1 Incredible Autonomous Vehicle Stock to Buy Instead of Tesla

Autonomous driving has been a hot topic for stock market investors for several years. As more cities approve driverless vehicles, what was once science fiction is rapidly becoming reality. Naturally, investors want in on what could be an important industry.

An obvious choice for investment dollars is Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), which has been making progress toward full self-driving for years. However, there's another well-known company that could be the better bet for making autonomous driving a mass-adopted reality.

Waymo is way ahead

While it may not be the first company investors think about when it comes to autonomous driving, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL)(NASDAQ: GOOG) is actually the leader in this space. According to Alphabet's Q1 2026 earnings call, Waymo surpassed 500,000 fully autonomous, driverless rides per week, a number that has doubled in less than a year. Waymo is also operating in 11 major cities, with six new cities added in 2026 alone.

Compare this with Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD), which is still not operating without human drivers in the vehicles. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, driverless autonomy is expected to roll out in the fourth quarter of this year.

Autonomy with a side of AI

While Tesla offers more to investors than autonomous driving, Alphabet is a leader in what is perhaps the most transformative technology of our lifetimes, artificial intelligence (AI). With its frontier large language model (LLM), Gemini, Alphabet also offers investors exposure to the leading edge of the AI revolution.

AI is progressing too rapidly to predict a winner, but Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, and OpenAI's ChatGPT will be jockeying for position for the foreseeable future as each company releases more advanced models.

But that's not all

It would take too long to list all the other aspects of Alphabet's business, but while autonomous driving and AI drive the headlines, it's important to remember that advertising (on Google Search and YouTube, primarily) and Google Cloud Services provide the bulk of the revenue and profit that allow Alphabet to invest in new technologies.

In Q1 of 2026, advertising represented 70% of revenue, while Google Cloud accounted for another 18%. Alphabet is the leader in search on both Google and YouTube, and it's one of the top cloud infrastructure providers in the world.

Mega-cap value

Considering Alphabet's leadership position in so many aspects of our tech economy, one might think shares are prohibitively expensive, but that's not the case. Alphabet stock trades at a trailing P/E ratio of 30, which is right around its 10-year average and 16% below its late-2025 high.

One can be fairly confident that Alphabet will present cheaper and more expensive buying opportunities over time, but adding shares or starting a position at today's valuation seems reasonable when compared to the company's historical averages.

Jeff Santoro has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.