Transcript: From Partnerships to Power Plays: The Road Ahead for Autonomous Trucking

Executive Summary

In this episode of The Road to Autonomy podcast, industry expert Chuck Price joins the show to analyze the autonomous trucking market, which he describes as being in a “period of retrenchment.” Recent speculative moves by Volvo and PACCAR are shaking up leadership positions and potentially shifting significant power to Daimler Truck.

Chuck also explores the four distinct models for building and deploying autonomous trucks and considers the massive disruption that could occur if Waymo decides to re-enter the trucking space.

Key The Road to Autonomy Topics & Timestamps

[00:00] Current State of the Autonomous Trucking Market: A Period of Retrenchment 

Chuck Price describes the current autonomous trucking market as being in a “period of retrenchment”. He clarifies that while the market is still strong, recent events are causing a shuffle in leadership positions and potential rollout dates.

[01:00] Speculation on Volvo’s North American Shutdown and its Impact on Aurora and Waabi 

There is speculation that Volvo has shut down its North American autonomous solutions division. If true, this would directly affect partners like Waabi and Aurora, who have significant partnerships with Volvo. The best-case scenario involves re-discussing the relationships with new executives, while the worst-case scenario, though unlikely, could mean a complete loss of the partnership if Volvo were to de-commit from autonomy.

[04:00] PACCAR’s Silence and the Power Shift to Daimler 

Amidst the uncertainty with Volvo, PACCAR has remained extremely quiet, issuing no press statements or social media posts. These potential issues with both Volvo and PACCAR could create an opening for Daimler to become the dominant OEM in the market. Chuck agrees that this situation creates strong “tailwinds” for Daimler and its subsidiary, Torc.

[06:00] Could Waymo Re-enter the Trucking Market?

Waymo, backed by Alphabet, could quickly re-enter the autonomous trucking space if it chose to. Having co-designed a redundant truck with Daimler, they have a deep understanding of the required systems. Their primary challenge would be a lack of recent data, requiring them to operate trucks on deployment routes to build up training data before a driver-out launch.

[11:00] The Complexities of Building an Autonomous Truck and OEM Partnerships 

Building an autonomous truck requires critical partnerships, especially with an OEM. Fleets prefer factory-built trucks for warranty support and resale value, not retrofits. An autonomy developer must also build a supply chain with Tier 1 suppliers for components like sensors and computers, ensuring they can meet volume and liability concerns. Ultimately, all partners, including the OEM, must be bought into the vehicle’s system-wide safety case.

[17:00] Can an OEM Veto a Driver-Out Operation? 

If an autonomy developer owns a truck and has modified it, an OEM cannot directly stop them from operating it. However, the OEM could take indirect actions, such as filing a lawsuit, demanding the removal of their logos, or reporting the operation to regulators. The blacking out of logos is a strategy an OEM might use to signal that they are not certifying the vehicle as safe for the road, placing the full liability and safety validation burden on the third party.

[26:00] Four Emerging Business Models for Autonomous Trucking 

Chuck Price outlines four primary models for deploying autonomous trucks:

1. Off-the-shelf Retrofit: Buying a standard truck and performing all the work to add autonomy systems.
2. Redundant Base Vehicle Retrofit: Adding an autonomy stack to a truck an OEM has already equipped with redundant steering and braking.
3. Factory Integration: The OEM fully builds the autonomous technology into the truck on the assembly line.
4. Vertical Integration: The OEM designs and builds the entire system, both hardware and software, in-house, with Tesla being the only current example.

[41:00] Analyzing the Safety Case of Having an Observer in a Level 4 Vehicle 

Placing an observer in a fully autonomous Level 4 truck raises complex safety questions. Driver intervention systems (like takeover upon steering input) present a risk because a false signal, such as from hitting a pothole, could cause the autonomy to disengage unexpectedly. It’s unclear what risk an observer mitigates if they cannot take control of the vehicle, and their presence may add the risk of having another person involved in a potential accident.

[54:00] Aurora’s Path Forward After PACCAR and Volvo Developments 

With safety drivers now back in their trucks at PACCAR’s demand, Aurora appears to be in a difficult situation. If the trust relationship with PACCAR has been damaged, it could take a long time to recover. Aurora’s most obvious path forward may be to focus on its partnership with Volvo, assuming Volvo refactors and remains committed to autonomy.

[58:00] Why 2027 is a Pivotal Year for Autonomous Trucking 

2027 is an important target year primarily because Daimler is on track to deliver factory-built autonomous-ready trucks. With the hardware in place, the focus shifts to an “execution play” for partners like Torc to finalize their software. Several other players are also targeting 2027, making it a key year for commercial launches.

Watch the Full Episode of The Road to Autonomy

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Chuck, it’s great to have you back on the road to autonomy. I believe this is your fourth time on. Second time is president of AI kinetics. Chuck, you got a long history in autonomous trucking. You actively study the market. You and I have some fascinating chats and let’s make these public. Now, in your opinion, Chuck, what is the current state of the autonomous trucking market? 

Chuck Price: Well, Grayson, thanks for having me back. Uh, I really enjoy our conversations. the current state of the autonomy market is, I would call a period of Reten retrenchment. uh, it is still strong, uh, but there have been some recent moves as we’ve discussed, uh, that might be juggling, uh, leadership positions. Uh. And, you know, dates of, of, uh, rollout. 

Grayson Brulte: Then there’s the speculation. My phone’s been ringing off the hook all week and I stress, this is speculation that Volvo shut down Volvo Autonomous Solutions in North America, retrenching letting everybody go, going back to Sweden. If indeed that speculation becomes fact, impact does that have on the market? 

Chuck Price: Well, that’s gonna affect a couple of players, uh, directly. Uh, Waabi has a partnership, with Volvo. Aurora also has, uh, a significant partnership, uh, with them. Uh, in the best case, it means, those, those relationships have to be, rediscussed between the OEM and the autonomy, partner. best case, it’s, it’s educating per, perhaps educating a new set of executives. it may just mean that that Volvo is making an internal adjustment that has no impact on the relationships. In the worst case, it could be a loss of the partnership if Volvo is, is decommit from autonomy. I doubt that’s the case. I don’t think we’re gonna see the worst case, but I think for each of the autonomy players, it does mean that there is some discussion to be had and some, some reevaluation of the, of the relationships. 

Grayson Brulte: You have to reevaluate. You also have to hedge your risk. And I wanna point out, Volvo Venture Capital is an investor in wbe. So there, there’s a relationship there. There’s been rumblings going on for months now that Volvo is gonna double down on their mining business and their Quarry business, which I believe has been very successful, then they’ve been actively hiring in that team. So if the worst case scenario happens, we, where does Wabi go? They only have the one oh M partner in Volvo. Do they have to go back to the market? And then where does Aurora go? They’ve been hyping up the Volvo v and l. That’s not gonna come. And you have. A, I would call it a brewing situation, which I’m not gonna speculate or comment on with PACCAR Outside of what’s been publicly reported, do they go? 

Chuck Price: So in the case of Wbi, I think Wbi has to show, significant progress. I think they’re, they’re still in the early stages of getting vehicles, you know, reliably on the road. Uh, even, even with safety drivers. So they need to make their own progress. And I, I wish them well, and I hope they, they do that rapidly. They’re taking an approach that should converge quickly to a solution, uh, that that can be, uh, repeated on the road. in the case of Aurora, I think it’s early. Um, we don’t really know what this rumor, uh, means for their relationship. It may continue, uh, or it may need to be reevaluated. and as you said, the, the case with Paccar is, uh, TVD, uh, rumors are flying that more is to come. There’s another shoe to drop, but we just don’t know yet. so, so it. It is significant, and maybe we’ll talk a little bit later about the need for an autonomy player to have multiple OEM partners to mitigate some of this risk. 

Grayson Brulte: It’s a risk. There’s, there’s no doubt about it. And what we can say publicly, PACCAR has been awfully quiet. press statements, no social media posts, IR release. They’ve been extremely, very quiet and that makes wondering if fuels Then if you look at the market, so potentially Volvo has an issue, potentially Paccar has, I say, potentially has coal feet because in a blog post, Mr. Chris Urmson said that Paccar demanded driver in it was in a public blog post. that open the door for Daimler to King? Make this market since one. This the cha, everybody wants the freight liner. The redundant freight liner cha that Suman is working on coming. Did do these two moves, shift the power back to Daimler potentially. 

Chuck Price: I think it, it does so very strongly. the, the tailwinds are there for Daimler and for Torc. uh, the, it, it really is an execution play at this point. If Torque can deliver on the committed dates, they, they have the least turbulence ahead of them in terms of their relationship. Their, their relationship with Daimler is, is very deep. since Daimler, uh, fully owns torque, so I, I think that puts them in, in the lead, if you will. Uh, but again, this is a long, this is a long game. So, uh, there, there are many things to happen before we can start declaring actual long-term leaders. 

Grayson Brulte: They have access to the, the chassis. Let’s call spade a spade. They have access to the chassis and that’s a big deal. The redundant chassis, it would be factory grade. However, across the street, if you want to use that analogy, they’ve got a multi-trillion dollar organization in Alphabet that at the Google IO conference this week, I nearly fell outta my chair started talking about Waymo and autonomous trucking. They have a deal. Or if you wanna use the industry term, a seat at Daimler. If Alphabet authorizes and Waymo makes the decision to go back into trucking, does that shake up the market? 

Chuck Price: Well, I think if they chose to commit to trucking, they could move back very quickly. they were a co-designer of the redundant truck with Daimler. Uh, so they, they understand that redundant system, very well. So. If they chose to, to move back into that space, uh, I think they could move, they could move very quickly. Now, what they don’t have, uh, what they’ve, what they’ve left on the table is data collection. And, uh, they, they would need to operate trucks, in the domain that they would intend to deploy for some period to build the training data, to do that, uh, effectively, you know, and reach a driver out stage. Uh, but I think they’re, they’re well equipped to do that and well equipped to do that very quickly. So, yeah, I think Waymo would be a, a real threat, to this mark, to these, to the other players in the market. Uh, if they chose to come out, 

Grayson Brulte: Well, let’s role play. I’ll give you a scenario. Now, Waabi has data collection. They have a sim platform that potentially, I say potentially no longer have an OEM partner. And if that’s the case, then their, their road to commercialization will be dramatically slow down. Could Waymo via potentially acquire Waabi to accelerate their plans to get back into trucking? 

Chuck Price: maybe, uh, I think the big value there might be the data. assuming they’ve, they’ve, they’ve done sufficient data collection. I don’t know what they’ve done on the road. that might provide some acceleration, maybe, sensor suites different, uh, the kind of data they collect may not be appropriate for Waymo. So I’d say that’s a maybe, I would be hard pressed to believe that Waymo doesn’t already have the simulation. Tools, available that wbe, uh, is building. So, it, it’s not clear what they would acquire, in, in that case. 

Grayson Brulte: That’s a follow point. If they need data collection though, there’s a company that does have a very large data set, is currently running trucks applied intuition. Waymo has a preexisting relationship with them from the car side. Potentially could they license some data from Applied Intuition to restart the program to accelerate it? 

Chuck Price: Yeah, it’s not inconceivable. It depends on where, where they’ve been running. it depends on how sensitive Waymo is to, to sensor positioning and the kinds of data that are, you know, that are collected. but yeah, it’s, it’s possible. 

Grayson Brulte: So let’s go down this hypothetical record. Now I’m curious. Let’s say September 1st. Waymo makes an announcement. We’re going back into trucking 2027 is lining up to be a predominant year for autonomous trucking. You can even call it the golden year. multiple companies have said they’re gonna launch driver off commercial operations, then including Torc, including plus with their partner, international and Traton. Could Waymo meet a 2027 deadline if they were to start restart? I should say September 1st. 

Chuck Price: I think that’s a heavy lift for Waymo. they have not been operating trucks, consistently on any lanes. so 2027 might be a stretch to be driver out. I think they could, they could have driver in commercial operations in that timeframe because Daimler is going to have factory trucks. They’re committed to having them rolling off the line in that timeframe. and I think it would not take long for Waymo to accelerate into a driver out. There’s no particular reason they need to be first. the, the goal is to be best. 

Grayson Brulte: Waymo is the best in robo taxis. Now, you could send the Tesla mail, but Waymo clearly is the best of a leader. They passed 10 million miles, and I know I will get inbound mail saying, well Baidu did 11 million miles. The Baidu date is not verifiable. So in my opinion, Waymo is the clear def fact of leader. 10, 10 million paid rides, buy 11 million paid rides. But Chuck, you and I know this very, very well. engineering aspect is one, your chief product officer, platooning company, chief product Officer at an autonomous trucking company. But you need really great personnel and you’ve surrounded yourself with great individuals like your career. Robert Brown and Jim Mullen, really great individuals. Lee White as well. Waymo’s gonna need to hire trucking talent. Lee, that’s a shout out to you buddy. They’re gonna have to hire trucking talent. So there’s a gentleman, he’s retired, he’s enjoying pick pickleball. You know where I’m going with this. Could Waymo potentially lower Craig Harper out of retirement to run Waymo via, since Craig was instrumental in the first deal between and JB Hunt, 

Chuck Price: Well, I have not had a discussion with, with Craig about this, and I’m sure he loves his pickleball. but, uh, there, there are more unlikely, uh, scenarios than that. Um, I think Craig would be a great, uh, leader of an operation like that. so if they do, if they do ring him up, I hope he says yes. 

Grayson Brulte: I have too. Craig’s a huge asset to. Not just the autonomous trucking county, but the entire trucking industry a whole truck. Since you’ve built autonomous trucks, Waymo potentially restarts a program. What goes into building an autonomous truck and what are the key partnerships that you need in order to make that practical? 

Chuck Price: as an autonomy developer, it’s important to understand what actually goes into this, the partnerships that are required, the, the various interests that come to play together. it’s, it’s critical to have an OEM partner that you can build a relationship with, because the fleets won’t buy long-term, won’t buy trucks that are retrofit. They want factory built trucks. They want warranty support. Uh, they want the ability to resell their trucks at the, at their, uh, end of life. so. The, the OEMs understand this, and the OEMs have their own interests. They don’t need to be first in autonomy necessarily. They want to, uh, maintain their brand reputation. They want to maintain their relationships with customers. And the, that’s hugely important to them. And as an, as an autonomy provider, it’s important to be sensitive to that and not to try to drive too quickly to get them to do things that they are uncomfortable doing. So it’s important to, to understand what their first principles are and to play the game with that in mind, to build a relationship that respects that. part of doing that technically is building a supply chain that you can, depend on to build. A large volume of trucks. And that means that the supply chain, you need to build your sensor hardware, your mounting, um, uh, the, the actuation components, the computers, this all needs to eventually be, uh, effectively own to buy the factory. The factory needs to be able to call up someone like Continental and say, give me, you know, a thousand parts this year, uh, or 10,000. Um, so, so it’s important that that is all understood, uh, and that those supply chains, uh, are on board. Um, and those tier one suppliers are also hugely important. So you’ve got the braking suppliers, the steering actuator, suppliers, and, uh, for all of those, it’s important to understand their concerns, um, and pr uh, principally. They’ll be concerned about volumes. Are they gonna be able to make enough of these to make it make financial sense and liability? Are they gonna be in a position where if, you know something unfortunate happens with a vehicle, that they’re gonna be sued? So they want, they want those issues resolved. It’s important to deal with all of those. And then finally, and I’m rattling on for forever on this, uh, but finally, it’s important that all of those players in the partnership are bought into the safety case. And that needs to be addressed. Taking into full account the underlying platform, the, the components that are supplied into that platform, and in the autonomy stack and the system as a whole. It needs to be treated fully as a system. Every element of that needs to be considered and. The, if the OEM is not bought into that, then you’re going to struggle to get, to get to a point of, of production. and that may show up as part of what’s going on with, you know, what we’ve seen in the, in the past week. 

Grayson Brulte: In the past week, we saw the spade a spade. The packed car Peterbilt logo was blacked out. I don’t know what that means, but I’m just pointing to a public photo. The logo was blacked out. Anybody can speculate what you want there. I’m not, I’m not gonna comment on that. But I am curious, Chuck. So you have the OEM partner that builds the, the chassis and, and in Daimler’s case, redundant chassis, have the braking supplier, the steering supplier, the actuator, and you have continental, you have your Boschs do a lot of the, the tier one work, you building an autonomous truck. do you get all these individuals to come together to either give you the green light, give you the permission, or in some cases, give you the codes that you need in order for the control systems to work? 

Chuck Price: yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. Um, well, you have to enter into agreements, which with each of them, um, by default, you can’t just load software onto a truck and expect to be able to actuate the brakes or the, or the, or the torque. the OEMs typically need to provide you with access to those APIs, and in order to do that, you need agreements. you can hack into systems, but that doesn’t make it reliable. and fundamentally it doesn’t guarantee you high integrity because you don’t know what the commitments are of the supplier of that interface to, uh, integrity. So it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. To validate your safety case with evidence in the case that you don’t have an agreement with the partner because they need to, they need to participate in that validation. 

Grayson Brulte: Could any single partners call it the stack? Could any partner in that stack veto a driver out operation, or is it the OEM that has the ultimate final say? 

Chuck Price: Well, this gets into legal complexities that will probably go well beyond my, uh, training. Uh, I’m not a lawyer. Uh, I think fundamentally if you buy a truck and you own it and you have figured out how to hack it so that it does what it needs to do, and you can safety certify that, I don’t believe the OEM can stop you directly. I believe the OEM could stop you indirectly by, filing suit. you know that you are, you are somehow misusing the technology. they might demand that you remove their medallions from the truck. or they might go to, uh, the regulators and say, you know, someone’s doing something, you know, beyond our, our certification with these vehicles, and they shouldn’t be on the road. So I think there, there are secondary things the OEM can do directly. If you own the truck, I’m not sure they can, they can stop you from operating it, but certainly the regulators could. Uh, and I think the OEMs have sufficient power to make enough noise that you would, you would be hard pressed, to operate, at least in a driver out. Uh, operation, uh, in, in that regard. So there are, you, you, you raised the question of the blacked out logos. Uh, I do believe that that is a go-to strategy for an OEM to say, you might operate a truck, but you’re not gonna operate it with our, with our medallions in place. and in that case, they’re treating you like what’s called a bodybuilder. And bodybuilders are, are those that put their own bodies on the chassis of large trucks. and they put their own logos on them because they’re doing the homologation. They’re certifying that it’s, it’s the bodybuilder that’s certifying that it’s safe for the road, not the original OEM, uh, in that case. So they don’t, the OEM doesn’t allow their, their labels to be put on the trucks in, in those cases. so if you see. Uh, I, I can’t, I can’t speak from firsthand knowledge, uh, but if you see a truck, uh, that, you know, was built by Peterbilt, but it doesn’t say Peterbilt on the truck, uh, the assumption is that the, the assumption I would make, as an outside observer is that this truck was homologated, was certified by the third party, not by the OEM. It’s no longer a Peterbilt truck. it’s a, it’s an Acme truck. So, so that potentially puts a lot of onus on, the, the, the company that decides to roll a truck with, with a blacked out logo or their own logo, uh, that they have to, they have to prove the entire platform safe, not just their, so if it’s an autonomy player. They not only have to prove that, that their autonomy stack is safe, they have to prove that the underlying technologies are all safe as well with their own evidence. Because it seems apparent to me that they’re not gonna get that evidence from the, platform supplier. If the platform supplier is refusing to put their name on it. They’re basically saying, this is a bag of parts. You figure it out. 

Grayson Brulte: Does this open a business opportunity for an UPFITTER or a Foxconn to produce or upfit a truck and slap it? Let’s call it autonomy trucks. Medallion on there. And say, look, we bought it, we own it. We’re gonna, we’ll, we’ll do our own warranty system. We’re gonna partner with a Munich Re or Swiss Bri, and we’re gonna insure it. And the heck with you. Does that O, if they put up this, this fight, does that open that door potentially? 

Chuck Price: it does potentially. Now the OEM has to agree to, to provide the, the base trucks. you know, if they’re, if they’re doing it in a, in a bodybuilder form, but certainly other companies, uh, do this today. You know, lots of the dump trucks and garbage trucks you see, are built by bodybuilders, uh, buying chassis from, you know, major producers like, like Paccar. so, so that is, that is doable. Uh, it’s also doable that, that a, a foxcon could say we’re gonna build, uh, chassis from the ground up. If, if they’re large enough they could build their own supply chain and start from scratch, uh, and, and do that work. It’s, it’s, if, if you look at how a truck is built, you know, it’s, it’s not rocket science, you know, it’s heavy metal and you know, a lot of assembly. So if you can get the, if you can get the tier one suppliers to pay attention to. Pay attention to you, then absolutely. You, you could do it either. Either getting prebuilt chassis or starting from scratch. 

Grayson Brulte: there’s multiple path forward as, as using, this is a very, I would call a fluid situation. ’cause you could get the foxcon, you could get somebody with chassis just to step in to fill that void if Volvo doesn’t indeed didn’t go away. And Paccar continues to make no statements, so we get no clarity. So there, there is an offer. Trinity there, and when there’s an opportunity, does Daimler just step in and say, okay, gonna cut a deal with everybody. Okay, Waabi you got a deal? Okay, Kodiak, you got a deal? Okay, Aurora, you got a deal? plus you have a deal. And just go, go across the board and I’ll throw away one there. Okay, Waymo, you’re back. You got a deal. And so no matter what happens in autonomous trucking, Daimler wins. Do they try to make a power play that way? Potentially. 

Chuck Price: I believe Daimler is going to be open to multiple players. I. I, I believe they’ve made statements to that effect, uh, one way or another. I don’t think they will try to do it with all players. Uh, I think they’re gonna pick, you know, they’re gonna pick the winners basically. you see this already in other elements of their, of their vehicle systems. They have multiple brake suppliers. They have multiple steering suppliers for most of their supply chain. They have more than one. But in the end, Daimler, like Volvo likes to ship systems with their brand on it. They like to say this is A-D-T-N-A product, that instills confidence in their customers. The customers know that they stand behind it, so they may white label multiple, uh, autonomy suppliers. Or they may do it with, with sort of a, a, a gray label where you could say, powered by, you know, you know, powered by Wabi. Powered by Aurora, powered by Waymo. but they would likely claim it as their product and they would likely limit the number of players they work with just because it, it’s a mess to deal with all of the above. I have heard, uh, uh, statements from, from Tesla, that they’re interested in licensing their tech out so they could be another player in this. 

Grayson Brulte: And that gets really interesting. Before we get into the models, then give it a shout out. She’s, she’s a wonderful human being. Joanna Butler, congratulations on your kick ass awesome promotion. Well, well done. Joanna is now the general manager of product strategy market development at Daimler Truck North America. Joanna, you deserved it. You’re doing great things. Keep, keep kicking butt at Daimler and zoom on buddy. Keep engineering some of the world’s best trucks there that you, that you’re doing now, Chuck, now that I got the thank yous and the congratulations out of the way 

Chuck Price: Well, I, I want to add mine. I want to add mine to that. Joanna is an awesome individual and this is a well-deserved promotion for her. Daimler is very fortunate to have her. 

Grayson Brulte: Extremely fortunate. I’ll, I’ll put an exclamation point on that, 

Grayson Brulte: Chuck, as we’ve been alluding to in, in, in this conversation, and we’re gonna dive into it, there’s multiple models evolving and how you’re gonna build an autonomous truck and how you’re gonna deploy autonomous truck with Tesla lurking. your opinion, Chuck, what are the models that you see emerging? 

Chuck Price: there are basically four ways to approach this. the de minimus one, I would say is the off the shelf retrofit. You basically buy a truck, uh, in, in off the retail market, new or used, and you do all the work to retrofit it. and, and that’s a, that’s a ton of work because you have to replace, uh, the braking system, the steering system, uh, you have to make changes to torque control. it, it’s hard, it’s hard work. I believe today, uh, two players are doing this, uh, and that is Kodiak and bot. I think over time that will need to change. ’cause it’s very expensive to do, to do that retrofit and to prove, prove it safe. Uh, and you have to get agreement with the tier one suppliers to provide you with the components to do that, uh, with and, and to extend out to say, yes, this will be, uh, able to meet your safety case. the second level is the redundant, what I call the redundant base vehicle retrofit, where the OEM has done the work of providing the, the fully redundant actuation systems, uh, in the base. And all you’re doing is adding, uh, the autonomy stack. Uh, today. this is, this is the domain of Aurora Wabi. Uh, and, and Waymo, uh, there, you know, today all, all three of them, uh, well with Waymo being on hold, but, but they have been in this mode. Where they’re retrofitting to a, a base system, that has been negotiated with the OEM. the third level is factory integration. Uh, and that is where the OEM is fully building your autonomy in at the factory, managing your supply chain, and, and delivering a fully integrated, truck. today the players that appear to be doing this are Torque Plus and maybe Aurora. Uh, but that’s, that’s a question mark because nothing has, you know, been fully announced, to my knowledge. And then the fourth level of integration is vertically integrated, where the whole thing, software and hardware is being done by the OEM. And the only one doing full vertical integration today is Tesla. Uh, in my opinion, the most powerful form is vertical integration, and the rest are, you know, descending, uh, levels of power a as I introduce them. So, so the ideal is to be fully vertically integrated. Uh, it’s going to be sort of, i, I would say the most high integrity system because you have full control of your supply chain. factory integrated is a close second to that, because you do fully understand your supply chain, but you gotta negotiate with a lot more partners to make that work. Uh, the redundant base retrofit and off the shelf retrofit are pretty hard altogether. so that’s, that’s how I, that’s how I lay out the field. 

Grayson Brulte: With your vertical integration. You’re right with Tesla, do it in the vehicles today, they’re doing it in Tesla semi. an OEM try it? Very similar to do a vertical integration? ’cause if you look at the car side. Nobody’s been able to compete, especially from a domestic US auto manufacturer’s been able to compete with Tesla on electric vehicles there. There’s just no way. The software’s horrible. The vehicles are no fun to drive. And here’s the thing that nobody talks about, about Tesla, and I own a Tesla and I know you’ve owned several. It just works. There’s no other way to describe it. It just works. The same thing’s going to happen with semi Does a truck OEM say, wait a second. We don’t wanna see what happened to the the car side. Do they try and perhaps buy somebody due to, to a vertical integration? 

Chuck Price: So this is the big challenge for traditional OEMs. All of them in, in cars and trucks, to a large degree without denigrating them to a large degree, they’re vehicle assemblers, so they aren’t designing the computers and the components that go into the vehicle. There can be, tens potentially, you know, many tens of computers, potentially hundreds, uh, depending on the vehicle. with software stacks that are written by the various suppliers. Trying to consolidate that and affect change is very hard for vehicles that are assembled from tier one supplied, uh, components. So the beauty that Tesla has is because they’re vertically integrated in the hardware and software stacks, they can control the, the evolution. The software systems quite tight tightly. So being able to do, uh, over the air updates is very straightforward for Tesla because they control all the software. Trying to do that with an OEM that has multiple independently developed software stacks, the, the development cycles for which they don’t control. It’s a much harder problem to be able to do things like over the air software updates because you have to get agreement amongst all of the players that the software’s now, you know, verified and, and ready to go. It’s, it’s easy to, easy to break a system if you’re only upgrading one half, uh, of an interface agreement. so, so Tesla really does have a distinct advantage in the approach that they’ve taken to be fully verti, vertically integrated. 

Grayson Brulte: Chuck for a moment. Put on your Oracle hat. You’re at Oracle for a while. Can you integrate all these software systems into one fluid dynamic system? 

Chuck Price: It is possible to do. It requires negotiation with each of the suppliers, and it’s, it’s potentially a lot of work, to get that done. But yeah, it’s possible. 

Grayson Brulte: How about from a timeline perspective? Let’s say, okay, let’s just say your CTO or you’re back to your CPO role. You get a mandate from the CEO and the board. Okay, Chuck, figure out the software. Integrate it. We just, I’m gonna be polite. Acme Autonomous Trucking. Figure out how to get all these systems is, is that an 18 month, 24 month, 36 month. John, what are you talking from a timeline perspective? 

Chuck Price: I believe if there’s gonna be a substantial amount of negotiation on who controls. The stack, uh, the autonomy provider is going to be very sensitive to changes in the, in, in the, in the deep levels of the stack and at the control layers. it, it may have, uh, tremendous ripple effects up to the higher, higher levels of autonomy. so they’re going to be extremely concerned about, uh, how that is managed. If the OEM says, you know, for the future I’m managing all, all updates, there’s, there’s a lot of negotiation on how that, how that would work. So I would say, yeah, 18 months, you know, a concerted effort for 18 months might be doable. but I think everyone would be nervous about. That approach if, if you were an independent autonomy provider and had to integrate into an OEM’s schedule, uh, for, for updates. 

Grayson Brulte: Well then what about licensing? If you look at the past car side Wave has an OEM partnership with Nissan. They can integrate their autonomous driving into Nissan’s Pro pilot system on the truck side. PL plus has a, I call a vertical integration if deal with international, where their software’s gonna be integrated. International trucks. Kodiak has a sensor po, which I think is one of the greatest inventions in autonomous trucking. When do we start to see on the pass car side where the developer has multiple OEM deals with their license, their technology place with international, maybe two years from now they have a Daimler deal. Maybe Kodiak is a Daimler deal, and then a PACCAR deal. do we start to see licensing emerges? We’re seeing in the passenger side of the house. 

Chuck Price: I think the early licensing, uh, agreements are gonna be very tight partnerships, because the, the, the licensor has to work very closely with the licensee to make sure that they are integrating at the right levels. and there’s gonna be a lot of work to, to sort of normalize that. So there are low level standards, today for, for messaging, within the vehicle, within the vehicle network, but that’s going to have to be enhanced substantially. Um, eventually I think there will be, uh, recognized commonalities and they will, we will see some standardization, uh, and that will make licensing, you know, uh, much, much easier. But there’s a lot of work between now and then, uh, to make that happen. So, so yeah, it, I, I think there, there. It, it, it’s a road filled with potholes at the moment, but it will, it will be smoothed out. 

Grayson Brulte: Everybody loves paved roads to our road builder Friends, we know you love to pave, pave the roads and make them really nice roads. The opposite side of licensing is owning and operating the fleet, and that’s what Bot Auto’s doing. They’re gonna go drive route. This year I’ve been in the truck, phenomenal. An hour. An hour, about hour, 10 minutes down and back over, over bridge. Not one intervention, city streets, surface roads, highway. The truck worked really, really well. Could owning and operating, could that model emerge as well as the licensing and the integration models that you described? 

Chuck Price: it’s certainly possible to do that model. I think it comes with, its with its own business, concerns, and this is where investors will weigh in. uh, that model is inherently asset heavy. Um, you’re owning a lot of trucks and, uh, along with owning the trucks, you’re owning a lot of real estate, a lot of maintenance facilities, uh, to take care of these trucks. So, over time, I would assume that would need to be assessed. Whether it’s, it’s really, uh, a business you want to be in, asset heavy is, is a challenge. Uh, there, there are experts that spend their whole lives, just dealing with asset management and making that efficient. Uh, that’s, that’s in addition to, uh, the business of, of getting shipping partners that can reliably deliver you freight for you to, to, be able to move, uh, so that you can actually earn money. That’s hard as well. So if you decide you’re going to be in the, uh, autonomy as a service business where you own your own fleet, you are entering many businesses. You’re entering the asset management business, you’re entering the real estate business, you’re entering the, uh, brokerage business, uh, if you will, trying to sign up, uh, shippers to use your service. and you have to do this being more efficient just in the pure shipping part of it than any, uh, human driven fleet for, for your work to even be justified. So is it possible? Yeah. Is it hard? Probably the hardest way to do it. Uh, I would, I would argue. 

Grayson Brulte: It, it might be hard, but you’re taking away a lot of risk. You not have the OEM risk, you don’t have the, the partner partnership risk. And there’s, even though we’re in a freight recession, there’s plenty of freight to move and you don’t have to have all the pieces of the pie. So it’s potentially, and there’s multi-billion dollar businesses do it. 

Chuck Price: Yes. Uh, but that also depends on, you convincing your partners that you could, fully retrofit an off the shelf vehicle to have the redundancies required and to, to build the safe, to be able to validate a safety case, uh, that, that this truck is ready for driver out, uh, on the road. So, it’s, it’s hard. It’s not impossible. but it, it somewhat depends on the use case. Uh, a company like Kodiak is doing it today. but they’re doing it on private roads, uh, at slow speed, uh, with a specific use case. Converting that to an on the road, play, I think, is doable. It will, it will come with all those challenges. same with bot. it comes with lots of challenges. Now, I’m not saying it’s impossible, and I know the teams, uh, in both companies, they’re, they’re highly capable and I think they can accomplish that goal. It’s just not an easy street to 

Grayson Brulte: nothing in autonomous easy. Let’s, let’s call a spade a spade there. And I, I do want to point out for the audience, Kodiak is the only company operating full level four drive route operations that are paid commercial loads. They’re not testing, they’re getting paid for those in the Permian Basin in West Texas, Eastern New Mexico. And that is a monumental feat, what they’re doing. And they’ve got adapted the sensor pods for that heat in in and that dust. There’s no driver, there’s no observer. There’s no human in the cab. I want to point that out. No human in the cab. When aurora went driver out, this was in a public blog post, I’ll have our audience know by Chris Urmson on May 16th. They said, quote unquote, some rides have an observer in the back. And as we saw in that post, Mr. Sen said, at the demand PACCAR, they’re going to put a safety driver back. And then when I say driver behind the wheel, to me, Chuck, that poses some potential risks there. You had full driver route, not, I shouldn’t say full driver out. You had supervised drive route. I’ll use the kind of an Elon term there for you. And now you’re putting a driver back in. It seems that there’s, it could be inherent risk there. 

Chuck Price: So I’m going to, I’m gonna dive into the weeds on this a bit, so apologies to the listeners who, uh, uh, for this. Um, but let’s talk about building a safety case. a safety case. You have to, you have to prove that all the elements in the system, uh, the risks that those elements introduce, and anytime you add something to a vehicle, you’re, you’re inherently adding some kind of risk that has to be, uh, assessed. If risks are identified, uh, if hazards are identified, they have to be mitigated. so, and that’s, that’s what, when you see people talking about safety cases and proving out their safety case and validating their safety case, it means they’re building evidence to show that the mitigations they’ve put in place, uh, have sufficiently addressed, uh, the, the hazards and risks that were identified, uh, when the vehicle, was designed, when the systems were assembled. what I have not seen in Aurora’s case is any discussion at the safety case level of a rider in a level four vehicle. And this is important, this, it’s important to understand the distinction between a level two vehicle where it is required to have a human to intervene, and a level four vehicle, which is fully autonomous with no human intervention. One of the systems that is put in place of a level two vehicle, and it’s also put in place for level four vehicles that are under test, are mechanisms to, for the driver to intervene. Uh, there’s a mechanism in the steering system so that if the driver applies torque to the steering wheel, the, the autonomous system will, will detect that and release the autonomy. The same is put in place in some systems. In the systems I’ve built in the past for the brake pedal and the throttle. If the driver touches the throttle, the autonomy relinquish control. If the driver touches the brake, the autonomy, relinquiss control. There’s also typically what we call the big red button. Uh, and that’s a, that’s a, a special button that if you press it, the autonomy relinquiss control, um, there are. A variety of other potential systems that may be deployed, buttons on the steering wheel and such that also allow the driver to, to regain control of the vehicle. The problem with these systems, with these added, uh, takeover mechanisms is they can give you false positive signals, meaning the driver, the computer is told, the driver took over when the driver actually didn’t. For example, in some of the steering actuation systems that are deployed for autonomous trucks, the driver can, can apply torque to the steering wheel. The system recognizes that torque change as a driver takeover signal, but if the wheels of the truck hit a deep pothole, that can cause the same signal to go through the steering mechanism, causing the autonomy to relinquish control. If that system is still in place when the, when the level four system is deployed, there’s a risk that the vehicle could go out of control if it hits a giant pothole. So that has to be assessed by the safety team, and they have to determine whether they, they should keep that system in place, or they should disable it for the level four driver out, uh, system. And that goes for all of the driver takeover, actuation mechanisms. in the past, when we have done, uh, in my former company, when we did an evaluation of this, we determined that there were cases where every single, driver takeover mechanism could issue a false signal, in, you know, un potentially unanticipated circumstances, but it was greater than zero. So our decision was to disable all of those mechanisms for the level four system. So if there’s a vehicle with a human rider in it, that begs a question, and I have not gotten an answer to this from any of the players who have done this. If you have a human in the vehicle of, with an, with an L four system, without an ability to take over the vehicle, what is the value of that person, uh, in the vehicle? What risk is that human in the vehicle mitigating? And if they’re not mitigating any risk, what risk are they adding to the safety case? Are you just adding another human at the scene of the accident? which potentially means you could hurt, you could hurt someone that doesn’t need to be there. could the same effect be done by monitoring remotely or following in a separate vehicle? so I don’t know the answer and I, I look forward to hear, answers from, you know, since Aurora discussed it. I’d love to hear from them how they built, uh, an observer writer, uh, into their safety case so that that is, uh, feasible. And if they create, if they kept the mechanisms for, uh, driver takeover in place, how in the safety case did they mitigate the potential risk of false positives? So, I don’t know the answers to any of this. I don’t have any insight information, but those would be the questions. Uh, and those were the questions that came up the moment I heard they had observers in the vehicle. 

Grayson Brulte: And you also alluded to this emotions. If you, an individual in theory could get there and take over the steering wheel that’s why they’re there because I asked that question. been multiple documented reports and also in police reports that if you were to go try and sit in a Waymo and take over, you cannot take over. It is locked. It is. Waymo did a great job on the safety aspect of that Well done team. Waymo, can you, is can that, this is a hypothetical, this is a hypothetical Can that safety observer that’s sitting there in the back and he go take over that and if he can, what are, what are those risks? I know you have a, you’ve got a great safety leader in Nat Beuse, but that love Nat Nats a great safety expert, but Mr. Beuse can’t emotions. That person can say, well, I’m having a bad day. Here we go. Let’s take control. So it raises more questions and more risks. 

Chuck Price: Right. So, uh, in, in my previous, uh, life, uh, building this kind of system, and we were the first to actually go driver out. Uh, and that was three years ago, driver out on public highways. And we had to go through all of these, these cases. we decided to, disable, the actuation systems and we did extensive testing on the track without drivers, in the vehicle, uh, running through all of the validation cases, without, any ability of those actuators to fire. Um, we did determine that a sufficiently buffed out human, a football player size driver, uh. Could overpower the truck, they could overpower the actuators and wrestle a vehicle to a stop, but it would take a very strong individual to, to overpower, uh, those systems. They’re, they’re very robust. So the average human driver would not be able to wrestle the vehicle, uh, to a stop, but a very strong individual could potentially do it. so I don’t know. Well, and then there’s, there’s the other aspect of this, that if you’re an observer sitting in the backseat, you have to go through a process to get to the controls, uh, in the front seat, unless they have provided some sort of big red button in the backseat for immediate, you know, uh, command to go to minimum risk condition, which would be, uh, I would assume would be an immediate stop on the highway, which itself is risky. but that, that’s the only thing I think an observer in the back could potentially do because the, the time required to react to an incident on the highway is potentially fractions of a second. And if you’re in the back seat, you can’t unbuckle get to the front seat. Uh, and I ideally buckle in and respond to the accident. insufficient time. You don’t have time to do that. And in fact, all you’re gonna do is probably be an unbuckled human, in the middle of an accident, uh, which is the the worst case. 

Grayson Brulte: that’s a risk. Chuck, let’s put this all into a sandwich. What did Paccar see, do you think, in your opinion that led him to say, a second, you’re not doing this, or did Paccar never give them permission in the first place? 

Chuck Price: this is pure speculation. and like you, all my attempts to get definitive information, ha have not been, been answered for reasons I fully understand. but given that Aurora was operating the vehicle with, with blacked out medallions, that signals to me. A lack of approval to go forward by the, the base vehicle provider. That’s speculation. I’m reading tea leaves. I can’t say that with certainty, but it certainly feels like, uh, a lack of, of approval. now does, does that mean lack of approval? I, I don’t know. but the public statement about the existence of prototype equipment in the build, uh, might indicate that, Paccar was not fully satisfied that the safety case, evidence had been met for that prototype gear. And that’s possible, in, in the, the. Previous case, when we accomplished our driver out, we had secured, approval, from, from the partners, uh, in the deal. So, in this case, I would, I would be purely speculating, but I would speculate that there were challenges in the approval process and, uh, Aurora was, was convinced that their vehicle was safe based on their own evidence. I can’t doubt that because I haven’t seen the evidence. So I have, I have no way to, to judge that. Uh, Chris and Sterling are very smart people and I highly respect Nat, so I don’t know where it goes. and I think time will tell as other shoes drop, which it sounds like they’re likely to drop. 

Grayson Brulte: If you read the reporting by David Welch, Bloomberg, there’s definitely challenges and the thing that stood out to me more than anything, there was not a press release. I know PACCAR is not big on social media, but there was no public statement of congratulations operating a commercial, fully autonomous. Now we know the safety spectator. Observer is a monumental milestone. The fact that Paccar did not make a public statement applauding that is a sign. The fact that you said that the logos are blocked out, that’s a sign. What does all this mean? We don’t know. What I would ask for is, it’d be very nice for Paccar to give clarity to the market ’cause they’re the only ones that can give that clarity and that would be very nice. It would help us truly understand what’s going on and where Aurora’s going. What we do know, this goes back to Mr. Urmson’s May 16th blog post. There are now safety drivers back in the vehicle. How do they get back to driver out, either with an observer in the back or without an observer? What do you think their path looks like to get back there? And can they even get there to will? Can they even get there or in pat car? Will they even allow them to do it? And then if Volvo doesn’t come back, do they ever go drive route again? 

Chuck Price: I think they’re in a difficult situation. That’s, I’m reading tea leaves again. I have no insider information. Um, but it appears that they have hit a rough patch with Paccar. that is potentially a long recovery period. Um, it’s very, if they, if they damaged the trust relationship with Paccar, it takes a long time to rebuild, uh, that trust if ever. I don’t know what the situation is with Volvo. Uh, hopefully Volvo is still committed to autonomy and they’re just taking a different, they’re refactoring their approach. If that’s the case, uh, that seems to be the obvious path for, uh, Aurora to, to take. there is possibly long term an an open door, uh, potential with Daimler. Uh, but that’s, that’s a restart, uh, basically. I mean, they’re, they, they’d have to negotiate terms, fit to, uh, Daimler’s trucks. You know, there’s a lot of work, a lot of work to be done. Um, they might take a run at, uh, Trayton and try to, to sort of shoulder their way in, uh, past Plus. again, uh, having, uh, been down that road with Trayton, uh, it’s a lot of work, a lot of negotiation. Probably take a, a minimum of a year, uh, to even get close to, uh, you know, discussions that may result in something. So I think they, I think they are, they have a lot of work ahead. 

Grayson Brulte: I want to state very clearly for the record, me personally, I want Aurora to succeed. The industry wants Aurora to succeed. We just want answers. We want transparency, we want answers. But Chris Sterling, I know you’re leaving. We want, and Nat, you’re still there. Geraldo, we, Jake, everybody, we want you to succeed and we want you to do well. We’re just trying to, to put the pieces together and figure out what’s going on because I’m very sorry to say that there’s a crisis engulfing your company. How it started, I’m not gonna comment on, but I will say we really, truly do want you to succeed and we wish you the best to work through this. Whatever might have happened or, or not happened, 

Chuck Price: I, I’d like to add to that, uh, as well. the day they accomplished their driver out, uh, I sent, uh, each of them, uh. Notes, uh, congratulating them. And that was, that was completely heartfelt. Uh, I thought that they had, um, really done a masterful job of being very serious about their safety case. Um, being very careful about delivering from all outside impressions. Uh, it looked great, and I was thrilled to see them finally, finally hit that milestone. I know it was a tremendous amount of work. They’re all smart, dedicated folks. Uh, I love the folks at Aurora. Um, and, uh, and I do, I do absolutely wish them, wish them the best, and I hope they can get through this, um, what appears to be a rough patch with, uh, with Paccar. And I hope they can, they can make whatever adjustments are required, um, with the new Volvo refactored, uh, uh, relationship. 

Grayson Brulte: And I wanna highlight and emphasize what Chuck said. Aurora takes safety seriously. What Mr. Mr. Nat Beuse used bill from his safety cases is second to none. The whole, the Aurora has a whole culture of safety. And I do not believe, and this is speculation, that the trucks were grounded for a safety reason. I believe that Aurora did it right? From a safety perspective. This wanna highlight that there. And there’s really great safety individuals in this industry. Another individual who’s who’s great at safety is Steve Kenner. He’s now building out the safety program at Torque. Torque has said 2027, along with Plus is 2027 gonna be this magic year in autonomous trucking Chuck? 

Chuck Price: 2027 has, sort of important elements. one is that Daimler has a full factory program in place with trucks to be delivered in 2027. That’s going to happen. That train is rolling down the track. It’s hard to stop a train like that. They could, they could cancel it, they could delay it, but I don’t think they will. Uh, I’ve seen, versions of that truck that came off the line. They are impressive vehicles and, I believe they’re going to do it. The onus is now, uh, on torque. It’s an execution play, uh, to get, to get this, to get this done. Um, I, I talk with Peter, you know, fairly frequently. He seems highly confident that that’s gonna happen. And they also have, uh, you know, a very strong team. Strong. So will they get that done? I hope so. And I think they’re on a schedule that says 2027. is it, there are other players that are also talking 2027. I, I don’t know the magic of that date, although it, it probably is a date that plays well with, with investment. so, so hopefully they do, they do hit it. this is a long game though, so, uh, whether they hit 2027 or it slips, I do believe there are enough people committed to this happening, uh, that it’s gonna, it’s gonna happen in that timeframe. 

Grayson Brulte: The entire autonomous trucking industry, whether you’re at Bot Auto, you’re at Kodiak, you’re at plus, you’re at Stack, you’re at Waabi you’re at Aurora. The entire industry safety seriously. The entire industry is doing this the right way. The entire industry is building autonomous trucking the right way. They’re, they’re not cutting corners. Yes, there’ll be hiccups along the way, but the entire industry is building this the right way. Chuck, you gave a masterclass today, sir. We went all, all over the map. You gave the current state of a autonomous trucking. You can call it Chuck’s state of trucking, if you want to call it that way. And we can get you a, we get you a politician hat and says, uh, Chuck 2028 or price 2028. We’ll get you one of those fancy hats. And don’t worry, if you don’t want, we won’t have to make it red. We can make it a different color, but we’ll get you a hat, Chuck, as we look to wrap up this insightful conversation for today, until we, we have you back again soon. What would you like our listeners and viewers to take away with them? 

Chuck Price: Well, as I said before, uh, this is a long game. there we are now in what I would consider a period of retrenchment. for some, uh, players, they are now having to reevaluate their approach. Either, you know, looking at their new positioning as, as, you know, events have occurred in the last couple of weeks. and by the way, uh, to put out my own shingle, uh, that’s, that’s what I’m in the business of helping with now with AI Kinetics. The, so I think the playing field is shifting. Uh, but I, I do believe autonomy, uh, will happen and I think it will happen in the general timeframe, that we’ve been, we’ve been discussing 20 27, 20 28, fields like a, a fairly safe bet at this point. And, you know, I’m happy to help, anyone who’s involved. If, , secretary Duffy wants to give me a call, I’m happy to, to advise him. But, , in any case, I think the future’s bright. 

Grayson Brulte: Chuck, the future’s bright. The future of autonomous, the future is autonomous trucking. Chuck, thank you so much for coming on The Road to Autonomy. As always, 

Chuck Price: Thank you for having me again. Really appreciate it. 

Key The Road to Autonomy Episode Questions Answered