While a lot of the focus in the driverless taxi market has been around General Motors (NYSE:GM) and its Cruise unit, it’s not alone in the market. In fact, tech giant Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has its own dog in that hunt with Waymo. However, Waymo just suffered a similar fate to Cruise, getting into an accident with a cyclist. That didn’t matter much to investors, though, as shares are up fractionally in Wednesday afternoon’s trading.
The Waymo unit in question managed to hit a cyclist in San Francisco on Tuesday, but the outcome was a lot less trouble for Alphabet than the Cruise hit was for GM. In the Waymo incident, the cyclist in question was moderately banged up, suffering only “minor scratches.” The cyclist was apparently behind a truck that was making a turn, and when the Waymo car had its turn to proceed, couldn’t see the cyclist that was behind the truck. The Waymo car hit its brakes hard but was unable to prevent the partial contact that followed.
Terrible Timing
While no one wants to hear about autonomous vehicle accidents or injuries, this came at a particularly bad time for Alphabet. California has a bill up for passage called Senate Bill 915, which would basically make approval of driverless vehicles a wholly local affair. Currently, the state makes decisions about driverless vehicles, and under this plan, localities get more say. Localities like San Francisco—where this accident happened—may choose to keep driverless vehicles out altogether or limit them to certain areas instead.
Is Alphabet a Buy, Hold, or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on GOOGL stock based on 29 Buys and eight Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 46.2% rally in its share price over the past year, the average GOOGL price target of $164.14 per share implies 12.84% upside potential.
