Supervised Robotaxis Are Having a Moment. Unsupervised Robotaxis Are Having a Decade.

Waymo secured CPUC approval to operate commercially across 40,000 square miles in California, covering roughly 25 million residents, which Grayson Brulte estimates puts competitors two years behind. Waymo also opened its Houston market to all riders and expanded the Ojai vehicle to all riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.

In Dubai Baidu Apollo Go launched unsupervised service on Uber, while Tesla’s Cybercab launch in Austin showed signs of progress through first-responder training meetings.

On the supervised side, Pony.ai launched with Uber and Verne in Zagreb, and Wayve began early trip access in London on Uber.

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered

Autonomy Markets Topics & Timestamps

[00:00] Waymo Racks Up the Miles in California

Waymo is completing 1.4 million rides per month in California, a 10X in two years, and the CPUC granted driverless commercial authority across 40,000 square miles covering roughly 25 million residents, including Napa Valley. Regulated at the state level with no local interference, it is a regulatory moat that puts Waymo an estimated two years ahead of the competition, and the Teamsters lawsuit over trucks above 10,001 pounds has no impact on it.

[07:02] Airports Matter, In California Permits Matter More

Waymo is the only autonomous vehicle company with CPUC approval for California airports, but at SFO that still means the kiss and fly lot, and curbside pickup requires yet another layer of approval. OMEGA surfaced airport correspondence showing LAX told the city council it does not want autonomous vehicles. Riverside and San Bernardino, the one top-25 market Waymo has said nothing about, is legally possible now but plausibly not coming soon.

[09:50] Waymo Opens Houston to All Riders, San Antonio Likely Next

Houston became Waymo’s 10th market, opening to all riders off a 100,000-person interest list, potentially front-running Nuro, Lucid and Uber’s planned launch there. San Antonio is the likely next city, with local media reporting Waymos spotted testing at the San Antonio airport, while nothing has been seen at Houston’s airports.

[13:34] Waymo Opens Ojai to All Riders

The Zeekr-built Ojai opened to all riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, with roughly 300 in commercial operation and Denver, Las Vegas and San Diego slated for later this year. Walt likes the London taxi design, Grayson still calls it an unforced error, pointing to declining Zeekr customs imports and the possibility that the Ojai is a bridge vehicle to the IONIQ 5. Rider feedback on X has been mixed, and Waymo is engaging with it directly.

[16:21] Waymo’s Declining Costs

The sensor stack is getting cheaper, Hyundai is ramping US capacity, and Waymo introduced its own bespoke silicon chip for higher performance at lower cost. With Tesla and Waymo both on custom chips, the next domino to watch is whether Zoox follows. Amortized over 500,000 to a million miles at utilization well above a human driver, the $125,000 burrito delivery argument does not hold.

[19:28] New York City Does Not Want Robotaxis

The Hunter College and Open Plans report used to argue against robotaxis in New York was retracted after taking data out of context, and the retraction got a fraction of the coverage the original did. New York City and New York State are putting special interests ahead of safety. Always read beyond the headline.

[21:28] The 100 Car Benchmark

Uber’s Cybercab rider submissions close on 8/23, implying a launch window in September or October, and fire departments around Austin are posting about first responder training sessions with Tesla and the Cybercab, the same tell that preceded the Miami Robotaxi launch. The only benchmark that matters is 100 commercial cars in a market, and Walt and Grayson will be in Austin with a giant check mark when it happens.

[25:05] Pony AI’s European Expansion

Pony AI reported earnings with a 2,000 vehicle fleet and played up the Uber relationship, but the stock sold off. The Zagreb launch with Verne was supervised, which was buried in the second or third paragraph, and Verne is missing from the announced five-city European expansion with Uber. Europe appears open for business with China, and once the Chinese robotaxi companies establish their brands on the continent, they will leave Uber.

[28:09] Apollo Go Goes Live in Dubai

Baidu’s Apollo Go went live on Uber in Dubai, the first real-world launch from the partnership announced in July 2025. Baidu has the balance sheet, a growing global real estate footprint and reports supervised and unsupervised miles every quarter. Riders in Dubai can explicitly select autonomous, which raises the question of why that is not possible in Dallas, Austin or Atlanta.

[30:31] Wayve and Uber Launch Supervised in London. Who Gets the APS Permit?

Uber and Wayve launched supervised early trip access in London using Ford vehicles, a big step for Wayve and a minuscule one for Uber given a sub-15 vehicle fleet. Uber holds the for-hire license, which is why the announcement avoided the words robotaxi and autonomous. The tell is who secures the Autonomous Passenger Service permit: if Wayve gets it, Wayve can leave Uber tomorrow; if Uber gets it, Wayve is joined at the hip.

[36:17] Avride Expands Campus Delivery Bots

Avride is expanding autonomous campus delivery to 25 universities starting in September, doubling the active fleet to 1,000 delivery robots.

[37:07] Serve Robotics Expands with DoorDash, Grubhub and Beacon

A week after Uber and Serve Robotics got divorced, Serve announced deals with DoorDash and Grubhub, added San Jose and Washington, D.C., and is live in Chicago, Los Angeles and Alexandria. These deals take months, which suggests Ali Kashani saw the divorce coming and had a contingency plan. Beacon could let Serve undercut DoorDash and Uber Eats directly with restaurants running on paper-thin margins, as long as it passes the french fry test.

[41:27] Next Week

NVIDIA reports earnings, and the question is whether there is any update on the full-stack Mercedes rideshare program. Walt is watching his inbox for a Cybercab invite. Unsupervised is the metric.

Full Episode Transcript

Waymo Hits 1.4 Million Rides Per Month in California

Grayson Brulte: Walt, you can’t think of Southern California without thinking of Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, ’cause they keep your heads ringing, and Waymo’s keeping the miles ringing. So there’s a good thing going on there, because Waymo keeps racking up the miles in the Golden State as Dre hits the beats and Snoop drops the lyrics. As they do that, Elon Musk has channeled his inner Gene Wilder. Don’t forget, he owned the estate at one time. He wants to be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Then, it’s Thursday, and what happens on Thursday? Autonomous news drops like Dre drops bombs. So let’s start with Waymo racking up the miles. What do we know about the latest CUC release?

Walter Piecyk: Well, for two weeks in a row, Grayson, you, you’ve got me a bit speechless. I’m not sure what those lyrics were or all those things that you were saying, but I do know we have a lot of, a lot of Waymo news this week. I wanna start with the first thing, which is this data that came out showing that they’re doing 1.4 million rides per month in California. I know they’re– I remember reading on Twitter. I love, follow Twitter every day. great info there. and people talking about growth moderating in California or them not doing well or something like that, maybe share issues. But that growth, Grayson, when you plot it out, is a 10X in two years. I think that’s pretty good growth, wouldn’t you say?

Grayson Brulte: I would say it’s extraordinary growth. And for your comment on the intro, I don’t want an East Coast/West Coast hip hop battle anymore. So last week we had the Wu-Tang Clan on the East Coast, this week we had Dre on the West Coast. See? We’re an equal opportunity podcast. Well, equal opportunity

Walter Piecyk: I still don’t know what you’re talking about, but let’s get to something I know you can educate me on which is there is some CPUC approval that Waymo got. Now, whenever I hear CPUC, you know I’m a telco analyst, and when I hear the letters CPUC, my eyes start to glaze over. I, I get a, an agita about me and a frustration because of that organization in general. But I guess m- did they, was there some approval that they gave to Wa- to Waymo this week?

CPUC Grants Waymo Driverless Commercial Authority Over 40,000 Square Miles

Grayson Brulte: Yeah. What, what happened was, in a nutshell, in simple terms, Waymo now has the legal authority to operate in 40,000 square miles in the state of California from a driverless commercial perspective. To put that into population perspective, that is roughly 25 million California residents. That is a very large chunk of the state, and US regulatory not gonna put you to sleep. I estimate this is about two years ahead of where the competition to get here. So if Waymo 10Xed in a year, where are they gonna be in two years? That’s something to watch there because Waymo officially, I’ll say it for the record, has a regulatory moat in the state of California

Walter Piecyk: Okay, so help me understand this ’cause I get kind of confused with all the mayors and governors and I guess now agencies and the feds all claiming or s- at least stating something and, and providing some limitations. first of all, they are already operating in California, so are they operating without approval before? Like, what is a, what is this. I guess the two questions are, what does this approval really mean, ’cause I thought they were already operating in California? And secondly like, are they the ultimate arbiter, or does some mayor have some ability to, to, you know, stop them from doing something in their individual cities or towns?

Grayson Brulte: So with the state of California, it’s regulated at the state level. There is no local interference. I said it. There it is. There is no local jurisdiction of what this could do. It’s, it’s regulated at the state level. There’s the California DMV that says that you can operate, and then there’s the California Public Utilities Commission, which for us is the most important one, says that you are, you can charge and operate a commercial business without a driver. So what the CUPC did was they granted Waymo the ability or the legal authority to ch- to expand their service to charge in more areas. And I’m just gonna be me. This includes Napa Valley. So you can, can go around Napa and drink a ton of wine, have a good time, and ride around in a Waymo. Hypothetically, not saying they’re there, but they have approval to operate there

Walter Piecyk: Okay, so that’s good. But so prior to this, did they have CPUC approval in the markets where they were already operating? Because I see listed on here LA, and they were operating in LA

Grayson Brulte: Yes, and so basically if you think about it this way, the map expanded outwards. So as everybody knows, California’s on the left coast. It borders the Pacific Ocean, and so they’ve expanded inland in some of these geographies in, in north and south to some. So basically, the the map where they can operate just got a lot bigger

Walter Piecyk: Okay, so, and I’m sorry to have to ask this again, but just so I’m clear because we are talking about California right now, so obviously I have a lot of skepticism. there’s no governor or attorney general that can somehow stop Waymo from, from executing these markets? The CPUC is the ultimate authority here?

Grayson Brulte: That is correct, and most importantly, Alphabet is not trying to buy a movie studio and merge it with another movie studio. So I do not see any headwinds there

Walter Piecyk: Well, I gotta say, I’m gonna hat tip to California ’cause I’ve been a little hard on them. As you know, on the LightShed side of things, my partner, Rich Greenfield, you know, obviously believes that that, that transaction has got some troubles and, and, you know, there’s been a lot of things said about about. Even on this very podcast about how David Ellison should move out of the state. Hey, maybe this is signal that businesses, that California is open for business and that the people should stay in the state of California. What are your thoughts on that, Grayson?

Grayson Brulte: Walt, you went to Napa and drank too much wine before we recorded this, if that’s what you think the answer is. No, California is not open for business. And last week we said David Ellison should move to Texas, and lo and behold, I believe it was CNBC this week that said he’s seriously considering it, and e- he may even ha- might possibly have a site lined up. So again, I will say, Mr. Ellison, sir, go to the Lone Star State. They want you. Call the bluff

Walter Piecyk: Rich was, was, was, was upset that this site that they identified in Austin was close to a, a landfill. So I know on our le- our next trip there, we’re gonna check that out for Rich. But let’s get back to the CPUC because, again, my confusion here, sorry to perhaps ask the question a third time. This is not because I, I don’t– I’m questioning your answer, but aren’t the Teamsters suing to truck, to shut down the truck side of things? So does, does CPUC not handle the truck side of things? Is, and, like, just because they’re friendly to Waymo, does that mean that. Or does that mean that there’s any help maybe on the trucking side of things, where, where obviously Teamsters have been, been having a recent impact?

Grayson Brulte: The way trucks are regulated is it’s over 10,001 gross pounds, and so that’s what Teamsters are targeting, vehicles over 10,001 gross pounds. No matter how the courts rule on the Teamster issue, it will have no impact on Waymo in the state of California

Airports and the Limits of Waymo’s New CPUC Approval

Walter Piecyk: Okay, so now let’s move on to the airports, ’cause I think the airports are incl- are included. I think Waymo is now the only AV company with a CPUC approval for these airports. Does this mean that we’re gonna get out of having to walk 20 minutes or go to these kiss and fly lots in San Francisco? Or are there– Is there still another another administrator of sorts at the San Francisco Airport that’s still preventing us from getting a convenient pickup of our Waymos?

Grayson Brulte: It’s San Francisco. There’s this another San Francisco treat, okay? So there’s this regulator, this regulator, this regulator, this regulator, this regulator, and you have to get all the approval. There has not been any public filings, any committee hearings for the SFO Airport on Waymo moving closer to curbside pickup. No. They have the legal authority to operate at the airport through the California Public Utilities Commission, which are now at the kiss and fly, which is too far. It reminds me of that guy that goes, “The rent’s too damn high,” in New York. So I’ll, I’ll channel him and say, “The walk’s too damn far.” So hopefully, but they have to get another approval to be able to go curbside, so a lot of complexities in this. And OMEGA was surface of real interesting data looking at the airport correspondence from two and three years ago for all the major airports in California. I’ll just put it this way this is going to be very, very difficult, especially LAX, who said in a public letter to the city council they do not want autonomous vehicles at their airport

Walter Piecyk: I mean, I do have views on why the rent is too damn high in New York, but I don’t wanna digress on this podcast. one last question. Now, you know that being a telco guy and seeing wireless markets build out, build out, I’m always about like, look at the top. It’s either top 50 markets, top 25 markets, and maybe NFL cities or is obviously another important one for us. If you look in the top 20 farm– 25 markets, Waymo’s got something going in every market except for one. Our friends that live in Riverside and San Bernardino, Waymo has said nothing about this. Is it possible now that this CPUC approval will finally get Riverside, San Bernardino on the board for Waymo, at least to start to prep this market?

Grayson Brulte: Legally, yes. Plausibly, I would say no

Walter Piecyk: This is outrageous. This is the 12th largest city in America. What is wrong? There’s something- someone must have pissed somebody off in senior management at Waymo. Why can’t the people of Riverside get a Waymo service?

Grayson Brulte: I don’t know, and since you’re out there, and I’ll just say this, in my opinion, I have no, know nothing, but I could see it operating in the, in the Indo Valley where Coachella is in Palm Springs before operating in Riverside

Waymo Opens Houston to All Riders as Its 10th Market

Walter Piecyk: You know, there was a couple of people, I’m gonna digress a little bit here for a moment, that, from California, that were able to stop a Micron plant development outside, right outside of Syracuse, New York. I think we need to do the same in reverse. We need to start up a campaign somehow to get Waymo and, and, or a letter-writing campaign to expand their service in reverse. I will let it go now. You know where they did go online this week, and what did become the 10th market for Waymo which is Houston. Here in New York, we call it Houston because that’s how it’s spelled. But Waymo opened in Houston to all riders. they have this interest list that I think had, whatever it was, 100,000 riders off this interest list since this original February launch. Obviously this is, this is, this is interesting. To me it’s interesting especially because, are people listening to the podcast? Because last week we were talking about, maybe it was two weeks ago, how Uber and Nuro should perhaps pivot to opening up in, in Houston, Houston, excuse me you know, to get things going. It, maybe Waymo wants to front run them there and establish this presence before perhaps Nuro, Lucid, and Uber get on the board. What are your thoughts?

Grayson Brulte: Well, a little bit of history. Houston is a street. Houston is a city named after the founder, Sam Houston, and if you go by The Woodlands, you see this 40-foot statue of Sam Houston on your way into Houston. I have been in Houston. Waymo was very generous to put me on the early rider list, and I rode around the Waymo several times in April. Really good service, really happy with it. Yes, I think this is pr- th- this, this could be considered a move of Waymo getting ahead if to meet a deadline that Nuro, Uber, Lucid, has to launch paid, I said paid commercial service. They could say, “Look, well, we’re in Houston,” because let’s not forget, Nuro historically has had a presence in Space City over the years. Or it’s hot in Houston, as Iggy Pop once said, so maybe it’s, it’s autonomy is hot in Houston now

Walter Piecyk: I mean, I’ve been to Houston. It is very hot. I hope those air conditioners are w- working well. and the, I guess it’s the Jags that they’re putting in that market. There’s another hot city, maybe not as hot, San Antonio. They were on that list that, that was published, I think, back in February of a, of like an interest list. You think that’s the next city that we’re gonna see pop out in with, for Waymo?

Grayson Brulte: Yes, I think that San Antonio most likely will become the next city. I’m sorry to the folks in San Antonio. The Knicks will get another title before you get your next title there. I, I, I said that, but the sad part is n- even though the N- Knicks could win another title, they’re not gonna get Waymos in New York. And I say that, yes, because of the environment and also the, the capital investments Waymo and their partners are making in the depot infrastructure. Starting to see some really interesting things there in OMEGA about Waymo’s growing footprint in that city

Walter Piecyk: And then I guess the last thing on there is they’re not doing freeways and airports there. I know in Dallas, I think there’s some testing at Love Field, but in, in Houston, is there, is there any freeways or airports that are, that are happening?

Grayson Brulte: Since you won’t call it House, then I’m gonna put my hip hop out and switch it out and call it H-Town. And so we’ve we’ve got all sorts of names for that. we do not have any confirmed or unconfirmed photos or reports of Waymo testing at the Houston Airport. We do have local media reports, he says this is cited to local media, where Waymos have been spotted testing at the San Antonio Airport. Nothing at, nothing at Houston. That’s George Bush and the other one. Nothing yet

Waymo Ojai Opens to All Riders; Custom Silicon Chip Revealed

Walter Piecyk: Okay, Grayson, you have a Clouseau hat, you’ve got a clappy hat, but I think you’re gonna need to put, like, a, one of those hats that they wore in Odyssey to protect yourself, ’cause I’m coming at you. You have talked about the Ojai, which is really a Zeekr, a Chinese-built car, as being an unforced error. But what we had this week is that on Wednesday, Ojai opened it to all—Ojai was open to all riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. You can’t pick, I don’t think you—I think some people can pick and some people can’t. Hopefully we can. We’re on that list. But ultimately, you will be able to pick I think your vehicle, which obviously both of us agree with. I think it sounds like there’s 300. I think there was one press report, 300 of these Ojai’s already in commercial operation. I don’t know if that means they’ve redeployed Jags elsewhere. They’re, they’re talking about Denver, Vegas, and San Diego later this year for these Ojai’s. So maybe this is not the unforced error that you thought it was gonna be in our earliest episodes of the Autonomy Markets podcast.

Grayson Brulte: I still think it is an unforced error, and Forbes did a good report on the customs imports. I went and pulled customs data. It is public data. And there has been a decline in Zeekr imports to the United States. And I am under the belief, based on the data that OMEGA has uncovered, that perhaps the Ojai is a bridge vehicle to the Ioniq 5. And I stand by my statement that it was an unforced error. When and how that unforced error becomes a reality, I’m unsure, but I still view that as an unforced error. And furthermore, I’m gonna go into telco land, the Google Pixel phones are leaving China. The Nikkei’s reporting they’re not gonna be made there anymore. They’re going to Vietnam. So Alphabet’s moving the phones out of China. Come on, come on

Walter Piecyk: Keep that, don’t change the topic and keep that helmet on ’cause I’m coming at you again. What I’m really interested in is we debated, you know, I like this design of the Ojai. It reminds me of a, of a London taxi. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m rather tall, so the extra leg room is, is fine. I like to talk to people in, in a, in a car whether it’s share- I don’t wanna share it necessarily with someone, so I’ll agree with you on that point. I’m very interested to see if riders are gonna like this, this design on the Ojai

Grayson Brulte: The feedback on X has been mixed. There’s been some very harsh feedback. There’s been some very positive feedback. But I’ll give credit where credit’s due. Waymo’s engaging and saying thank you for the feedback and, and privately message us. And so they’re taking the feedback with stride, and hopefully, you know, I have not been for a ride in Ojai. Maybe next week I’ll go for a ride in Ojai. I have not been for one. I like to experience it. It, it, it is not a luxury product. It is a durable product with a lot of enhancements in there. But we’ll see over time

Walter Piecyk: Now, there is obviously a, I think a big tax on this car, but, but it’s lower and I’m starting to see in the mainstream media and on Twitter some recognition about the reduction in cost on the sensor stack. I also noticed that, that I think it was the CEO of Hyundai is talking about really ramping up capacity in the US, which would be another step down in cost. And yet there’s still people out there talking about like, “Oh, how are you gonna deliver a burrito in a $125,000 car?” With no recognition of the cars that are already in the pipeline and the vehicles that not– have not yet been announced. And, you know, it’s gone quiet, but I still believe that Waymo’s got some more tricks up its sleeve in terms of additional vehicles and sensor stacks that are gonna drive that the cost of that vehicle even lower. Amortize that over however long you think you– this is gonna be, 500,000, a million miles on a per mile basis. We have Uber themselves saying the utilization on these things much higher than a human driver. and you can do the math on how that economics work. But maybe some people just don’t wanna do that math

Grayson Brulte: Perhaps, and I, I will say for the record, the one thing I can guarantee you, the Waymo vehicle is not gonna drop a burrito out of the sky into the pool. It’s, it’s not, it’s not gonna do that

Walter Piecyk: Now what Grayson is talking about is a- a- allegedly, ’cause someone in my Twitter feed said, “No, that’s AI.” I don’t think it was, but an Amazon drone dropped, dropped a package into someone’s pool. I’m gonna blame it on that person, but, you know, that wouldn’t have happened with Zipline, I don’t think, ’cause it at least would’ve hovered there until someone someone came over and got it. But yeah, drone, drones will be a part of our coverage over time. the o- other interesting thing about this Ojai is they, they, they actually showed in the video how the. And y- this is something you and I have done when we’ve ever gone to the Depot. That’s the first thing we do is, like, look where the compute is, how much cooling there is, you know, very. So they introduced this bespoke ch- silicon chip for the Ojai. is this the next wave? I mean, we’ve seen this happen in compute already, where, you know, people are worried about supply and developing you know, their own, their own custom chips for, for the AI tasks that they have at hand

Grayson Brulte: Well, the bottom line is higher performance, lower cost. And in the official press release, and I, and I’ll give Waymo’s comms team a lot of credit, “We’d like to thank our partners that we use throughout the ecosystem, Nvidia, AMD, SanDisk.” And when the writing was on the wall, they’re going their own chip ’cause it’s unlocking performance and it’s also lowering cost. You hit the nail on the head. Tesla has their own AI chip. Waymo now has their chip. Let’s call it Chip Waymo. And over time, in order for companies to compete, I believe robotaxi companies are gonna have to do their own silicon. Now, the next domino to drop to, to verify this theory, Zoox. Do Zoox do their own silicon? I say that because they have Amazon’s backing. That’s something to watch if this does become a trend

Walter Piecyk: I think Zoox needs to worry about getting their cars to work before they worry about the silicone. I don’t think that’s the gating factor for them. one last thing on terms of markets that Waymo’s not in, New York City’s one of them. On Twitter you know, they– someone pointed out in one of the reports that was used in New York City surprise, surprise, was effectively taking data out of context. And so just check out my Twitter feed if you want more info there. But I don’t think that’s gonna change things. I mean, there’s people out there who’s like, “Oh, it’s not about the safety, it’s about the jobs,” and, like, we can, can go back and forth on that type of stuff. This report, by the way, was retracted. I mean, if you think about the press coverage the initial report got this was in Hunter College, Hunter College, an Open Plans report. If you think about the amount of press that this thing when it first happened versus when it retracted, I, I don’t have to explain to anyone or provide the. You know, I think a lot of websites like to do this, like, ” Here’s what this person said about this issue. Here’s what they said.” Obviously silent. it’s just sad that you have some cities that are putting, you know, special interest ahead of, ahead of safety, New York City and New York State being at the top of that list.

Grayson Brulte: I’m gonna give you a clappy hat for saying the quiet part out loud, yes. Mrs. Piecyk, I’ll say it this way, it’s bull donkey dust. It’s not polite, it’s morally and ethically wrong to put special interest over the wants and needs of your citizens. And as we’ve seen, and I’ll say this to the audience, and if you follow me on X, Walt calls it Twitter. The, the, the Twitter bird went the way of the dodo bird. It’s X, and X marks the spot, and I have a big mouth on there. Always read beyond the headline. There’s lots of details, so always read behind the headline. And I gotta give a shout-out. He’s not a listener. Maybe he is yet. I saw Nas, yes, Nasty Nas, at Hunter College way back in the day. Great show and great performance. Illmatic, incredible album. I’m on a music roll today, Walt, as you’re the truth detective

Walter Piecyk: But what happened to Hunter College if they’re putting out this filth? I digress. We know exactly what happened. So let’s go to Tesla, which Waymo just overshadowed Tesla, which I thought was like. Let’s go back here for a second. Cybercab, we went to Gigafactory, we saw the line, we’ve been in the car, we understand the cost dynamics there. They launched this thing, or, or, you know, I don’t wanna say they launched it. When it first started coming off the line, they get on the earnings call and like, “Oh, we still need to do new testing with the Cybercabs.” We’re like, “D’oh!” And at the time, on the podcast, I was like, “All right. Maybe if they get,” I made up a number, right? 250,000 miles, how long would it take them to do that given the number of cars? End of the year we’ll see a Cybercab launch. Shockingly, like to me, I was shocked. The market literally doesn’t care ’cause it’s like the boy who cried wolf at this point. But, but like, basically Uber’s tells people, “O- okay, if you ride in our robotaxis or send in a postcard, you can get a shot at the Cybercab launch, and the deadline for at least the submissions is 8/23.” Now, obviously the launch wouldn’t be the necessarily the next day ’cause they’d have to send the invite out for someone to come. But I would think, again, that implies something within a 30- or 60-day cycle, which put them in September, October. That is now ahead of my timeline. I, I realize before, before you come at me, this is a, this is ahead of a revised deadline from, you know, or milestone that I think I’ve had, you know, from before that has been pushed back and pushed back. But is this, is this finally the magic moment where we’re gonna see more than a handful of, of Cybercabs in Austin? Can they hit the only benchmark that matters, which is the autonomy markets benchmark, 100 commercial cars any given market, then we give you the check mark for being commercial? Is this an indication of that happening, or is this gonna be another false flag?

Tesla Cybercab Austin Launch Shows Signs of Progress

Grayson Brulte: The groundwork for this happening is there. And why do I say that? There are posts on Facebook, I’m not on Facebook but I get the data, of first responders, fire departments around Austin meeting with Tesla, and Tesla is bringing the Cybercab to them. They’re getting training on how to interact with Cybercab. Tesla is not going through first responder training unless something is happening. And you say, ” Oh, Grayson, you’re pontificating.” No, we had photos from Miami two weeks before Tesla launched Robotaxi of first responders in Coral Gables, Miami meeting with Tesla l- looking at the Y Cyber Robotaxi. So it’s happening, and now when it does, we’re gonna go. But the big question the audience wants to know, that I sure as heck wanna know, are you gonna get dressed up like Willy Wonka?

Walter Piecyk: I don’t know if I, I wanna do that, but I, I am hoping that we get an invite sent to us. If we don’t, that’s fine. Whenever it launches, it launches, and then we’ll just head down there anyway you know, to, to, to count some cars and make sure there’s 100. And maybe we just need, like, one of those, you know how they have the giant checks, like when, if you win the lottery? We need, like, a giant check mark. We’ll find, like, that, one of those graffiti things in Austin, you know, the Austin is weird or whatever it is, and we’ll put the check mark on it and we’ll say, “You’ve finally passed 100 cars. You have a commercial market.” What do you say?

Grayson Brulte: I say let’s do it. And I’ll even wear the inspector hat just to prove that we were there inspecting the market. And for the folk at Tesla that are listening, don’t worry. Yes, Walt and I will book flights that have Starlink available. So don’t worry, we’ll make it a family affair

Pony.ai and Uber Launch Supervised Robotaxi in Zagreb with Verne

Walter Piecyk: I don’t know about that. I’ve got a lot of miles on Delta. Anyway let’s. I know Uber you’re really worried that we haven’t talked about you yet, but so here, here is your, here is your section. Congrats to Uber for a, a string of announcement this week. I think we can start with Pony. Pony had their earnings, s- you know, like WeRide. I think the earnings were decent. The stock sold off. Their fleet’s at 2,000. I mean, they were really playing up the Uber relationship. Unfortunately, unlike WeRide, Pony did not give me a question on the call. That’s fine. we will address them after the fa- the fact that, after the fact with them directly and go through some of the questions we have about the, the Uber relationship. But there’s obviously progress here. I know you had some issues with when they actually put it on X, they didn’t say it was supervised. I think that’s fair, right? Like, ’cause you saw all the press stories that picked it up. No one really talked about this as, as supervised. It should have been in. It’s not even a headline. I mean, there was a full tweet there that they shoulda, they shoulda said that, that it was supervised. Nonetheless, you know, it’s a milestone for them to, to launch some, some type of, of service, autonomy service with a safety driver in Europe

Grayson Brulte: Yes. But the headline should have said supervised service at the end of the day. The, the partnership was with Verne in, this is the. I- you gotta love wordsmiths. Being a writer is an incredible gift. Ernest Hemingway had an incredible gift. Writers are incredible people. T- T.S. Eliot, everybody’s great. Here’s the thing, the wordsmith, in select parts, and, and how these words are, are used is absolutely fascinating. So we do not know the exact ODD of where in Zagreb, Croatia you can operate at. We finally found out on the second or third paragraph that it was supervised, and lo and behold, Pony says, “Well, we’re gonna go to five cities with Uber.” You know what’s missing? Verne. What happened to Verne? Did Verne get stuck there, or was perhaps, as I talked about in the Road to Autonomy newsletter, was this an EU issue? It’s something is up there. Something is up. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire

Walter Piecyk: Well, there are five European cities that they’re targeting. I don’t know which one. I mean, they say they’re gonna be safety driver then in the future without again, we’ve been in plenty of cars that have a safety driver and, and still waiting in many cases for the, for the driver to go out, including some Uber partners. Which one of these do you think is, is actually gonna go live in ’27? And I guess the bigger question is, is like, is Chinese technology in Europe, or is there just no pushback at all? Or is, is just Europe open for business with China?

Grayson Brulte: It appears that Europe is open for business with China, and I wrote about this two weeks ago on the newsletter, and Rob and I talked about it on Autonomy Signals. It is only a matter of a time until the Chinese robotaxi companies establish their brands on the European continent that they leave Uber. I said it, I’ll s- and that, and that’s truly what I believe is gonna happen because there’s no intrinsic value there once they establish the brand

Baidu Apollo Go Baidu Goes Live in Dubai with Uber

Walter Piecyk: Well, maybe that’s a good segue into our next one, who’s a much larger company which Apollo Go, which went live in Dubai. this is the first real world launch on the– with their partnership, which was announced way back in July of ’25. What– So Dubai is a different, is a different beast, right? but again, Apollo and Baidu would certainly be a company that you would think more so than I think maybe Pony or WeRide, no offense to those companies would be prepping to have their own platform like Waymo and, and, and I think Zoox’s hopes to do

Grayson Brulte: It’s very, very plausible. Obviously, Baidu, you look at, you know, they’re publicly traded. There’s an ADR. You can look at their balance sheet. They have a balance sheet that can afford this capital investment. They, they have a brand in mainland China and in Hong Kong, and they also have the brand in Macau, so they could potentially expand that brand. And OMEGA did some research, and I’ll just say that Baidu’s global real estate footprint is growing on their balance sheet, n- not on Uber’s balance sheet, and I do wanna give credit to Baidu where credit’s due. Every quarter, Baidu releases, and I love this, supervised miles, unsupervised miles in their earnings release. So Baidu IR team, thank you for, for making that there, and it’ll be- we’ll be very curious to see as Baidu expands throughout the European continent what strategy they ultimately go to over time

Walter Piecyk: And I think I noticed that which I think is the ideal situation for Uber, that you can get one of these autonomous cars allocated to you if you booked on a Comfort or UberX. but you can also select autonomous as an option in that market

Grayson Brulte: There it is. You can select autonomous in that market. Let’s repeat that. You can select autonomous in that market. Why can I not do that in Dallas with Avride? Why can I not do that with a divorcee in Austin or Atlanta with Waymo? Why do I have to play this game of autonomous roulette? They say, “Oh, the technology’s not here.” I’ve heard that excuse. Well, it works in Dubai. I’d like an answer

Walter Piecyk: My guess is that if you think about the size and power of Baidu relative to the size and power of, of Neibus there’s your answer

Grayson Brulte: I’ll put that as a political dodge and we don’t know the answer. How’s that?

Wayve and Uber Launch Supervised Early Trip Access in London

Walter Piecyk: That’s fine. But the news is not over for Uber, Grayson. They quietly had a big week, maybe not so quietly. There were so many people on X, like random accounts that were saying like, “Uber’s the cheapest stock ever. Generational thing.” It’s like, it was crazy. It was like, it was like a messaging. It was like, you know, they get these things where a certain party puts out messaging points, and it was like all over the place. There was a big, it was a big push on X this week. I don’t know if you noticed that, but it was a little odd. obviously it was successful. The stock has moved up 10%. Anyway in this case, Wayve I guess Uber launched early trip access, again, supervised robotaxis in London this week. That’s a positive, and I think we have that on our agenda, hopefully still in this calendar year to get to London and, and hop in the various autonomous vehicles that are, that are gonna be operating in that big city. And I hope also maybe to see Chelsea play Liverpool at you know, in London

Grayson Brulte: Yeah. I’m, I’m up for the football match with you. See, there, I called it football ’cause that’s what it’s called. I know your Eagles fans will get upset, but it is called football. Yes, and it’s gonna get very interesting. If everything goes according to plan, as the UK government is signaling, I know they, they just had a change in prime minister, so that could change, but as they’ve been signaling, Waymo will be driver-out in London, Baidu will be supervised, and Wayve will be supervised. It’ll be very, very interesting to see where that goes. And once again, Waymo’s in the lead

Walter Piecyk: Let me just hat tip though to both Uber and Wayve here. They’re not using a Jaguar. They’re using a Ford. Get that? A Ford in London. We’ve got Jaggars, Jaguars, Jaguars here. They have Fords there. Help me understand that one. you know, for this launch, so isn’t that great, Grayson? Not a, not a Chinese vehicle, an American-made Ford

Grayson Brulte: It would be even better if they had the American flag on it going around London. I know that wouldn’t go over politically well, but that would be much better. It, it’s a very positive step for Wayve. For Uber it is a, it is a, I would say a, a minuscule positive step, but for Wayve it’s a very big positive step.

Walter Piecyk: Terrible. I disagree with that. Minuscule. Come on

Grayson Brulte: Well, well look at, you and I have m- spent time in London. When you’re operating a fleet of sub 15 vehicles, you have no meaningful impact

Walter Piecyk: I mean, I hear you, that’s for sure. But you gotta s- you gotta, you have to take steps. Look, I’m full– I’m all with you in terms of, like, saying something supervised and preventing, presenting the information cleanly. ‘Cause I think they’ve ultimately got themselves in trouble historically by not doing that. ‘Cause then you have people on X or elsewhere writing up about, like, “Oh, look at all these partners in autonomous,” and, like, and then real announcements come out, and Waymo expands, and it just doesn’t suit you well. It’s better just to be as, as clean and upfront as possible. With that said, this is obviously a positive step. it’s a, it’s an important partner for them, Wayve, right? To, to get some cars on the road. There’s one point of this, though, that I want to point out, Grayson, where h-historically, you’ve always pointed out, like, “Who’s got the license? Who–” Like We- you know, “WeRide’s got the license. Who’s,” you know, “who’s the one that has the local license?” In this case, isn’t it Uber that has the UK license to carry the passengers? And isn’t that a bizarre thing, once again, given that Wayve is actually a UK company?

Grayson Brulte: So Uber has the for-hire license, which would allow them to take paying passengers with a human behind the wheel. That’s why they did not call it robotaxi. They did not call it autonomous. They used different language. The thing that, that has to be watched, which is the most important part of this, who owns the APS permit? That is the tell sign. If Wayve gets the APS permit, in theory, and in fact, Wayve could leave Uber tomorrow and go with somebody else. If Uber gets the APS permit, Wayve is stuck at the hip until they get another partner that gets a permit or they get a permit

Walter Piecyk: Well, I can’t wait, I can’t wait until you get that tweet responding to you saying, “Grayson, in fact, we,” we meaning Uber, “are the ones that got the APS permit.” Because I don’t think Wayve cares about that stuff. Like, Wayve is certainly has this kind of vertical of going down this ADAS route, level two plus plus, whatever terms you wanna use. I don’t know if they care about that. Do they?

Grayson Brulte: If I was Alex Kendall, I’d want to have all my options available to me, and I would very care deeply about the APS permit. If Sarah Gates is going for it, Sarah, good for you. I have no insight into it. I’m, I want, wishing Wayve well, and I hope they go for the permit because it’ll give the company optionality

Walter Piecyk: I mean, so in this scenario, I put my analyst hat on. I don’t have one. It kind of looks like a clown hat probably based on how people perceive analysts. I would say that the expectation would be that, that Uber would get this APS permit, given how Wayve is, is positioned in the market. So if they don’t, I’d say that’s a– for those that are following this closely, I would say that that’s a mild negative. So perhaps you should get OMEGA, the OMEGA brain cranking and watching that carefully and give us a prediction or give your clients a prediction I sh- I should say of how that’s APS permit. ‘Cause that’s, that would be pretty. I think that’s pretty important signal in terms of that particular relationship.

Grayson Brulte: One of the greatest strengths of, about OMEGA and his Rob Esau program, it is a regulatory insight. And our, our clients have seen things in the regulatory things that were signals and breadcrumbs that actually led to bigger things. There is a lot of valuable data that is filed in regulatory filings that signals where a business is going

Walter Piecyk: Uber, you’re not off the, you’re not off the hook yet. We have one, actually two more topics on you, so settle in. Here we go. AVride is expanding autonomous campus delivery to 25 universities starting September. Oh, wait a minute. This is the robots. Still, this is important, right? Food delivery is important. The b- the fleet is doubling active the robot count to 1,000 delivery bots. this is great. I mean, now, are students gonna be using these AVride robots to transport cocaine deliveries from the frat to the end buyer?

Grayson Brulte: Only if you use Snapchat, that’s all. You gotta use Snapchat to make the connection, and then the bot can bring it to you. I mean, that would be the next vertical integration

Walter Piecyk: So is this, this is obviously a good development for AVride. You know, we saw those, those ro- robots, I can’t remember, was it Dallas or Austin? I can’t remember where we saw them. I mean, I’ve seen them in, I think in Philly as well. So obviously good progress there. On the flip side, you know, their, their partner, Uber’s ex-partner, Serve Robotics, who got cut and then Uber dumped the stock. By the way, Uber also dumped a, a ton of Aurora stock this, this week as well. but Serve, you know, whips around very quickly and does some deals with DoorDash and Grubhub. I don’t know, like, when it happens that quick, I just wonder, like, i-it, did Serve cut these guys like a sweetheart deal to reverse the negative news flow of what happened between them and Uber in the prior week

Grayson Brulte: I mean, you know this, you’ve been covering this longer than most. These deals take months. Sometimes they take years. And I, I’ll give Ali the benefit of the doubt. We, we, we have no knowledge of it, but perhaps Ali saw the relationship with Uber coming to a divorce, Elizabeth Taylor style, and he started putting a contingency plan in place. So that’s what it looks like, and the contingency plan is being executed very well

Walter Piecyk: They have two markets that they added, so those of you that are, that are in San Jose or Washington, DC, look out for these, these robots. Don’t kick them over. That’s not nice. and they’re now live in Chicago, LA, Alexandria with Grubhub. I mean, the other thing to kinda keep watching here is I’ve always talked about this being only a potential positive, but, you know, the thing that Ali talks about is this Beacon, which basically is a way, I think, for these companies to go around all of these platforms. And I mean, we, we can’t rule that out as, as kind of a future model. Even, even with Waymo’s. I know, again, getting back to the, “Oh my God, you know, how does a $125,000 car deliver a burrito if it’s a Waymo?” Well, when the car’s $20,000 and doing a million miles, obviously that cost relative to, you know, the person that’s delivering my, you know, my, my burrito or food or groceries or whatever it is becomes a lot less. So it’ll be interesting. I don’t think Beacon has had a lot of traction yet. It’ll be interesting to see which of these companies, given how these, some of these relationships have gone with the platforms and some of the demands that I’m sure the platforms not only put on them but put on the restaurants themselves whether there’s an opportunity for a disintermediation in food delivery as well

Grayson Brulte: Bringing it full circle from last week, dollar dollar bill, y’all. Cash rules everything around me. Cream at the money. Dollar dollar bill, y’all. The restaurant margins are historically very paper thin. If Ali with Beacon can come in and undercut DoorDash and undercut Uber Eats, where do you think the restaurant’s gonna go if he can d- if he can deliver? That’s the question, and I think it’s a very good strategic play

Walter Piecyk: Yes. I, I mean, just talk to your local restauranteur. If you live in a town or a city, just talk to them and tell. And you can understand the strain that they’re on, under, and I think those, your wrap words resonate with me in That context

Grayson Brulte: Thank you. And, and I will give credit to my friend Roger, he’s a restaurateur, so thank you for educating me, sir, on the restaurant industry.

Walter Piecyk: And Eric for me, And Eric for me,

Grayson Brulte: See, Roger and Eric, we should Go out

Walter Piecyk: Roger and Eric, We got your back, Baby.

Grayson Brulte: Dave, we need a couple seats. Get us a couple seats, Dave. Is. Dave’s the best love, Dave. Gotta give shout out to Dave. Da- and Dave’s from Philly, by the way, so g- even the city of brotherly love. Dave’s Great. And it is a really, really, really, really smart move, and if you’re going to go in the delivery business, as Roger said, and I’m sure your friend said, you must pass the french fry test. If you’re gonna deliver french fries, they must be crispy when they arrive. That’s the test. No matter how much you wanna scale, you have to pass the french Fry test

Walter Piecyk: So Ali, I know that you listen. All you gotta do is build an air fryer in that Serve Robotics little robot. It’s the shape of an air fryer. That can’t be that hard to do

Grayson Brulte: And there’s, there’s 2,000 robots that they have now. We know there’s more coming and, and what do we have coming next week? ‘Cause you gotta man the fort because I’m going on a journey

Walter Piecyk: I mean, NVIDIA’s reporting, I– there’s a lot of focus on obviously the AI side of their business, but they have talked about autonomy b- before. I’m guessing they say nothing, and I’m gonna highlight that as like, okay, we– they had this thing at the start of the year and still no updates. Maybe I’ll wr- maybe I’ll be wrong and NVIDIA will provide some type of more, you know, spec- specific timeline for when they’re gonna get that Mercedes on the road and get a driver out. That Mercedes, again, for our listeners, being the one that is the full stack. We’re not talking about the open model, that 500,000 people or whatever it was downloaded, but an actual product in the market for rideshare, okay? Not ADAS. For, for rideshare, for autonomy. As Grayson says, autonomy is driver out, unsupervised, 100 cars. Anyway, so NVIDIA reports, obviously they’re, they’re the behemoth, and maybe we’ll get some more info on Cybercab. I’ll be looking in my inback- inbox, Tesla, when you wanna drop that invite in there for that Cybercab event, I’ll be Waiting

Grayson Brulte: Walt wants you to drop it like it’s hot, drop it like it’s hot. Walt is right. Unsupervised is the metric. The future is bright. The future is autonomous. The future is, no surprise, unsupervised. Walt, until next week