Just days ago, Alphabet (GOOGL) made one of the AI Boom’s biggest announcements yet. The tech titan’s self-driving unit, Waymo, reported that it plans to start testing its fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area – with no human safety driver present.
Now, many of you may be underwhelmed by that update. But some industry insiders are calling this massive news.
That’s because self-driving cars are arguably the biggest near-term application of artificial intelligence. After all, the core technology powering autonomous vehicles is just AI software coupled with advanced cameras, radar and LiDAR sensors.
Those sensors gather data about a car’s surroundings. That data is fed into and analyzed by complex AI software, which then tells the car what to do.
Theoretically, then, all the advancements that we’re seeing in AI right now should mean a quicker path to reality for self-driving cars.
And Waymo’s announcement seems to strongly support that theory.
Accelerating Waymo AVs to National Ubiquity Status
When it comes to surface-street transportation, Waymo has autonomous vehicles already figured out. For example, through a variety of ride-sharing services, the firm is currently fulfilling over 50,000 weekly paid public rides, primarily in San Francisco and Phoenix.
If the whole world were just surface streets, it seems likely that Waymo’s self-driving cars would be everywhere by now.
But highways are also a major part of the world’s transportation system. And historically, Waymo has avoided them…
Until this past week, when the company announced that it will start testing its autonomous vehicles on highways in the Bay Area.
Given Waymo’s history of caution, we don’t think it’d make this move unless it was completely certain that its autonomous vehicles were more than ready for highway driving.
Therefore, we think that at some point in the last year, Waymo must have made some massive leap forward with its self-driving technology.
This hunch seems to line up with the fact that Alphabet just agreed to pour another $5 billion into Waymo.
Why? Maybe… just maybe… because all these AI advancements happening right now are indeed meaningfully improving Waymo’s underlying technology… thereby creating an accelerated path for its cars to become a national ubiquity.
In other words – between all the developments in AI, Alphabet’s $5 billion investment, Waymo’s ability to deliver 50,000 rides per week, and its latest announcement – we think the evidence suggests that self-driving cars are coming much sooner than we all think.
The Final Word
It seems the long-overdue Autonomous Vehicle Revolution has finally arrived.
If true, there are some really compelling AV investment opportunities in the market right now.
A stock like Mobileye (MBLY) – a major supplier of critical technology of automotive autonomy – has been hit hard over the past few years as rising interest rates choked off demand for cars. But rates are set to drop over the next few months. And if we’re right about these positive AV developments, then MBLY stock could be due for a massive comeback.
It’s the same story with Aurora (AUR), widely considered the leader in autonomous trucking technology. That stock has been crushed by high interest rates. But the company is running autonomous trucking routes for its pilot customers, such as FedEx, Uber Freight, and others. It’s scheduling about 120 commercial loads per week with these customers and plans to launch full-scale commercial operations by the end of this year. This is the sort of stock that could fly higher from here if we’re right about an acceleration in underlying AV technology.
There are several compelling opportunities out there in the AV industry. And we think you need to get eyes on these stocks right away.
But of course, they aren’t the only AI stocks we’re watching right now.
This whole AI Boom is so exciting that we’re looking at opportunities in every corner of the market.
Learn more about what we’ve got our sights on right now.
On the date of publication, Luke Lango did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
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