EV and Autonomy State of the Union

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The Motley Fool

Business, Investing

4.3 • 3.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Autonomy is advancing quickly with Waymo leading the charge, but where are there opportunities for investors? And we discuss the future for Rivian and Tesla as EV tax credits expire. Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Rachel Warren discuss: - Waymo’s rapid expansion - Rivian breaks ground - Tesla’s Robotaxi challenges - Our top EV/autonomous stock Companies discussed: Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Mobileye (MBLY), Tesla (TSLA), Lyft (LYFT), Uber (UBER). Host: Travis Hoium Guests: Lou Whiteman, Rachel Warren Engineer: Dan Boyd Disclosure: Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. The Motley Fool and its affiliates (collectively, “TMF”) do not endorse, recommend, or verify the accuracy or completeness of the statements made within advertisements. TMF is not involved in the offer, sale, or solicitation of any securities advertised herein and makes no representations regarding the suitability, or risks associated with any investment opportunity presented. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. TMF assumes no responsibility for any losses or damages arising from this advertisement. We’re committed to transparency: All personal opinions in advertisements from Fools are their own. The product advertised in this episode was loaned to TMF and was returned after a test period or the product advertised in this episode was purchased by TMF. Advertiser has paid for the sponsorship of this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Are electric vehicles up or down and what's the future of autonomous driving?
0:09.0	Motley Full Money starts now.
0:11.0	Welcome to Motley Full Money.
0:22.0	I am Travis Hoyum, joined today by Lou Whiteman and Rachel Warren.
0:25.9	We are at the point where electric vehicles have gone mainstream, and we know that autonomous
0:30.3	vehicles are real.
0:32.1	But what's the future of this business?
0:33.5	And I want to start with this question for both of you.
0:36.7	Waymo continues to chug along.
0:38.3	They announced yesterday that they have driven 96 million miles fully autonomously.
0:44.3	They're operating in five cities.
0:46.3	They've got about a dozen cities or more that they're kind of laying the groundwork for operations.
0:51.3	They even announced this morning they're going to be coming to Nashville on the Lyft network. Lift stock was up over 10% early in trading on that news.
1:01.1	Lou, has Waymo gotten the strategy right here? They went with these expensive vehicles. That was
1:06.4	always the criticism. They're about $250,000 or at least a couple of years ago they were.
1:27.9	They have all this equipment on them. But they didn't go kind of cheap with vision only the way the Tesla did. They got a lot of criticism for that, but they're the one scaling right now. Yeah. Well, part of this is it's an unfair advantage, right? Not everyone has Alphabet's money to fall back on, which I think that's... It's a bit of a help for them.
1:28.3	Yes.
1:28.6	Yeah.
1:33.2	But look, part of this too is, and maybe this is because it's a kind of side business and not core to the company and the company's ability to attract investment.
1:37.6	But this has always been a kind of boring engineering culture versus a hype culture.
1:43.8	And others, I think, and I'm not just looking at you,
1:47.3	Tesla. I think even GM got caught up in this. It was about, look at us, look at us, look at us.
	...

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