Transcript: GM’s Autonomy Reversal, Waymo’s Vehicle Supply Crisis, and the New 37-Camera AV

Executive Summary

This week’s episode of Autonomy Markets covers General Motors’ stunning reversal on its autonomous vehicle program, now spearheaded by Sterling Anderson who is tasked with rebuilding the team. The conversation also analyzes Waymo’s critical vehicle supply shortage, as it is projected to run out of Jaguar vehicles by the end of the year, creating a major bottleneck for expansion. Finally, a new market entrant, Tensor Auto, has emerged from the former AutoX, launching with claims of an “AI agentic car” featuring a massive 37-camera sensor suite.

Key Topics & Timestamps

[00:35] GM’s “Flip-Flop” Back into Autonomy

Sterling Anderson is leading a revival of GM’s autonomous vehicle program just months after it was shut down , with plans to rehire former Cruise talent in Mountain View, CA.

[11:24] Ford’s “Anti-Autonomy” Position

A look at how Ford has retreated from the autonomy space after shutting down Argo AI , now seeming to be the “anti autonomy company”.

[14:57] Waymo’s Vehicle Supply Crisis

Waymo is projected to run out of Jaguar I-PACE vehicles to retrofit by the end of the year , creating a production bottleneck and a risky over-reliance on partners like Hyundai and Zeekr.

[25:00] Tesla’s Production & Service Advantage

Tesla’s ability to mass-produce its own vehicles without supply issues is highlighted as a critical advantage for scaling its robotaxi network.

[35:00] New Entrant: Tensor Auto

Formerly AutoX, Tensor Auto has launched with claims of the “world’s first AI agentic car” , featuring a massive sensor suite of 37 cameras and 5 lidars.

[43:50] Uber Freight CEO Moves to Waabi

Lior Ron, CEO of Uber Freight, has resigned to become the COO of autonomous trucking company Waabi.

Watch the Full Episode of Autonomy Markets

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Walt, it’s the dog days of summer, but for some of us, it marks the beginning of hurricane season and the autonomy markets. The news keeps flowing. We had a new entrance to the autonomy markets, a company formally known as something which we’ll get into later. Not sure they’re gonna make the autonomy leaderboard anytime soon, but they’re coming. Tesla making news as always. They got something big coming in September for us and Sterling Anderson. Wow. Oh wow. He’s in a GM for two and a half months. He’s turning that tanker around and they’re going back into autonomy. He’s channeling a C. They’re back. What do you make of the news? Come outta gm. 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, you called it Grayson and you said that he was there and had larger aspirations. , I was, you know, a little skeptical. And, and just to be clear, Aurora insisted. That when he, where he was going, he, it wasn’t gonna be a competitor. And last time I checked, Aurora is still developing autonomy with Toyota. So now, if GM is developing some level of Toyota, wouldn’t that by definition, make them a competitor? So I’m a little confused by that. , So I think you had, you were spot on this, but even, you know, based on what Aurora was saying, there wasn’t the expectation that he was gonna go this route. 

Grayson Brulte: There wasn’t the expectation, I, I believed it and luckily I turned, I was right. ’cause in the official press release from GM announcing the transition, not one mention of autonomy, autonomous self-driving, put in your favorite verb to describe autonomy. Nothing. Zilch not, and boy, oh boy. There’s a big strategy brewing, including gm, looking to rehire a lot of the crew’s talent for Mr. Anderson’s request. 

Walter Piecyk: Yeah. It comes as a significant shift from them effectively killing the program. Right up to the top, right. Mary, Mary Barra, CEO of the company. I think, I think as you pointed out, we’re like a week away from launching an autonomous product and like killed it. And you had a lot of people leave that, uh, leave that company. So, you know, how, how hard is it gonna be or how easy is it gonna be to get them back? I mean, Sterling’s obviously a known commodity with the industry well respected, but you can’t put everything on him. How hard is it gonna get to back? Because if I’m an employee that has left, aren’t I saying like, yeah, I love Sterling, but are they really dedicated? How do we know we’re not gonna go down the path? Sterling is not, at least for now, the CEO, but so how do we know that his, his, the plug isn’t gonna get pulled on him. 

Grayson Brulte: We don’t, well, the question is the third time the charm or. Does GM get to the, the, the starting line and then they pull the plugin? We don’t know what GM did when they shut crews down for the final time. They burnt bridges. They lost trust. They lost trust in your world. They lost trust in the autonomy markets. And for gm, the biggest thing they lost was trust with the engineers. So the interesting thing is with Mr. Anderson’s appointment, he’s gonna be based in Mountain View, California, not based in Detroit. Could that potentially be an olive branch to attract talent? But then is the overhang, is GM gonna pull, unfortunately, have a pattern? So I have to ask you, well, are they gonna pull it? And I just think getting that talent’s gonna be very, very hard without board assurances. 

Walter Piecyk: But I would think that Sterling understands the assignment in that he will try and bring people into California. Whether that ultimately creates kind of a power struggle with, um, where management is. Remains to be seen. Let’s see if that he even gets, you know, gets to that point. I guess my question for you and, and your, you know, kind of history with, with, with Sterling, , is this a, is he a build it alone, only invented here type of CEO or do you envision that he goes out, tries to bring people back into cruise? Maybe he wasn’t, didn’t love the people that were at Cruise in the first place. Brings in his own people, poaches from Aurora, right? People that are kind of loyal to him at Aurora. Or maybe this is an opportunity, um, for Aurora to license the Aurora driver or some part of the technology stack. So tell us your views on Sterling as a build it or lease it. 

Grayson Brulte: I thought about both scenarios. My gut says, and this is based on Mr. Anderson’s past, going back to Tesla with with autopilot is passed with Aurora in the GM corporate culture, is that they’re gonna build it. I’ve kicked around. The idea is do they license a virtual driver? You mentioned Aurora, but that driver’s clearly optimized for trucking. I thought about neuro, I thought about Wave, but based on everything I know about GM and and Mr. Anderson, they’re gonna build something. But when I say that with the caveat, let’s not forget, there are competing teams inside of gm. You have the Super Cruise team, which is building their A DAS, their level two plus system. Then you have the remnants of what’s left from the cruise through L four system. The thing I think about, I love your opinion, is does GM try to merge, which they publicly said they are, but different tech stacks merge the cruise tech into the Super Cruise stack. If that, does that even work or does Mr. Anderson has to say, wait. Guys, we gotta go back to the drawing board. We gotta build an AI first system and kind of start all over. 

Walter Piecyk: This is the thing that they end up writing books about when you have large companies like this. You have multiple groups within a space. There’s obviously, especially a company that’s as entrenched as as gm, um, there could be internal power struggles, especially if a employee base starts to get built up in California. I don’t know where these other segments are that, that you described, whether they’re in California or not. Who’s got their relationship with the CEO ultimately, who has the relationship, um, with the board. I mean, it seems, it feels like there’s a lot of drama. Um, or maybe there’s some indication and we’ll have to wait for interviews of whether they’re basically just turning over the keys to Sterling and he’s gonna say like, do whatever you want to get us back in, um, the autonomous game. Any sense on, on whether that has happened? And by the way, you know, not to patch on the back again, but like, this is exactly what you said when he, when, when he got hired, let’s wait for him. Is he gonna be like doing these visits around? Is he gonna be acting like a CEO or is he just gonna be kind of like pushed aside? He clearly. You know, is acting the act of, of a CEO as a leadership. But do you think he has gotten, um, the authority to basically do the things that you just talked about, merge all these things together and bring in, um, bring people back? Um, from an, from the outside? 

Grayson Brulte: On paper, according to the GM press release, he has the authority, but in reality, unsure what I am sure and positive about. The staff that works for Mr. Anderson loves him. They’re really happy where he is going. They say he swears a lot. So it’s like, well, it’s not corporate speak, it’s, it’s, it’s honesty speak. And Mr. Anderson has been well reported by David Welch at Bloomberg. It’s, it’s a breath of fresh air for the employees that are working. Mr. Anderson saying, okay, I’m not gonna say the four letter word here, but it starts with an F and ends with a K, ed crews. And he’s openly em admitting that. So there’s a lot of trust building there. And if that trust continues, do those individuals that work for Mr. Anderson today go out, become advocates to bring, to bring new talent in? Kind of very similar what we’re seeing at Meta with all their hiring spree. Does GM go on an AI hiring spree or an autonomy hiring spree? That’s a sign to watch. 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, that was a bit, bit of a riddle to follow all the, all the fu and this that and the other thing. Let’s try and like get to the heart of it though, which is, you know, when he was first hired, there was no zero mention of autonomy. He didn’t say, Hey, I’ve got great respect for this group or that group. It just talked about the legacy of the company and blah, blah, blah. Um, so it doesn’t mean that you can’t, in a large organization, you can’t necessarily, well, you can, there’s different approaches. Do you want to go in and start, you know, breaking kneecaps and, and making no friends? ’cause you want the people that you want in there work with, with whoever. But again, I get back to my first question, which I don’t think you answered, Grayson. Do you think he has given, given the authority, whether by the CEO. Or maybe by the board itself to go in and make those hard decisions. Or does he have to play the typical big company politics and, and make sure that this guy remains happy or this team remains happy and we’re gonna maintain here. And because the latter, I think, makes it hard for GM to get, get into the space quickly. 

Grayson Brulte: If Mr. Anderson cannot make the hard decisions, g GM’s gonna become a relic of a dinosaur. And with all due respect, they’re gonna become Ford. They’re gonna lose money on every ev they sell. The future of personal transportation is autonomous 

Walter Piecyk: You’re dodging the question though. Do you think he has gotten the authority? Just, you know, I know you don’t know, but guess I’ve got my opinion. I just wanna set you up before I give you my opinion. 

Grayson Brulte: are, are we, uh, Walter Cronkite here? Are you pushing me for the answers? Is that where we’re going? 

Walter Piecyk: Answer the question, Senator. Answer the question. 

Grayson Brulte: I’ll give you the answer. I think he has partial authority, not full authority. I do think that he has Mark Royce’s. Approval whether does he have the board’s approval? Does he have Ms. Barr’s approval? I don’t know, but I believe he has Mr. Royce’s approval. 

Walter Piecyk: I think whatever approval that they have is probably bullshit. Meaning that this is a large company and it’s gonna be a lot of backstabbing and battles. And we’ve seen the flip-flopping that occurs there. I don’t think there’s, like, there has been like a revelation there at that company and they said, okay, we need to clean house and get it done. I think they’re, they understand that they’re at risk and he’s a person that can help that, but I’m guessing that he still has not built up the power base to just be aggressive and that’s gonna be a problem. So, ’cause you know, I think it’s gonna be hard to attract those people and still not offend internal people. And if he doesn’t use outside partners, whether it’s Aurora or Nuro or, or May or whoever. I think this is, this is gonna be a, you know, with all due respect to Sterling, who we have great respect for, this is not an easy assignment. 

Grayson Brulte: No, it’s a hard assignment, but, and I predicted this on a pod way back when. If Mr. Anderson does succeed, he’ll become the next CEO of General Motors. I’ll say it again for the record. 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, you were the first one that said that to me at least. And like, I thought you were crazy at the time. I still think you’re a little crazy on this in a number of things. Um, but lot, a lot less crazy now. , You have to be a big company animal. Like, I don’t know if you have those same requirements where he’s been historically, , obviously has a very, is very type A personality. The ba the, the Bigelow battle was a great one that he was the, the primary guy. And so, um, I don’t know. I think the bigger issue here is. It also just feels like these OEMs are lost, um, in general and not a defined strategy to get them to autonomy. , I actually was able to get on the Luminar call this week and was asking about Volvo to try and get them to talk about their partner because Luminar, who sells LIDAR sensors into Volvo, had to reduce their numbers because Volvo’s reducing their numbers. ’cause the EX 90 is a disaster. Now look, that car’s reduced. , You know, sales numbers are more about some of the functionality of the car itself. It has nothing to do with the, with the LIDAR sensor, but it kind of underscores the technology challenges that, you know, even in great companies like Volvo who have a, have a reputation for safety have, when they’re trying to embrace new technologies that aren’t on like a two or three year path that they’re, that they’re used to. And another one in that, in that realm is Ford, which, you know, where are they in all of this? ’cause it seems to me. They are like the anti autonomy company. Like every time I hear something from them, it seems like they’re, they’re throwing cold water on the possibility of being involved in this space. 

Grayson Brulte: You’re right Walt. It’s true. They are the anti autonomy company today, as you spoke about a little bit earlier with gm. Perhaps that’s because of the, the corporate minutiae or the corporate politics that go along with it. But it’s sad ’cause if you go back to when Mr. Mark Fields with CEO of Mr. Fields was actively very there out there championing autonomy for gonna sell an L four personal vehicle. Mr. Fields flew out for the infamous meeting at Google, where unfortunately because of the way he arrived, and it’s been well documented in Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, so I won’t comment on that. They never got the deal then Mr. Fields doesn’t give up and you gotta give Mr. Fields a lot of credit. He doubles down and says, okay, we’re gonna invest in a little unknown company with Pete Rander and Brian Lesky called Argo ai and they put out, may I think it me, a um, a paragraph two paragraph block statement. Ford’s investing $1 billion in unknown company called Argo AI said headlines and the notice of the world, Ford’s serious about autonomy. Fast forward to a few years ago, they shut it down because it could have been the relationship with vw, it could have just been forced desire. But e ever since then, Ford just seems lost at the field in autonomy. They went all in on electrification that bet Walt we know did not pay off. They’re losing $22,000 per electric vehicle sold in America, and that’s before the tariffs kicked in. So what are we gonna lose? 29,000 a vehicle. 27,000 a vehicle. They gotta do something. And if you talk to Aner, any American, you own a Tesla. I own a Tesla. Talk to older Americans. They want the ability for the car to drive itself under certain conditions. Ford doesn’t seem to be listening. They seem to be focused on electrification and racing. That’s not gonna move the bottom line, Walt. I really don’t understand what Ford wants to be. All I do know they don’t want to be autonomous. 

Walter Piecyk: I want to go back though, because I’m interested. I didn’t read those articles. What happened in that meeting between Ford and Waymo? That that scuttled the deal? 

Grayson Brulte: And I’m gonna paraphrase this, that this has been publicly documented. This was in the Financial Times Wall Street Journal in Bloomberg. Mr. Field shows up with bodyguards and these big Lincoln navigators has to do a bodyguard sweep. And Sergei Bri shows up and roller skate says the Google thing is like, what the heck is this? It turned it off the appears. They came in there with this macho Detroit and like we’re Google, we’re we’re relayed back. So I will summarize it. Corporate culture clash. 

Walter Piecyk: that’s great color. I mean, I will say that it’s a little unfair of Google to like slam a company just ’cause they happen to show up in, in, you know, their SUVs. I mean, that’s the culture. It is what it is. It’s not like they were buying the company, they were just trying to enter a partnership. But, you know, definitely very funny color from those stories. I, I think the bigger question here though is like, even beyond Ford and gm, like where is the supply in the industry? We know Hyundai is, has their timeline. Um, where’s Toyota? I mean, they, you hear, you hear a lot about them in terms of, you go see, may you look at the roadmap and they’re, you know, they’re very tight with Toyota. You know, you have that, that kind of weird release from, from Waymo where they were, it’s like a, I don’t even release of nothing. They’re supposedly doing something with Aurora, although it’s certainly well in the background. I think they’ve made an investment in, in, uh, pony ai. Um, and then you have woven, which I guess is their internal development. So it seems like on the surface they’re super involved. Where are their, where’s their cars? Like, you know, I, I want to channel my, my inner Rod Tidwell to Jerry McGuire rather than saying, show me the money. ’cause Toyota has shown the money to a couple of these autonomy companies. Show me the cars, Koji. Show me the cars. Where are the Toyota autonomous cars? 

Grayson Brulte: Before we get into the cars, you wanna know a little interesting fact from Toyota’s corporate history about autonomy. 

Walter Piecyk: Absolutely lay it on me. 

Grayson Brulte: They were one of the largest investors back in the day in Tesla. 

Walter Piecyk: That’s crazy. I should know that. But that is crazy. So always around the hoop they’ve shown people the money, but, but you know, where are the cars? I mean, I think that’s the issue. And I think it, it’s a nice pivot into kind of what’s going on at Waymo and the supply they have there. We know Hyundai’s on the timeline, we’ve seen videos of, um, you know, the Zeekrs that you call the unforced error that are, that are being shipped. We’ve got an update from one of our friends on YouTube showing that they go back to that lot where we’ve seen the overheads showing about 2000 cars. And now that, that’s down to about 1000 cars. So if you follow that timeline. These are all the jaguars. They’re probably gonna run out of Jaguars to retrofit by the end of the year. And what’s what’s interesting is like when you looked at the newest video that shows this overhead, which you can see behind me, if you really zero in there, it’s hard to tell, I’m sure if you’re looking on YouTube, but there’s no there. So, you know, what’s going on with, with, with Waymo and, and how quickly they can ramp the supply. 

Grayson Brulte: I believe that Waymo’s supply constraint, when you look at how quickly they can ramp supply, I’ll push this back to you. Does Waymo need to open a second factory in Arizona perhaps to meet with the demand magnet clearly has the technology, the skills, and the labor to do it. Do we need to see a second factory come? 

Walter Piecyk: I don’t know, because the, as as the, as the photo behind these shows, there’s empty slots there. They, they need cars. Don’t need. It is not a Waymo issue. I think Waymo, if let’s say they’re cranking out probably 50, 60 cars a week, which is fine given the markets that they’ve launched for now, until you get Hyundai really cranking them out, um, you know, it’s not a matter of their, uh, productivity, although that will be an issue shortly if Tesla gets their technology ramping. It’s, it’s a matter of, of literally sourcing the cars and, you know, I, I don’t know, like they’re gonna have to start ramping Z curves big time. Or, or, and again, what’s, what’s our timeline on Hyundai again and how many cars do you expect, expect Hyundai to, to deliver? Because we have gotten updates from Waymo and they’re what? They’re, what are they saying? 3,500 cars, you know, in 2026? I think we need to know more of when, when we’re gonna, what’s the target to get 20, 30, 50, a hundred thousand cars. 

Grayson Brulte: The last update we had as related to Hyundai was the original press release in 2024 that said 2026. The Hyundais are coming, it’s Savannah plan. I’ve been trying to get us a tour. I wanna bring a Autonomy Markets on the road and and visit Hyundai. So far no success, but it’d be really great if Alphabet or Waymo or Hyundai for that matter of fact. Would give us clarity on that. Are they still on track for 2026? And if they are, I would love to know what is the annual output of those vehicles and how fast will it be by the time they come to the assembly plan. So they go in service. I asked that because when the Jaguars rough fitted by Magna in Arizona, 30 minutes later they go into service. Well, we have a similar timeline with the Hyundai vehicles coming off the Savannah line. That’s something we’re gonna have to watch. 

Walter Piecyk: yeah, I don’t know. And, and I hope there’s someone watching it there because it seems like there’s a lot of vendor reliance on Hyundai. Obviously Zucker’s, given how things are, are, you know, continue to kind of. Be an issue between the US and China. We had this issue with the chips and, you know, the president taxing the chips and then China saying like, well, we don’t want those chips because you just basically denigrated them, um, in your speech. Like things can change overnight with these seekers, and then you’re down to, and the Jags are done, so now you’re just relying on, on Hyundai. So, um, I mean, I’ve said this on so many of these podcasts, but it feels like they need to add some vendors. Toyota is probably the, the most obvious one, but the, again, that release was from months and months ago, and there we, there’s been no follow through on what we can expect between those two companies. Or maybe this is the end of the test for Waymo. They’ll just run it out with the Zeekrs and Hyundai and then just say like, all right, fine. We’ve proven the business case and it’s time to just license it to the private. I don’t think that’s the case. 

Grayson Brulte: What do you think the case is? 

Walter Piecyk: I, don’t know. I, I mean, I just think they need. Better product managers. I mean, I just see the success that Apple has done in terms of ramping up when there was demand. There’s demand. Um, there’s demand that’s out there for the product, but you just need to supply the cars in order to do it, which is a good kind of segue to our next topic. I’ve been getting a lot of , investor inquiries this week, what’s going on in Atlanta and you know, there’s some data out there that’s suggesting that, you know, the growth in Atlanta is slower than Austin. But I think it’s, it’s, I think it’s probably not what people, I think people are taking data and analyzing the wrong way. If you go back to what we said about Austin, when, when that launched, and I think we were right at the time, day 1 35 cars, they probably ran pretty quickly to 50 and within four months when we were just out there to see, uh, the Tesla launch, they were already up to like 200 cars. So when you look at it at, and by the way, at that point, people were, were quoting this yipit data and how it’s, oh, the growth is so good versus San Fran, and this, you know, this means that everything’s gonna be a, an Uber market. And that was the wrong take. So now we have this take like, oh, the, the adoption in, in Atlanta’s not good, but let’s look at Atlanta. Atlanta’s, the OODM of Atlanta is twice the size. As Austin and you’re most likely launching with, you know, the same if not fewer cars than you did in Austin. Right? So let’s say you’re at around 30 cars in the launch. So you have 30 cars operating around a much larger area. Obviously the share of rides impact to Uber, meaning the number of rides that are gonna be on way more, way more relative, total Uber is gonna be slower because it’s a larger area. Not to mention the wait times are probably longer. Don’t know that, just guessing, but like a larger area, smaller cars, this is like basic logic. So to try and draw conclusions again from like some usage data, I think just sends, I think this sends the wrong message. The real me, the real takeaway here is why aren’t they allocating more cars, you know, to, to Atlanta? I mean, are they sending too many cars to Austin to try and prove the point that they’re like overwhelming to Tesla and Austin? Or like, what’s the deal? Why they’re not sending, or maybe they just don’t have enough cars. It always gets back to this car supply issue, right? As, as the limiter of growth, not the demand, 

Grayson Brulte: You’re right. Remember when we were having breakfast and look out the window and I kept interrupting you ’cause I counted Waymo after Waymo after Waymo. And then when we went on a walk around downtown, you couldn’t turn left or turn right without seeming seemingly seeing a Waymo. They were everywhere. The other thing that you didn’t hit on about Atlanta, sorry, Atlant. It’s some of the worst traffic in the United States. So if those Waymo’s are in Buckhead trying to go downtown, you’re, you’re not gonna see ’em a lot. So there’s a lot of issues there. But you’re right. And it’s interesting, I’m you’re, I’m gonna put on my military strategist hat here. I should have all sorts of hats to wear on this show. ’cause Cousteau’s coming out later. Don’t you worry about that. Is this a, is this a show of force? Is this a shock and awe campaign in Austin? Look, Tesla, we’re the mighty Waymo. We’re gonna put all of our chips in here. Well, unfortunately the battlefield in Atlanta is falling short. Is this just. Is this political theater? Is this optics? I I don’t know. 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, if you’re still launching in Atlanta, you wanna have enough cars. There’s people, important people that certainly, that live in Atlanta, and look, maybe it’s just short term. We know that there’s what again, a thousand cars ish in that plant. 50 can come off the line, uh, per week. So, you know, send 50 and you’ve more than doubled the supply. And, and I’m sure Atlanta will ramp up quick. And all this data will, people will be looking at, I mean, they probably need to get to 150, 200 cars and you’ll see Atlanta growth take off. I don’t think there’s anything about the demographic or the interest of people in any market. Autonomy is a great product. It’s safe. It’s safer, it’s cleaner. These are gonna be all new cars for sure. Um, I don’t think you’re gonna have the same type of, you know, issues in terms of getting service areas, you know, around Atlanta that you’re gonna have in the, in the Northeast. So be patient people, Atlanta’s gonna is gonna get there. 

Grayson Brulte: Let me ask you this question, Walt. Is Waymo expanding too fast because of their supply constraints with the vehicles? 

Walter Piecyk: mean, I think they’re expanding too fast in the PR department, meaning sending cars to whatever that term is that they use to make people think that markets are coming and launching. So, and like, look, at the end of the day, they have a, whatever the cost of that car is $150,000. We’re still in effectively science project mode. So they’re not looking at it, it doesn’t well. Who knows how they’re looking at it. They’re not executing as if this is really a production scale business. I, this is not to knock it and say, yes, Waymo is the leader, they’re the most scale company. They’re gonna have thousands of cars. But it’s stuff like this that I think you just need, you don’t have the right people in certain positions at that company and that need to be updated. And frankly, the issue becomes, you know, I know that everyone still has doubt, not everyone, but most people still have doubts on on Tesla SFSD. But look, suspend your disbelief for a second. Tesla haters. Like, just imagine for a second that FSD works, right? And that they can take the safety driver out, the observer out, whatever you want to call them. They have these ODMs, there is no production issue there. They will crank the shit out of those things off of the line. These model Y hardware four. Anyone that’s worried about like, well, the unit sales that they have this quarter or next, they’re just gonna go right into the FSD fleet. And that is gonna be a critical advantage, the production of those cars. And, you know, I don’t know how you solve these things. Like, going back to that Luminar car, when I was asking about the, the Volvo X 90, the CEO who’s like, you know, mustering his words together was like, well, you know what, you know, we’re making decisions today on the cars that are coming out in 2027. ’cause I was asking him like, what’s, who’s ultimately gonna buy your, your lidars? Is it the OEM or is it the technology? Well, those decisions are made today for the, and I’m thinking to myself like, well, the decisions already made for Tesla. Those things are coming off of wine today. We, if you’re Waymo, you got no more Jags. Zeer is Chinese risk there. So all of our eggs are effectively in this Hyundai basket. Like, and, and if it takes multiple years to get it in there, like who’s the next supplier? 

Grayson Brulte: And you know what’s a bigger risk That really hasn’t been discussed yet. Hyundai announced in the Korean times. Today they’re putting $320 million into an internal subsidiary called 40 two.to work on autonomy and software defined vehicles. They’re rev ramping up motional. What if Hyundai says, you know what? We don’t wanna be a contract manufacturer anymore. We want to commercialize motional that you have a risk there that’s starting to emerge. 

Walter Piecyk: It is just wild. All right, so now that I’ve given my positive rant on Tesla, I’m gonna give you some criticisms of Tesla. I will say I use it all the time now. I love my new Tesla y. The suspension is great. As I’ve said many times before. I encourage our listeners to go out and get yours before that $7,500. Um, you know, subsidy goes away. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna put my little referral rate out there. Get it on your own. Save the money, give it to a friend, give the referral rate to a friend. I don’t have a code for you. , So here are my complaints. It feels a little bit more cautious at night, not a huge complaint. I prefer to be cautious and, and keep me safe. It still is operating. It’s not awkward, but definitely more cautious at night. And for me, uh, it won’t park at my destination and it won’t go out my driveway Grayson and still does not go out my driveway, which is, is a bit irritating, meaning that I, so if I press, if I’m in my garage, what’s awesome is I can press the button, the thing backs outta my garage, and it’s actually kind of tight for the y the Y’s a fat car, it’s a little tight, great job, goes all the way to the fish store, but then won’t pull in the fish store and park. I’m hopeful that in September that’s gonna get fixed with the new software that that is promised. 

Grayson Brulte: I went and got pizza a few weeks ago, parked right in the parking spot, parallel, parked right in the street in front of the pizza shop. Mine’s parking. 

Walter Piecyk: But you just said parallel parked on the street. I think if I let mine do it, it might do the same. I don’t want it to go into the, I don’t want my car on the street. There’s crazy drivers in New York. I want it to pull into that parking lot and pull into a nice, safe spot. And by the way, this was one of the big questions we had, and we know it did this, you know it when we were in Austin, right? It did it quite well. We went into Terry blocks. [00:29:00] It went in there and parked it. It went into that other, remember that doctor’s office where the person kicked us out? We wanted to sit in the, it was a like 107 degrees. We wanted a little shade in front of this insurance broker. And the guy wouldn’t let us sit in front of his store while we were waiting for our next Tesla ride. I wish I remember that dude’s name. What a jerk. Anyway, I digressed. 

Grayson Brulte: I remember his name. Not nice. 

Walter Piecyk: not, his name was first name, not last name. Nice. Um, by the way, everyone else in Texas is fabulous, just not this asshole. Um, so, but in, in, you know, in the, in this case, you know, I don’t know, like, I, I think it, it should get there. And so that’s why I’m hopeful in September. It’s, it’s those types of things that are gonna give me more confident about Tesla’s progression towards, you know, full autonomy. 

Grayson Brulte: And you know what else is coming in September? Tesla’s opening Robax in Austin to the public. So here’s the big question. Safety attendant or no safety attendant. 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, I think if they’re opening it to the public, they’re gonna keep, well, I don’t actually, I have no idea, but that will be the next unlock, right? Where the safety attendant comes out of the road. I mean, I mean, it’s been, here’s the other thing I always say on the light, she podcast, I go to Rich on the Light, she podcast. I’m like, Hey, did you know, have you heard, did you hear the big stuff about like Tesla and Austin this week? And they’re like, no, no, what? I’m like, exactly. Because how many people were telling us. Oh, they’re gonna launch in Austin. It’s gonna be a disaster. And here we are, how many weeks later? And not a disaster. Right? So, whatever. I don’t know. I mean, I think, I think it’s fine just to open it up to more people with the, with the person in the, in the passenger seat. And look, it’s just, I, you know, I would hope that it’s just a matter of time before that passenger seat, um, observer gets pulled. 

Grayson Brulte: I’ll give you a prediction. The safety observer is gone in Austin by October 31st, 2025. 

Walter Piecyk: That would be huge, I think, for them. Right. And then you just span. And I’d also like them to see, you know, enough with California, like, give us, give us a market where you don’t have some of the regulatory constraints so we can, you know, continue to expand, go to Atlanta. You know, why not, you know, do the people of Atlanta a favor. ’cause if you go to Atlanta, maybe Waymo will ship more cars there. 

Grayson Brulte: Because that is just a hunch. What’s what, what’s happening there in Austin. So we know Tesla’s opening to the public, I believe October 31st. No safety attendance, so they’ll be competing services. What metrics as an analyst are you gonna be looking to get clarity on? Are you gonna wash and determine how each service is competing against one another? 

Walter Piecyk: , as I’ve said before, like when we were in Austin, like, yeah, we, we thought Tesla felt better, but it was like, who cares? They were both good. So now it’s just a matter of, you know, supply of vehicles, which with Tesla it’s clearly less of an issue. Regulatory things and obviously, you know, the infrastructure, meaning the charging and the, and the servicing of the cars. And, and we’ll see how that, that rolls out. I mean, I think if you look at Tesla, they’ve got the superchargers, right? That’s, we’ve talked about the key challenge that that other robot taxi fleets have. The fact that they have this supercharger thing that’s a huge leg up. And then on the service side, I mean, I just got a flat tire, brand new car, by the way, three 30 miles. I’m not sure I hit anything but whatever. So hit my service button on my, my Tesla app guy, scheduled two hours later, comes out, replaces my in my driveway, replaced the tire and lease. I mean, I actually called the garage ’cause I forgot that I bought the tire plan. Even if I didn’t, it would’ve been a couple hundred bucks. The garage guy’s like, oh yeah, you can get it here, otherwise send a tow truck. I mean, it was like a hassle, like te, you know, talk about service. Literally Tesla truck to my house tire replaced the nicest guy in the world too. 

Grayson Brulte: I had the, I had the same thing happen to my house. My father-in-law’s over for dinner. He couldn’t believe the guy shows up in the little Tesla of things. Got all the, he’s gotta go out there and talk to the guy. ’cause he’s like the little sneaky guy looking out the window. He was so curious. He goes, you didn’t have to go to a car dealer. You didn’t have to get towed. No. [00:33:00] Welcome to the future. And that’s what nobody really understands. With Tesla, they have the entire ecosystem. And as you and I have documented many times, we saw it on our trip. We visited the Uber Depot in Austin. Charging is going to be one of the big competitive advantages for Tesla as they scale Robax because they have that network. And if you look at market expansion, Tesla’s hiring an autopilot vehicle operator based in Flushing, Queens, New York City, flushing home to the Mets if you want to use the Seinfeld, the Amazings. But I’m not a Mets fan. I, I, I, I, my loyalties are in the Bronx. But it looks like New York could be coming as a, as a Waymo Tesla competing market. What do you know living there from a ev charging infrastructure? Are there a lot of Tesla superchargers around? 

Walter Piecyk: Actually, I’m not familiar with that because, you know, if I’m driving around New York, I, I can always charge at home. , I don’t know, idea. I don’t think New York is, is on the near term agenda for a variety of reasons. First and foremost. Um, you know, we have a new mayor likely to, to come in. Um, you know, to your point, the charging and infrastructure there is is just not really set. And look, if Tesla can pull it off, it’s, it’s a, that’s a huge win. Right. You said Tesla versus Waymo, how you’re assuming Waymo is gonna be able to figure out how to get all this stuff as well. So, I don’t know. I’d just rather, Tesla, there’s so many other things Tesla can prove out in other markets. They don’t need to necessarily take on this beast of New York or what they’re planning on doing in California. It’s almost like they’re over challenging themselves in the near term. 

Grayson Brulte: I like simpler markets. Expand in Texas, come to Florida, go to Arizona, build miles, build revenue, build a business and let the regulatory stuff work itself out. That seems to make a lot more sense to me ’cause the complications with the potential incoming mayor in New York are only gonna get more difficult. And so you look at the political situation in New York. So this gentleman basically came out of nowhere to basically capture preemptively the New York mayor race. Then we had another individual who resurfaced. Professor X, not the X-Men individual, but Professor X from Auto X. And I say that because I met this gentleman over a decade ago. Gentleman was an MIT professor, and I don’t know if you remember this, well, remember the little tiny cameras that you have to put on top of your computer? Little webcams made by Logitech. They’re very blurry, and this gentleman comes out and says, I’m gonna make a car drive itself. I was never in that vehicle with the Logitech camera. I wanna state, but there were videos. Can’t prove it was right or not. Comes out and announces Tensor Auto. The interesting thing on that, it was formally Auto X, but yet all the branding online. If you move from Auto X, what are you making on this launch of tensor? 

Walter Piecyk: That was quite a segue from Manami to Professor XI. The only Professor XI know is, is, um, from the X-Men. So I’m, I just envisioned Patrick Stewart in his wheelchair. Is this Professor X, I assume, is gonna easily walk around? Um. Maybe not, but the Auto X is, is the origination company. It’s interesting though, when they introduced it, they’re saying, founded in Silicon Valley and found it in California. I think most of the people we saw there were clearly former Auto X companies. The new company, by the way, is Tensor Auto, is what they’re called, came out with this press release. The press release was something else. Um, even though they’ve, they obviously have this heritage. They’re, they talked, they talked about being a Silicon Valley founded company. I mean, let me just read something on that. On the technology side, 37 cameras, five lidars, 11 radars, 22 microphones. Tell 10 ultrasonic sensors, three IUs, 16 collision detectors. Wait for this one. Eight water level detectors, four tire pressure sensors. I mean, come on with that one, one smoke detector and a triple channel 5G. 

Grayson Brulte: And a partridge and a pear tree. I mean, you put everything in the kitchen sink in there, but you’re Mr. Telco, what the heck is this Multi connector 5G thing. But again, why do you need it in a car? 

Walter Piecyk: mean, I don’t know about that. That’s, that’s connect. I think they’re just throwing everything in there to kind of beef it up. Beef the press release up 37 cameras. We saw a video. I mean, the website looks very Apple-like. The car itself looks, looks extremely sleek. I don’t know where they’re hiding the 37 cameras, one of the lidars in the front looks a lot like what Waymo uses, so I don’t know about that. But this press release, Grayson like goes on and they’re, they’re claiming to be, now wait for this. The world’s first AI agentic car stating specifically at its core is a state-of-the-art multimodal large language model embedded with an agentic framework that brings the entire vehicle to life. To me, when I read that type of stuff, it just feels like, hey, let’s, what is the buzzword that investors care about? And let’s figure out how to, how to talk about our technology as if it’s hitting this thing that everyone’s like, who’s got the new best thing? ’cause that’s what, in the LLM world, obviously that’s what people are looking for is ag agentic. But to, to label yourself the first AI agentic car. I’m not sure what, how you get there to that. Do you have thoughts on this? 

Grayson Brulte: It sounds like somebody put it in chat, GPT and said, search engine optimized this press release and had every buzzword under the sun into it. I don’t know any other way to describe it to you. It’s already to be so harsh. 

Walter Piecyk: it’s fine. First of all, the video itself is enough. Saying you’re a new company is enough. I don’t, you know, to stack the release with all this stuff. I mean, they also talked in the release, they’re saying obviously you wanna talk about safe. Tensor is designed to meet the world’s most stringent automotive standards, including, and then it lists things as if they’ve already achieved these awards. Ih IIHS, top Safety Pick plus US End Cap, five Star Ratings, rigorous European GCC standards. Like I get that you’re building that, but I think you have to be awarded the Top Safety Pick Plus from IIHS before you can kind of talk about it. And again, the wording is designed to meet those standards, but the way you list them out, it’s almost like, Hey, you’re gonna, you know, this is gonna be the safest car on the road. It just, it was a bit much, I know you wanna make a splash as a new company, but it, it just felt a bit much. But we are learning, or we are, you know, very interested in learning. I’ve had no history like you have with Doctor X from Auto X. Um, so definitely want to get up to speed with where they are with the product and. Um, you know, plans to, to ramp it. This is gonna be a personally owned car, by the way, Grayson and no mention of trying to partner with, with, um, you know, with Uber and Lyft, which also I, you know, we have to, we have to talk to our friends at Uber. I don’t know why you would turn down checks and purchasing from Uber. Maybe they really believe in this business model, but it’s possible. Is it possible that they, they attempted that and, and were, did not get interest from, from any of the, the ride share guys. 

Grayson Brulte: Well, if you look back at history, auto X never had a partnership or any sort of public relationship with Uber. So did they go back this time? I don’t know. And Chinese state media portly stated, this is Chinese state media, so we cannot verify this, that Auto X was shut down in China. So maybe this is part of a P of a, of a pivot back to America for being shut down in China if they were shut down in China, as we know was happening in China, there’s a massive crackdown on autonomy. What the heck happened? I’d like to see some answers for that, some clarity there, because nobody knows. And there’s been several reports out this week, people asking that, getting no answers. And another thing I wanna highlight for the audience here, Walt, they have a manufacturing partner, VIN Fast, the Vietnamese companies, vehicles will being manufactured in Vietnam, shipped to America. The president’s in Alaska right now, and boy oh boy does he like tariffs. And from Vietnam, you got a 20% tariff. It’s gonna be expensive no matter which way this comes. 

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, I mean, it’ll, it’ll be interesting to see, and I think in terms of, I don’t know enough about China, but I suspect that, you know, sometimes companies can maybe not succeed for. Or get shut down for things that might have nothing to do with the performance of the product or the acceptance there. Um, you know, it’s certainly a challenging market on, on the political front as as many markets, um, clearly are. So I love the fact that we have a new player. I love the look of this car. It, you know, I don’t, you didn’t like it as much. I think it’s great. I don’t love the press release. I can, I can live without some of the hyperbole and, and the positioning of things. Um, but can’t wait like every, you know, like every time to get, to get into one of these things. And certainly we’ll be, you know, on it for our listeners, figuring out Tensor Auto and whether this is the car or the future for you to own. 

Grayson Brulte: Yes, and if you watch the press video with the one minute mark, and maybe I’m wearing my Inspector Kau hat, that looked like a Waymo honeycomb Lidar. That’s right. It looked like a Waymo honeycomb lidar. I like to know who the Lidar manufacturer is because that thing looks so very, very familiar to weigh most proprietary sensors that they’re no longer licensing. A lot of questions here. 

Walter Piecyk: I look at it, it looks similar. We don’t know if it’s the same. And if I, if I went to the website, the way I read the website and it’s, I haven’t spent a ton of time on it, it looks like they’ve developed, or at least they claim to have developed their own sensors. I’m sure if Google has issues, someone’s stealing their technology in any shape or form that we’ll hear from them shortly, um, you know, in the courts. 

Grayson Brulte: Not accusing anybody. I wanna be clear on that. I’m just saying it looks very similar. 

Walter Piecyk: yeah, I mean, things can look similar. I mean, look at all the products that look a lot like the iPhone and you know, those guys go crazy every now and then for, you know. For, you know, cutting these deals with manufacturers and the manufacturers don’t, don’t make money, they act shock. That like a product looks exactly like what they just did with, with, uh, with one of their manufacturers. I’m talking about Apple in this case, not tensor. Anyway, let’s move on to the next topic, which is Uber Freight. And um, we had some big news this week, Grayson, that was a bit of a surprise. You have Leo Ron, who was the CEO of Uber Freight, um, is resigning and taking the role of COO of Waabi. Another one of our, um, you know, autonomous trucking companies based out of Canada. Seems a little odd to go from a CEO role, even though it’s a division of Uber to wbe. What are you making the move. 

Grayson Brulte: Well, odds and understatement. A lot of things do not make sense. Yes, I know the, the founder and CEO of Waabi, Raquel and Lior have a long personal friendship going back over a decade, but now I’m gonna put my inspector hat on because that’s what I do. I inspect things. When you announce a product or you announce a hiring, you get a corporate headshot, right? It’s true. Everybody knows that. The photo announcing this was the original Walt, I’m not making this up. It’s in the metadata. The original photo announcing the original Uber Freight Wabi deal. There was no new press. Photo is showing the two of them. Why is Mr. Ron not having his own photo showing him as COO? Is there a potential power struggle merging here? The way the press release was written, it, it raises questions. This part of succession planning. Will Ms. Ersin go back to becoming a full-time professor? There’s just a lot of questions around the photo and the way the press release was worded. I I, I’m unsure where this is gonna go and why. Step down from Uber Freight. You’re doing $5 billion a year in revenue in the middle of a freight recession where the company needs your help. What did you see? What do you know? What are you not telling the market? I’ve got a lot of question. 

Walter Piecyk: That’s very speculative, but I think there is, you know, at least some merit given the optics as you laid them out. And sometimes investors, you know, for companies if, if someone’s not gaining traction and they don’t want to necessarily make a, a change, they bring in someone. Sometimes it’s a fractional CFO or Frank, you know, this, that, or the other thing. But, , you know, it could be that step one and to get the company back on track without rattling people to get rid of. A founder. So I don’t, it’s not, I think crazy, but again, it’s speculation. We have no idea what the situation is. And I think to read into a photo, um, you know, it’s probably a bridge too far for me at least. 

Grayson Brulte: Okay. But I am going to continue to be me, and I’m gonna push back on you. I am gonna look for the next six months of public appearances going into your world. Who’s presenting at the Autos conference? Who’s doing the B of A? The JPM, the Barclays. Is it Raquel or is it Lior? Who’s doing the CES speeches? Are they together? Are they separately? Who’s doing the media appearances? Who’s doing the blog posts? I’m looking to see that because if you look at all Waabi media, historically, it has all been Raquel, none of the other employees. So that’s a sign that I’m really watching to see. 

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, I mean, on the flip side though, like if all the investors want is for the thing to work and for themselves to make money. And Raquel, I think does a great job. Every time I’ve seen her speak, even in the Bigelow battle, uh, with Sterling Anderson, I think, you know, she held her ground quite well and made excellent points. Um, so you can present well and still have someone else getting the job done. So I think I, I take the flip side of that, just because, you know, you see her presenting doesn’t mean that that’s, you know, necessarily how the operations are getting run. But again, I don’t wanna speculate on someone’s career and future, but when you have a CEO of a large division like Uber Freight leave to become a COO, it’s, it, these are certainly legitimate questions, um, to ask. Um, you know, Waabi is a private company. I don’t know who you’re gonna ask those questions. Maybe we look in the investor base and see the types of moves that they’ve made historically with companies that they own. And is this like coming out of a playbook of, of their, of the owners of waabi. It could be, but one thing that we can track, even though they’re private, we can track in an interview with TechCrunch. This week they said they were gonna achieve driver route commercial operations by the end of the year. That’s in a tech crunch interview. They did. How so I wanna ask how, because let’s go back to a publicly traded company where we have data on Aurora Wbi has a Volvo autonomous solutions deal very similar to the one that Aurora has. They’re both gonna operate on the Volvo VNL. That’s the autonomous version, the dual redundancy truck. If Aurora is not able to achieve driver route on the Volvo VNL by the end of the year, how is Wbi gonna be able to achieve that? It’s just a question I’m asking. That’s all. I mean, that’s a, that’s a related question. It’s not, I don’t think maybe it is directly related to this, this change. I think that claim was, was made at CES and I. It raised eyebrows. I think we may have talked about that at the time it felt, uh, ambitious. And then when they launched that thing you put, had your inspector CSO hat on and you, that you found out where that truck was actually a, wasn’t it a, uh, an an Aurora truck that was in the Wbi press release when we looked at the, when we looked at the numbers. Am I remembering that correctly? 

Grayson Brulte: You are right. The Cousteau hat one on. See, I’m gonna go, when I visit Wave in London in a few weeks, I’m gonna get a a Sherlock Holmes hat so I can bust it out for you every time I call one of these things out. Yes. It was Aurora’s DOT number on the truck. That is correct. 

Walter Piecyk: all I’ll say Grayson is, uh, what did Elon say about Robox ex years ago? About a million robox. Sometimes CEOs need to set targets that are ambitious to motivate their people to get to, to the end game. So, , I’m gonna give, uh, Raquel, is that how I pronounce it? The benefit of the doubt. On, on, you know, her leadership abilities at, at the company. But again, this, you know, and hopefully Lyor strengthens that company. ’cause we want these companies to, you know, we obviously want all these autonomy companies to succeed. 

Grayson Brulte: Lior is a great individual on a personal level, he is extremely smart. He’s extremely respected in the freight market, and we wish him well and we’ll think he’ll he will do. I think he will do very well at Wabi if he’s given the tools to succeed. Let’s go back to, to Uber Freight here for a moment. So replacing Lior is the global head of electrification and sustainability. That seems odd. I, I, I, I don’t get that because trucking. Runs on diesel, not electrification. What do you make of that? Because I asked that friend of the show, personal friend of mine, Olivia Hu, the head of autonomous trucking electrification for Uber Freight was passed over. She’s a rockstar who had done a phenomenal job running Uber freight and pivoted Uber freight towards the future of autonomy as Mack McDonald’s doing as a COO, focusing on building Uber’s robax, Olivia, who’s doing the same thing, and you’ve got a really great compliment there to build Uber in this big autonomous company. But she was unfortunately passed over. It appears. 

Walter Piecyk: I met Olivia also at for Fort Worth, and it’s clear just people coming up to her that she’s highly respected within that industry. Um, for sure on, on titles. Like, Hey, I don’t know what titles mean in corporate America anymore. I read a lot of stuff and I’m like, I have no, my daughter just got hired by a large bank. Her title, I don’t even know what it means. And, and that what she does, um, I mean, I know what she does, but I don’t understand these titles. But even if the title was specific regarding electrification, that’s a pretty, you know, clear word. Sometimes people move, if they’re rock stars in certain areas, they get put a new assignment. I mean, you had, let’s look at Apple where, you know, you had all their AI people that failed and so. They brought people from Vision Pro. Oh, wait a minute. Vision Pro didn’t really do too well either. But in any event, sometimes you shift people that have different titles into new roles, uh, in the hopes that it shakes thing up. I will say in your argument one time I think the Eagles had like a defensive guy become our defensive line coach, become their offensive coordinator. Or maybe it was the reverse of that. It didn’t work out too well. So we’ll see how this one plays out. 

Grayson Brulte: We’ll, we’ll see how this plays out. I want to ask you the last question on Uber Freight. In, in March, 2023, Bloomberg reported that Uber’s looking at spinning out Uber freight. Yes, I know. We’re in a freight recession. What do you think Uber’s long term plans are for freight? ’cause it doesn’t fit within their, their core model, 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, that’s fair that it doesn’t fit in the, in the core model. I still think, you know, I’ve been spending more time in, in trucking. [00:52:00] Um, obviously in, on the autonomy front, I think I still think there’s a good opportunity for Uber to play a role there, but, um, like to what end to get out for what reason? Like, is it gonna help their growth rate? Not really, is it gonna provide them dollars that they can then redeploy? I mean, I guess, you know, they could, this gets back to our conversation from last week about share repurchase versus autonomy investments. So maybe it, it creates more of a, a, of a singular focus in the area, but I don’t know if it’s the right decision, but I’d have to think about that one more. 

Grayson Brulte: but you forgot you didn’t use the right term. Recycle investments. 

Walter Piecyk: Yeah. Recycle exactly. 

Grayson Brulte: See, I, I caught you on that Walt Great show this week. Every week the autonomy markets keep humming. What do we need to look for in the autonomy markets? Next week? 

Walter Piecyk: I mean, we’re heading into the last two weeks of August. Hopefully everyone’s can either, if you’re sending your kids back to college, maybe you’ve got that stress. Hopefully others are relaxing at the beach as we kind of enter into September. We have a Google Android event next week, so you never know. Maybe they can drop some car stuff during the Google Android event. I doubt it, but you know, you never know with Google. 

Grayson Brulte: We could get an Android auto update. We’ll have to tune in and tune in next Saturday at 10:00 AM As always, ’cause Walt and I are here breaking down the autonomy markets for you each and every week. The future’s bright. The future autonomous. The future is personally on autonomous vehicles, Walt, until next week.

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered