Transcript: Commercializing Waymo Via

Executive Summary

In this episode of The Road to Autonomy podcast, Charlie Jatt, Head of Commercialization for Trucking at Waymo, provides a deep dive into the strategy behind Waymo Via. Jatt explains that Waymo’s core mission is to build “the driver,” a technology platform applicable to many vehicles, not to become a trucking company itself. 

This philosophy underpins their “Driver as a Service” model, where they partner with OEM partner Daimler Truck and logistics leaders such as JB Hunt to integrate their technology. Jatt emphasizes a long-term, safety-first approach to commercialization, focusing on building a robust ecosystem of partners to ensure a gradual and responsible deployment of autonomous trucking technology.

Key The Road to Autonomy Episode Questions Answered

Key The Road to Autonomy Topics & Timestamps

[01:34] Why Waymo expanded from self-driving cars into autonomous trucking 

Waymo’s core philosophy was always to build a versatile “driver” that could be applied to various vehicles and use cases, with trucking and logistics being a major application on their roadmap.

[04:15] The rigorous testing process: from simulation to closed courses to public roads with safety drivers

Waymo follows a diligent, multi-step safety process that begins with simulation, moves to closed-course facilities for testing vehicle dynamics, and finally proceeds to public roads with safety drivers behind the wheel.

[10:00] How Waymo’s development teams learn from the invaluable experience of professional truck drivers

Experienced professional truck drivers provide critical feedback that helps improve the technology, sometimes identifying potential behavioral issues more quickly than engineers can discover through data alone.

[18:15] The role of autonomous trucking in shoring up the supply chain and adding capacity

Autonomous trucking can help address the significant driver shortage by adding a new source of capacity, particularly for the more strenuous medium and long-haul routes where the shortage is most acute.

[27:10] The story behind the JB Hunt partnership and how it evolved from a pilot to a long-term alliance

The partnership progressed from initial relationship-building to a collaborative market study, a successful small-scale pilot, and ultimately a long-term alliance that aims to make JB Hunt Waymo’s first fully autonomous customer.

[33:30] A detailed explanation of Waymo’s “Driver as a Service” business model

Waymo focuses on developing the autonomous technology (the Waymo Driver) and partners with OEM partner Daimler Truck to build the trucks, allowing fleets and carriers to purchase the vehicles with Waymo’s system as an add-on option.

[41:00] The future of autonomous trucking: a gradual, lane-by-lane introduction rather than an overnight change

The rollout of autonomous trucking will be a gradual, incremental process, starting with small-scale deployments on specific lanes such as Dallas to Houston and expanding from there, rather than a sudden, large-scale shift.

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Hello all and welcome to the Road to Autonomy. The Road to Autonomy is brought to you in part by Stantec generation av Stantec Generation. AV combines some of the most experienced AV experts in the industry. With the resources of a global engineering firm, Stantec Generation AV provides educ. Consulting assessment and guidance to any industry interested in autonomous vehicles. Learn more@stantec.com. Hello and welcome to The Road to Autonomy. I’m your host, grace and Broy on today’s episode. We’re absolutely honored to have Charlie Chat. Head of commercialization for trucking. Waymo, welcome to the podcast Charlie. 

Charlie Jatt: Thanks, Grayson. Great to be here. 

Grayson Brulte: I’m super excited to have you here because autonomous trucks are the future of trucking. Autonomous trucks will shore up the supply chain and autonomous trucks will have a positive impact. On society because in the future they’ll be able to lower the cost of goods for millions of individuals around the world. So thank you for this endeavor and bringing this technology to the people that need it the most. Waymo’s known as the self-driving car company. Everything going on at Chandler, going back to the Firefly car. And then in 2017, Waymo said, we’re expanding and we’re going into autonomous trucking. Why? 

Charlie Jatt: So it really starts before 2017. So 2017 was the year we put our first, uh, autonomous truck on the road. But prior to that, and dating back long before I even joined Waymo in 2016, the philosophy and the theory of our technology was we’re building a driver. And that driver can be used for lots of different applications, different types of vehicles. And so the mission of the company was always to build that technology in a way that could be applied. To many different exciting use cases. So it’s always been on our roadmap to explore diverse applications and trucking logistics is a huge one of those. So in 2017, when we then put our first autonomous truck on the road, it was the right time for us to put that theory to the test and say, okay, we’ve built this technology platform. We think we’ve built it in a way that we can put it on a very different type of vehicle than what we’ve been testing up to this point. So let’s do it. And of course, you know, we do every step responsibility and start with close courses, but we are really pleased with the results of that theory being put into practice. And so we took that technology and saw that it could actually quite easily transfer over to a very different application, different type of vehicle. Around that time we also, we recognized a couple things. One was the immense business case that we had seen from the beginning in this application for trucking was just becoming clearer and clearer as industry trends were developing that are really. In full focus right now, but have been around for a while. Supply chain crunches, driver shortages, those are not new issues. They’re just really in a focal point right now. So it was really a good turning point for us to increase the investment in that application specifically. The other thing that was kind of a. Key turning point in time for us was getting enough stability in our technology platform to be able to successfully go after multiple applications at once. So if you think about it, you build a tool that you’re gonna use for multiple use cases. You don’t wanna get ahead of yourself and try to use that tool. On too many things before that tool is really ready to do what it’s supposed to do. But we were really seeing good signs. 2017 was shortly before we opened our fully autonomous service to the public in Chandler. So we were seeing really good stability with what we’ve developed. And you know, we’ve obviously continued to grow our trucking program, ramp up our testing operations. We’ve invested quite a bit in that dedicated. Team. We’re testing on public roads across California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and we’re just working diligently to keep ramping up our testing and technology development to work towards the goal of fully autonomous deployment at scale. 

Grayson Brulte: When you went, the Waymo driver goes from car to truck. Do they have to get a digital CDL or go through that traditional truck driving process, but just in a simulation digital world and say, okay, Waymo driver A, you’ve been certified with a digital CDL. 

Charlie Jatt: Technically speaking not, but in terms of. How we approach deployment of, of doing anything new. There’s a series of diligence steps we’re going to take. Right? And so, you know, it starts in simulation, as you mentioned, with cars and trucks, both including that big step when we first took it onto a truck. But also, every time we push a new software change, every time we’re gonna operate a new geography, a different operational environment, we always test it in simulation first. That’s your. Canary in the coal mine, so to speak, to make sure that anything that you’re changing is gonna lead to positive improvement and not a regression. The next step is then close course testing. So we’ve got a really robust close course testing facilities that kind of hit two flavors. One flavor is. Just testing out like the vehicle dynamics and stress testing. What are the limits of acceleration, braking, steering that are safe for different types of vehicles, different payloads in the case of trucking. And then we also have a closed course testing environment where we have basically a small simulation city. In the real world where we can test in very controlled environments. And then when we do deploy our Waymo driver onto public roads, it’s always first with, uh, safety drivers, our test drivers behind the wheel, and often with an expert software operator in the right hand passenger seat as well. So while, while there’s no CDL process for an autonomous truck, you know, we, we kind of have a responsibility to. Thoughtful and safe procedures in order to make sure that every step we’re taking is in serving the public interest of safety and not attempting to take any shortcuts along the way. 

Grayson Brulte: Is that one of the key ways how Waymo, specifically the trucking division’s building trust. If you meet with a highway patrol officer or policy meets with a, an elected official in say, New Mexico or Texas, you say, we have a safety driver. Safety engineer, we wanna build your trust and this is what we’re doing. Is that one way that you’re building the trust? 

Charlie Jatt: Safety is huge in everything we do, and it’s huge in building trust with just about everyone we work with from public agencies, like you mentioned, government stakeholders, also the private companies that we partner with. I mean, transportation is a safety critical industry and it’s very. Readily apparent how important safety and safety culture is in the automotive industry in the trucking logistics industry. Of course, the motoring public is very concerned about safety, and the whole reason we’re here is to improve safety. That’s the mission, that’s the founding of the Google Self-Driving car project is a belief that we can make road safer for everybody, and so we would really be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn’t really embed that into the approach that we take to everything we do. And I think that. Just how long we’ve been around and how consistent we’ve been in that. That reputation in both soft and concrete ways just really comes through with everybody we work with. I mean, you mentioned law enforcement as an example. We’ve partnered very closely with law enforcement officials anywhere that we’ve operated from the early days when we were testing in Chandler, for example, just reaching out to law enforcement and saying, Hey, just so you know, here’s what we’re doing. We’re testing these vehicles. If you come across one. Here’s what you need to know. And of course, at first, that’s easier when there’s a test driver behind the wheel. But we’re also operating without test drivers in Chandler. And so that’s a whole step you have to take with the community as well and say, okay, now we’ve got these fully autonomous cars that we’re ready to deploy because they improve safety, but they’re new. So, okay. What happens if a police officer comes across one of these vehicles and wants to get in touch with Waymo? Let’s say we’ve got a, a busted taillight. Or it looks that way. We would detect it if we had it because we’ve got onboard vehicle diagnostics, but supports the officer. Thought it looked like it. Maybe it wasn’t actually the case. What’s he supposed to do in that scenario? So we, we helped provide training in just how to interact with this new technology. 

Grayson Brulte: I wanna mention a couple things. On the Waypoint blog. Done a really good job. There was an example where on the passenger vehicles interacting with a fire engine and you broke down to the public in very simple terms of what happens. That was really well done to build that trust with the public. And then on March 11th, there was an on NBC news, there was a feature where on the trucking side you had one of the Waymo safety drivers, and they asked him, I believe the gentleman was a million mile driver, and they said, sir, what have you seen on the road? Why are, do you wanna do this Sir Waymo? And he is like, well, look, keep in mind I still have a flip phone. I’m just a simple guy that likes driving trucks. And he said, I wanna do this to improve safety because as a million mile driver, I’ve seen horrific accidents. And he picked up the number one thing, the Waymo driver. Doesn’t get tired. And that’s a really important factor. Is that another element when you’re developing the business and and meeting with your partners, and we’re gonna get into in a minute, like JB Hunt or CB Robinson, that the Waymo driver doesn’t get tired. Is that a big part of that conversation? 

Charlie Jatt: Absolutely, and and I would say that message is especially relevant on the consumer transportation side of things because we’ve all been there. Most of us adults do a lot of driving. It’s just part of the way we run our lives, whether we’ve been just a tad tired on the road. Few minutes from home or we’ve seen somebody else on the road texting and you see those moments, especially us as consumers, uh, are imperfect drivers, and that’s scenario where technology just has a huge advantage and promise for improving safety within the trucking industry. I would say what’s interesting is. The difference here is we’re talking about professional truck drivers, and so the trucking industry, while it’s not perfect, of course, has a huge value for safety. And over the decades has made really great improvements in safety through things like technology, through things like thoughtful regulation, through things like smart and responsible training at private companies. And so there, I think it’s just important tore. Fix a problem in trucking with regards to safety, but rather build on a strong safety culture with yet a new technology that can improve things even further. And our drivers, you mentioned Bob, who, uh, recently was spotlighted in an NBC interview. Our drivers play a really critical role for us in helping to improve the technology because they have more experience driving than. Anybody else on the road like you or I, just from driving our cars around and so they’ve just seen so much. And so what may take our engineers several development cycles to discover through data. Sometimes our drivers can point out with a couple runs on the latest software release and say, Hey, I noticed behavior change. You may wanna think about that a little bit differently. That may surprise some of the other road users in something like that. So drivers just play a really critical role for us. A partnership between autonomous technology and professional truck drivers for many years to come. 

Grayson Brulte: I wanna highlight that. That’s special. Waymo learns from truck drivers. That’s really special. What are some of the most interesting things? These truck drivers are amazing individuals. They’ve driven all over the country. They’ve seen road conditions, they’ve seen weather conditions, they’ve seen horrific crashes. They’re really incredible wealth of knowledge. I’ll give you an old school term. They’re like an Encyclopedia Britannica for roadways. Well, how did that start? Was it Bob or another one of the Waymo drivers and said, Hey Charlie, let’s talk about a scenario when I was driving this and how we can build it into simulation. How did that, first of all, because it’s really smart. 

Charlie Jatt: I would say it was organic, but intentional and and definitely kind of went both ways. So I think that was something that our. Technology development teams clued into pretty early on when we’ve kind of moved from going from cars to trucks. I mean, with our car testing, we get tons of feedback from our drivers too. And we’ve built in really, I would say, smart and differentiated technology around how to solicit and ingest that feedback from drivers at scale. And so then when we started ramping up the trucking program, that outgrowth was extremely natural and just the difference was. We’ve got people like Bob who are million mile drivers, and so they’re not only just giving feedback based on what they’re seeing, the truck drive on that run, they’ve got the context of their decades of experience. So it’s really powerful and we’re just really grateful to have a great team behind the wheel. 

Grayson Brulte: It’s phenomenal, and like I said, it really showed in, in the NBC piece. And so you mentioned the autonomous trucking program. The early days started before 2017, but then 2020. Commercialization began with the introduction of the Waymo via division. What did you and the team see at that time? Said, okay, now is the time to officially launch a logistics business and prepare for commercialization. 

Charlie Jatt: I wish there was something special about that. Uh, but it’s actually just when we branded it for the couple years leading up as we’ve been kind of ramping up the program post 2017, we would just refer to the program internally as the the Waymo Trucking Program. We’d be talking to government and industry partners and just. Talking about it as Waymo Trucking, and eventually we realized that it was a big enough program that it, it needed its own name in order to create its own identity. I think that’s been one interesting thing about. Strength of having so much history and time spent developing autonomous technology for cars is that when we first started being more vocal about our, uh, trucking efforts, I think we were all a little surprised in just how tricky it was to kind of make it known that we were working on and serious about trucks. Even several years in, I would. Run into people at conferences or this, that, or the other and, and folks would say, oh, I didn’t know Waymo was working on trucks. And so we’ve definitely made a push over the last couple years just to get the word out there. It’s not really in our DNA to make big splashes, you know, we like to keep our heads down and just focus on making the progress on the product. But it is important that folks know the brand, know that we’re working on autonomous trucks and see the opportunity that that we see to partner together. 

Grayson Brulte: It’s not just Waymo’s seeing the opportunity. You have several competitors in the industry that see the opportunity, but Wall Street’s really picking up on the opportunity. There’s inflation’s running at a 40 year high. We don’t know where Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve are gonna go. They’re shipping reports that it could rise as much as 25. Percent. So there’s a lot of, let’s call it global supply chain imbalances that are currently facing, and I see this opportunity. You have world-class, some, probably some of the world’s best engineers working on developing the Waymo driver, which for autonomous trucking your competitors are, are developing autonomous trucks. To me, there’s a really great opportunity for government and for industry to embrace autonomous trucking to help blunt inflation. Why do you think autonomous trucking is not being offered as a solution? When it could have a really positive impact and it could potentially blunt inflation as this, as I said, is a 40 year high. 

Charlie Jatt: I think it’s on the nose to point out that trend and that connection as to why is this not more of a. Focal point of the conversation or how William Ovia and others are promoting the technology? I think it’s an issue of timing and humility, which is we’re still pretty early days on developing the technology, and so realistically, it’s gonna be a number of years before autonomous trucking is going to have macro level. Impacts on the economy such as inflation. But the trend is exactly right, or I should say the, the logic is exactly right. There’s huge opportunity for autonomous trucking to increase efficiencies in the supply chain. Reduce. Blockages in the supply chain, reduce costs and prices in the supply chain, which in many ways, I’m not an economist, but as a lay person, understanding kind of seems like the tip of the spear for inflation issues, at least as we’ve experienced them over the last couple years from the pandemic. So the opportunity is. Definitely there as to why it’s not kind of a bigger focal point. It’s just that it’s early days and so it’s a little early to make specific predictions or claims. And we’ve found just being around as long as we’ve been around, we know the importance of. Keeping grounded expectations, there can definitely be some backfiring consequences by getting expectations really inflated that, no pun intended, where people kind of feel like there was a promise that was not delivered on, and then they question future. Claims predictions. I think we’ve, we’ve obviously seen a little bit of that in the autonomous technology industry over the last five years. So just as a good steward to the industry and, and our company, at least at Waymo, we just try to keep really grounded and focus on the end game, which is, there’s no doubt that. Safety benefits, the economic benefits, the supply chain benefits, all of these things hold huge promise, but we’ve just gotta take our time and be patient to get there. 

Grayson Brulte: I appreciate the honesty. I thank you for not giving a timeline. The industry learned a lot of mistakes early on where outrageous timelines were made by several companies, didn’t have become true, and we lost a lot of credibility. So thank you for, for being realistic on there. While we are early Central Bank digital currencies on the economic front, they’re being talked about more. There’s books being written about it. That’s still early. I’m gonna discontinue to my wife, hears all the time. Autonomous trucking will lower inflation. I’m gonna be the one out there cheerleading it as to maybe some professor from the IMF from Oxford and write a theory paper on it. And then I’ll say, uh, Charlie, look, we’ve, we’ve got a document from a very important person in Oxford that’s a lot smarter than me or Yale on this. Hopefully we can get there. But overall, how do you see autonomous trucking shoring up the domestic supply chain? Because there’s a lot of imbalance, as I mentioned earlier, with ports. We saw the reports with containers sitting at ports. There was the Goldman Sachs report that came out about a month ago where the containers off of Huntington Beach were just over the horizon line. They’re still there. Will autonomous trucks be eventual, go into the ports and start moving those containers to help shore up the supply chain. So the mom that’s buying their childless sneakers doesn’t have to pay an extra $6 $7 due to the shipping costs and the backlog. 

Charlie Jatt: The specific question around the use case around autonomous trucks and torts, it’s not something that we at Waymo are pursuing right now. So from a use case standpoint. The early use case that we’re focusing on is over the road trucking, so that’s medium to long haul, predominantly highway driving, and that’s where we see the biggest opportunity to increase safety. So reducing risk of incidents on the road and supplement the growing need for drivers, which I’ll, I’ll talk a bit more about. So. In terms of how autonomous trucking can help shore up supply chains, the way I think about it is it’s really a tool that we’re offering. Autonomous trucking is not going to completely turn supply chain and logistics on its head. It’s gonna really evolve in parallel to lots of other trends in the industry. Some of the benefits of autonomous tracking is. One, it’s a new source of capacity. So there’s a driver shortage right now there’s some estimates of over 80,000 rolls, shortage and predicted to grow at a hundred thousand within a year and over 160,000, uh, within the next five years. So there’s a big driver shortage, and that’s particularly strained on these medium and long haul routes where it’s a tougher lifestyle. Don’t necessarily get to be home with their family every night. And increasingly there’s more of an interest in kind of short haul and, and local driving jobs. So there could be a really nice evolution in synergy between autonomous trucks bringing online capacity where it’s needed. Then also potentially making the driving job that much more attractive to bring in more talent where it’s needed in local driving operations. The other ways that autonomous trucks may help improve supply chains is through efficiency. So right now, trucks really aren’t utilized as much as they could be. So that’s physical operating capacity that could be moving goods, but just isn’t. And that’s a result of a number of things. So losing time stuck in traffic, losing time stuck at pickups and deliveries if the that facility is congested or if an appointment window is mismatched. Safety incidents can cause traffic. And then another big one is trucks driving without a load. So, because truck drivers need to get home, sometimes they’ll, you know, drop off a load one direction and their net isn’t necessarily another load for them to bring back right at that time. And they don’t wanna sit around and wait for hours because they might get a load, especially if they’re up against their hours of service limitations, and they might risk going over the clock. So a lot of these things, autonomous trucks, could be an interesting tool to basically empower fleets and logistics companies. To make their network smarter, optimize them better. So for example, you know, an autonomous truck, it can drive any time of day. It’s not gonna be subject to when a driver wants to be home. And geographically it can probably take much more complex routing. It doesn’t necessarily need to get home to the same place every night. And so with those two things, you could potentially get much more intricate with some of the optimizations around. Where you move capacity and when in order to make sure trucks aren’t driving empty, make all the use you can of the trucking capacity that you have in terms of the actual power units. So again, it’s early days, so who knows exactly how these. Suite of solutions is going to evolve. But you know, I think when we think about technology trends outside of transportation, some of the most powerful ones that we can think of are tools. It’s not necessarily a product in the end case. I mean the internet, mobile computers, smartphones, et cetera, are really enablers of many solutions that nobody could have ever imagined. And I think autonomous trucks have have some of that characteristic as well. 

Grayson Brulte: I like that analogy. I remember years and years ago. I was, I had the old Bell Atlantic phone, then I went to a Star Tac, and then I went to a Nextel Blackberry, and I had the latest Blackberry and Steve Jobs out there announces the iPhone. I’m never gonna get this. Doesn’t have a keyboard. I can never type on this boy. Oh boy. Fast forward years later, I’ve gotten more iPhones than you could imagine, an iPads. It completely changed the game, and it became a commerce platform. Apple publishes the statistics. I don’t remember on the top of my head of how much money developers have made through the App Store. It became a game. Changing platform and getting back to inflation when you’re adding on. New capacity, you’re eliminating empty trucks, you’re gonna lower the cost of goods. ’cause there’s the great line that’s used in the trucking industry. My buddy Jordan Coleman says all the time, if you bought it, a truck brought it. And that’s exactly what you’re gonna do. And you’re gonna do really great things there. And as you develop the commercialization strategy for Waymo, what role do market conditions play in this decision making process? Are you taking in all these different elements of the market saying, okay, this is where our commercialization strategy needs to go based on current market conditions and where. You’re predicting the market to eventually go. 

Charlie Jatt: We’re obviously always monitoring, and it’s really apparent over the last couple years just how stark those market conditions have been in the trucking industry and supply chain more broadly. We hear it all the time from industry stakeholders, those signals, whether we’re at conferences and and hearing talks, or having good conversations with some of our partners in the industry. So we’re very aware of those market conditions. Necessarily play a, a big role in our strategic decision making process because the timescale that we’re talking about of bringing the Waymo via technology to market kind of sits above some of those year over year changes in market conditions. But that overarching trend of, Hey, we all see the problems right now, and none of the talking heads are saying, yeah, these will just go away. They’ll fix themselves. I think these problems. It won’t last very long. Nobody’s saying that. Everybody knows that there’s some endemic trends around driver supply. Increased demand from consumers, increased congestion on our roads, generally speaking. So the overarching trend, while it doesn’t necessarily directly impact our strategic decision making process, certainly is an underlying component of why the business case is compelling enough to justify. The tremendous investment that we and others are putting into this technology. 

Grayson Brulte: How about ESG rating agencies are starting to include ’em. Certain companies will only work with companies that they have ESG. How are those ESG metrics changing the way that you’ll strategically approach commercialization? 

Charlie Jatt: It’s pretty similar to those market conditions where we see and hear a lot of those signals and. They’re pointing to supporting everything that we’re doing. So they’re positive trends that companies are caring more about ESG requirements. And I’ll say in just the few years that I’ve been focused on trucking, I’ve noticed a tremendous shift in attitudes and conversations in industry. I can’t pinpoint where that change started or when exactly it happened, but the contrast from. I started in this role a few years ago to now is, is very palpable and having a positive societal impact has always been a foundational part of our mission. Safety being the biggest part of that. But then, uh, you know, other areas around sustainability as well. So that remains unchanged for us and continues just to be something that we prioritize. We don’t necessarily tie it to external ESG requirements. I think someday we may get there. Similar to the market conditions and, and similar to the inflation, it’s just early days and the timescales we’re talking about are really where it’s appropriate to talk about themes more than it’s appropriate to talk about, you know, hard metrics and requirements. But I’m really excited for the, you know, the phase when we eventually get to have those much more concrete and robust conversations around. How to use this tool we’re introducing and how to maximize its benefit. And I think those frameworks like ESG requirements are great tools in the industry for helping various stakeholders come together to figure out how to, you know, have the most positive impact. So we really look, look forward to being a part of that process. Right now, it’s really just about the themes and the underlying motivation. 

Grayson Brulte: ESG is getting interesting. I read a report from Brown Brothers Aman Day, the the New York, uh, private bank where other institutional clients, 56% of their institutional clients with over a billion dollars under their management are gonna put money into E-S-G-E-T-F funds. So the, the trends only continuing, and you’ve got a wonderful partner in JB Hunt and Craig Harper. Thanks for being a road to autonomy listener. Can’t wait to have you on. They’re committed to sustainability. You read JB Hunt’s filings, they’re doing really great stuff. Craig and the team at JB are doing wonderful things outside sustainability. I wanna highlight the thing is on the JB Hunt deal for Waymo, it started as a pilot and then it turned into a long-term commercial engagement. And I like that and I wanna stress long-term commercial engagement. It wasn’t just a press release, how we’re gonna run a load for two weeks and then away we go. How did you build trust with Craig and the team at JB Hunt where you went from the pilot, everything went well, and you entered into a long-term commercial agreement? 

Charlie Jatt: We’re really grateful for the partnership with JB Hunt and with Craig and his team and, and just to give a nod to that ESG conversation, I’ve been really impressed just speaking personally from my own vantage point at how seriously Craig and his team and JB Hunt as a company are, are taking ESG and really taking an impressive leadership stance within the industry to push that forward. So. Kudos to all them, and like I said, we’re really grateful for the relationship and how I would describe the evolution was early on when we started ramping up our investment in the trucking space and started building out a dedicated team, I switched to focus full-time on, on trucks. You know, of course we started to reach out and just establish some connections and relationships with various folks in the industry and JB Hunt, and Craig in particular really. Stood out right away as a company that. Really saw the importance of innovation and the opportunity in innovation. Craig always likes to say, if there’s going to be a disruption, I’d rather ha disrupt myself than have somebody else disrupt me. And I think that mindset is just really impressive for a company with as long the history as JB Hunt has. So it was clear from, you know, the first days. That we met, that they were a company that would be a really valuable partner in this space. And so we, from the Waymo side, just invested in that relationship and stuck to the things that we know how to do best, which is just be authentic, be transparent, emphasize the importance of safety, and demonstrate our technology leadership. So taking the JB Hunt team members for. Rides not just with our trucks, but also with our fully autonomous passenger cars in Arizona, I think is a really powerful proof point for our technology because you can see where the truck technology is going, by seeing where it’s been with the passenger cars. And then we just together kind of worked on an outline for how we wanted to see the relationship evolve. Started with. Kind of a market study in collaboration to just say, Hey, let’s put our best people together and crack out the metaphorical pencils and paper and think about what’s gonna need to be true in order to successfully deploy this technology. We obviously at Waymo understand the technology side of things, but we’re not a trucking firm. We have no plans to be a trucking firm. And so there’s that whole other side of the equation of how do you make this successful that a company like JB Hunt brings to the table. Collaboration was great. We said, okay, great. Let’s launch our first pilot together. Identified one of their top customers who was excited to be part of the technology testing and again, saw really good results. It was a small pilot to start with, so we all knew that. Not something that was going to change the face of the industry in one pilot, but it was a stepping stone. And after that is when we kind of sat down together and we said, okay, we know we like working together. From the Waymo side, we know that we see JB Hunt as being a leader in adopting this technology from the JB Hunt side. They said, we know we want to be a part of this. And so we said, well, let’s map out a path where we can focus on that long term together and not kind of sit. And guess each year, what the next year’s gonna hold for our relationship. And so we mapped out a, an alliance that consists of four main components. So executing multiple pilots together over the next few years to prepare for fully autonomous operations and to prepare for fully autonomous operations that have the strong ability to scale, continuing to conduct operational and market studies to refine the commercial readiness and the operational readiness. So there’s things that you. Won’t really learn by running a handful of autonomous trucks, but you shouldn’t wait until you’re running a thousand trucks to think through all of those edge cases. So there’s really important, like the real world testing, but then also the proof of concept on pencil. Ways to integrate our technology with the JV Hunt platform and the JV Hunt 360 platform in particular. So thinking through how to ensure that autonomous technology gets some of those utilization and efficiency benefits that we talked about earlier. And then one of the things we’re really excited about is that we’ve given JV Hunt the opportunity and they have the intent to be our first fully autonomous customer with our technology. So just mutually having that locked in together to say. Hey, we’re developing this technology. We’re getting ready for this launch and we’re both gonna be there for this launch. Really, unblocks, I think a, a depth of collaboration that is really quite invaluable for this type of technology that’s so intricate. I mean, it’s not often you get technology that is where the technology itself is so intricate. Then also the deployment of that technology in the real physical world interacting with their shipping customers, like interacting at the pickup and delivery there. There’s just so much to work through that having that kind of depth of collaboration is really what we look for. 

Grayson Brulte: What every company has to do to do a deal, do a partnership, develop trust, you develop there. It’s clear from what you said in putting the JB Hunt team and, and the Waymo via truck putting the team in Chandler in the passenger van, you build trust. And when you build trust, really great things happen. And that clearly is what is that trust? What led to JB Hunt saying We wanna be the first fully autonomous customer. Was that that trust that you developed has led to that part of the deal? 

Charlie Jatt: I think so. I mean, if you get an opportunity to have Craig on the podcast in the future, that’d be a, a fun question to ask him as well. But trust was big. And then I would also just. Say again, their value for innovation and leadership and safety. I think trust has led them to Waymo and belief in our technology, but it’s their belief and value in innovation and safety that put them at the forefront to say, Hey, we need to be a part of ushering in this new technology transition. 

Grayson Brulte: And earlier you said a statement that resonates with me. Waymo is not a trucking firm. I wanna repeat, Waymo is not a trucking firm. Does that mean that Waymo is gonna operate the driver as a service model and you’re not gonna operate the fleets? Could you shed more light on that? ’cause that’s a really powerful statement because there are. Some competitors in the industry that wanna operate a trucking fleet, and you’re clearly making it. No, we’re Waymo. We’re an incredible technology company. We’re not a trucking company. Did I hear that right? 

Charlie Jatt: I mean, that’s a message that we repeat constantly. I mean, I’d say especially early days, the top questions we would get. Are you gonna build a truck? Nope. We’re partnering for that. Are you going to, uh, build and operate a fleet of trucks? Nope. We wanna partner for that. Well, what are you gonna do? Well, we’ve got a huge mission in front of us to build the technology, and we fundamentally believe that not only will we build the technology better by collaborating with industry through the drivers of service business model, but those industry stakeholders will be able to put that technology to use better and faster. Than we could if we tried to do everything ourselves. So in terms of how that model works, just to put a little bit more meat on the bones, we’re obviously developing the technology, what we call the Waymo driver. So that’s full hardware and software stack that we add to a truck in order to drive it. Autonomous. And then we’re partnering with OEMs, most notably Daimler Trucks North America. Um, to build the technology that’s needed on the base truck platform. Things like redundant steering, redundant braking, and to integrate those two technology stacks such that then a fleet or a carrier who normally buys a Freightliner from Daimler and hires a driver to drive that truck, they can purchase these trucks and Waymo via, can be provided as an add-on option to drive that. Track autonomously. And then we of course provide, you know, deployment support, ongoing services for hardware and software components, mapping over the air updates, all things like that. And then on top of that, there’s a broader ecosystem that ourselves as well as. The OEMs and the fleets are gonna need to piece together in order to support and deploy these waymo equipped vehicles. So, for example, you know, we’re partnered with Ryder who runs maintenance services for our trucking fleet. You could imagine how a huge maintenance network like Ryder could provide support services for anybody who owns a, a Waymo via equipped, uh, autonomous truck. 

Grayson Brulte: Add-on option. That’s interesting. Will that be done at the factory, at Daimler Trucks North America? Where does that add-on? So let’s just say I’m Acme Shipper and I’m gonna order a hundred, a fleet of a hundred trucks from Daimler Trucks North America, and I want to put the Waymo driver in those vehicles. Do I do the add-on option with my sales rep and then it’s all built there? Or how does that process work? 

Charlie Jatt: That’s still in development. I mean, again, early days. And so in our partnership with Daimler, we’re mutually committed to. Make this technology available on Daimler’s, Freightliner, Cascadia trucks, and mutually committed to make those trucks and that technology available to the industry. The exact model of how’s the sales transaction gonna work, uh, who do I call? What am I talking to? Daimler? What am I talking to? Waymo? That’s something that we’re working through together as partners, so no specifics to share on on that. But the term vision is very clear, which is. Make these trucks available with the Waymo via technology, put them in the hands of fleets and logistics companies who are gonna make the best use of them. 

Grayson Brulte: Well, I’ll just say I think it’s a very smart business model. I’ll say that. I think it’s a very, very smart business model. 

Charlie Jatt: Definitely appreciate that. We’re excited about it. And I think what makes me personally so excited about it is even just in the early days. You can see the benefits of the expertise that all those ecosystem players bring to bear. I mean, we talked about JB Hunt. I just can’t imagine that we would be able to develop as good of a product without a partnership like that. And if that’s what we’re saying seeing in the early days, then when I think when we fast forward five, 10 years and there. Thousands, many thousands of these trucks operating on the roads. Then it, I think we’ll really see this business model take off where it’s like any industry, if you try to do everything yourself, you’re just gonna not think of everything. You’re gonna move slower. And if you kind of empower a whole ecosystem, then. New solutions that you never thought of are going to pop up. Things are gonna scale way faster than we could have ever imagined. So I’m just really excited to see what the industry can do with the tool that we hope we can put in their hands. So 

Grayson Brulte: that raises a question, will the future of autonomous trucking be defined by partnerships? You mentioned rider for the maintenance, you’ve got the JB Hunt partnership, you have the CH Robinson, you have the UPS. Seems like you’re building a pretty nice stable of, of partnerships there. 

Charlie Jatt: I think building the ecosystem is really important. And Daimler, of course, we also talked about, and the big buckets we think about are, are really those buckets. So there’s. The OEM, so manufacturing the truck there. We’re partnered with Daimler. There’s the kind of user of those trucks, so the trucking firms and logistics companies, JB Hunt, CH Robins, and UPS, and then there’s the support ecosystem. Rider being a great example of that. And so our kind of mindset when it comes to commercialization is we recognize. The timelines are long, but that’s not a reason to wait to build out the components of the ecosystem. Our ideal, what we would love to see is that by the time we’re ready to take the driver out of the cab for at scale operations, that everything else has already been worked out, and it’s almost like huge event for the technology. Ideally almost a non-event for the actual operation of the business. You know, everybody’s already been prepped. It’s kinda like the law enforcement example we were talking about earlier where it’s like, don’t wait for someone to pull over a self-driving a fully autonomous car and think, what the heck do I do with this? Think about ahead of time solve that problem such it’s not a big deal. Our whole mindset when it comes to commercialization, it’s important. Going back to another part of our conversation though, just to keep expectations grounded, so I think something that can sometimes be misinterpreted when there’s a lot of excitement around the industry is when you see a lot of activity heating up on the commercialization and partnership side of things. I think we’ve seen some examples, cars and trucks, where the industry gets a little bit ahead of itself in kind of conflating that progress with, okay. Next year this is gonna be ready and it’s gonna change everything. And I, I think, like we talked about, that that can backfire sometimes where it just leads to a sense of false promises and erodes that trust that you, me, is really so critical to. Everything we do and everyone we work with, 

Grayson Brulte: I’ll use a home builder analogy. It’s that you’re building a home and you’re building the foundation. So when you’re ready to put the kitchen in or uh, put the living room in, you just start adding the pieces to the home. So it’s really wise ’cause you can’t build a home without a sturdy foundation. And it seems that’s clearly what you’re doing. So I want to get back to economics here. As you probably tell, I’m fascinated with economics. What are the economics of Waymo’s Driver as a service model? 

Charlie Jatt: It’s early days. We don’t have any exact numbers or margins or cost projections or things like that, but we have studied and see that there’s likely a pretty massive savings opportunity in terms of the actual operating costs of a truck. Huge efficiency benefits. So we’ve modeled out. Some scenarios with some of the things we talked about around like increasing truck utilization, decreasing empty loads. We’ve looked at that ourselves. We’ve looked at that with partners, and so the, the opportunity is there. It’s early days and so nothing really to share in terms of specific numbers. 

Grayson Brulte: That’s fair. Putting this all together, overall industry wise, how do you see the autonomous. Trucking industry evolving over the next five to 10 years without giving timelines or any of that perspective? ’cause it’s, the industry has grown and now I feel like we’re, we’re getting ready to go. If you wanna use the Brian Chesky Airbnb analogy, we’re getting ready for that hockey stick growth. Now it seems, 

Charlie Jatt: I think what exactly the meaning of that hockey stick will look like for autonomous technology is an open question. And so. From what we see, we’re gonna see it continue to see a gradual and incremental introduction of autonomous technology. And this is true across both, both cars and trucks. But I’ll just focus on trucks since that’s this conversation. And that’s to say, you know, we’re gonna start with. Deploying small scale, fully autonomous operations. Our first launch lane is gonna be between Dallas and Houston. You’ll see gradual kind of lane by lane expansion, starting with kind of southern US growing from there. Of course, global ambitions as well, and that introduction is not going to kind of hit an overnight moment where all of a sudden it works and it’s everywhere, or all of a sudden it works. And now you go from a hundred trucks on the road to a hundred thousand trucks on the road. It’s gonna be a gradual introduction. The reason for that, your Airbnb analogy, is we’re talking about. Technology in the physical world, and we’re talking about safety critical technology. And so the old Silicon Valley adage of move fast and break things doesn’t really work in our space. It’s move fast, move responsibly is maybe a better way to phrase it. And so that’s gonna mean that how we think about that hockey stick moment just may. Feel DA little bit different. I still think that there will be an inflection point where this goes from a conversation where we’re saying, oh, it’s early days. Here’s some things that are gonna happen and we’re gonna be talking about this technology’s real. It’s an action, it’s growing. Now we’re talking about more concrete projections, things like that. Exactly. When that’s the million dollar question. And then the other interesting dynamic that we envision over the next five to 10 years. Which is a question we get a lot from industry stakeholders is how’s this gonna interact with drivers and the existing supply chain industry? And because it’s gonna be that gradual introduction, I think it’s actually gonna be a very kind of fruitful co-evolution. So we mentioned. Earlier that kind of use case synergy, where autonomous trucks are really well suited to kind of medium and long haul routes. Human drivers are really gonna be the experts for a long time to come on local urban and suburban, metropolitan driving kind of the first, last mile type of stuff. And so it’s gonna be really interesting to, to see it evolve. But I think it’s undeniably right now, a really exciting and interesting time for the technology. And I think that just to. Temper maybe some of the things that I’ve said. I’ve emphasized the importance of being grounded and not getting ahead of ourselves. But on the flip side, I think we’ll all look back at the early 2020s and say, wow, that’s when autonomous technology like really got started. And I think 10 years from now, undeniably we’re gonna be looking at a totally different landscape of transportation. 

Grayson Brulte: I like that we’re still in the early days. If you wanna let me, you mentioned the Dallas to Houston route. In my opinion, Texas has become the home of autonomous trucking. Waymo’s opening a facility outside of Dallas Fort Worth area. It looks really well designed, by the way, and we’re, we’re still in those early stages. I really like your line. Move fast, move responsibly. ’cause that’s what this is about, because history is gonna look back and judge us kindly. If we prioritize safety, we prioritize doing good. By society, we’ll all win because society needs. Autonomous trucking. As I mentioned earlier, autonomous trucking will help to lower inflation. It will have a positive impact on society and for everybody and make our roads safer. And Charlie, as we look to wrap up this insightful conversation, what would you like our listeners take away then? We covered a lot of ground and thank you for shedding light on the commercialization strategy of Waymo and I find it very fascinating. 

Charlie Jatt: It’s been a really fun conversation, Grayson, I think. The number one thing, which is what we just ended on, is it’s a really exciting time for autonomous trucking technology and I think that plus hopefully our listeners through this conversation get a sense that Waymo Via is in a really strong position. We’ve got the most robust safety expertise in the industry. We believe we’ve got the best technology platform. We’re tailoring our product for the industry. This is a long-term game and we’ve got long-term stability, so it’s an exciting time for the technology and I think it’s gonna be really fun to watch what Waymo Via is able to do and, and I’m just grateful to be along for the ride. 

Grayson Brulte: I wanna highlight again, Waymo’s in a strong position with long-term stability. Waymo is in a strong position with long-term stability that is your golden goose that allows you to focus on building the safest, most reliable. Driver, go Team Waymo. Because the future is bright, the future’s autonomous and the future is Waymo. Charlie, thank you so much for coming on the road to Autonomy today. 

Charlie Jatt: Thank you, Grayson. It’s been really fun. 

Grayson Brulte: Thank you for listening to The Road to Autonomy podcast. If you’ve enjoyed listening, please rate review, and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Want to get in touch? Follow us on Twitter. At Road to Autonomy. The content discussed in this podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be taken as legal, tax, investment, or business advice.