1 Brilliant Driverless-Vehicle Stock to Buy Before It's Too Late

When looking for huge long-term winners in the stock market, one of the simplest things to seek is a product or service solving a crucial issue -- or many issues. Driverless vehicles have the potential to greatly improve transportation safety -- when working properly at scale, which isn't the status quo -- and reduce traffic congestion.

For consumers, they can improve mobility, productivity, and convenience for non-drivers, and there are economic advantages for robotaxis and for transporting goods and services.

There is a long list of companies developing driverless vehicles, but Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) might be the most brilliant. Here's why.

A plethora of partnerships

Uber has taken an interesting approach to tackling the challenges presented by driverless vehicles. Some automakers -- Tesla and Rivian among others -- have developed their own advanced vehicles and driverless technology alongside it. But Uber doesn't want to own the vehicle portion of the equation.

Its driverless-vehicle strategy is brilliant in a way because it avoids a capital-intensive and higher-risk development in-house, using a platform-as-a-service model instead. The company is focusing on being a leading aggregator of driverless vehicles, rather than the manufacturer, so that it can leverage its existing global network, consumer base, and data to develop and commercialize major partnerships.

Another of Uber's partnerships combines Nuro's driverless technology on with Gravity vehicles.

As of March, Uber has over 20 active driverless-vehicle partnerships. You read that correctly: 20 active partnerships. The list includes huge companies in the manufacturing sector, such as Stellantis; the technology field (Nvidia); or a combination of the two, with Amazon's Zoox and Alphabet's Waymo.

Not only does this strategy avoid the manufacturing of vehicles, it also reduces Uber's risk since any one company or partnership failing won't stop the company's overall development of driverless vehicle technology. On the flip side, Uber's investment being poured into software integration, in-car experience, and the support of its enormous network makes it a crucial partner for the best manufacturers and tech companies interested in robotaxis.

What it all means

Uber's stock recently jumped following a couple of expanded partnerships with Nvidia that targets a deployment of Level 4 self-driving across 28 cities by 2028. Leveraging its huge user base with robotaxi partnerships to eliminate fleet ownership costs, and eventually driver costs, enables the company to expand revenue without proportional costs. And it can quickly scale up distribution to its users.

It could prove to be a brilliant way to play the rise of driverless vehicles. Uber will own the consumer and data parts of the equation. And for investors, that leaves a lot of upside and significantly reduces the risk.

Daniel Miller has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool recommends Stellantis. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.