Forget the Waymo/Uber News, Focus on the Nuro and WeRide Partnerships

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s newly announced expansion ahead of the World Cup, the suddenly accelerating deterioration of the Uber/Waymo relationship, and the partnerships that actually matter for Uber’s autonomous future.

As Waymo expanded their U.S. service area by 1,400 square miles across 11 cities, Uber continued to amplify both their direct and indirect attacks against Waymo in the media and in a self-published report about deploying autonomous vehicles.

Even as the deterioration of the relationship spreads into the news, Walt notes that the divorce narrative is already largely priced into Uber’s stock, but the more interesting question is what happens next with Uber’s remaining partners.

Nuro recently opened an engineering and partnerships office in Munich, home to BMW, with Lucid notably absent from the press release and personally-owned autonomous vehicles mentioned directly. On the WeRide earnings call, the company outlined European expansion plans including Slovakia and made the case for a unified Level 2 to Level 4 platform.

Wrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Walt discussed Volvo Autonomous Solutions’ new Dallas-to-Houston lane and what the true definition of autonomous and what defines supervised.

Episode Chapters

• 00:00 Waymo’s World Cup Expansion
• 03:59 Waymo’s Unforced Error
• 05:08 The Waymo/Uber Divorce Narrative Goes Mainstream
• 14:51 Nuro Opens Munich Office
• 20:26 WeRide Eyes a Unified L2-to-L4 Platform
• 22:47 Volvo Autonomous Solutions Dallas-to-Houston Lane
• 23:49 What Defines Driverless
• 31:39 Foreign Autonomy Desk
• 32:04 Next Week