Transcript: Tesla’s FSD Robotaxi Launch Preview, Waymo’s AI and Ownership Vision, Aurora Stumbles as Autonomous Trucking Heats Up

Executive Summary

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson and Walt discuss the latest developments in the autonomy race, starting with a preview of Tesla’s highly anticipated FSD robotaxi launch in Austin. They discuss the cautious, measured rollout strategy, the impressive new Model Y, and how Tesla plans to manage its network. Then, they turn to Waymo, which is expanding its service area and pushing a vision of private ownership and AI, while re-emphasizing its commitment to lidar. Finally, they analyze a significant stumble for Aurora, as partner PACCAR forces them to put drivers back in their trucks, raising questions about the future of autonomous trucking.

Key Topics & Timestamps

[00:57] First impressions of Tesla’s New Model Y and FSD Version 13 

Walt shares his positive experience with the new Model Y, highlighting its greatly improved suspension, comfort, and quietness, and notes that FSD 13 feels equivalent or better than Waymo in some respects.

[03:30] Expectations for Tesla’s Robotaxi launch in Austin 

Grayson and Walt discuss that the launch will likely happen later in June, not on June 1st, and will start in a limited, geofenced area to ensure safety, contrary to speculation about a wide release.

[06:20] How Tesla’s initial launch compares to Waymo’s “Trusted Tester” Program 

The launch strategy, which uses a closed group of initial riders, is defended as being the exact same approach Waymo used with its “Trusted Tester” and “Early Rider” programs.

[08:50] The “Airbnb model” for Robotaxis and the Plumbing of the Network (Cleaning, Charging)

Tesla is expected to own the service layer for its robotaxi network, using its existing Supercharger locations as hubs for cleaning and recharging vehicles, giving it an advantage over competitors.

[13:30] Waymo’s Recent Expansion Approval and 10 Million Paid Rides Milestone

Waymo received approval from the CPUC to expand its service area to almost all of San Jose and announced it has surpassed 10 million paid rides, signaling it is becoming a real business.

[15:45] Waymo Doubles down on LiDAR, Contrasting with Tesla’s Vision-Only Approach 

During a presentation at Google I/O, Waymo reemphasized the importance of lidar for safety, showing demonstrations of its ability to see pedestrians in conditions where cameras might fail.

[20:25] The Complex “Frenemy” Relationship between Waymo and Uber 

While Waymo and Uber are currently good partners, their long-term relationship is uncertain; Uber prefers short-term, one-year deals to reassess the economics as the market evolves.

[25:20] How Tesla’s FSD Licensing Strategy Creates an Opportunity for Nuro

Tesla’s likely “hands-off” approach to licensing FSD to other OEMs essentially giving them a book and telling them to build it themselves could make Nuro’s more collaborative, partnership-based model more appealing to automakers.

[27:50] Aurora’s Major Setback: PACCAR Forces Drivers Back into Trucks 

Following its driver-out commercial launch,Aurora had to put safety drivers back in its trucks at the demand of its partner, Paccar, in what is described as an “unfortunate situation”.

[37:25] The Push for a National US Autonomous Vehicle Framework

High-level discussions involving Elon Musk and Secretary Duffy signal a strong push for a national AV framework by the end of 2025 to champion homegrown AV companies and usher in the “autonomy economy”.

[37:50] A Pony.ai Robotaxi Catches Fire in Beijing, Highlighting China’s challenges 

A fully autonomous Pony.ai vehicle caught fire in Beijing due to a “system malfunction,” representing a notable setback for China’s robotaxi industry.

Watch the Full Episode of Autonomy Markets

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: This week you headed out to Silicon Valley. I stayed behind to work on policy to ensure that America can always lead on autonomy ushering the autonomy economy, and hopefully we can get an autonomous vehicle framework by the end of the year. Elon goes on CNBC talks about robotaxis, the hypes building. Secretary Duffy joined him a giga this week talking about robotaxis, and most importantly for me and you, they talked about a national framework. And then the China Bulls, they got a dose of reality this week in Beijing. A pony AI car blew up, caught on fire on the roads. The Chinese government, the heavy totalitarian government, they put a kibosh to it. But Walt, let’s start with your trip to the valley. What did you learn? What did you learn?

Walter Piecyk: First of all, I think the improvements in San Francisco in terms of the cleanliness under the mayor is, is notable. So congrats there with the, the city look great, look great in general. And the optimism there and, and, and I’ve said this over many episodes of our podcast, just, you know, these are the smartest people. Um, you know, in our society that are, that are pursuing this problem. So it was a very encouraging, a very encouraging trip to be sure. know, let’s start, I think with, with Tesla, uh, I had an opportunity to ride the new model Y and before we get into the autonomy for anyone considering car purchases out there, I own a current model y. This one is so much better in terms of the suspension. The comfort, the quietness. I know we’ve probably heard this from other people, um, you know, on the internet thus far. But just my personal experience is just, it’s a great car. Um, in terms of the new car, the, the FSD, this is my first opportunity to be an FSD 13 dot, I think it was two six, maybe. I mean, it was equivalent, I think in some people’s experience. Perhaps better than what Waymo felt with, I understand that people will note that it’s not necessarily about how it feels, but you know, does it, it, does it maintain your safety as I think you’ve kind of highlighted on, on past episodes and, and, and we can get into that, but it was certainly, I think a very positive experience and I think I learned. more about what we can expect in the upcoming launch that maybe can dispel some of the, you know, the, the incorrect speculation that might be out there.

Grayson Brulte: Before we dive into autonomy as a, as a Tesla owner, I got a pet peeve with a new model y. The column blinker. I don’t like it. I liked it on the steering wheel. Did you get used to that?

Walter Piecyk: it was, it’s, it takes a transition in terms of how you’re controlling the car to be sure. I. but given that the autonomy starts from a park position, I think just how we’re gonna integrate or inter interface with our cars is, is, is gonna change going forward. And like many things, just like people replicated the large screen in the car and you see that all over the place, I’m guessing you’re gonna see others replicate what you’re seeing in the model Y. It was a great car. The biggest thing for me is, you know, I’ve always complained about the suspension. I was in the backseat, I was in the front seat, but the backseat is the more notable thing. I mean, it just felt smooth compared to getting rattled in in my existing model Y

Grayson Brulte: FS D is getting very smooth. I use it every day, frankly. I love it. June’s. Eight days away. What are you expecting for the initial launch of robotaxi in Austin.

Walter Piecyk: June is eight days away. It’s also what, 38 days? You know? Until the end of June. Until July 1st. So I think I. There’s a bit of over focus on this June 1st date, and I’ve never had a company refer to any type of launch date and someone expects something to happen on June 1st, and I certainly don’t expect, something to happen on Jo June 1st. Nor should anyone, I believe, speculate that in fact, we just had Aurora, we, we went through the entire month before they actually announced something, the day after the last month. and then in terms of what to expect. You know, I think I’m Elon has talked about in terms of there are people testing in that market in broad areas, but when you first launch, you’re gonna launch in an area that is a subset of that larger area, which makes sense. That’s ’cause there is this, I think, culture of safety and that’s one of the biggest, I think, misperceptions about this company. that this perception that they have just, you know, they throw safety to the wind. There is a culture safety, so clearly you’re gonna focus on a portion of that footprint where you know the car is performing well based on the tests that are going on today.

Grayson Brulte: Let’s harp on the culture of safety. If you look at all of the crash rating. So Tesla vehicles are the safest vehicles on the road, and the individuals say that they don’t have a culture safety. It’s reckless ’cause there’s public data to back it up there. And FSD and multiple times has saved multiple lives. It has been proven to be safe. So sorry to the, the, the Tesla Haters app. It’s been proven to be safe. So we heard this week, Mr. Musk confirmed to David Faber on CNBC initial launch will be in a limited ODD 10 to 12 vehicles. We also have a little segment there. They’re currently testing them. Now. Drive route with no passenger limited ODD. How do you see this ODD in the vehicles ramping up over time?

Walter Piecyk: Well, first of all, I don’t, I don’t know if they’re driver out on the testing. I didn’t catch if. On said that, I don’t think that that’s the case. But when they, when they do launch, I think at some point in, uh, later in June, you know, with this, you know, kind of subset footprint, um, and with some of these, these paying customers, then, you know, I think we’ll get some early signal. I think some people that are always gonna have the bias of anti Elon and Tesla are gonna criticize that. It’s not gonna be open where anyone can just log into the app and do it. But I think. In the context of within the last few months, people burning Teslas you know, vandalizing Teslas across the country. It would be absurd for this company to move forward and just let it open on day one at the, at the very start of when there’s so much focus on what’s going on. will be external people, they will be paying, in my opinion, and I think we will get signal, and I think certainly there’ll be an opportunity, hopefully, to get to, to Austin, soon, to test it ourselves and see driver out and, and see how this, how this is, is performing. Certainly if it feels like the why that I was in, you know, just this past week, the experience, you know, should be a positive one. Now the question is like, can they deliver this service safely? And then how does it expand from there? What, what do you, what’s your guess on, on how big that initial service area is gonna be?

Grayson Brulte: My guess on the initial service area would be from Giga, probably to the Austin Bergham Airport in that area. Initially, I’d say for the first week or two weeks. Then slowly. And on a mile, half mile, two miles, three miles. And Tesla’s gonna take a, a very cautious approach to scaling and to the individuals that say, oh, it’s gonna be close. It’s gonna be close. I wanna point something out to you. When Waymo launches a new market, initially, there’s a thing called the trusted tester. Then there was a thing called Early Rider. Explain to me, write to me what is the difference between what Tesla’s doing and what Waymo’s done. It’s the exact same thing. So let’s get that there. For the record.

Walter Piecyk: And, and obviously even in Silicon Valley today. You’d have to get a Waymo code in order to get activated to use Waymo service in that market for, for a company that everyone thinks is, has fully solved, um, autonomy. I think as the company progresses, if things go well, they expand again. My guess would be by the end of the year, the coverage area of what Tesla will provide in Austin with more cars would probably be equal, if not larger than what Waymo is delivering in in Austin. And then from there, Grayson. definitely, well, I don’t wanna say definitely it is, nothing’s, there’s never anything certain in this world, right? It’s unlikely that, as some uber bulls have described, that you’re just gonna flip a switch and everyone that has hardware for and up, um, is gonna have autonomy wherever they live. This, this, again, there is a culture of safety at this company, there will be markets that are similar. There could be clusters of markets. That launch at the same time. But the dynamics in New York are very different than Austin, which are very different than San Francisco, which are very different than Chicago. And I think see a measured approach in terms of how these products are launched. And then you can obviously add lots of cars because if in those markets someone has, you know, level four, or excuse me, hardware for, then you can have, you know, a rapid expansion and they can quickly catch up in terms of the number of cars relative to Waymo. Um, that are in the market, but I think that’s how you should expect, this FSD to kind of roll out, roll forward.

Grayson Brulte: They’re doing it right. You get some. Of these maniacs there, they’re gonna turn a switch hunt overnight and then the whole world’s gonna do it. No, they’re going market by market. Mr. Musk has clearly stated Los Angeles, San Francisco are the next markets those are gonna come. And he has clearly spoken about if you wanna call the Airbnb model where you put your vehicle out, it’ll cover your lease payment, your insurance, your, your charging. We talk a lot about the infrastructure. You wanna use the term go into your world Telco Corner plumbing. How do you see these vehicles getting cleaned? How do you see them getting managed? ’cause if I put my Tesla on the network. I don’t want to have it come back with puke or a McDonald’s bag. Uh, how do you see the plumbing working?

Walter Piecyk: You’re right. And I think, and we have been early on this and there has been subsequent dialogue. I think more people are catching onto this as an opportunity. As we all know, Uber and Waymo are using third parties, uh, to do this maintenance. I. In Tesla’s case like, and, and again, when we look at some of those third parties, I’ll give an example. Terawatt, you talked to Terawatt, who is a Waymo partner. Like the primary issue for them is finding power and getting power to a location. We’ve addressed this on past podcasts. What does Tesla do best? Like the supercharging network is far surpasses anyone in the market. So now you’re just effectively layering in, in, in many cases some cleaning capability. So the way this will work is Tesla will own that service layer and in the future when you privately own your Tesla and you send it out for, you know, to get some revenue for that per privately owned Tesla that you own, will stop in a Tesla service center and be cleaned, potentially refueled if you want it reow recharged before it returns to your home or whatever location, uh, that you may have. So that is the solution and frankly. It’s not like Tesla’s starting from ground zero here. If anything, they’re a step ahead of, you know, where Waymo exists today in terms of the locations that they have with, with, uh, their charger network.

Grayson Brulte: you know what else Tesla has? Robots. Which allows them to scale the cleaning. We saw the robot for the, the cyber cab, the cleaning. They can easily invent and build a robot to clean the Y’s. The three is the X’s that are gonna go on the network. They, they have the ability to scale as the Tesla network. The robot botax network really scales up, gets to, uh, let’s call a pretty dense environment. Lots of vehicles on the road. How big of a competitive threat does that really become to Uber?

Walter Piecyk: we’ll have to see how that plays out. But I think one component to think about here, is I just do not believe that. Tesla has any interest in allowing their cars in robo Taxii mode to plug into the Uber network. So that is just not gonna happen. Now, you could all listen to a podcast that Dara, uh, just did on a decoder where he was asked about this. And Dara’s, argument is, look in the future when you’re, when you, and, and Dara believes this now, right? Private, privately owned autonomous cars will be plugged in. Or be available for a Robax network. And he is like, you know, if there’s a Toyota from a deal that Waymo’s dealing with Toyota or maybe Nuro deals, you know, has a deal with another OEM, you know you’re gonna leverage it more in our network. ’cause we’re generating so much demand. His point is that if you’re owning a Tesla, the value of that Tesla may be lower because you can only plug it into the, to the Tesla network and not our network where you can get many more rides. I get that argument, and maybe that pressures Tesla in the future to cut a deal with, with Uber, in Tesla’s viewpoint, within the, the low cost of their cars and the broad potential volume that that’s out there, maybe Tesla is gonna be generating enough demand on their own and there’s never gonna be need to plug into an existing ride share partner.

Grayson Brulte: Tesla’s going to drive the demand point blank. The Model Y is the best selling vehicle in the world. In that same interview, Dara also said there’s 150,000 Teslas on the Uber network and on the Lyft side of the house. We don’t how many vehicles are on that network. Drivers are freaking out, flipping out. The model Y is no longer listed as a Comfort Plus vehicle. So it’s a lot easier to make it autonomous and put it over there. So the, the actions that are happening, Tesla’s gonna be able to drive the demand. And let’s not forget the most important aspect of this. Tesla’s a brand, I, I relate them and they have fans you can call. It’s very similar to the Grateful Dead. These individuals will follow them all over the country, all over the world, go to store openings, that’s gonna drive demand. Just like when Jerry would get up there with the band, they’d have 60, 70,000 people there. It drives demand.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, the counter argument to that is that brand also evokes hatred, um, in many cases. Although I will say that I believe that if you just go back to auto sales for this company, that sounds like it’s more of an issue in Europe and now that kind of Elon has returned to Tesla, there’s not as much noise around Doge that some of that kind of, that noise level is reducing. more importantly, like the Y, especially the new one is just a great car and you know, at a reasonable price. And soon if they deliver this. autonomy. Another reason that you should buy that versus other potential cars on the market. Someone cuts a deal with, you know, Tesla or, or, uh, Nuro or someone else. Today, it’s gonna take multiple years before you get that level of autonomy in a car versus getting it effectively today in the, in the car that you’re, that you’re purchasing today.

Grayson Brulte: I’ll give you another reason why you should buy a Tesla. As a Tesla owner, maintenance costs are zero compared to an internal combustion engine, which would cost you thousands of dollars a year to operate. But what we are seeing now. The robo Taxii market is clearly now two leading players. Tesla, with this coming launch in Waymo this week, Waymo had a big week. They got approved from the California Public Utilities Commission, commonly known as the CPUC, where they can now expand down to almost all of San Jose in the South Bay. It’s coming closer. They’re getting closer to airports. Do you think with this expansion, the next unlock could be the San Jose airport? ’cause a little less politics than with SFO.

Walter Piecyk: on my trip to San Francisco. I saw a Waymo on the 1 0 1. and you know, I guess in the meetings that we had and, and talking to a bunch of people, um, there is obviously driver testing and, and driver out testing, I believe on those highways. I still think what we covered last week, the issue is, is, is supply. If you have a bunch of cars in San Francisco and you send them on the 1 0 1 headed down to the valley, like you may have a supply issue where it impacts your service in San Francisco. So I think the gating factor at this point, other than the regulatory and getting, you know, places to, to pick up and drop off, is just the number of cars that they have available in those cities.

Grayson Brulte: There’s drone footage from the Mesa, Arizona factory, the Maga’s building for them, drone footage on on Reddit. 1800 vehicles were kind, they’re getting ready to outfit, so more vehicles are coming. Also this week, major milestone for Waymo, they’ve announced they surpassed 10 million paid rides or repeat 10 million paid rides. It’s becoming a business.

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, and, and Dmitri, um, gave a presentation at, at google io. They really played up, I think ai, this stuff, they even refer back to presentation, or excuse me, that white paper that we discussed on Autonomy Markets podcast. Right. That was not talked about that much at the time. Great job, Grayson finding it, highlighting it. It was brought up in this presentation and this kind of shift to, I think, the role that AI has. And that just shows, I think, you know, what happens in terms of, uh, development. Overall, definitely emphasize private ownership is in the future. It’s not just them building their cars, but enabling OEMs, whether it’s Toyota or others. so you know, private ownership, which is something that you’ve been calling for in the earliest episodes of autonomy markets, seems like it’s still part of the plan. If not, moving to the forefront.

Grayson Brulte: It’s moving to the forefront because of the, the pending launch of Robax, and I own a Tesla. You own a Tesla way most realizing the market’s shifting. Elon called it right again, and they’re going to have to move towards private ownership. On the Emma front, if they go to a vision only system, what Sebastian Thoran spoke about last year at the Applied Intuition Conference in Silicon Valley that they want to do it was Elon Wright. Again, it’s all this, this all seems like it’s coming full circle here.

Walter Piecyk: There was no indication that they would go to vision only that that was clear. I mean, in, in fact, it was the opposite, that they were playing up the importance of lidar. There was demonstrations showed about like a child behind a truck and how Lidar was actually it was, it was. You were in the, they were in the fog, in the rain. You could see in the camera. This truck but didn’t see. And then they say, here’s what it looks like with, with lidar. And there would be a person that would, that would show up on the screen. So if anything, they’re reemphasizing. And I think trying to point that out an area of differentiation for the tech media, to, to, you know, keep going with this like concept that Tesla can’t get there ’cause they’re camera only.

Grayson Brulte: to kra. The CO CEO of Waymo went on CNBC and said, Teslas can’t drive at night. You need lidar. That’s factually incorrect. Anybody that owns an FSD has used it at night and and knows it works. The question that I would love answered, which we do not have any information, how much has Waymo spent on inventing their lidar, the proprietary LIDAR system? I like to know that. Is that why they’re defending this? Because of the potentially billions they sunk into building this system? Because if you look at the public markets outside of Hesai, outside of Ouster, the LIDAR market’s collapsing.

Walter Piecyk: I’m not gonna say the LIDAR market’s collapsing, but I will pivot quickly, and I know we’re gonna get to this later, but we had a great meaning at Nuro the tech stack or the, or the hardware, the package that Nuro needs to put on a, a car lot less expensive. It, and it has, you know, steady state lidar as a part of their solution. So. Nuro would, would also agree with the Waymo’s of the world, that you need lidar and that that Tesla’s approach without lidar is, is doomed to failure. not that I agree with that, but that’s, that, that is their view. You know, Nuro is somewhere in between where we don’t need the most expensive or, or all these different, you know, versions of self-designed, lidar that, that you can use a steady state and get a much cheaper technology stack.

Grayson Brulte: If you look at media, there’s, there’s, there’s eight K, 4K, hd sd. Perhaps that’s how this evolves, depending on, on what resolution you want at the end of the day.

Walter Piecyk: I’m sure there’s a variety of approaches and for a long time, listeners, you know, I, I just, I’m cognizant of the fact that when someone insists that a certain approach doesn’t work, I. my radar goes up, and we’re open to different technology approach, especially in an era of ai where things are, are moving very quickly. Even in this Waymo presentation, they were talking about simulations as a part of training, um, their autonomy system. And the value of simulations. Again, simulations were, I was, people were telling me like, oh God, you know, they’re used to, you only need, you know, the guy that wins is, has the most actual miles on the road. And, and now even Waymo is, is, you know, again, Waymo’s talking about the combination of real world as well as simulations, but again, expressing the value of simulations in, in developing that technology.

Grayson Brulte: There’s different technology approaches to building autonomy and scaling. Autonomy is also different deployment strategies. There’s the own, your own network with Waymo One, there’s the partner with Uber Strategy into another, and then there’s the person own, which we see that Waymo’s very publicly talking to a Toyota. But let’s start with Uber ’cause there’s this debate goes on. Waymo needs Uber. Uber needs Waymo.

Walter Piecyk: Dara said they’re frenemies, but yet they’re friends. Where do you see this going? I think right now they view them as a very good partner in the, in the near term, but I just don’t think that over the longer term. That decision has been made. you know, and who knows how private ownership impacts that one way or another. So, you know, I think we will see how that evolves. I think investors are gonna be very focused on every new market that gets announced. You know, will that be a Waymo one? Will it be Uber? There seems to be this view that all future markets will be with Uber. I think you probably shouldn’t expect that. And then there’s Lyft out there, like, where is Lyft? You know, and when does their, um, partnership get announced? And if they don’t have one. And Waymo announces multiple new markets and Lyft is not included. When do investors really start get to get concern of kind of where Lyft is with the leading technology provider of autonomy today? Waymo.

Grayson Brulte: Where’s Waldo or, or where’s Lyft? That really raises the question. Now I wanna stay in this, in this Uber thing for a minute. If you look at Tesla with the Robax, they have the software, you’re gonna be able to operate and ha a robax. You’ll be able to put your own vehicle all using the Tesla Robax app. Waymo one in theory could add personally owned, which goes back to why the heck would Waymo need Uber? Darl sit here and tell you? Demand, demand, demand. But why?

Walter Piecyk: I mean, Uber would claim it’s just the demand. of it, right? And that, especially if it’s a privately owned driver powering a Toyota or whatever OEMs that they have, that if that customer wants to not just use it for themselves, but you know, generate some money out of it, that Uber’s generating the most demand for them. So that’s theoretically the argument. But that’s, you know, we’re probably at least five years away from scale private ownership of a lot of these cars.

Grayson Brulte: Any insights or speculation to how long these Waymo Uber deals last in these two markets? Are they multi-year?

Walter Piecyk: It’s hard to know. But again, going back to what Dara said on a podcast this week, I think he talked about like, look, let’s get the, let’s get the markets established. Let’s do one year deals, and if we have to review to see who’s gonna get the economics, we’ll do that in the future. So it sound, I have no idea, but it sounds to me like Uber prefers to have short term deals.

Grayson Brulte: Maybe the way that Uber wins, which we’ve talked about on several podcasts, is fragmentation, consumer choice. Consumer could put the vehicles on there. It’ll box out Waymo. So if you buy it or you license it, you can put it on the Uber network. Uber’s gonna get their products, they’re gonna get their vehicles. Could that work?

Walter Piecyk: mean, for Waymo, that’s probably true because you know, Google is under such scrutiny by regulators for them to limit a privately owned Waymo driven. Third party car to just the Waymo One network would be difficult. Tesla’s a different beast though, and Tesla has no, you know, no interest, I think in allowing their auto-driven cars to be in, uh, the Uber network. And furthermore, from a Okay. Then you say, well, what about licensing it? And if someone licensed FSD, uh, to an OEM and then that OEM would then allow. That car to be put into the Uber network? No. If, if, if, if Tesla does license to an OEM, they will also have that same restriction where they will not permit that to be put into the Uber or Lyft network. And secondly, in terms of this licensing, I know that Elon talks about it and they’re talking to OEMs and they’re certainly desperation on the OEMs, um, standpoint, or there should be shortly to have some type of autonomy strategy. But I think what licensing looks like from Tesla is more of like. Hey, here’s what we did. Here are the specification. Here’s the book on how you do FSD. Now go and do it. And I, I think that’s a, that is a very fearful position for an OEM to enter, as opposed to, let’s say, Nuro who’s gonna work with you as, as the OEM or May Mobility, who’s gonna have cross engineers and develop a combined, you know, roadmap to integration. Tesla’s not gonna do that. They’re gonna, here it is. Go do it. It’s on you. And when you do it, you still can’t plug those cars into, into Uber’s network. So as a result, like I’m not sure that OEMs today are at that point to cut those deals. I could be wrong. Again, I noted the desperation. but if you wanted a, a Tesla operated car that’s probably gonna take an OEM three, four years given how slow they move, um, to deliver something like that into the market. So. That does not seem like something that’s appealing to an OOEM to move forward. We’ll see.

Grayson Brulte: Three to four years, try seven. And if that does move forward, so you have 150,000 vehicles technically removed from the Uber network. You visited with Dave Ferguson at Neuro this week when you were in the Valley and Nuro has openly pivoted to a licensing model. Andrew Chapin has been on The Road to Autonomy podcast. Spoke about it in depth. They announced three new testing markets with Dallas, Miami and San Diego. Could this Tesla, what you’re discussing, potentially accelerate what Nuro’s plans for an OEM deal?

Walter Piecyk: I just described how challenging it might be for an OEM to take on that Tesla book. That creates an opportunity for Nuro, for May mobility, for others, even maybe Aurora, if they get their technology properly. and look, I met with Dave Ferguson, first time I had previously met with JZ a couple of times. I think he’s a great founder. it’s compelling, right, because the technology is a lot cheaper. And then if you’re an OEM, you can fully own that and integrate that into your product. For Nuro, it’s great. You’re a fully licensed model. It’s gonna rely on, I think, you know, uh, a ride share company or others to try and step in with the dollars. But I think given the dollars that are getting thrown around by, by Uber, I mean they’ve put a hundred million in, into We Ride. that doing, helping this develop, which has been part of Dara’s strategy, um, and putting some of those cars on the road or, or maybe same thing with Lyft or whoever. You know, it makes a lot of sense. I think that’s, that’s good. And I think, you know, we’ll see how Nuro progresses. They’ve certainly, I think, have taken the right, the right approach. I think good things are coming.

Grayson Brulte: I would say definitely good things are coming. Any insights on to when we might get a public announcement of the. OEM deal

Walter Piecyk: no insights there. but again, I think, you know, this pivot and, and the state of the technology today, the cost of the technology. and again, what’s going on at Waymo and, and Tesla, I think, you know, queue them up for, you know, for something in 2025. For sure.

Grayson Brulte: and what this does, we’ve talked about it a lot. This validates Wayve’s strategy. It really truly does.

Walter Piecyk: I had a lunch with a industry contact in, I forget what town it was, but I mean, I saw like multiple, going by. I mean, they’re active in the market. Um, adding miles, um, to their program.

Grayson Brulte: They’re active adding miles to the program and to our listeners and viewers, we, last week, Walt and I recorded before the big news broke. Aurora, they’d had the great head fake. They had driver route commercial. We applauded it. It was well done. And then lo and behold, a demand PACCAR car and a Mar and a May 19th blog post we confirmed from Chris Urmson posted publicly they had to put a driver back in. They’re still gathering miles, but they’re not fully driverless. There’s a safety driver back in. Walt,, what the heck do you think happened?

Walter Piecyk: it’s kind of wild. And, and I’m guessing that Paccar has been pretty public in general about their, focus on safety. Um. That’s definitely an unfortunate situation and I, I think then puts more focus on Volvo. challenge of Volvo is like, when I look at LinkedIn and, and just talking to people like, it sounds like there’s job cuts at Volvo within this space specifically, whether it’s, um, innovation labs or autonomy. So I’m wondering, not that this, you know, stops them from moving forward, but like if you’re losing people. That are focused on, on adding autonomy to the Volvo trucks that can’t help at a time when your first partner, at least Paccar, is basically forcing you to put the, the driver back in the seat.

Grayson Brulte: Paccar has forced him to put it back in and we, we had that there in the blog post. The other interesting telling sign for me is when Uber announced drive route, no press release, no public statement from Paccar congratulating him. I’ll go even further. No LinkedIn post ’cause Paccar does not have annexed, no statement. Crickets. It tells me that the relationship is strained. How long do you think PACCAR could go from not allowing them to go back to driver out?

Walter Piecyk: I don’t have enough relationship with these companies, but I do, the more I learn. About OEMs, especially in the trucking space. bit set in their ways, perhaps so. I don’t know. I mean, Kodiak has been successful in moving forward with Atlas on PACCAR trucks, so I don’t want to say it’s, it’s impossible. I think to your point, I think we have a great respect for the Aurora technology team, although you have to mention that there’s been turnover at the top. and that was what we did cover on last week, episode Sterling Anderson. Leaving to go to go to gm. And then on, on top of that, there’s, there’s obviously gonna be more pressure like going back to Google io. still has Class eight on the roadmap. Is it gonna be that long before something gets announced in, in class eight from Waymo? You have Kodiak, which is, you know, they, they get shied for not being on a highway. Okay? So then what happens when they cut a deal, not an announcement. But when they cut a deal for someone on the highway, how is that perceived then? so, and even plus, I mean, I, unfortunately, I had a conflict. I couldn’t make it down, but some of my acquaintances, uh, went down to plus, tried to have their technology, had a very positive experience a truck, and a good meeting with management team. Again, all these guys have a different type of approach. They’re a little bit more OEM focused than let’s say Kodiak is. But, you know, there’s a lot of. Potential noise that can exist in the market at a time when you know your primary truck is now how the has a driver sitting in the driver’s seat.

Grayson Brulte: The interesting part of that, and I’m gonna get into the weeds here in the statement that Mr. Urmson made in that blog post he said. Some rides had an observer in the back seat. Elon’s definition that’s supervised, that’s not unsupervised. Why was that not disclosed to the market when they announced this to me? That’s material.

Walter Piecyk: They did announce that Chris was in, in the backseat for those cars. I don’t know if he was determined and as, as an observer, wanna say this is kind of a good pivot. Not to like go back to Waymo and Tesla, but it’s definitely top of mind. Things evolve over time. Like when, when you think about Waymo’s safety driver, we know that historically there was a guy that drew a line when it got, you know, in a, in a, in a tough situation. I think with the way it currently works, Waymo driver is that you can be driving along the road, the car notices that something’s coming up. It goes to the safety driver sitting in that market and says, what should I do? And there’s a click down menu. And you may have be having interventions from a safety driver in your Waymo ride that you don’t even know about. Now let’s, let’s now move over to Tesla. I think Tesla, initially, you’re probably gonna have someone literally like driving the car and there’ll be a one-to-one ratio. And as that gets discovered, you’re gonna have the haters like point that out. But an evolution, right? Over time gonna evolve and you should be applauding the focus on safety for all of these guys. Whether it’s Aurora having someone in the backseat approach that Waymo has already taken, or where Tesla is starting with in terms of maybe a one-to-one safety driver. And then evolving as they get more comfortable to take, you know, to, to, to take the approach that that way more approaches. of it is evidence of the industry’s focus on safety, and we shouldn’t necessarily try them for it, know, obviously fair to evaluate the technology, but I think that’s, you know, I think it’s a little unfair to, to bash them for saying someone’s in the backseat in the earliest days of the launch.

Grayson Brulte: Disclose it. But with that said, a rollover does have a safety culture. Nat Bus does a fantastic job of building and leading that safety in. Nat, you do a really great job, sir. But Walt, that should have been disclosed. Another thing, why was the blog post released at 2:30 PM Eastern Standard Time when the market was open? Again, going from driver out to driver in to me seems material. It just seems that there’s a series of unforced errors that are unfortunately happening time and time again at Aurora.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, I can’t defend some of the communication. I mean, we’ve talked about this on past episodes, even like going to the last month. Again, we’re, we’re focused on Tesla having this expectation of June 1st and first, like everything’s gonna happen. Meanwhile, Aurora didn’t actually announce route until the month had passed, even though it had occurred, um, the week before that. These are just decisions. That I think companies have to make, and frankly, what the focus should be on now is, is getting to revenue, contracts and path to profitability.

Grayson Brulte: at google io. There were statements from Waymo about the VIA program. This comes months after their CO CEO made another public statement around it. It seems that trucking is becoming top of mind at Waymo. Furthermore, I can confirm that Waymo’s quote unquote, seat in partnership with Daimler still intact. 2027, the dual redundant freight liner. Autonomous chassis coming out. So if Waymo, if they do turn it on, they have a truck, could everything kind of be lining towards 2027 for Waymo? And if they do enter the market, what happens?

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, we’ll see where the market is there, that that is a different market, and I think establishing. Some customer relationships the interim are gonna be positive, um, for companies that can get there. You know, they’re, you, you can’t forget this is still Google, it’s probably still gonna be Google two years ago. So there is some concern about, you know, enabling a large tech company given how it’s, they’ve disrupted other industries, um, which gives some of the new entrants some opportunity. But yeah, it’s obviously, certainly something that to keep your, to keep the eyes, keep your eyes on.

Grayson Brulte: The thing that I’m watching, and as, as this market unfolds, the, the Tesla Waymo, we’ve been going back and forth playing ping pong with Tesla and Waymo. Tesla has the rob, they have the car business, the robo taxi business, the semi, and soon to be semi the autonomous business. Waymo has the robax, soon have the personally owned AV. And perhaps the truck, it just seems that the, the, they’re each growing into each other’s markets to compete. And if they do, those companies could really end up owning, I’ll say 40, even 50% of this market share of autonomy across both trucks and cars if they keep going the way they’re going,

Walter Piecyk: I’ll just relate this to my experience with starlink where a lot of you know it started as well. It’s just gonna be home broadband for someone that lives in the middle of a desert. Remote locations. And then it was like, well, someone suburban can use it and maybe as a backup to broadband, which, which sometimes goes down because of the storms we have here. and then it was like, oh, well then it’s also hitting the ships, and then it’s hitting the RVs, and then it’s hitting the boats. And when you build a good technology with connectivity and you have an existing model. There’s obviously, you know, other models that, or other market opportunities that you can take advantage of. The same holds true for any of these companies. Like if Aurora is successful with their technology, it can then be applied to OEMs on, on the car, on the car front. So sure it will Tesla go to the semis. Yeah, that’s, but that’s a much smaller opportunity for them. But certainly that is a long-term risk to kind of continue to be aware of and yes, in terms of the responsiveness. Waymo went out and announced that they’re talking to Toyota. There’s no agreement, there’s nothing. They’re talking to a company that is as red flag as it gets in terms of feeling market pressure to be able to have to say something about your future plans. Otherwise, why would you possibly announce something that’s not like a full on agreement? Right? So, you know, even though they’re within this larger company, Google well funded. still pressures that they have to show progress in other areas.

Grayson Brulte: they have pressures and they have to, they have to show revenue. You look at pressures. How much pressure do you think the Chinese robo Taxii industry is under? Because it seems to me that Beijing is pushing to export this technology across the globe. And we spoke about on many podcasts, how now they’re, I use the term expanding or invading into Europe. And this week, well, you gotta file under, you can’t make this up a pony. AI robotaxi, no human, they’re fully autonomous in Beijing, blew up. It caught on fire because of a system, quote unquote. Malfunction that was in the police report as reported by Reuters, the system malfunction. How the heck does a robotaxi dis morbidity ity boop, and catch on fire.

Walter Piecyk: It’s not an Autonomy Markets podcast until we hear Grayson say Biddy bo boop. So thank you for that. It came a little late this time. We do get a lot of feedback. on our podcast and, and thanks for all the positive and you know, we’re keeping you up to date with the weekly events. We’re not giving you, um, commentary on stuff that happened three weeks ago. and this did happen this week. And the other feedback we get is talk more about China and some people this belief that like, you know, whatever we talk about is irrelevant ’cause China’s so far ahead. So it was interesting to see, know, a setback. Everyone has setbacks. I’m sure there’s, you know, gonna be continued. developments at Pony and we Ride and Baidu and others. Um, so that’s positive. But the bigger issue here, I think is, is the, the existing trade war. You know, we have a new potential tariff against Apple. you know, getting, getting taxed 25% because they’re not making their phones in the United States. There was some shift to India. It’s an interesting concept because there was an interest, a book that. our listeners who look at Apple and China by Patrick McGee that talks about how Apple has effectively created this ability for China to be very successful as a leading manufacturer across the board. And they’ve taken that really to the detriment, maybe of the United States and other countries. And I think the risk is that they do the same thing in India, which I think is what they’re hopeful, uh, on doing. Um, so I think you know this, I think the, the current administration recognizes these risks. And it’s flexing them on Apple. So the connection here is clear, is if they still recognize these risks and you think there’s gonna be some magic trade deal that Trump’s gonna get up there with what I said in a prior podcast. And, you know, with Zeekr and who’s gonna make, you know, cars in the US and, and everything’s gonna be fine from Waymo, that feels less, less likely from reality.

Grayson Brulte: Waymo may be fully in with Zeekr but Waymo’s fully in trouble. That’s the bottom line. You have a Secretary of Transportation. He says it more than I do about the China threat. Secretary Duffy goes out there and he, he did it this week again with Mr. Musk at Giga talking about the threat of China and why we have to champion homegrown autonomous vehicle companies. In separate interviews, Mr. Duffy talked about a national autonomous vehicle framework. Mr. Musk talked about a national autonomous vehicle framework, and I’m gonna go on the record here while we’re gonna go Prediction corner. I’ll make a prediction by the end of the year. 2025, we will have a framework, not necessarily voted in passed, but the language for an national autonomous vehicle framework will be made public. The public will see that the Trump administration wants to usher in the autonomy economy in America. What do you think

Walter Piecyk: I mean, this is clearly a top priority for Tesla. It benefits, frankly, the entire industry, but now as they get closer to the reality of driver out and and their Robax taxi network. If they didn’t think it was happening for two years, there wouldn’t be this focus, you know, at the company and on the regulatory front. So I think it’s important. Clearly e Eli has a good relationship with the president and the administration, but more importantly, put, let’s put all that aside. It’s good for America, right? You can’t, if you want our technology to advance, not, not notwithstanding the kind of, you know, the shots I took earlier. You know, you have to. Enable these, these technology to be used across, across the country. So yeah, I think, I think that’s, I like that prediction and, and, and given what we see Secretary Duffy doing with, you know, on, on airlines and enabling autonomy like they did for Amazon in terms of, um, delivery, drone delivery, I think that’s probably, , you know, a safe bet.

Grayson Brulte: Autonomy is good for the economy. To our listeners and viewers, sneak Peak, the Council for Economic Resilience, which I chair will be making a very significant announcement public. On Wednesday, there’s big things coming for autonomy in the US economy. Walt, what do we need to look for besides my big announcement on Wednesday in the autonomy markets next week?

Walter Piecyk: Well, Grayson, there’s one company left on my earnings card and it’s Hesai, the LIDAR company. believe it or not. Uh, we have a conference call on Memorial Day. You’re a Chinese company lidars in the US and you do your earnings call on Memorial Day. That is, I think, unforced error of the week.

Grayson Brulte: It’s beyond an unforced error. It’s a clear understanding that you don’t understand the US markets. It’s not good. Memorial Day is a day to respect those have sacrificed the ultimate for America. The future is bright. The future is autonomous. The future is vertical Integration, Walt, until next week.

Key Autonomy Markets Questions Answered