Al Root
Shares of ride-hailing firm Uber Technologies and electric vehicle maker Tesla behave like oppositely charged ions around self-driving news. One's gain appears to be the other's loss.
Uber is the one gaining this week.
Coming into Thursday trading, Uber stock was up about 4% while Tesla stock was down almost 2%. The S&P 500 had added 0.9%.
CES, short for the Consumer Electronics Show, an annual tech get-together in Las Vegas, appeared to catalyze those moves as it spotlighted AI-trained self-driving cars. Nvidia, for instance, unveiled its latest system for training and running self-driving vehicles that any automaker could adopt.
Self-driving technology has been a difficult nut to crack, with many companies failing. Alphabet's Waymo and Tesla have emerged as leaders, with efforts to develop self-driving ride-hailing businesses, vying for a business that Wall Street believes will be worth trillions someday. Americans, for instance, drive trillions of miles each year. If robo-taxis turn out to be cheaper than owning a car, then there is a lot of growth for anyone with autonomous vehicle technology.
Evercore ISI analyst Conor Cunningham looked at 10 instances of recent robo-taxi news in a Thursday report. They stretched back as far as a Tesla April 2022 earnings call, when Musk talked about robo-taxis, to Monday's presentation by Nvidia. In eight of those instances, Uber and Tesla stock have gone in opposite directions.
The logic goes something like: if Tesla is good at robo-taxis, then Uber's business is ultimately doomed. Or, if autonomous driving technology is commoditized, then Uber will be fine and Tesla is overvalued.
The truth will probably be somewhere in the middle. And the stock reactions don't necessarily line up with long-term stock performance. Tesla stock, which is notoriously volatile, is up about 32% since the April 2022 earnings call. Uber stock has gained 160%. The S&P 500 is up 55% over the same span.
The Tesla-Uber dynamic will continue to play out in 2026, wrote Gordon Haskett analyst Robert Mollins on Thursday. "Although we anticipate that investors will continue to voice concern about AV competitive encroachment, we remain constructive on both Lyft and Uber," he added.
He rates shares of both Buy. His Uber price target is $115 a share. His Lyft price target is $28 per share.
Cunningham is the polar opposite. He rates Uber shares Sell. His price target is $73. "Uber has the most risk from increased competition," he wrote recently, despite attempts to position itself as a "demand aggregator" for new robo-taxi companies.
He rates Lyft stock Hold and has a $21 price target for the stock.
Overall, 31% of analysts covering Lyft stock rate shares Buy, according to FactSet. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 55%. The average analyst price target for Lyft stock is about $24.
Lyft stock was just under $20 in early trading on Thursday.
Overall, 83% of analysts covering Uber stock rate shares Buy. The average analyst price target is about $111 a share.
Uber stock was just above $86 in early trading.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
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January 08, 2026 10:22 ET (15:22 GMT)
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