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Tesla Inc. (TSLA) fell slightly after reporting worse revenue in the second quarter than last year, and even worse than analysts had thought. Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), on the other hand, climbed after the search giant reported revenues of $96.4 billion and $2.31 in EPS. But which one is really a “car company?” asks Tom Bruni, editor-in-chief of The Daily Rip by Stocktwits.

Tesla suffered the steepest drop in revenue for over a decade, according to Business Insider. And after two periods of declining sales, CEO Elon Musk had his work cut out for him to convince investors that future prospects look good.

Tesla is now a stock that is priced entirely on the future: Low-cost EVs, self-driving cars, robots, and its adjacency in the Musk empire of companies to space travel and advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Tesla, Alphabet (Year-to-Date Percentage Change) Chart

Data by YCharts

Speaking on the call, Musk said Tesla was much better than Google at self-driving and AI, and that Tesla aims to bring robotaxis to half the US population this year. Yet Bloomberg reported that the firm has not applied for automated driving clearance with the California DMV yet, which leaves a significant portion of people out.

As for Alphabet, the company said AI is positively impacting every aspect of business, and it beat estimates across the board. The firm said it had $45 billion more this year to spend on CapEx, bringing the total to $85 billion. In the earnings call, the company did its best to show that search was solid, nothing to see here.

Meanwhile, the firm said it was going to “allocate more resources to Waymo” but did not specify what that meant. Waymo pulled in $373 million in Q2, less than estimates for $429.1 million, but more than the unreported amount from Tesla’s Austin tests.

“Last month, Waymo launched in Atlanta…more than doubled its Austin service territory…and expanded its Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area territories by approximately 50%,” CEO Sundar Pichai told investors on the call. “The Waymo Driver has now autonomously driven over one hundred million miles on public roads. And the team is testing across more than 10 cities this year, including New York and Philadelphia. We hope to serve riders in all 10 in the future.”

About the Author

Tom Bruni is editor-in-chief & VP of community at Stocktwits, the largest social network for investors and traders, where he leads the company’s newswire, newsletters, and other publishing efforts. For the last decade, Bruni has been at the intersection of finance and media, regularly featured in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, Barron’s, and more. He holds both CPA and CMT licenses and is co-chair of the NYC Chapter of the CMT Association.

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