Waymo’s LiDAR Controversy, Tesla’s Mega Merger, and Waabi’s Pivot to Robotaxis

Executive Summary

In this episode of Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s commercial expansion into San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and expansion to downtown San Jose. The discussion also covers Tesla’s strategic pivot away from traditional electric vehicle models (S and X) to focus on Optimus and Robotaxis, alongside Waabi’s $750 million funding round to develop autonomous trucks and taxis.

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered

Key Autonomy Markets Topics & Timestamps

[00:00] Waymo Launches Commercial Service at SFO

Waymo opens public access to rides at San Francisco International Airport, though current pickup locations at the rental car center still require a tram ride.

[03:59] Waymo Expands Service to Downtown San Jose

The service area now connects SFO directly to downtown San Jose, enabling fully autonomous regional trips for travelers.

[05:40] The Santa Monica Incident: Lidar vs. Human Reaction

Analysis of a recent incident where a child ran in front of a Waymo vehicle, sparking a debate on whether Lidar or human reflexes would have performed better.

[15:56] Tesla’s Pivot: Ending Model S/X to Focus on Optimus

Tesla shifts resources away from its legacy Model S and X lines to prioritize the development of the Optimus robot and dedicated autonomous vehicles.

[16:32] Tesla’s 2026 Robotaxi Roadmap (TX, AZ, FL, NV)

A breakdown of Tesla’s plan to launch unsupervised robotaxis in the first half of 2026 across states with favorable regulatory environments.

[22:22] New Sensor Cleaning Tech Spotted on Tesla Robotaxis in Austin

On-the-ground reports from Austin reveal new cleaning jets retrofitted onto the side and rear cameras of Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet.

[30:22] Waabi Raises $750M & Partners with Uber for Robotaxis

Waabi secures massive funding to expand beyond trucking, aiming to deploy 25,000 robotaxis on the Uber network.

[42:45] PlusAI’s Analyst Day & International Trucks Partnership

Insights from the PlusAI Analyst Day, highlighting their strategy to act as a software layer sold directly through OEM partners like International Trucks.

[50:50] Waymo’s London Pilot & Left-Hand Drive Vehicles

Waymo prepares for its UK debut with a launch party in London, utilizing imported US vehicles with left-hand driver configurations.

[52:45] Pony.ai Deploys 3,000 Robotaxis in China

Pony.ai accelerates its global footprint with a new partnership to put 3,000 autonomous vehicles on the road in Beijing.

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Walt, Waymo’s getting ready to launch commercial service at SFO for the public. But down in Santa Monica, they got an incident they’re dealing with and as some of the critics say, LIDAR didn’t bail ’em out. Meanwhile, Tesla is no longer sexy as they shut down the model S and the Model X to make room for optimist. The bot and Uber’s inching closer to possibly rebooting ATG funding Waabi to go and build robotaxis in addition to trucks. There’s a lot to unpack this week and also Mercedes there. So where do you wanna start?

Walter Piecyk: Well, I think we should start with Waymo, the airports. We’ve been waiting for this for a while. It’s not totally new, right? They had the kiss and fly lot that I love to talk to. Now we’re getting, I guess, a little closer to the rental Clark car lot. I don’t not, I don’t know where that is relative to the garage that I am willing to walk to to get Ubers, which I think is a great. Facility there. But you and Rich Greenfield, my partner over at Light, she would prefer what Uber gets if you’re taking a black, which is curbside. So we’re getting closer, but do you know, do you know where the rental car lot is relative to where you get a typical Uber at that, in that garage?

Grayson Brulte: I have to give Rich the honorary clappy hat. The clappy hat’s not coming out today, but I’ll give Rich an honorary clappy hat for that. ’cause he is right. We do want curbside service. Yes. To go to the rental car, which is commonly referred to as the rack. RAC. You have to take a train. That’s right Walt. 10 minutes. Not only do you have to walk, but you have to get on a train and it’s a pain in the, you know what? So you gotta take a train.

Walter Piecyk: at JFK, it’s, it’s kind of a little screwed up right now and one of the terminals that I came into, I had to take a train. It was good ’cause I got past some really bad traffic. Uh, but I. Tend to agree that once you, once you’re asking people to get on any type of train or tram or something like that, versus that I think is a pleasant walk to where the Uber garage is. That’s kind of a, a bridge too far. Give us a little inside baseball, if you can. You’ve dealt in these situations before, like what is it, how do they get from kiss and fly to the rental car lot and what’s it gonna take to get to the, the, where the Uber Lyft garage is? And then ultimately authorization for curbside.

Grayson Brulte: It is gonna take a lot of political maneuvering. It’s gonna take the mayor of San Francisco taking bold action to say this is what we need. ’cause it’s good for the tourism economy of San Francisco. We, if we look back at policy battles, the taxi union, when they were strong, they banned Uber and Lyft from certain parts of the airport. And over time that’s come. It’s going to take a profound lobbying effort on Waymo’s part to be able to overcome that. And then the question is, when, this is the question, when Waymo starts operating in the Uber and Lyft area, if that’s what they do, does that cause more tension between Uber and Lyft and Waymo? Because a lot of those rides will probably go to Waymo. So overall, Walt long-winded way of saying it’s gonna take an increased lobbying effort on Waymo’s part to make it a reality.

Walter Piecyk: Well, I’m actually impressed that in this short period of time, they, they got from Kiss and Fly to rental, so congrats on that. Hopefully it’s a, a similar timeline to getting to the. A lot, and I think, you know, especially in California where these, the people of California, Northern California and that Southern get to experience way more on a daily basis, hopefully there’ll be more pressure on their politicians or bureaucrats, whoever’s making these decisions to get there. And you’re right. You know, the downside is for Uber is these are very valuable trips and I think the potential economic impact to Uber starts to rise when people, you know, start to think about using Waymo for more than just getting around San Francisco, but you know, more of their regional needs. Those are higher value and greater market share opportunities for Waymo in that market.

Grayson Brulte: You know what else happened that wasn’t discussed a lot this week, Waymo expanded the ODD and the Peninsula to go to downtown San Jose. So now you can go from the San Francisco airport to downtown San Jose. So if you and I go out on an autonomy markets mission, or you go out on a business trip, you could take Waymo the entire time. That completely changes your journey and gives you a really great experience.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, that’s awesome. And I think in a short period of time, Waymo has really transformed themselves in California from being just kind of in San Fran to, to more regional. You know, we’re gonna be out there, um, a couple times in the first half of this year. So I’m looking forward to, to, to being able to use these, these Waymo’s, um, in that market, in that expand. And I think maybe we should think about setting up a tracker where we just look at square mileage overall, where Waymo is in the United States as kind of a reflection of, you know, where their footprint is relative to any of their peers in the marketplace. You know, you’ll see like May Mobility or whoever launching in Atlanta will, will show what that looks like in star contrast to where Waymo is today. In terms of that square, not square footage, but square, let’s call it square mileage. And by the way, as, as they expand to London, we’re still gonna use square mileage,

Grayson Brulte: Yes. We’re not, we’re not going on the, on the me in the meter system there,

Walter Piecyk: the, the meter system, the me, the metrics system.

Grayson Brulte: Listen, Walt hooked on phonics obviously didn’t work for me, so I’m sorry about that one. But you, you, you know what would be better? We take the population that lives in those areas and overlay on that map, and then we’ll get a really big understanding of what percentage of the US population Waymo was serving today.

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, for sure. That’ll be interesting. Now, you, you talked about, um, or we both talked about, you know, getting public support for greater pressure in the airports. , The people of Santa Monica don’t seem like they support Waymo too much. We’ve already, we’ve had complaints about their cars beeping because they didn’t have anywhere to park. Uh, or maybe their, their back office was not suitable. We have a new incident this week as far as I can tell. Um, there was a school situation, the Waymo was, was driving approximately 17 miles per hour. That’s what was reported. Um, and, and a child ran out from behind a car. The, the, um, the Waymo slowed to six. I actually, in my car this week drove at 17 miles an hour. It seemed like more than an appropriate speed, you know, in a school type area. So it didn’t seem like that’s a speed that would be too fast for a school zone. Someone can feel free to correct me and say, oh, the appropriate number is 15. But honestly, the difference between 15 and 17, um, not much of a difference in six, like six literally is a number where, again, look at your car if you have a digital readout when you get to six. I’m not even sure most people are getting slower than that before they, they, you know, move out of a stop sign. We’ve talked about this thing. So I think at the end of the day, my guess is this Waymo performed. Um, better than a human. And, and fortunately this child was not, um, you know, seriously injured, which I can’t imagine they would be at six miles an hour, uh, on contact.

Grayson Brulte: And what happened was that this isn’t, this is in the NHTSA report. I just wanna high, this is in the NHTSA report. The child darted out from behind a double parked SUVA Human ME won’t see it. And if you wanna look at the National Safety Council Statistic Database, the percentage of individuals that are distracted on their phone are high. So there is a higher percentage that that individual was w if it was a human, would’ve been going over 17 miles an hour. To put in perspective, the school district where I live for the school zone is 20 miles an hour. And I can tell you they have a cop out there with a radar going every day, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, people ignore it. So there was a high likelihood, in my opinion, and there’s massive amount of data to back it up, that a human would’ve caused a tragedy, potentially, or, or a worse situation than the Waymo did.

Walter Piecyk: So it’s obvious that the media likes to, you know, write stories about this ’cause it’s a robot, whatever, ai, I mean, there was also Zoox, , had a minor incident in, I think it was San Fran as well, in the mission. So in California, not in, not in la uh, in the mission where, um, someone’s hand was struck. And they’re like 1977 Cabrio or something like that. Um, again, you know, big headlines in TechCrunch, but like minor desktop. Here’s the, here’s the silver lining to, to our listeners who I believe are probably mostly pro autonomy and seeing the benefits. This has not changed anything in terms of Waymo’s service or other company’s service. Right? So you’ve had these incidents, thank God they weren’t serious. I think, you know, these are not, you know, this hasn’t changed the trajectory. This is always the kind of the freak out that people have. Like, do, does an incident change the trajectory or the willingness of these companies to move forward? Um, nor has there been, at least the, not that I’m aware of in, in Santa Monica, some outcry. I mean, I’m, I’m sure there’s other, you know, interested parties that will drum up these incidents to try and achieve their goals, to slow autonomy, um, for their own benefit. But I think the positive side of this is, is. You know, they’ve, the, the, um, consumers have been able to digest this news, um, you know, in a normal fashion, which is, you know, kind of rare these days, to be honest.

Grayson Brulte: It, it tells you that the technology is maturing and it’s becoming part of the local community. There’s, I can’t tell you how many former NTSB individuals and board members that I’ve spoken to and said we’d just become numb to death on the roads, and if it was involved in a human, we wouldn’t be talking about it right now. But this is a positive sign that there hasn’t been a major outcry. And it also tells me that the public acceptance of this technology is only growing.

Walter Piecyk: Now, the flip side of this is you can’t help but start to question because of the debates that exist with lidar and frankly, some of the videos that. Waymo himself, Dmitri himself, has presented in terms of why Lidar is so much better with an exact example of, of a, uh, human, I think it was a kid actually from behind a bus that jumped out. Now, in this case, they were describing the lidar, I guess, having seen below the, the bus and didn’t have a direct line of say. But certainly there has been this belief and certainly tests that have attacked Tesla. Some of them, you know, questionable on how they were run, where they, where they have like a mannequin that they’re throwing out in front of the FSD whatever version that they happen to be using then. But the whole narrative was specifically that lidar with this specific incident would be better. And yet if you look at the literal quote from Waymo from that release, it says, Waymo said its vehicle immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the the stop vehicle. So that’s telling you if they’re emerging from the vehicle, then you have sight. Right? It is the camera that is seeing, you know, that child, uh, see it. So like, so to me like, it, it is, you know, if it doesn’t, you know, kind of underscore like yeah, sure lidar for long distances, like if, if I’m traveling on a highway doing 70 miles an hour, is Lidar gonna see something three miles or two miles down the road? Sure. But do I need to see something three miles or two miles down the road? So like in, in the, in the inner debate that I continue to have where I agree that, you know, LIDAR provides greater information in some scenarios, but does it restrict the ability to create a driving experiences that is materially better than a human? Like how is this one not in the column of like, wasn’t, shouldn’t Lidar have done better in this situation?

Grayson Brulte: Well, it goes back to the, the Elon debate where he says the, the, the sensors create noise. I’m not saying that’s what it is, but lidar is not this end all, be all miracle drug or mu miracle sensor that, that certain individuals make it out to be. Is it a component that does, uh, a job? Yes. Is it a component that you need to drive a car? No. NO spells no. And, and to give you an example on that, do you know where you can’t deploy a lidar? I want, I wanna, I want to have, we’ll play a little game here. Well, where, when you’re deploying an autonomous vehicle, can you not use lidar because it will harm your safety. Where, where do you think that is?

Walter Piecyk: I have no idea.

Grayson Brulte: You cannot put it in military applications ’cause it gives off pulse nice. And the enemies knows where it is.

Walter Piecyk: Well, thankfully, well, some people might debate this. We don’t have enemies on our, in our, in our, um, on our streets. And I’m not willing to, to say, no, you don’t need lidar. I think there, it’s not binary Grayson, like there is, you know, there is nuance. Like there are certain situations where maybe I’m willing to consider that lidar and I think it’s a reasonable consideration is gonna do better. The question is like, does that mean that camera is not enough to save tens of thousands of lives? I don’t know. Like, it seems like, you know, we’re going down to a path where that’s where that’s a possibility and I’m still leaving that option open. But I’m not saying it’s like, no, you definitively don’t need it. There’s gonna be, I think situations where you do on those edge cases. You know, from my standpoint.

Grayson Brulte: I have an open mind. I’m not. Forced into one side or another. I own the Tesla. You own a Tesla and I drive it every day. And it’s proven. It’s validating to me that, that it can be done. And you’re right, with specialty applications, of course you probably need lidar. But in the day, the day to day what we experience, no. It’s been proven that you do not fundamentally need lidar.

Walter Piecyk: So I wanna throw this thought piece out there to our listeners, which I got, by the way. Awesome. Positive feedback this week. Thank you so much for all the, for all the messages that you sent, um, from last week’s episode. Appreciate that. Um, but I wanna throw this out to our, you know, our, our self-appointed experts, which is, is it possible that, you know, when you think about the added data from the additional sensors that are on a Waymo, including that LIDAR sensor, that the additional processing time that it had to take for, to taking all these sensors in, had an incremental whatever it is, half a millisecond, quarter millisecond of processing time, that maybe the car would’ve stopped, you know, that quarter second, that quarter millisecond faster. That would’ve taken six down to two in terms of the miles per hour on impact. Who knows? Computes powerful. I don’t think, I don’t know. I don’t think Waymo’s using Nvidia. So they’re using their own kind of purpose built, like is theirs better than Nvidia or faster than Nvidia? I don’t know, but I just know when I have in our LL the LLMs that I use, when I go to thinking mode and it’s trying to get more inputs, the answers come back slower. Like so there, there seems to be some basic logic in that maybe there is a slight fraction performance differential that might exist when you have more sensors. I don’t know. Again, not making a statement. We have a lot of self-appointed experts. Let me know your thoughts on that as a concept. And do you have any thoughts, Grayson?

Grayson Brulte: It, it is very, very possible. So when you’re doing deep research in your lms, you’re triggering a, a larger percentage of the database, mostly running on an hd, not. An SSD, so there is time there. So there, there, there is a, there is a lag on that, that standpoint, the way that the Waymo system is architected, there could be a lag of, of a millisecond, half a millisecond. We don’t know because Waymo has never made the specs public. But based on the architecture of these models and how they work, you are very right. They’re possibly, I’ll use the word, possibly could be.

Walter Piecyk: talking about the LLMs, you’re getting access to data centers, right? Massive compute. Remember, these decisions are being done based on the compute that’s on the vehicle. They’re not relying on the, the amount of compute that exists elsewhere. So you have some limitation on the compute that’s in the car, and again, you’re giving it all of this extra data. I don’t know, it just stands to reason. That additional data would take more time to process. Maybe the answer is like, no, dude. Like that incremental processing time is like one, I don’t know, what is the smallest measure of time, parsec of whatever. Um, and that’s a completely I irrelevant statement, but it seems to me that like latency and, and you know, the, the tie in between compute and the, the, ability to handle different amounts of data has some impact.

Grayson Brulte: A hundred percent. The question is what impact, and that’s something that maybe Waymo should get more transparent about.

Walter Piecyk: let’s go to Tesla earnings and kind of validated what I’ve said on this podcast before. In terms of like, does anyone really care about the number of cars they’re making? It’s all about autonomy. Um, and I guess to a lesser extent, or maybe to a greater extent, uh, robots. In fact, Tesla is getting rid of models, SNX and why, to focus on autonomy and robots, including an increase in CapEx, which includes some more compute as well as some of the factories, um, to build out this stuff. So, I mean, it’s a complete pivot to be like, Hey, we’re, this is not us about about us being an EV company anymore. This is fully, you know, embracing autonomy is the future. Not that that’s like a massive revelation, but that’s the facts. And we got a new, a, a new market timeline where you’ve got a handful of markets, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Nevada, um, all expected to be delivered in five months. What does delivered mean? Grayson, because, you know, that could mean anything. Let’s just put it that way. Why don’t you say what, what you think this means in terms of these markets being launched in the first half of 26?

Grayson Brulte: What it means is that Elon and Tesla, they’re not getting their sexy back on. They’re moving away from the Justin Timberlake days and they’re moving to the robotics days. That’s what, that’s what it says to me at a high level. But the common denominator in the markets that Tesla has announced that there are going to launch for the first half of 2026 are the regulatory environment. Each one of these states, Arizona, Florida, and Texas, has a regulatory environment where Tesla has the ability, and they could have the authority depending on permitting, which I do not see for the record as any potential hiccups to deploy. Driver out unsupervised robotaxis and cyber cabs. And cyber cabs will be pending NITSA regulations and NI and NITSA approval. But they have a clear path to do this. And I’m not going to speculate on which markets will go unsupervised in that timeline, but I’m just saying the facts from a regulatory standpoint, Tesla’s cleared for launch.

Walter Piecyk: Let me focus on that last thing you’re not gonna say, which is unsupervised. So what is, when they say first half, when they, the status that they show and first half of 26, what does that mean? That they’ll just have a car with perhaps a safety attendant in those markets? A ha. Like two or three cars with a safety attendant in these markets in the first half of 26. You think that’s what this is communicating?

Grayson Brulte: I don’t know if it’s communicating one car, two cars, three cars. What I think in my opinion is communicating Tesla’s getting ready to expand. The Robo Taxi service, and it also says to me, Tesla is emerging as the biggest competitor to Waymo. Let’s look at the Miami market for example. I put on my inspector au hat and I did some work. I was able to pull building records from Miami-Dade County and was able to uncover the location of Waymo Miami Depot, uncover the current status. I will tell the audience it is under construction. And here’s the interesting thing, Walt, when you and I were in Austin, we visited the a Vmo Depot and that was the size of a Costco or maybe a football stadium. That thing was huge. The one in Miami, it only has a permit for 69 spots. And what we also know from the building permit, the energy’s not there yet. So as Tesla saying there’s a strategic opportunity to go into Miami and gain market share, I don’t know. But they’re going into markets where Waymo, where Waymo is active or has been planning to go. So it says to me they’re getting ready to compete.

Walter Piecyk: 69 spots are gonna need, obviously more than that if they really wanna service Miami. They talked a big game about as they’re launching, they’re claiming they’re gonna have all of the service centers there. I’m not sure we didn’t see it in Austin. Um, they also claim that they’ve got 500 cars. On the market. Obviously this includes California, where they still have a, you know, a safety driver sitting, sitting behind the wheel there. Uh, I’m gonna say, I think the first half of 26 is basically what it looked like in December in Austin, which, you know, a handful of cars, someone you know in as a safety attendant, you know, in, in the passenger seat. If that, and, you know, for, meaning for the number of markets, obviously they don’t have a supply issue, but like there’s a number of people in operations that’s a lot of markets if you’re gonna have to have, you know, drivers to ramp up in the first half of 26, I think that’s a, to me that feels like an aggressive milestone for them given some of the recent, um, the recent performance. Um, but we’ll see, we’ll see. And, and it’s, and you know, again, more things to hold them accountable for and we’re not gonna jam ’em up, I think too badly on, on a three week deadline, miss here. But, you know, now you’ve really put the pressure on it in terms of the number of markets that, that they hope to launch on. Bigger issue for me also is just taking Austin than the next level as well. And maybe we’ll see that in the coming weeks, getting more fully un unsupervised cars on that road so that when we head down there, um, you know, we’ll have no op no problem getting an unsupervised ride in a, in a Tesla robot taxi.

Grayson Brulte: next week we could get some clarity and insight as Tesla is, uh, representative from Tesla is testifying in front of the Senate about autonomous vehicles. So we could perhaps get some clarity there for their plans. That is perhaps we do not know, we haven’t seen the testimony, but there is a public hearing on that. So perhaps we could. When you look at the amount of vehicles in the market, are you thinking the 30 to 40, 20 to 30, is this kind of you reminiscent of when you and I first went to Austin?

Walter Piecyk: Well, I don’t currently. I mean, let’s put a, let’s do a shout out to David Moss. This guy we hadn’t heard about until he drove coast to coast in his Tesla. A guy’s a lidar salesman. And the amount of information that he was generating, um, while trying to get a a, you know, a driver out, attendant out ride in Austin, um, was phenomenal in terms of, you know, also the number of cars, like the, you know, counting that he was looking at license plates. So there’s a lot more cars there than I’ve thought. Obviously he had to go through 58 rides where there was someone sitting in the attend seat before he did get that, you know, fully driverless attendant out ride for the record. He turned around, looked through the window. There was no chase car. That always was, to me, kind of a silly supposition that someone was, you know, remotely driving it from, from behind the car. I can’t imagine. Just thinking about that technically, how that would make any sense, but whatever, everyone has a right to their opinion in this case. David Moss was there. I think he’s a pretty credible source from what I can tell. Um, no Chase cart and was able to get an antenna out and gave us a better sense of, you know, the amount of cars that they have in the market.

Grayson Brulte: Mr. Moss did a phenomenal job of putting on his journalistic hat. We’ve got great insights on that, the best insights that we’ve seen out of Austin. So, Mr. Moss, thank you. Very much. The other thing that Mr. Moss talked about that you and I spoke about and did a podcast on was he said the vehicles blended in and the, the motoring public had no idea. There was no driver in there. That was a really interesting takeaway that you and I discussed previously.

Walter Piecyk: that, that was exactly our takeaway when we did our rides down in Austin and also. You know, I remember reading someone’s, you know, post saying like, oh, you know, I was there. I didn’t see any Teslas. Like, no shit. ’cause they don’t have sensors all over them. Of course you in. in. addition to that, though, again, picking up on what we were talking about last week with my drives to Philly and the sensor cleaning issue and the same thing that, uh, Alex Roy, I think talked about in terms of his coast to coast ride, they’ve now added cleaning mechanisms on the side and the back sensor, which is new, right? That definitely doesn’t exist on my car. So the question is, are these new car cars? Is this the new, like, is this gonna be installed on all new cars coming, all new model Y’s coming off the line? Was this an aftermarket, um, you know, addition? Like, what, what did you make of that? And, and by the way, most importantly, you know, can I go to back to Tesla at some point and up to have my car updated so that I can get those little jets for my, for my camera sensors as well?

Grayson Brulte: going back to Mr. Moss again, he posted closeup photos of. The new cleaning things. It looked to me, and then I’m not an engineer, but it looked to me, especially with the rear one, that it was not factor that it was modified to perhaps during these tests in Austin, Tesla learns something and that perhaps, and I don’t know the, the timeline, so just hear me out maybe three months, all new Model Ys and th start coming with it. It looked to me that it was not built on day one. It looks like it was, it was updated after. But again, I have no factual stuff to prove that on. I’m just basing that off of a photograph.

Walter Piecyk: The other issue with this though, Grayson, is like, it’s not just replacing a camera. You, you’re gonna need to pipe some plastic tubing to get your cleaner fluid to those locations. So if, if existing Ys that have already been sold. With hardware. Four need to get upfit, you know, with these new camera sensors. That is not, I can’t imagine something easy to do. Again, maybe some of our listeners who are, who are experienced in tripping out their cars will have some better sense than, than I would. And look if it costs, let’s say, you know, just to ballpark it, let’s say if I took this to a detailer and said, you know, put this stuff on my car. Let’s say it costs 500, a thousand dollars with a hundred, $200 a month, payment for robo Taxii or whatever it is, the payback on, that’s obviously gonna be pretty quick if that’s what it takes. But, um, just, and certainly an, an interesting, an interesting development that, that, uh, David was able to un uncover.

Grayson Brulte: yeah, I’ll just say it this way, Mr. Moss. Thanks. It was awesome. You gave us, you gave us great insight and, uh, I’ll say this from Walt and I, we see you in Austin, sir, lunches on us when we see you down there

Walter Piecyk: he doesn’t live in Austin. He was just visiting it like, like we visited. I was actually grazing, gonna gonna warn him ’cause we’re familiar that we know there’s someone that we’ve seen, , filing, flying to Austin and filing complaints following the Rob Robotaxis around and filing. I was gonna warn him to like look for the guy in the bushes with the camera. Maybe they wanted to jump out, but I decided that maybe I was not gonna do that. But that was, I’d love to refer back to your inspector Clouseau of discovering who’s actually, where did you find that? Again? It was the police reports in Austin where they list who’s making these complaints.

Grayson Brulte: See, I got a I, I’ve got a magnifying glass to find things now.

Walter Piecyk: We know who you are. We know who you are.

Grayson Brulte: The inspector knows all.

Walter Piecyk: just a good wording for people to think about the stats when they see these complaints, you know, where they’re originating from and maybe what’s driving that.

Grayson Brulte: I didn’t have to use my inspector glass to find it because it was in the public Austin Police records. And furthermore, those police records linked to a YouTube video, I’ll leave it at that. So it’s out there.

Walter Piecyk: beyond all that, perhaps the biggest news came after earnings when headlines started to hit about, you know, SpaceX merging with X ai. Also thinking about merging with Tesla and like, look, my takeaway from this is. As I said, much more in the Lightship podcast. I’ve talked about it a little bit here. I was just interviewed on Bloomberg talking about Apple and, and my concerns about Google and their monopolistic, , power that they have within the ai, um, realm. This is the new paradigm, right? You have to be these mega companies. So for Tesla to mash it all together and look on paper, you’re talking about what, three, $4 billion potential enterprise value, um, for this, for this company, um, with a ton of free cash flow associated with that. A lot of synergies we, we don’t necessarily get into here, but like I am all four. And by the way, from a light share perspective, given all the work that we do on the space side of things, on connectivity as well as AI and, and with and with, uh, now autonomy would love to see, uh, this mega merger, uh, this mega merger happen. What, how about you?

Grayson Brulte: I am all for it. I think it’s wonderful and I want to throw this back to you and ask a hypothetical question from history. Is this the new, if the merger does go through, is this the new GE for the AI years?

Walter Piecyk: I will hope not ge ’cause I’m, I’ve got, I’ve got, I’ve got my own issues with what GE over the years, um, did to the American economy. Um, but look, this is, this is the new paradigm, right? You have these companies that are effectively unfettered, that they’re determined to be monopolistic and there’s no real, you know, regulators or even courts that are doing anything to stop it. So, in order to compete, you know, you gotta, you gotta be big. And at least for the next three years, that seems to be, um, you know, that seems to be permitted. So get it done, I guess, when you can get it done. But we’ll, we’ll see what really happens. It might be a subset, it might be. It might be nothing at all. , But I think there’s been, there’s been some speculation about this historically. Now there’s some press reports around it. We’ll see what happens. This is all in advance of an expected IPO for SpaceX, um, for next year. And, and, you know, the, the price talk around that has been, last deal for them was done like 800 billion. Now they’re talking, I think, at least in the press, uh, a trillion and a half in terms of value. So, exciting times in the world, in the world of TMT.

Grayson Brulte: I can tell you the, the inspector knows where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And I, I’m gonna give a plug here. We do have inspector shirts now available on the store. We’re gonna link to ’em below so you can do, can be an inspector. And we always inspect things here ’cause that’s what we like to do. And we love to read the fine print. And we, we got a press release this week, which confirmed a report from the Toronto Global Mail last year. Waabi, the Canadian Autonomous Trucking Company. Raised 750 million us. The headline said it was a billion, but the dollar amount when you get into it was 750 million. The 250 million being, if they accelerate into robotaxi, that comes from Uber. While you have an autonomous trucking company here that has not successfully pulled the driver commercial roads publicly, that’s pivoting into robotaxis. To me, this reminds me of the, of, of the good old days when Waymo had ramo via their trucking program, and Aurora had their car program before they both picked a path forward. Am I having deja vu? Where is this history repeating itself again?

Walter Piecyk: mean, you might know more about that history than I do, but I think the more that I’ve spent with the companies that are focused on autonomy. For long haul. You know, these are focused on the highway type miles for very large trucks. It’s a very difficult, um, and different, um, challenge that they face. But you know, you’re talking about hubs or even if you go beyond the hub to the ultimate destination, you’re basically plotting out an ODD, uh, an operational, what is it? Design domain, what is it with O-D-B-O-D-D?

Grayson Brulte: ODB, I mean, he, he, he was A-O-O-O-D-B. Yeah. You know me

Walter Piecyk: We should license some ODB and play it as our, as our, intro music.

Grayson Brulte: We’ll have the autonomy. Market, zoo, zoo.

Walter Piecyk: maybe you could say this is like, this is like, uh, zoox in Las Vegas where there’s a very limited street that it can actually drive on. This is not how a robotaxi is gonna operate in terms of going from point to point anywhere within a city. So, I don’t know, maybe again, Waabi has an end to end. Approach, right? There’s not this reliance on maps. So for them to do this versus how Aurora would approach this is obviously very different. Never gonna lose an opportunity to, to bring up the, the CES two ago with the, the Bigelow battle, which was between, uh, Raquel, the CEO of, of Waabi, and Sterling Anderson, who was formerly at Aurora now, um, at GM about this very issue. So maybe Waabi is, is unique because they have end to end that they can make this pivot and from Uber’s standpoint, like, look another $250 million to throw in the bucket to try and promote any type of competition possible, uh, in that robotaxi market.

Grayson Brulte: But yes, so the press release also said to clarify that, that the plan is to deploy 25,000 WBE powered robotaxis with their sensor suite, which we don’t know what it looks like on the Uber network, and we do not have any indication of, of who the OEM is yet. But Uber’s invested in before with a focus on trucking. Lior Ron, who per before ran Uber Freight as CEO, is now COO of Waabi. So, and then Raquel previously was, uh, a scientist at ATG. A lot of overlap there, but, well, you’re an investor, you’re an analyst. How do you launch a new business when you haven’t gotten the first business to be commercially viable?

Walter Piecyk: when you say commercially viable, it’s not like anyone’s generating a profit in trucking. So it’s early days, so you gotta give people a break here, right? ’cause what’s your, what’s your comparable, I mean, obviously you’ve got, um, Kodiak generating revenue, you’ve got Aurora generating, uh, revenue, but that field is, is still wide open. Um, but sometimes this is maybe signal of a pivot where, you know, who knows? If we’re gonna get into the trucking later, with plus ai, there’s a limited number of OEMs who knows how close each of the partnership’s gonna be. Like who is Volvo gonna ultimately partner with? This provides a diversified path. Aurora has a diversified path as well. Toyota, I’m a little skeptical that there’s much development going on between the Aurora driver and Toyota, but you know, but who knows? So, I mean, companies can walk and chew gum at the same time, especially when you’re getting $750 million now up to a billion, um, to invest in this when you already have, you know, some amount of of, of, development underway.

Grayson Brulte: But it, they raised $1.28 billion us to date. It’s not gonna take you very far. They have an OEM partnership with Volvo. They’re, they’re building that you’re not gonna get to launch two programs for 1.28 billion. I’m sorry. At the end of the day, it’s, it, it’s, it’s not gonna happen. And not to mention, the Financial Times publicly reported this, the valuation when they raised the 750 million was at a $3 billion valuation.

Walter Piecyk: I’m glad you’re so certain because I’m not certain that $1.3 billion doesn’t enable you to develop a program. I mean, how much money is main mobility, um, invested in, in their technology and they’re gonna be launching a trial, um, you know, with cars that, that are on the road, you know, what is, what is Tesla’s increasing their ca in their CapEx this year? 10 to 20, uh, billion for that massive company. So I don’t know if you, you know, always have to associate dollars, uh, with success. I’m not sure that, that, it always works that way, especially in the age of, of ai.

Grayson Brulte: I agree with that, but it’s two programs with top tier engine engineering talent and there are, there are engineers that are very good at working on trucks. And there’s engineers very well working on cars and it’s two different skill sets. So you basically are going to have to double the talent pool and that’s gonna be very expensive. These engineers are in high demand.

Walter Piecyk: I don’t agree that it’s two different skill sets. If, again, if the whole point of this is end to end and, and it’s the AI reasoning model where you’re not relying on these maps, there’s gotta be some level of, of crossover in terms of, you know, a, a unified, um, approach to how they’re doing, um, autonomy in the market.

Grayson Brulte: I will give you that. There is some, but I will say this, I’m gonna very curious to see how this evolves over the next six months. And it’s something we’re gonna be watching. And the thing that I’m watching in this too, if you’re, you’re Nuro lucid, how are you reacting to this after that beautiful car was introduced at CES.

Walter Piecyk: I don’t think they care. Like Nuro Lucid have a great partnership with, , Uber. They’re, they’re moving forward. They know the market’s gonna be competitive. Like you could argue that, , you know, the news that came out of Mercedes where Mercedes is formalizing their S-Class relationship with Nvidia and Uber is competition and they’re using Nvidia as the tech stack. When Nuro is using Nvidia in terms of their compute. Like they need to keep focused on getting product to the market. That’s the only thing that matters to them. If Uber wants to dabble around, they know they’re gonna want, they’re gonna want to do that. And it’s up for the, for them just to beat the competition and get, uh, and get product on the roads. I don’t think they react to the news at all. And again, to go back to, to Waabi, if we’re gonna give the benefit of the doubt in terms of Tesla and their ability to not use Lidar and get a successful product, why should that not extend to Waabi and their ability to take these dollars and to develop a roboto taxii program? You get, you have to apply it evenly across whatever company that we’re talking about. Unless you’ve got specific knowledge about, you know, why you think their technology, you know, might not work with that application where it is working for trucks. I don’t see how that’s possible. Like, yes, they’re different, but like I, I can see that there are similarities. You are trying to autonomously, autonomously move a vehicle from one location to another.

Grayson Brulte: Trying to autonomously move it. You haven’t removed the driver on public roads yet, so you don’t have that proof point. It’s just to me, launch one business,

Walter Piecyk: mean, you can say that about nearly every company in this space. How many of these, how many of these competitors still have someone sitting in there as a safety driver? So, you know, they’re no different than most of the field.

Grayson Brulte: there is proof points. Aurora removed the driver until PACCAR demanded that the driver go back in and that was successful Nat Beuse built to heck of a safety program there. Bot auto has removed the driver on a, on a test case. Kodiak is operating every day, 24 7 in the Permian, public and private roads, no driver. So that’s three use cases that are very public and truck.

Walter Piecyk: So what, so companies are at different stages of their development. Okay? So maybe they haven’t reached these milestones that are set by those companies. That doesn’t mean they can’t move forward on whatever the new project is that they have. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But clearly they got some investment dollars behind, you know, pushing this project forward.

Grayson Brulte: I’ll watch it. Just I’ll watch. That’s what I’ll say. I, I, it’s gonna be very interesting to watch, to see where this goes. And I still can’t figure out Uber’s AV strategy where they want to go. I’ll say this for the record. I truly do believe that Uber is going to relaunch ATG in some form, in some fashion, at some point in the newly announced AV labs is the first step in that direction.

Walter Piecyk: What is AV Labs? ’cause I’m not, I’m not quite certain what it is.

Grayson Brulte: So the way that it’s been portrayed to the market, Uber AV Labs, is to gather data to help accelerate the development of autonomous vehicles in that lab. They, they currently have one vehicle, a Hyundai Iion five, no surprise with that one. That is a test vehicle, and they said publicly in an interview, they look could add more vehicles to that. It’s the early steps of research of re rebuilding potentially ATG and launching their own fleet because enough time has passed, in my humble opinion, since the incident in Arizona where Uber could successfully relaunch a program.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, that may be the case. I’ve seen labs put, um, behind a lot of things, the 5G labs. Verizon has a 5G lab, T-Mobile has a 5G lab. They brought Jensen in for the 5G lab or whatever, you know, AI lab that they were doing. And it’s just, you know, okay, they’re testing technology. It makes it easy for vendors to come in and, and look, Uber, you said you didn’t know what their, their strategy is. Their strategy is pretty clear to try and have as many. AV technology companies succeed out there so that that market is fragmented so that they have to rely on Uber to, to supply all the demand for the supply that’s getting, that’s getting, um, generated at a much cheaper basis and a much safer basis, more importantly, by these autonomous companies there. So maybe this labs is just to support that. Maybe you’re right. Maybe the labs brings in enough intelligent people within the company to be like, Hey, we’re dealing with Nvidia. Maybe we can do this ourselves. Or maybe we just buy Nuro and take their tech because of the six or seven guys that we’ve invested in, their technology is good. Let’s bring it in-house because some of the others, you know, might not be progressing as fast. So I think it can go any different ways. You know, there’s nothing, there’s nothing bad about what they’re doing, and I don’t think it’s any major to me, not necessarily a major change in strategy. To your point earlier, we already, both of us predicted that it’s not. You know, implausible, if not possible, if not probable that a couple years down the road as the kind of, you know, the winners and losers emerge. Maybe in your case you don’t think w Waabi makes it and maybe Nuro does that. They end up owning, you know, whoever the one or two winners, uh, are in, in the market.

Grayson Brulte: I could see a scenario where Uber buys two companies and, and merges them together to build a program to, to accelerate that. Another signal that I’m gonna look for in the market, do we start to see public messaging from Uber? And do we start to see job hirings around fleet management? ’cause that issue still has to be solved. No matter how many partners they have, they still have to solve fleet measurements. So I’m looking for those signs for job hires, for public messaging as Well,

Walter Piecyk: Well, maybe the solution to fleet management is just to get rid of it all together ’cause it’s not really core to the business.

Grayson Brulte: And that’s why you’re the Walt. And I asked an LLM, I said, who is Walter Piecyk? And said, A famous Wall Street analyst. So there you go. You give a very famous answer.

Walter Piecyk: that’s not that famous.

Grayson Brulte: You were, in New York. I saw, I saw you on the video tape. I saw you see, I got a hat for that. And I didn’t. I have a, I have a magnifying glass and I saw you at the Plus AI Investor Day at NASDAQ in New York. Inspector saw you. What did you learn? What did you think?

Walter Piecyk: I mean, we should have tied this in order wise, I think maybe to the Waabi commentary. It was great. It was great to see the management team again. , You know, have obviously met the group before. The new person there for me was, um, the gentleman from International or Trayton, who they cut this deal with. And, you know, the way the relationship works is like plus A is trying to be this very kind of thin software layer. I think they said the word software about a hundred times during the presentation. And that means that they rely on the OEM, in this case international. To be the sales. And so international will then sell the truck to, let’s call it JB Hunt or whoever, and JB Hunt will pay a normal price for the truck. I don’t know if that’s elevated or not. Let’s assume it’s not. And then they’ll pay a residual. So it leaves questions whether JB hunt, Amazon, whoever is end up buying these trucks from international or gonna be willing to pay a residual versus like their normal purchase agreement, which you just buy the truck and, and then that’s it. Now they obviously are gonna save a lot of money, right? Because you’ve got this, this autonomy driver, which they’re, you know, offsetting by, by what they’re paying for the maintenance, which is like the remote driver and um, and things like that. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a beautiful business model with the risk of you have an an OEM, you’re reliant on the OEM to actually sell it as opposed to, let’s say, Kodiak, where, you know, you’re basically, you know, you’re going direct to the, to Atlas or whoever and, and you know, you’re dealing with the trucks. What’s fascinating about all of this is like when you, when you, when I talk to the international person, um, it just doesn’t seem like there’s an opportunity, at least in their case, for there to be more than one technology partner. I think, again, especially if you’re selling, if you’re the one selling the trucks into the customer, how are you selling anytime soon in the next couple of years, at least, you know, multiple technology solutions when you’re working and putting so much effort in trying to make this, this stuff work with plus ai. So it feels like whoever’s locked up is locked up and then that kind of flips to like, who is Volvo locked up with? Like, and like, does anyone, and if you’re locked up with Paccar, like is that the guy you wanna be locked up with? If you have someone like, you know, international who has smaller market share that is more willing to embrace technology versus paccar, that just seems, feels, maybe I could be wrong, but maybe a lot more cautious into moving to this next wave, , out there for trucking.

Grayson Brulte: So Volvo has. Public, OEM partnerships with Wbb, and they also have a public partnership with Aurora. And if you looked at the Volvo investor decks, you could see that they wanted to basically put any virtual driver on top of the, the Volvo VNL. That’s the dual redundant platform they’re building. So you’re right.

Walter Piecyk: Is that realistic though?

Grayson Brulte: at this stage of the game? Probably not in the future. Yes.

Walter Piecyk: And so if that’s the case, you know, since despite our debate on Waabi before, clearly Aurora’s ahead, I mean, and Aurora’s had their issues with Paccar. Like, are they just locking up Volvo? And, and is there a way for them to, um, to make that relationship ex, they probably don’t even need to get it written. Like if they’re just really working with them more closely, getting more batches off those lines. , By definition, like Volvo is gonna be much more focused on that Aurora relationship,

Grayson Brulte: Well, not necessarily. The Volvo. VNL is not in commercial use yet. It’s being tested. It’s, it’s, it’s being built. We’re looking most likely, I would assume, a 2027 launch for the VNL platform. ’cause that’s when the Daimler Dual redundant Cascadia comes, comes off the line. But Aurora needed trucks. They went to international Plus’s partner and they bought trucks off the lot and they’re retrofitting ’em now. And those are gonna be going this year. Driver out international trucks with the Aurora driver.

Walter Piecyk: okay? But if you are international, right, and you have this relationship with plus ai, whether you’re a partner and they’re generating you, you know, if this is, you’re selling it, you’re selling this product, you’re not just selling a truck to Aurora, and Aurora goes and sells it, you’re the one that’s selling it to the customer. So, and this customer is generating you. A, you know, an a recurring revenue stream that if you’re a trucking company that’s great for investors like that, you get a higher multiple for recurring revenue stream. Where’s your focus gonna be? Like, when this goes back up to the CEO or whatever level it is, where’s your focus gonna be? The guy you’re selling these trucks to or the one where you’re literally selling this, the actual servicing, getting behind selling this autonomy technology?

Grayson Brulte: It’s gonna go to the one where you’re fully integrated. In Plus’s case, that’s where the attention’s going to go because that’s what you’re, you’re, if you wanna use the term, you’re making your big bet on plus, and that’s clearly. What they’re doing, but this model, who’s gonna service them?

Walter Piecyk: Well, it depends what, what servicing you’re talking about. But, but in this case, um, the way plus is presented is like, they are software. Remember I said software a hundred times? It is the OEM, it is in this case international that is taking on the service component. And that’s why they’re, they’re getting paid this, you know, this annual fee for that service component, including. Maintaining those remote drivers. By the way, the tie in financially here also goes to the investment that they made and, and they’re getting warrants when they hit certain revenue milestones. So there’s a lot of incentives there. And again, it’s a, it’s a trucking company, from what I can tell, their market share is smaller than some of the peers that we just talked about. So they’re probably more willing, um, to embrace technology in order to take share. By the way, this is probably, if they’re successful and plus is successful with them, this is really great for the industry. Let’s not like do this as a winners and losers because like, I don’t think, no offense to, plus you’re not gonna all of a sudden, you know, sign up Volvo or sign up, um, you know, Daimler or whoever, maybe Daimler, I don’t know. We sign up others the next day. But it does put pressure on those OEMs. To, you know, accelerate things with their existing technology partners. So, you know, the best friend of of Aurora, of Aurora and, and, and bot and, and others, , might be, uh, for plus AI to be successful with international

Grayson Brulte: There is enough pie to go around and we want everybody to be successful at the end of the day. And I, and I think for the autonomous trucking industry, they want everybody to be successful because this is not a, this is not a winner, takes all market. It is a highly, highly fragmented market. And when, when, when Plus succeeds and Kodiak seeds and bot succeeds and Aurora succeeds and warm seed. It’s a win for everybody. It’s a good thing ’cause it sets the narrative that this technology is successful and it’s proven to work.

Walter Piecyk: any event, plus should be a publicly traded stock, shortly, um, when they, whatever the term is for the SPAC stuff. Um, joining Kodiak in Aurora. So we’ve got a nice little sector. Um, that has, that has evolved for this, for this space. So, um, it’s gonna be fun and a lot of great people at all the companies.

Grayson Brulte: it’s a lot of great people and we’ll see ’em at Forward Fort Worth in March and we’ll, we’ll get to talk to them more in person and have some good times. And let’s, let’s shift to the foreign autonomy desk because Cusso noticed something. I noticed something and I didn’t even need my pipe. I have a pipe now to see this. Waymo had a launch party this week in London to announce the Waymo vehicle coming to London. I noticed something. Do you know what I noticed? Wal. The driver was on the left hand side, not the right hand side. The inspector saw that. That to me says these vehicles were obviously imported to the uk, probably came out of the Arizona factory. What do you think?

Walter Piecyk: I think that if we’re talking about autonomous cars. The location of the driver is irrelevant ’cause there is no driver. That’s, that’s what I think. Uh, but also, um, I will be headed to the UK in the first, I think the first week of March, somewhere thereabouts. I’m looking forward to, to try and put on my inspector au hat, find some of these Waymo’s, maybe try and find a Wayve. I don’t know. Do the wave cars exist on the road there? Apparently was one in Vegas, although I don’t, I don’t think many people got a ride in it. I don’t know why you take a car all the way to Vegas and then not show it off to as many people as you can there, but maybe I’ll be able to track down for any of our listeners at Wayve, I’m gonna be on your home turf. If you’re willing to allow someone to kick the tires, basically a hundred percent of your peers have. So I look forward to, kicking your tires, um, or trying to track you down on the streets of London in a couple of weeks.

Grayson Brulte: Yes, they, they, they are in London. You can see the vehicle’s clearly marked self-driving car. ’cause unfortunately you’ll be there in March and Waymo’s launching their pilot in April. So you’ll miss them by the matter of a few weeks. But we’re gonna continue to watch the UK market for the robotaxi deployments. And, and for our audience, it’s very important that you watch the political race that’s unfolding in the UK because that will have a dramatic impact in the future of autonomy in the United Kingdom because the telco issues that Walt and I have talked about are about to come true. If the polls hold the way that they’re holding,

Walter Piecyk: Well, hopefully it, it, uh, changes a lot of things about the UK that, that seem to get, get sent into my social media reels recently. What else do we have on the foreign autonomy desk?

Grayson Brulte: We also have pony ai. They have partnered with the Beijing A TBB, travel and Express service company to deploy 3000 robotaxi in the mainland China. By the end of the year, ponies ramping up in China,

Walter Piecyk: yes they are. As a Chinese company, they definitely are. , Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. We’ll, we’ll, uh, we’ll, we’ll keep our eye on China and, you know, we’ll, we’ll try and find out what cars are coming out of China. They’re trying to sneak their way into the us um, with that technology. I think that’s always, that’s always a possibility. I guess

Grayson Brulte: the inspector will be inspecting and paying close attention because be sh. Videos show up on X and there was a video that went, I said, oh my God, did the Chinese hacker, did the person fall asleep? That video that that happened out there in la, that’s where my mind went. ’cause you never know what we do know Wal. It was an extremely busy week in the autonomy markets this week. What do we need to look for next week is AU is going on the road and I’m going undercover and I’m making a video for us next week. But besides that, what else do we need to look for?

Walter Piecyk: You’re not gonna tell us the location of where you’re gonna be.

Grayson Brulte: I’m going to oh oh seven top secret land.

Walter Piecyk: Okay. Well, for me, I’m buried in earnings for another week. One of those earnings reports will be our good friends over at Uber. Um, obviously, you know, we’re looking for more information out of Austin. Certainly important, um, for the industry to see if, if Tesla in fact can ramp up. Obviously there’s a lot of people that think that, that continue to believe that that’s not gonna happen. So, you know, we will be here reporting on it every week and not forget about them one little bit.

Grayson Brulte: No, we won’t. The future’s bright. The future’s autonomous. The future is unsupervised, Walt. Until next week.