Send More Waymo’s to Atlanta ASAP and Nuro’s Big Check

Executive Summary

This week’s episode of Autonomy Markets dives into the major supply constraints plaguing Waymo’s recent launch in Atlanta, where users are struggling to find a ride, prompting local news to publish guides on how to get one. We also break down Nuro’s successful $203 million Series E funding round, led by Uber, which values the company at $6 billion. We debate the future of the Uber-Waymo partnership and explore global developments, including Helm.ai’s L2+ production deal with Honda and Tesla’s FSD testing in Japan.

Key Topics & Timestamps

[02:49] Nuro’s Funding and Strategy

Nuro has successfully closed its Series E funding round, raising $203 million, which includes $97 million in new money. The round was led by Uber and gives Nuro a $6 billion valuation. While the company is shifting towards a licensing model, it continues to develop its delivery robot business. Unlike competitors whose bots run on sidewalks, Nuro’s vehicle is designed to operate on roads in mixed traffic.

[13:38] The Uber and Waymo Partnership

Waymo is facing significant vehicle supply constraints in Atlanta, leading to extremely long wait times for users. The issue is so prominent that local news outlet Fox 5 Atlanta has published a guide on how to increase the chances of getting a Waymo. This has led to a debate on the future of the partnership, with one host predicting a 50/50 chance of another joint market launch, while the other believes there is a 95% probability of more collaboration. The point was also made that Uber needs Waymo more than Waymo needs Uber to maintain its autonomy narrative for investors.

[27:18] Helm.ai’s Deal with Honda 

Helm.ai, a US-based company, has a deal with Honda to deliver an L2+ to L3 “eyes on, hands off” autonomous system. The technology is slated for mass production in Honda vehicles in 2027 and is considered Honda’s equivalent to Tesla’s FSD. Honda was an original seed investor in Helm.ai and has continued to participate in subsequent funding rounds.

[32:37] Chinese Autonomous Vehicle News 

Alibaba is spinning out its autonomous driving division, Banma Network Technology, through an IPO in Hong Kong. Separately, Baidu announced its Apollo Go service has completed 14 million rides in 16 cities and driven over 124 million autonomous miles, surpassing Waymo’s reported 100 million miles.

[36:38] Tesla’s FSD Testing in Japan 

Tesla has started testing its FSD Supervised system with employees in Japan. To begin testing, Tesla had to acquire a permit from the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, which validates the safety of the vehicles. There are currently 30,000 registered Tesla vehicles in Japan.

Watch the Full Episode of Autonomy Markets

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Walt, it’s nearly been a year. You put up with me and I put up with you and boy. Oh. We’ve got some great interactions, great listener feedback, so each and every week, thanks for tuning in. Don’t worry. I know it’s a slow week in the Autonomy Markets this week, but Walt and I got some interesting things to dive into. Walt, you want to kick things off today? 

Walter Piecyk: it’s been a year, but obviously Road to Autonomy has been here much longer, , and has definitely emerged as the leading source out there. And you continue to do these interviews with senior management from the industry that I find fascinating each week in between Autonomy Markets. But, and certainly the growth in, in this industry has accelerated in the past year, likely associated with ai , but, you know, I’m happy that we’re able to keep people up every week on the news. Uh, it just seems like there’s everything, there’s something new every week, even this week. To your point, probably one of the slowest weeks we’ve had over the past year of doing this. , Before we get to the autonomy stuff, did you see some of the videos that were circulating about these, the Chinese Olympics and robotics? ’cause it’s kind of tied to our, our autonomous space. 

Grayson Brulte: I did, and if you can’t win the race, you fall down. You get up and you keep racing again. 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, they were not necessarily racing in their same lane. It, I think it was more comic relief for me. When we’re constantly told about how far ahead China is. I mean, I think we’ve seen optimists and, and we had some of the interns, um, at Lightshed doing a big project on, on kind of the future of robotics and, and optimists and, and other things. So I don’t know. I found it more comedic relief than anything in terms of the, of what we saw at the Olympic Games. 

Grayson Brulte: It could have been comedic relief, but really it was political. It, it, it sent a message to the world that China wants to own this industry and the world better, pay close attention. That’s the message it really sent to me. 

Walter Piecyk: I don’t know if I received that message. I mean, figure, AI I think had some videos later in the week, uh, that I saw on LinkedIn where they had one of the robots, you know, walking over, you know, difficult, , terrain, not necessarily a track. Obviously agility we spent time with and, and you know, we hope to learn more about Tesla’s progress with, with Optimus over time. But, um, anyway, robotics is, has certainly a nice, um, heart, a nice market that’s complimentary to what we do here on Autonomy Markets. So something we’ll be, we’ll be keeping in tabs.

Grayson Brulte: It is, and I can’t wait till I have a robot at home that can fold my laundry and clean my house, but that’s, that’s for the future.

Walter Piecyk: mean, you’ve also talked about the robots that are gonna clean the cars in a lot of these, you know, uh, robotaxis centers, assuming rideshare becomes the use, or even not if it’s rideshare, just robotaxis to clean these cars out. 

Grayson Brulte: robotics are gonna play a huge role in future autonomy from the, the maintenance, the service, they’re going to play a big role. , One of the companies that we follow very closely, Nuro, to successfully close their series E, they raised $203 million, $97 million of new money. The Round was led by Uber. And what percent of that round do you think Uber actually took? 

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, I have no idea. And we just know that Uber’s spending money. We’ve talked about this in a past podcast where they were. Actually, you pointed out more than me. I was focused more on the share repurchase and you were correcting me with all the times that they said that they were gonna put additional money. And then here we are them putting additional money, size unknown, but just point that you know, more dollars are going in. And frankly, they likely enabled dollars coming in from the institutional investor partners because of the deal that they had done with Nuro and Lucid. Where they gave this 20,000 cars, which by the way, both sides have emphasized that as a minimum. I think the expectation is as things progress well for Nuro, as we hope and expect that they will, that, you know, there will be far more than 20,000 cars. Uber will own a, a big chunk of those at some point if they can, uh, you know, off lay them to someone else, they will. , But, you know, definitely another positive step for Nuro. Which is a company that, you know, we’ve put investors in front of, and they’ve been very impressive in terms of how people view their technology and their positioning in this space. 

Grayson Brulte: And another thing about the Uber Nuro deal that we did learn, ’cause Andrew Chapin, their COO came on The Road to Autonomy podcast. You’re right, it is a minimum, but that deal’s gonna go global as it expands. That’s gonna be something to watch. What do you make of Nuro getting a $6 billion valuation at part of this round? 

Walter Piecyk: it’s a public sized company. It’s, it’s in nature of the beast. We have seen the IPO market heating up more, and there’s more companies, whether through SPACs or through, you know, actual IPOs. The market’s expanding. I, I would guess that that’s possibly a path, it’s next path for Nuro, but $6 billion, you’re probably bigger than many public companies anyway, and that’s why you saw the, the type of institutional investors that were in there. You know, in the release Grayson though, you know, they talked about how, you know, one of the few companies that they’ve already been at scale with autonomous vehicles. I think what they’re referring to is that delivery robots. I think our expectation has been. That, you know, that was a business that was gonna get sold off as they focus more on licensing. Right. For cars, for, for ride share type applications or maybe even private ownership, what are your thoughts or what’s the latest on, on the delivery robot business? 

Grayson Brulte: Delivery robot businesses. We learned on The Road to Autonomy Podcast. Nuro still has that. They’re still working to develop it. It’s not the main focus. It, it’s still there. Yes, you’re right. At some point, do they spin it out to a Serve robotics? Do they spin it out to a Coco? Do they spin it out to an Avride? I, I don’t know, because I think over time, as we clearly see Nuro is gonna develop into a fully licensing model. It’ll be interesting to see where, where those bots go. And I’ll give you a curve ball. Maybe even A BYD could potentially buy their business. Since BYD was the manufacturer of the bot.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, that market is consolidating. Um, serve made an acquisition. It’s also interesting that, you know, Uber has been involved in investing in this company. Obviously, these delivery robots fit right into what Uber’s trying to accomplish on the Uber Eats side of things. We thought at one point that maybe there’d be a strategic reason for somehow Uber to take ownership of that delivery robot program. That doesn’t seem to be happening, at least, not yet. Maybe there’s an opportunity for them to start to develop a partnership with a fleet management company. ‘Cause I think a lot of these technology companies are relying on Uber to be the kind of go-between on fleet management. What are your thoughts on Nuro. Maybe going out on their own and saying, rather than Uber connect them, connecting them to Avomo or move or whoever it is. Them developing those, those fleet management partnerships themselves. And maybe in the context of you start with, you know, with the delivery robots and then it evolves into whatever cars ultimately, you know, get the Nuro driver and get license out. 

Grayson Brulte: It could be the way that the contracts are structured, that was documented in the SEC filings. The deal with Lucid Ubers is exclusive for the gravity. Those vehicles are exclusively contractually obligated to run on the Uber network as it relates to the bots. That’s a very real possibility, but I question the economic. Would a fleet manager want to manage a fleet of these bot? Is there enough revenue there? Enough profitability to do it? Yes. From a real estate perspective, it’s a lot smaller real estate footprint, but is there enough revenue and profitability there to make a fleet manager interesting. 

Walter Piecyk: I guess I’m gonna question what you just said because it doesn’t, it’s irrelevant that the, the lucid cars are gonna be on the Uber network. There still has to be a third party. Uber is, doesn’t seem like it wants to be the third party that’s doing the fleet management. My only point is, you know, in general, forget about delivery robots in general, should a company like Nuro or May or whoever it is, be developing relationships with Avomo or, or move or, or the countless other smaller fleet managers that we know are out there, whether for these lucid cars, you know, in other markets or for their delivery robots. Rather than rely on, on Uber to be kind of the defining, , partner in, in who says which fleet partner they’re gonna go with. 

Grayson Brulte: A hundred percent to me is diversifying a a risk. You have to have those relationships and you know this very well, and our audiences very well. You can get better deal terms if you go and shop the deal to the market. So yes, a hundred percent. Diversify, diversify, diversify. 

Walter Piecyk: And as long as, you know, Uber’s not doing that, and if you develop those relationships, that could potentially be part of a vertically consolidated play, you know, in the future. Right? I don’t, I’m not sure Uber can control. If someone wants, else, wants to come in. I don’t know. Again, we haven’t seen the term sheets on, on the fleet managers that they’ve taken equity stakes in. , But again, you know, I mean, Nuro big company just raised a ton of money. Maybe that’s an a path to, to start asking about in terms of these technology companies, whether it’s Wayve or Nuro or May or whoever, um, that, that are starting to evolve to, to develop some additional semblance of independence. From whatever the, whatever the platform is that their product is gonna be used on. 

Grayson Brulte: If I was running one of these companies, I would develop my own internal ecosystem of partnerships, not relying on one on one partner. If that partner goes under or the contract ends, I would build a whole ecosystem of, of partners in order to scale this to, to hedge my risks. 

Walter Piecyk: getting back to the, to the delivery robots though on Road to Autonomy and what I said before about the value of Road to Autonomy. You’ve interviewed the CEO of of Serve, you’ve interviewed the CEO of Coco. We’ve now seen some slight consolidation. It’s not something that Uber Eats or Uber talks about on their earnings call in something that can drop the cost and change the, the, the margin dynamics there. But when we talk to these companies and, and you’ve done it on road to autonomy and, and I’ve done it just in our basic research, you know, it seems like they’ve, they are also at, at some version of inflection point. And we’re gonna see these things popping up in more and more cities and you’re gonna see more of these things. There’ll be an advertising model wrapped into it. Um, you know. How is this Nuro opportunity, meaning their delivery, robots not attracting more attention either from the existing players or from a third party, that that can play a role here? 

Grayson Brulte: Well, there’s a key differentiator, and I don’t mean to put my regulatory hat on, but there’s a very key differentiator here the way the Nuro vehicles designed. From a regulatory standpoint, James Owens does a really great job as a chief legal officer for Nuro handling all of their policy. It is designed to run on a road. In mixed traffic, the serve robotics and the coco robotics are designed to run in sidewalks. So two completely different regulatory environments and different speeds, different use cases. The Nuro vehicle, in theory, this is the bot, not the car can go longer distance. There’s obviously it can go faster. Speeds. 

Walter Piecyk: Got it. So it is two different, but it’s, it’s effectively the same thing. You’re delivering goods and not people. , I don’t know, like, let’s, let’s back away from Nuro for a second and just, just thoughts on, you know, where you think that market is in, you know, the hockey stick growth that we hope for, or. A lot of people like to say what inning is of the game where robot delivery of, of food, um, specifically to the benefit of DoorDash and Uber Eats and others is in the market today. Where, where are we? 

Grayson Brulte: I’m a baseball nerd and we’re heading into the fall for the Fall Classic. We’re in the top of the first inning and I believe in the fastest metric to look for that’s gonna drive the growth of this business is their ad businesses. If you talk to Zach and Coco, you talk to Ali, over Serve fastest growing part of their businesses are the ad revenue. If their ad revenue is starting, that hockey stick growth and the more bots they get out there, the faster that ad revenue’s gonna grow. And that’s the thing, I’m really, really watching. So that market is in the top of the first, but it’s about to take off. 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, that’s fine. That’s outdoor advertising, but, but outdoor advertising, if you’re getting good CPMs. You’re gonna just want more products out there. And the question is not about the advertising, Grayson, ’cause I think you just dodged the question. The question is, when do we scale so that Uber like Dara gets on an Uber call and says Percentage of our deliveries handled by robots is now, you know, 15%, 10, whatever that percentage is that people start to get excited about the margin opportunities. By taking that, those costs away from their existing, um, delivery mechanisms. In some cases, like it’s, it’s impossible, right? You’re gonna have to have the guy on a bike or whatever it is. Um, but there, it seems like there’s a, there’s still, we’re still early days in the opportunity there. 

Grayson Brulte: Dense urban environments, and this includes grocery, includes alcohol, includes pizza QQ 1 27. You start to see significant growth that’s in dense urban environments that is not rural environments, that is dense urban environments. Q1 27. 

Walter Piecyk: we saw in, in a related, but not exactly the same market, um, Amazon. Start to talk up how they wanted to do overnight. I mean, if you go to the Amazon app, it’s very confusing in terms of what’s Whole Foods, what’s fresh, what’s Amazon Fresh, what’s overnight, what market’s available. Like to me, it doesn’t approximate at all, um, what Instacart is doing today. But there’s always this fear of like, you know, Amazon and as they go into a vertical, whether it’s groceries or foods. Delivery mechanisms that they use. Obviously we’re, we’re familiar with the, with the Zoox project, whereas Amazon, on, on the delivery robots, who, who is using them and, and what do you think the opportunity is for them? 

Grayson Brulte: I think Amazon has a bigger opportunity in prime air than it does in delivery robots. I’m not sure if you, if you use my household as an example. The objects and items that we buy outside of grocery, which we buy from Amazon, tend to be larger, not necessarily the right fit for a bot or some of the things I had to order batteries the other day. Prime Air would be a great example for that. But I live in restricted airspace, but I still think if you move outside of restricted air spaces, Prime Air is a bigger opportunity for Amazon today and in the future than delivery robots. 

Walter Piecyk: I think air has its own issues, but anyway, I think that, you know, on Autonomy Markets, it’s not just about vehicles, it’s, it’s, you know, robots and food robots and, and uh, you know, it’s definitely a space to watch ’cause those are certainly billions of dollars of opportunity there, Grayson, in my world. Um, I continue to get questions about. What is gonna going on between the Uber and Waymo relationship? , You know, last week, especially after last week where we gave a lot of great data and our thoughts on why Atlanta might be showing, you know, a different type of ramp than than Austin did specifically. ’cause the ODM was twice the size and you had a, an initial launch of probably a similar number of cars that they had for Austin., So. I guess first off, I think you have some new information on, on that that kind of verified what we talked about last week and why it’s basically hard to get a a Waymo in Atlanta. 

Grayson Brulte: I got to do one of my favorite things. I got to put on my Clouseau hat, not Jacques Cousteau, but ous per Clouseau. I went there or used a Sherlock Holmes, so I, no, I didn’t turn on the local Atlanta tv. It would’ve been cool. Let’s see what the Braves were doing. I read Fox five Atlanta, the news website, and found out that there is a problem in Atlanta with Waymo. The local news is interviewing people in the local Atlanta market. They cannot get a Waymo. There is one individual’s reported in the sun. Now the uk the gentleman tried for an hour to get a Waymo order X cancel order, X cancel order, X cancel. So Fox five Atlanta puts out, Walt, you can’t make this up. They put out a guide on how to increase your chances of being paired with a Waymo in Atlanta. Choose green or comfort. This is not very good. The fact that your local news media is putting out a guide of how to get this. If something’s not working, you say it is supply constraint. I say it’s not good. 

Walter Piecyk: was it comfort or was it Comfort Electric or, or Green is reflecting of the electric and comfort was it comfort Electric or just comfort? 

Grayson Brulte: Two tiers. So you have green and comfort, so two, two different tiers. 

Walter Piecyk: Got it. So, I mean, our experience in Austin was, you know, effortless when we were in the ODM of Waymo. Those things were crawl all over the place. I get it. When we were in Austin, it was, you know, months into the launch and they had flooded the market with what we estimated was what, 200, uh, Waymo cars in that ODM before it was then expanded. Um, and I was able to get them on UberX, on Comfort, business Comfort, I think on a couple of different categories. , We got served up, , a Waymo. So, , in Atlanta just, there’s just not enough supply, right? So. If they’re doing hundreds per week, I would guess that should be fixed within a couple of weeks. And then maybe Autonomy Markets needs to hit the road again. Check it out. See how hard it is to get a Waymo in a couple of weeks, do our car counting, which ends up being pretty good in terms of getting close to the numbers. , And also maybe check May Mobility, which, which, you know. Is offering some version of service. I think we’d have to take a closer look. I haven’t seen much content on that, so I think we’ll have to break the seal on content on May Mobility in Atlanta as well. So Atlanta trip should be on our docket, don’t you think? 

Grayson Brulte: Absolutely, we’ll, we’ll have some good southern comfort foods. So that’s, that’s what we do in a little peach cobbler. After that, if we, we know, and it’s been well reported by local media and some national media that Waymo has supply issues in Atlanta with outrageous wait times not being able to be paired, wouldn’t it have been smarter? I know I’m playing Monday morning quarterback here. So let you send the bows and arrows folks. Wouldn’t have been smarter to start with a smaller ODD until you get more vehicles and gradually expand that ODD? 

Walter Piecyk: Well, I think it would be smarter of just allocating more cars there, but I think maybe that wasn’t, that wasn’t an option. I don’t, I don’t know. , You know, these are engineering people that are, that are launching this thing. I’ve talked about that before, that it feels like we’re still in kind of science project mode. Right? The cars, what, 150, 175,000. We’ll talk later about Baidu and where they are at production and, and, and, and cost as a result. , Not, it doesn’t seem like tremendous amount of focus on. The business side of it. Um, maybe parts of groups within Waymo not communicating well enough together. Like if there’s a product team that’s assigning a certain number of cars, like, I mean, you read about this with large companies, especially, like, there’s just not good enough, um, synchronicity that goes all the way back to the top. I mean, to Tekedra And Dmitri should be handling that right and should assign people. Whether it’s with Uber or in their own markets to make sure that these things go more smoothly. But I guess in their mind it’s like they probably didn’t do a lot of marketing in Atlanta. It’s like a beta, we’re kind of more focused on it than most people. Um, but I think the, the error in that is, you know, part of like, look at Tesla, they don’t advertise at all. All part of this is like trying to create your own virility. In terms of the product, and it has to be a happy experience. So while you may not be like marketing it, if you’re offering service in a market, you should consider whether it’s gonna leave the customer happy that they were able to get the product that you’re offering in a quick timeframe and have it and have a pleasant ride. So, I don’t know, unforced error. 

Grayson Brulte: It’s unforced air. I mean you, you said happy. I’ll give you the McDonald’s term. It’s not a happy meal. It’s a horrible meal. If you, you get less than a one star on the Zaget McDonald’s gets a higher than a one star on the Zaget Guide. Let’s just get into that. ’cause no matter who made the decision, I’m not assigning blame anybody. You’re getting picked up in the media saying your service has an issue. So then if I’m Waymo or if I’m Uber, and Uber has publicly confirmed this, Andrew MacDonald on X has publicly stated that they are building a robotaxi tier. Why not accelerate that? You could see, okay, robotaxi, wait 45 minutes. Okay, fine. I’ll go inside and hang out and go, why? Why not be more transparent around that? Why does Uber have to mash everything together and the inconsistency of the experience just like this gentleman had to do it for? I cancel two, cancel this, and I’m gonna tell you Walton, we go to Atlanta. If we have that thing, I’m gonna make a whole video just about how many times we have to do it to get Waymo. 

Walter Piecyk: That’s gonna be a very boring video. I don’t think we’re gonna get a lot of watches, maybe some unsubscribes. So I may emphasize the, edit that down. It just goes back to kind of who’s making what decisions in jointly launched markets between Uber and Waymo. ’cause there’s no reason Uber wouldn’t want Waymo to flood the market there and if, if Uber’s potentially enticing them Waymo to do joint markets through funding of the cars or, you know, nice payments on. On, you know, the rides that are there. Like, are there, shouldn’t there be, shouldn’t there have been minimum requirements that Uber, um, asked for when launching new markets? And I think it, it just goes back to the very first question I was trying to get to, which we constantly get, you know, now that we had the, Austin was like, everything’s great with Uber. Then Dallas was like, things are not great with Uber. And then Atlanta is like, things are not great with Uber ’cause maybe don’t, people don’t care. Which again, as we said last week was a false read. What it ultimately comes down to for a lot of investors is, is there literally now is there gonna be another Uber Waymo market, or are we done with Uber Waymo markets? What’s your, what’s your answer? 

Grayson Brulte: I’m gonna give you the political answer. I think it’s 50 50 at this point. I have no inclination. O one way or another. I, I do. We did see something interesting, which I wanna point out. Somebody on X went through the latest update to the Waymo app in the source code. It’s no longer called Waymo One. It’s called Waymo. Is that a sign that Waymo’s looking to go on their own? I don’t know, but at this point as it relates to Uber, I’m gonna say it’s 50 50 and I’m leaning towards the side of. Uber being, being left in the markets that they are in OK 

Walter Piecyk: so two things there. I have no idea why. If you called it Waymo versus Waymo, one that sends you any signal about whether they’re going alone or not. So I don’t know, like Waymo one versus Waymo. It’s not Waymo Uber. So I don’t think that matters at all. And on the likelihood for a new market, um, I think 50 50 is just way too low. There. It’s still important for Uber to show to its investors that they’re in the game for autonomy. And while Nuro is a great new partner, uh, to, to hedge their bet and to get the, the diversity, um, and the segmentation that they want. Waymo is an unavoidable partner that you need to be if you’re Uber partner with, now look, we’ve highlighted like that. People should start asking questions about the financial relationship, blah, blah, blah. So I think it’s possible that Uber is being more thoughtful as they negotiate the terms of new markets they’re getting into. On the flip side, you’ve talked about, you know, the pressure that Waymo has on the regulatory front. In markets like Boston and New York where Uber clearly has expertise in how to execute in in these markets. So to me, I think the percent of the probability is much higher, meaning like 90% chance that we will see another Uber Waymo market. Remember, we’re not anywhere close to Waymo making its final decision on whether it goes it alone, in my opinion, at least. I have no idea, but like I don’t think we’re any, you know, we’re at least two years away. From whether Waymo decides whether they’re, um, going it alone or gonna do something with Uber. So in our interim, you’re gonna see more Uber markets. So I’m putting an, I’m taking an, I’m gonna say 95% chance you will see an additional Waymo Uber market 

Grayson Brulte: One market or two markets. 

Walter Piecyk: It doesn’t matter. Just that, that there will be another market. That was the question. I know it’s a cop out. It’ll be more than one market though. If you’re gonna push me, push back on me, that’s fine. I will. I will still say that. It’s gonna be more than one additional. There’s a lot of markets, right? As much as great as Waymo is in terms of being a, quote unquote, this scale player, the leader in the us, let’s put it in perspective. There are a ton of markets that Waymo does not exist. So, yeah, I think it’s going to, there’s gonna be more than one market, 95% chance with, with Uber. 

Grayson Brulte: Put on your, bulletproof vest in your helmet. Emphasize a point here. Waymo does not need Uber. Uber needs Waymo. Uber has to keep the narrative going at the end of the day. I’ll give you further pushback. Why did the CEO of Avis and the earnings call come out said they’re gonna potentially do more markets together? Why is the Miami market not Uber? And if this fiasco in Atlanta, sorry, Uber, it’s a fiasco, continues. If I’m on the Waymo executive team, it gives me more ammo not to go forward, unless you rightly stated this, that you can take your ammo off for this one. What are the financial terms of that agreement? Make that public and let us make a better, clear decision. 

Walter Piecyk: Well, there’s no way you’re getting terms of the, of contracts like that public. Um, and yeah, I look, I’ve, I’ve long said, , that Waymo is, you know, has kind of more leverage at this point. At least that’s why you need. Companies like Nuro and Wayve and, um, and others to, to continue to progress and succeed to, to, to change those dynamics or, you know, like I said, build up some of the fleet management stuff to gr to get some greater leverage. , But there is a, there is a definitive role that Uber does play in the interim, which is why they’ve already been a partner with Waymo. And again, we don’t know what Waymo’s final decision is as a company. On whether they wanna maintain a robotaxi fleet. Long time. We constantly get feedback by people that are certain that they know, that they will not be doing, you know, rideshare over the long term and insist then go back to this citation and that citation. Um, and if that’s true, then they do in fact need Uber, right? Because where, what, what are they, what, what are you gonna do if you’re not running your own ride share? Are you gonna have to partner with someone? And, and Uber’s the biggest, obviously they could do something with, with Lyft. Does that not one market at all exist with, with Lyft? So, we’ll see. And you know, the question was one market, two markets, whatever. And when that happens, I can’t wait to get back on this podcast and, and rub it in your face that your 50 50 was, was way too conservative.  

Grayson Brulte: And I will congratulate you if you’re right. I think the one thing you and I could agree on now, we don’t know what the heck is gonna happen going forward with those two. 

Walter Piecyk: Well that’s true, but we can give our best guess. So there’s another company that’s out there that I’ll be honest, , I had never heard of this company before. Um, it’s called Helm ai. , And they have a deal with Honda, an OEM. And, , I think that you’ve done stuff with them on The Road to Autonomy. Maybe you know about this company. Tell us please about. Helm AI. And if there’s any listeners from Helm ai, I apologize for not having heard of your company before. It’s embarrassing, I admit. And I’d love to learn more about it, but why don’t you tell us what you know about Helm and, and this, and, you know, give us some context on this new Honda relationship. 

Grayson Brulte: The Honda relationship. Is not new. It’s actually an old relationship. Honda was one of the original seed investors in Helm AI I, it’s led by a gentleman named Vlad. Vlad did his PhD under Jim Simons, the famous quant trader, probably. I mean, there was that really great book. Would you give a book plug? I’ll give a book. Plug The Man Who Beat The Market. You can order it on Amazon. Really good book about Jim Simons and they’re taking a, a, a deep teaching approach. If you kind of think about a, a deep neural network, a building approach. They sort a simulation platform. Mo moving into driving. I have not been in the helm vehicle. I do have the opportunity to go, and I will say for the audience, Vlad, the CEO of Helm will be on The Road to Autonomy podcast again shortly. So they’re taking a, a deep learning approach. The system, the way that the deal is structured with Honda today. So an L two plus to a three system and a simple terms, it means eyes on, hands off. And this is gonna go into, and, and Walt, this is real because this is why this is not a press release. This is real. It’s going into mass production in 2027 with Honda. To me, reading all the press releases, having interviewed their CEO before, this is gonna be Honda’s equivalent to Bloomberg. Even stated this Honda’s equivalent to Tesla’s FSD. Really interesting move. I’m bullish on, on the founder and CEO and I’ve been, can’t wait to get in this vehicle in 2027 when it’s out there on the roads. 

Walter Piecyk: So a couple questions. Vlad, what, what is this? Where’s this company based? 

Grayson Brulte: They’re based in Sunnyvale, California. 

Walter Piecyk: But is it truly an American company or is it like we had last week with, , professor X, where it was effectively a Chinese company that has shed all of their, allegedly the Chinese assets and is now reborn as a US company. 

Grayson Brulte: it was always been a US company, was never, never reborn, never branded, mostly worked in simulation below the radar. I’ve been following them for a while, and it’s a, it’s a true and true founded American company with no foreign ties. 

Walter Piecyk: And then the other thing is this, this hands off, I mean, what you described just sounds like ADAS, right? So do they have specific aspirations with this Honda relationship to go, you know, level four, which is. Basically not having to watch the road, or is this, is it, does the, does the buck stop here with basically just like, okay, great, it’s gonna drive my car that I’m, when I’m, sitting behind the wheel. 

Grayson Brulte: So I had the same question. I reached out to the company for comment and at this time they said the deal is, is, is focused on the ADAS portion, but having a very good understanding of the technology and having interviewed the CEO before at some point that that will go level four. And if you even go on the helm.ai website. They do have a level four product, so at some point I could see this going, but the way that the, the deal structure from what the company told me, that this is an ADAS play today. 

Walter Piecyk: So it’s kinda like a mobile eye type of approach to, to the progression here. And I guess, I guess the real question is that may be their, their goals, but do you think Honda sees them that way or is Honda like, okay, you’re great for this product? But if we ever go to fully autonomous, we’re gonna have to engage with with someone else. 

Grayson Brulte: I see, and this is based on filings. Honda has invested in several rounds and continue to invest in helm. So if you look at Honda, let’s not forget, Honda was burnt on GM cruise. I, I, I view Honda as taking a very conservative approach with Helm and, and I see this if I’m in Honda’s shoes as a way to scale into L four based on the Honda culture. I see this as the Honda culture, taking that first step to get there instead of jumping all in as they did with Cruise. 

Walter Piecyk: Okay, well that’s great. So it’s another one to put on the radar. Um, keep an eye out. It’s also interesting, , no lidar sensors, right? This is vision, and again, this speaks to this, what we’ve called Autonomy 2.0, maybe 3.0, where you have these legacy companies that were built on. Things that are on the rails of HD maps and this evolution to the next step where it’s just trying to, you know, true end to end, um, in terms of how their approach to autonomy is, which is, you know, kind of the, basically the, the Tesla approach, the Wayve approach. Um, not necessarily some of the, some of the people that use darpa, um, to provide their kind of legacy credibility. But DARPA comes now with a legacy. You know, structure of, of perhaps a more challenging market by market rollout. 

Grayson Brulte: The legacy of, uh, structure of maps and having to rely on legacy maps is going the way the dodo bird everything is going to a, a, a mapless map, like future, the sooner the companies adopt to it. The sooner room quicker, they’re gonna be able to scale. 

Walter Piecyk: And we’ll see, we’ll see about that. Uh, I don’t know if that’s definitively true, but, but certainly. You know, it’s, it, it’s becoming like one of those rel, one of those kind of die hard dividers between how people view this market. , I don’t come out on one side on yet on that. We’ll, we’ll have to see how things progress. 

Grayson Brulte: We’re always progressing and we’re always learning things, and I learned something this week. Walt, I literally fell outta my chair. I had to fact check this before we, we brought. Into our audience, Alibaba, Jack Ma’s, Alibaba, they had an autonomous driving division. No surprise. They have a lot of other stuff. They’ve invented and have verified this, that they have a company called Banma Network Technology. They’re in the process of spinning the company out through an IPO through Hong Kong. Interesting timing to say the least. They didn’t even know they had the group. And next thing you know, they’re spinning it out in Hong Kong. I know the relationship between the mainland and Hong Kong, but what do you make of this move? 

Walter Piecyk: the Hong Kong exchange means nothing to me ’cause it’s effectively China. In fact, you have a lot of the, the Chinese techno autonomous companies that attempted or did list in New York, and then there was some pushback on whether they should be allowed to do that. Now they’re talking about moving to Hong Kong, I’m sure it’s liquid. Um, there, um, I think Dallas had an announcement earlier this week about their connection to the, to the NYSC. , Like, I don’t know if, if. That really means anything. It’s just a matter of do you, does the market offer you an opportunity to get the capital you need? If you’re a Chinese company, do you really need that type of access to capital when you have the government, um, backing and which, which helps you, um, drive cost down? So a lot of times we’ll see people tout, you know, the, the cost of a Chinese EV at 35,000 or 30,000 to an American design car. At least that’s much higher. I don’t know if that’s. Truly an apples to apples comparison for a variety of reasons. And then where is, you know, what markets are, are actually gonna en be enabled to, uh, to have those cars on the road. Certainly not in the us. , You know, Europe might be a little bit more accepting. We’ll see how that, how the trade wars continue over time and and how that plays. 

Grayson Brulte: Yeah, the, The The thing is it’s very hard to get verified data. A lot of it is opaque and we can’t get verified data. And I’m gonna give you some data here from Baidu in their Apollo Go program. And I’m not saying this is verified ’cause we have not verified this. All I will read you this data was off an X tweet on the official Baidu account. To date, Baidu has completed 14 million rides in 16 cities globally and they have driven over 124 million miles autonomously. That’s compared to Waymo’s, a hundred million miles. Walt, is this marketing speak? Is this hype? What do you make of these numbers that Baidu putting out there? ‘Cause it got the attention of Bill Gurley. 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, I think those numbers are, are great and I’m sure, um, Baidu has done a lot of miles, whether it’s 124 or a hundred, I don’t know if there’s a material difference. The only thing that matters to me is I get in that Waymo and it works on the roads that I’m familiar with. And yeah, the difference is the price of the car. Like I just said, I think apples to apples, 1 75 to 35 is, there’s probably some factors at play there given where, where you know it’s coming from and where it’s getting manufactured and where there’s a drive to get market share, purchased. Market share. Um, and then I would also layer on top of that is like Waymo’s effectively still a science project they’re putting. Sensors on top of purchased cars. It’s not a fully integrated production car, and the 1 75 is just kind of a ridiculous number to reference. It’s, that’s gonna be under a hundred thousand I think, pretty quickly when you get to production, whether it gets to 35 or not, we’ll see. I don’t know if it needs to get to 75 or excuse me to, to 35 in order for there to be good business models. For the Rideshare business, um, let alone private ownership. In fact, I know it doesn’t need to get to 35 for those models to work. So if you need to get to 35 in China, great. , And you know, it’s getting paid for somewhere else there though, and likely, and, you know, there’s a different economic and market in China. As always. 

Grayson Brulte: It’s always, and those vehicles are being exported to Europe and they’re gonna run the Uber network and I wanna experience it. Perhaps at some point we take another Autonomy Markets field trip to Europe and experience these Chinese AVS firsthand. 

Walter Piecyk: Absolutely put it, put it on the docket. It’s gonna be a busy 25 and 26. 

Grayson Brulte: We’ve got lots of content coming for you, and I wanna stay on the international theme here. One of the markets that I’ve been talking a lot for years, actually on The Road to Autonomy, and you’ve, uh, you and I have highlighted quite a bit here, is the Japanese market with the aging population, the government’s willingness to embrace autonomy. This week we got confirmation from the Japanese government that Tesla has begun testing FSD supervised. With employees. That’s a big step. What do you make of Tesla’s expansion into the Japanese market, and could this be a precursor potentially to robotaxi in Tokyo? 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, I think it’s great whenever we hear any incremental data point on FSD in additional markets and we don’t hear anything in terms of an incident that happened in Austin over the past week, and here we are. How many weeks in? I’m sorry to be repetitive to our longer time listeners, but it, it, you know, it bears pointing out that, you know, we got a lot of negative feedback. I can’t believe they’re launching this, is this, that, and the other thing. The whole thing should be shut down for this. And here we are. Another week has passed. So, and then we talked last week, I think, about California. Why, why, why deal with California when you have other markets? So it’s good whether you know it’s Japan, I’d rather obviously see. , More markets in the US but Tesla to your point, is a global company, so it’s great. Um, and I think, yeah, that’s a hundred percent, uh, a positive sign. Um, but we still want the ODM and, and Austin to be increased more cars to get down, down there. But it’s earlier, like September. I know that there’s expectation that you’re gonna have, you know, more riders being able to, to get in there. And I think probably soon thereafter, we’ll see that, um, observer, hopefully get pulled out of the car. 

Grayson Brulte: I just wanna give some data here for the audience in Japan before we get back to Austin. Just for the audience knows, there’s 30,000 registered Teslas in Japan, and from a regulatory standpoint, Tesla has to receive. A permit for the Ministry of Land Infrastructure, transport and Tourism. And what that permit does is that permit validates that the vehicles are safe. So that’s a really good public sign there. Getting back to Austin, I’m gonna ask you for prediction here. So you and I experienced the, the Model Y great car. I wish it was the Y. That would’ve been even cooler. More room for our stuff. When do you think, and a prediction here, well, the Cybercab begin taking, paying passengers in Austin. 

Walter Piecyk: There hasn’t been a lot of chatter about the Cybercab, so I don’t think, I have no expectation there. I have no idea where we’re at with the Cybercab. I think to your, to what you said, I’m a larger person, so I prefer the larger cars, and when, when I see the the YXL, you know, in this country. Maybe at some point we get that cyber truck line converted with a, you know, a spacious SUV type of, of vehicle on top of, you know, whatever drivetrain or whatever you would call it, that, that exists on that man manufacturing line, um, for the cyber truck. So I prefer to go bigger, um, than smaller, but I don’t know, maybe in the upcoming earnings call we’ll hear more about timing on their next earnings call.

Grayson Brulte: Well hear more. You and I will always continue to follow the market each and every week and break ’em down for our audience every Saturday at 10:00 AM as we the last two weeks of the summer here. What do we need to look for next week in the economy markets? 

Walter Piecyk: Nothing, Grayson, there is nothing on the docket. It’s the last week of August before Labor Day. We got a lot of things teed up for September. Let’s just hope that something happens in the markets for us to chat about. But you definitely hear us. You will see us here to next week. Either way. 

Grayson Brulte: Either way, and something tells me that we will have some news because that’s always what happens in the Autonomy Markets. The Autonomy Markets are growing, and Walt and I are here each and every week to cover it for you. The future is bright. The future autonomous. The future is Autonomy Markets. Walt,, until next week. 

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered