controlled by cofounders Mo Chen and Xiaodi Hou, TuSimple’s former CEO, CTO and architect of its technology, had removed independent directors Brad Buss, Karen Francis, Michelle Sterling and Reed Werner from the board, leaving Hou as the sole remaining board member. It’s pretty intense! Yet if you believe autonomous trucking has a future and you have enormous risk tolerance, the stock is just $2.18 now. We are talking about $648 million in funding, you’d have to think investors did their due diligence right?! With the crash of FTX, it has to make you wonder. It’s estimated the self-driving industry has lost about $100 Billion in early bets without showing a great future in the 2020s. GM General Motors GM’s Cruise has scaled better than I thought it would, though pictures of the cars stranded in the streets continues to haunt me. While no Waymo or Apollo, I like how seriously GM appears to have taken the project. Cruise is the company's global segment responsible for developing and commercializing software and hardware autonomous car technologies such as light detection and ranging sensors and other components. GM has revenue of over $121 Billion in 2021, so their stock is more fairly priced than most EV entrants. The stock is down 35% YTD, and should go down further before this picks up on your radar. But few companies are prioritizing EVs and autonomy the way GM is, it’s really worth watching over time. EMBK Embark Amid a lot of turmoil for the sector Embark has a weird distinction to boast: out of all the beaten-down public companies in the autonomous driving space, Embark Technology stands out as a conspicuously terrible stock market performer. It’s a bit amusing really, the company’s recent market capitalization of $110 million is actually quite a bit lower than the $191 million cash it had at the end of Q3. In other words, investors seem to think it’s worth less than nothing. How is that possible? For a SPAC that’s raised $317 million it’s very an incredible ride of volatility. YTD the company has lost nearly 98% of its value. For companies bleeding cash and no making revenue, it’s very hard to evaluate how they are doing. Embark Technology, Inc. develops self-driving software solutions for the trucking industry in the United States and is a competitor to TuSimple, among others. It’s a pre-revenue company at the absolute worst time. Embark’s co-founders Alex Rodrigues and Brandon Moak formed the venture roughly six years ago, neither was old enough to buy a beer. The company joined the Y Combinator accelerator’s 2016 batch with the initial intent of building self-driving shuttles for use on college campuses. One thing led to another… in a rags to riches story. Now in tattered rags once again. The company’s long-term vision is for human truckers behind the wheel in city driving, with computers in control on the highway. This is basically the consensus for autonomous trucking companies for the most part last I heard. Embark completed the merger and began trading under the ticker EMBK in November, 2021. The SPACs really were mostly shady companies getting quick to market during a boom. A January report from short-seller publication The Bear Cave titled “Problems At Embark Technology” didn’t help matters, contending that “current valuation appears to be based on puffery rather than actual substance.” It warned that the company “holds no patents, has only a dozen or so test trucks, and may be more bark than bite.” More research is needed if this is a buy the dip story, but I don’t see a reason for it to be compelling. MBLY MobilEye Spun out of Intel recently to be a cash cow, MobilEye is actually profitable, though its valuation may still be far too rich. It’s a fascinating platform though. Mobileye Global Inc. engages in the development and deployment of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving technologies and solutions worldwide. I think the stock needs to be well below $20 to warrant a serious look, but it’s a serious company that could have a sizeable part of the future TAM of this area, that alone is impressive. Right now it has a Market Cap of $22 Billion, I think it’s more realistically valued between 15 and 20 Billion. MobilEye develops vision systems for vehicles that enable advanced driver assistance features such as adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assistance. As those features get more advanced, cars do more of the actual driving. This is already a proven winner so is definately a safer bet in this sector where a lot of the horses are simply dropping out of the race. AAPL Apple While Apple is not usually associated with the future of the smart car, with their Software integrations alone it’s a name to watch. I’m actually bullish on the future of Apple’s car project Titan. I think it will amount to something, it’s too important for the future of the company, and Apple has the deep pockets to do incredible things in the space. While rumors will always swirl with Apple and Project Titan, I think they have nothing to lose to keep seriously working on the engineering challenges this presents. Apple has finished restructuring its Project Titan car team, and may reassemble is electric vehicle project as soon as this year, if we are to believe some of the latest reports. Apple, as one of the best growth stocks, is ultra secretive about Titan and so it should be. BigTech building smart cars is to me a good idea since the TAM of the space can augment their technological influence. Google spinning out Waymo may prove really wise or Microsoft partnering with Wayve. If you trust the quality of the kind of product Apple could eventually produce (my guess is in the 2029 to 2032 window), then a smart car by Apple could be an interesting reason to own the stock. The TAM of Self-Driving Autonomous Vehicles is too big to Ignore I strongly advise you to do your due diligence on the space. I hope this list can help. Other stocks you might want to consider in this domain, do your own due diligence: TSLA Tesla - it's unclear if FSD can scale to full-autonomy anytime soon. Investing Waymo One when they go public (after mean correction). ALV Autoliv LAZR Luminar - more or less my favorite LiDAR startup that's a safer bet in an over-crowded space. COHR Coherent APTV Aptiv Horizon Robotics (China) WeRide (China) Deeproute.ai (China) Pony.ai (China) BABA Alibaba Trunk Tech (China) Inceptio (China) Fabu (China) ON ON Semiconductor Corp OUST Ouster (merging with Velodyne gives them added runway) ETN Eaton Corporation ALB Albemarle Corporation QCOM There are so many others, you can learn more about them by following the links below: Apple Fair Value Apple P/E Apple EV/EBITDA Microsoft Fair Value Microsoft P/E Microsoft EV/EBITDA Tesla Fair Value Tesla P/E Tesla EV/EBITDA Amazon Fair Value Amazon P/E Amazon EV/EBITDA Netflix Fair Value Netflix P/E Netflix EV/EBITDA