The Robotaxi Reality Check You Won’t Get From an Investor Deck
This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss their Texas Field Work where they rode in Cybercab, Waymo, Avride, May Mobility robotaxis, Kodiak and Aurora autonomous trucks, and inspected depots across Austin and Dallas.
Grayson’s verdict on Tesla’s Cybercab is simple. Once you go Cybercab, you don’t go back. In Austin, wait times averaged two to five minutes across dozens of rides, and from a software perspective Grayson found no material difference between Cybercab and the Model Y Robotaxi in terms of performance.
In Austin, Grayson counted roughly 200 to 300 vehicles at Avride’s upfitting facility, a presence he believes the market is overlooking, and views Hyundai as a quiet winner of the robotaxi buildout with the IONIQ 5 powering Waymo, Avride and Motional. The Zoox depot in Dallas was under construction with no visible charging infrastructure, and Grayson estimates it is 12 to 18 months from being operational.
Both Walt and Grayson rode in a Kodiak autonomous truck and Walt noted clear improvement ahead of Kodiak’s driver-out target on the Dallas to Houston lane by year-end. Additionally, Walt rode in an unsupervised Aurora autonomous truck at their Investor Day.
On the Foreign Autonomy Desk, Baidu is ramping supervised robotaxi testing in London with Lyft, Mercedes-Benz signed a licensing deal with Wayve, and Tensor Auto is preparing to deploy robotaxis with Volt Premium Taxi in Bulgaria.
Episode Chapters
- 0:00 Once You Go Cybercab, You Don’t Go Back
- 03:56 Robotaxi in Dallas
- 09:01 Cybercab Wait Times, Pickups and Routing in Austin
- 12:10 Austin Robotaxi Depots
- 13:45 Avride’s Austin Depot
- 16:02 Zoox’s Dallas Depot
- 17:22 May Mobility in Arlington
- 20:17 Kodiak Targets Driver-Out on Dallas to Houston by Year-End
- 24:19 Avride in Dallas and the Uber Partner Math
- 26:46 Hyundai Is the Quiet Winner in Robotaxis
- 27:30 Walt Amends His View on Upfitting
- 30:57 Tesla’s Vertical Integration and Supercharger Advantage
- 33:06 Aurora Investor Day and the 1,000 Truck Target
- 40:22 President Xi’s Visit and a Wake-Up Call for Detroit
- 47:01 Foreign Autonomy Desk
- 49:33 Next Week
The future is bright. The future is autonomous. The future is The Road to Autonomy.
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