Transcript: Uber CEO Reignites The Great Waymo vs Tesla Debate

Executive Summary

This week on Autonomy Markets, the autonomy world was set ablaze after Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi endorsed a multi-sensor approach using camera, LiDAR, and radar as the “right solution.” The statement prompted a direct response from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who argued on X that LiDAR and radar actually reduce safety due to sensor ambiguity.

In this episode, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk break down the reignited debate, Tesla’s Robotaxi expansion in Austin, Waymo’s testing in New York City and what Stellantis shutting down its Level 3 program means for autonomous driving partnerships.

Key Topics & Timestamps

[02:26] Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s Comments on LiDAR

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated his belief that in the short term, a combination of camera, LiDAR, and radar is the “right solution” for autonomous cars, which is a different approach from Tesla’s camera-only system. He noted that all of Uber’s current partners use this combination of sensors.

[03:57] Uber’s Investments in Vision-First Companies

It was pointed out that Uber has partnerships with and investments in two companies, Wayve and Nuro, that are developing solutions that do not rely on traditional LiDAR. While Nuro uses a solid-state LiDAR in its system, a tweet from the company stating “no LiDAR, no problem” was posted and quickly deleted shortly after the Uber CEO’s comments.

[09:00] Elon Musk’s Response to Dara Khosrowshahi on X

In response to the Uber CEO’s comments, Elon Musk posted on X that LiDAR and radar reduce safety because of “sensor contention”. He argued that if LiDAR or radar disagree with the cameras, it causes ambiguity and increases risk, stating this is why Tesla turned off the radars in its vehicles to enhance safety.

[11:15] The Broader LiDAR vs. Vision-Only Debate

The discussion explored the deeply entrenched views in the autonomy sector. It was suggested that even if Tesla added LiDAR to its vehicles tomorrow, many critics would likely just find something else to criticize rather than see it as a positive step. Conversely, the pro-Tesla community is often just as critical of Waymo’s LiDAR-based approach.

[14:11] Waymo’s Robotaxi Expansion in Austin

Waymo announced a major expansion of its robotaxi service in Austin, increasing its operational domain from 91 to 173 square miles. This expansion also included a 50% increase in the vehicle fleet and now allows for drop-offs at the Austin airport. Despite the growth, there has only been one reported incident involving a Waymo vehicle according to public data from the city of Austin.

[19:55] Waymo Begins Testing in New York City

Waymo announced it is officially expanding its testing to New York City with eight vehicles, each with a safety driver. The move was met with immediate pushback from former mayor Bill de Blasio, who called it a “really bad idea,” while current mayor Eric Adams noted that Waymo is operating under very strict safety rules.

[21:45] Opposition to AVs from Bike and Transit Coalitions

The opposition to autonomous vehicles in New York is reportedly being funded by two main groups: the Bike Coalition and public transit coalitions. These groups are allegedly concerned that autonomous vehicles will take away union jobs, reduce funding for public transportation, and encourage more vehicle miles traveled.

[25:52] Tesla Testing FSD in Las Vegas Tunnels

The CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Steve Hill, confirmed that Tesla is testing its supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) system in the Vegas loop tunnels. Hill stated there is a clear pathway to full autonomy, which would involve moving the safety driver from the front seat to the back seat, and then eventually removing them entirely.

[28:20] Stellantis Shuts Down Internal Level 3 Program

Reuters reported that Stellantis has shut down its internal program for developing SAE Level 3 autonomous driving technology because it was not achieving the necessary technical breakthroughs. This move is seen as a sign that OEMs may need to license this technology from specialized developers, potentially opening up partnership opportunities with companies like Waymo, Nuro, or Wayve.

Watch the Full Episode of Autonomy Markets

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Walt Cue the music, but please don’t cue Send in the Clowns by Frank Sinatra. We’re here to celebrate, not disappoint. It is our one year anniversary of autonomy markets. Can you believe that each and every week we break down the Autonomy Markets Some analysis, some entertainment, some laugh, some pontificating. I can’t believe we made it. You slid into my dms and here we are . produced this show for over a year.

Walter Piecyk: well, Grayson, I’m not sure I’m sliding into anyone’s dms. I don’t know about that. I do know that, I mean, we’ve been kind of, you know, talking to each other for years. I, I’ve been. Started looking at this back in 2016 with the Uber IPO, you well before that. , Talking to ATG before, obviously that was dismantled by by Dara, um, obviously took a bit of a sabbatical, um, and had been back more recently sabbatical, specifically on autonomy along as many investors given a lot of those early promises weren’t delivered on. It’s great to be re-engaged over the past couple years. Thank you for pushing me to do this. Over the past year, this has been huge. Thank you. More importantly to our listeners, um, who I think, you know, I’ve done a lot of tech industry sectors over the past 30 years, you know, some of the smartest group, you know, in terms of the listeners that the, the engagement has been phenomenal. The industry, thanks to the industry like, because over the past year with all this new competition. Things have really been accelerating in the past year. So we, I think, entered in the right time and like, look, it’s been great. We’ve had, we’ve seen tremendous growth and I think now we’re basically the only weekly podcast going through and discussing all these major things that are happening every week. But thanks to the industry for giving us something to discuss every week ’cause it’s been great.

Grayson Brulte: and thanks for you for, for teaming up with me and for you and I brainstorming this idea. And I know when we were starting, we’re is now the right time is not the right time. And you and I just said, fuck it, let’s do it. And it turns out we were. Right into the listeners and viewers. Thanks for the engagement, Walt and I read every one of your comments and you really make this show into everybody that tunes in every week. Thank you. And to Walt. Thanks sir, has been a fun journey. We got many more years ahead on this train. And now let’s, now let’s get onto the show. That’s why you’re here. You’re here for Autonomy Markets. We’re headed into Labor Day. I’m having a big Labor Day party. A lot of, a lot of folks are. The news and the autonomy markets keeps on going. Last Sunday, Dara Khosrowshahi came out and made a statement about LiDAR and what happens when anybody makes a, a statement about LiDAR? The pot gets stirred and the LiDAR debate heats up, 

Walter Piecyk: Before we get to his quote, , Grayson, I wanna half commend you for your pronunciation. Pro pronunciation. I can’t even pronounce pronunciation of Dara Khosrowshahi, because I think on past podcasts, that’s one feedback we didn’t get from our listeners. They were nice on you. I think you were saying you were calling him Kasha Shockey or whatever, but we did go to the internet. Ro Shahi, and it’s, and I’ve actually, I think, mispronounced his first name on many, taking the Long Island Dara, as opposed to, uh, Dara. So to our listeners, we’ll, we’ll try and get that right. But you have to admit, it’s not an easy name. It’s not an easy name to pronounce.

Grayson Brulte: It’s not to the individual that created the video on YouTube of how to pronounce it. Thank you. You made this segment of this show. Great. Now let’s get, now that we got the. On phonics out of the way. Let’s get onto the quote here, and I’m gonna quote this here ’cause I’m good at that, Elon, you’ll say I’m wrong, but in the short term, it’ll be very difficult to have a camera, only autonomous car like Tesla Camera, LiDAR, and radar is the right solution. The pot is stirred Walt. The pot is stirred.

Walter Piecyk: the quote is taken outta context. I haven’t listened to the whole interview, but you know, he said what he said. Um, obviously our, our dms and, um, various sources of how we can be reached, lit up on those comments. Um, because of this kind of embracement of LiDAR and the debates that we’ve had here on the role that it plays in Tesla’s choice to use it or not to use it. , And what’s I think fascinating about this is. First off, like, you know, they have, Uber has partnerships and investments in two companies that are developing solutions that don’t use LiDAR. One is Wayve well known, the other is Nuro. Now look, Nuro does have a solid state LiDAR in our solution, but it’s ironic you put your, your Inspector Clouseau hat on recently. Literally this week, multiple, you know, a few, just a few days after Dara said this, there was a tweet that emerged, from Nuro that said, quote, no LiDAR, no problem. Watch the Nuro driver politely yield to another car on a narrow neighborhood street. And then there’s a video, whatever. So you had your, your Clouseau hat on, sent this to me. I’m about to do one of my kind of like, wow, isn’t this interesting? ’cause everyone was like, you know, going after me about you know about Uber and Dara and no LiDAR. By the time I got that thing retweeted, it had already been deleted. What are your thoughts?

Grayson Brulte: It went Bye-bye. And I want to pull another quote out from Mr. Khosrowshahi’s, , interview here and I’m gonna quote this one ’cause this is building on this and getting this even more interesting here for you to break down. Walt in quote, all of our partners that are, we, we are working with now are using a combination of camera, radar, and LiDAR. And, you know, I personally think that is the right solution, but I could be proven wrong. All of our partners is the key terminology there.

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, and look, we’re parsing things. I mean, Wayve I think is much more embracing. Without LiDAR. Again, Nuro, we know they have a solid state, you know, in their, in their system, which is really cheap. I mean, it’s, it’s one of these things, we have these like kind of very, you know, very impassioned arguments, LiDAR and outlaw. Why isn’t there impassioned arguments about someone saying like, look, that these spinning LiDARs that that Waymo is using on all of their vehicles is so much better. And how dare Nuro use a solid state LiDAR? There’s probably, you know, a segment of, of people that are believers in versions of, of LiDAR, uh, as well. So, but again, it’s just, it’s odd at the end of the day. I think a lot of those comments, again, I haven’t listened to the whole thing. , Dara is a good CEO right? And he is, you know, not the type of person to get. I think dug in on a viewpoint. So I think we’ll give ’em the benefit of the doubt, and I’m sure that as these technologies evolve, they will go with whatever the best solution is with them, the safest and, and the something that can generate them positive economics as well.

Grayson Brulte: I fully agree with the statements about Dara, but I, I wanna point out, and here, and here, and here comes the feedback, if you want to call it the hate mail, at some point, I’m not giving a timeline, I’m not giving names. You’ll be able to scale vision only, and then you’ll be able to scale LiDAR. There’s gonna be both solutions in the market. This is not a one size fits all market. There’s gonna be multiple solutions in the market.

Walter Piecyk: Well, we will see. I mean, that’s a prediction. I’m, I’m certainly not gonna rule it out. I’m hopeful that that happens. I think you have some of the smartest people in the world at Tesla, at Wayve and Nuro, and frankly, by the way. At Waymo itself, who is also exploring, you know, alternative solutions to the, to their current, um, their current ecosystem or their current stack. You know, so we’re hopeful that they can do whatever’s best and that can generate a positive return so that these things can scale. 

Grayson Brulte: You have to search into the Pro Waymo, pro LiDAR folks. Let’s not forget this year, Waymo published a paper called the Emma Paper. Which was a vision only paper. That’s right. Waymo published a vision only paper. Do they have a test vehicle to Castle? We don’t know, but there’s a public paper that Waymo’s currently looking at it. I went to a conference hosted by Applied Intuition. This year, Sebastian Thrun comes on stage and says, Larry Page, one of the founders of Google wants a vision only system. It could happen. There’s public statements and papers we could point at. So at some point Waymo could go vision only and they probably will when that happens. I don’t know. But that, uh, interview with Mr. Khosrowshahi caught the attention of none other drum roll z Elon Musk. And what does Mr. Musk like to do? He likes to post on x and in response to that video clip. Mr. Musk tweeted the following, and I’m gonna quote Mr. Musk here. LiDAR in radar reduce safety due to sensor contention. If LiDAR slash radars disagree with cameras, which one wins? This sensor ambiguity causes increased, not decreased risk. That’s why Waymo’s can’t drive. On highways, we’ve turned off the radars in Teslas to increase safety cameras. FTW End quote.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, this is not new. This is stuff that we’ve discussed. We’re not the only people that have engaged, , with Tesla to understand their reasons. Many times I try and correct this, um, in social media when people are like, oh, it’s, you know, it’s so cheap. It’s like, it’s not about whether the LiDAR sensor is expensive or cheap. That is not why Tesla is making this decision. It’s exactly what Elon laid out. Now you could argue that you think that’s wrong. That’s not how safety is like, again, that’s fine. That is your argument. But there are a group of engineers that have a different argument, right? And that is what, and that is what they’re, they’re executing on. So, , again, not surprising in the, and look, at the end of the end of the day, like in the past, Dara’s like, yeah, we’d love to work with Tesla. That’s clearly not gonna happen, right? Because Tesla doesn’t want it to happen. Tomorrow, Tesla said, yeah, we’re, you know, we’ve changed our model rather than doing the Robotaxi fleet. You know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna allow these cars to be plugged into Uber. We’re gonna do a deal with Uber. Do you think maybe it’s possible that the commentary around LiDAR might change outta people from LiDAR? Possible? Right. I mean, they’ve been shut out though, so that, that, you know, obviously impacts how they communicate things. Again, you gotta keep in mind you have other Uber, you have other partners, and those other partners are also working on camera only solutions. End-to-end solutions. ’cause we are in the AI era now.

Grayson Brulte: We are in the AI era now, Yes, if that was to happen, which I don’t believe it will. It’d be like a Looney Tunes com commercial on Warner Brothers turn, turn right around. The commentary in the marketplace would completely change.

Walter Piecyk: the flip side of that argument as well, in terms of everything changing in your perfect Grayson, what if we woke up tomorrow and Elon was like, you know what? We figured out how to have these sensors communicate together, and we’re gonna put a LiDAR on the car, solid state, whatever it is. Do you think that all these, that 100% of the people that have been like super anti Tesla and you know, there’s some out there that are really, you know, really vocalize it, let’s call it that, um, would suddenly be like, oh, like this is great. Now I think Tesla, you know, this is the way for autonomy and Tesla is gonna be a major competitor. Or do you think there would be just one other thing that they are going to try and, you know, knock at this company in terms of their ability to execute on autonomy? What’s your guess?

Grayson Brulte: You’ve two different crowds. You’d have the radical fanatics that no matter, no matter what happens, are never gonna budge. And then on the other side, you’re gonna have another crowds say, I told you so. I told you so. I told you you need LiDAR. Mr. Musk did. He came around, he found the LiDAR religion. Holy wow. He’s the greatest thing since life bread. And this fanatical group, for whatever reason, they drink the Kool-Aid, they’re never getting off that train. So you can have a divide.

Walter Piecyk: my guess is the more, there’s gonna be more so on that group, not the ones. Yeah, they’ll be the, I told you sos, which is fine. Like, what does Elon care like? Fine. Yeah. You told me. Whatever. This is part of being a. You know, thoughtful and, you know, deciding you have new information, you change. They’ve done that, I think, at SpaceX on many occasions. Um, so in this case, my guess is these, there’s some, some views out there that are so dug in on this company for, for, for whatever reason, that even if they put a LiDAR on their car tomorrow, we’d still probably have this, like, oh, these guys are gonna fail and they’re never gonna get to autonomy. But I could be wrong.

Grayson Brulte: I’m gonna take this a little close to the edge here. My wife and I were talking about this at dinner the other night. Could you imagine if the fanatical group, for every negative tweet they put on TE Tesla, they bought $1 a share, would they be negative because that balance would’ve kept growing over the years.

Walter Piecyk: I don’t know about that. And look, let’s to be clear, there’s just as many, if not more fanatical pro Tesla people that unfairly rip into. Waymo’s approach and saying, Waymo’s gonna be obliterated off the face of the earth. And those people are, I think, you know, deserve as much questions as those that you know have a very, um, emotional view towards Tesla’s approach to autonomy.

Grayson Brulte: There’s a lot of emotion in the, in the LiDAR debate, the Tesla debate, the Tesla versus Waymo debate. You and I, we don’t get emotional. We get accused of being stans, but we’re like umpires. We’re calling balls and strikes as we see it, to now get to Robotaxi in Austin. They announced this week, they’ve expanded from 91 square miles to 173 square miles in Austin. That’s right, 173 square miles. They doubled the fleet by 50%. You can now get dropped off at the Austin Bergham Airport. You can now go visit Giga. Is this a sign of things to come of how fast Tesla is going to ramp when they eventually move into new markets outside of California?

Walter Piecyk: I mean, steady progress. And, you know, they’re, they’re increasing the ODM and you know, you, you, you kind of check off criticisms, well, you know, this only works in a certain area that can be engineered to do that. You know, checking another box, obviously the big one everyone wants to see, I think is taking the, you know, the, the observer in the passenger seat, safety driver, whatever you want to call them out of the car, and obviously opening up the app. To more and more people so you can have some more, you know, voices out there talking about you. We’ve seen more people, we’ll get to that I think in the next segment. Someone else that, that had an experience in Tesla. But I think those two things will be critical success. But, you know, going from 91 to 173 square miles and having a lot more cars, you know, these are clearly positive steps. And in the meantime, , you know, California’s out there, right? And, and they’re doing rides in California. With obviously someone in the driver’s seat, so perhaps not as as interesting, but, but you know, showing what they can do in that ODD.

Grayson Brulte: The ODD, it’s impressive. It’s big. We have public data from the, the city of Austin around incidents and despite us not knowing how large the, the vehicle fleet size is, we have no public data on that. We do have public data from the city of Austin. There has only been one reported incident. ’cause you and I remember, oh, this thing is gonna blow up on day one. It’s gonna fail, it’s gonna fail. Only one incident. Waymo has more incidents and yes, I know they have more vehicles, but if all holds and this pattern holds and they had more vehicles, they’re truly onto something. ’cause when September rolls around, you and I both know it’s opening to the public. That’s what Elon has said. This is pretty impressive.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, that will be a good milestone if, if they, if they deliver on that, which I just said like that was a key one. Getting, getting rid of the, you know, that observer’s another one. I don’t know what the incident was. Um, obviously you want to have zero, but things are gonna happen and there’s a lot of focus. I mean, there was a video this past week, um, of, you know, someone that was in one of the cars, they were gonna make a left turn into Terry Black’s. For those that that have seen our video on this, you know, that we went to Terry Black’s on multiple occasions and the car didn’t make the left. We went in there three or four times, quite easily. As an aside, I think we even talked about this in the video when we got, we had an an uber human driven, Uber driver that didn’t pull into the parking lot and I think took us into, if I remember correctly, it was, I think a bike lane that was there instead. Um, but clearly this was, this was an issue. Now, once again, this is like no one’s life was in danger. This obviously showed that there was an issue that, that Tesla had to deal with. In this case, the safety person got out of the car. And drove it. So like you’re freaking out about them being safety, and yet they literally have the safety guy in the car to, to deal with the situation. And everyone’s like, wow, Waymo, Waymo, Waymo. I’m like, okay. But there’s also videos that I’ve seen from Waymo where there’s two Waymo’s, literally just frozen at a stoplight. Now look, the context was, this was from like a, A Tesla fanboy. It wasn’t, you know, the person was claiming he was LiDAR. I don’t know why. If they had any issues. But there’s plenty of videos out there of Waymo’s having these minor glitches where no one’s life is in danger. And I think the, the, the problem here, Grayson, is everyone in this industry that’s so focused like the Waymo lovers and the Tesla lovers, you’re missing the bigger picture where, where you’re, where if you, if you come at someone and say like, oh, I can’t believe Tesla’s doing this. And it creates this back and forth. It gets vocal that the mass media picks up on and they focus on these issues. We have 40,000 people dying on our roads, right? And you’re focused on whether a car is making a left turn or freezing there, or a Waymo is, is stopping at a stoplight when the bigger issue here is autonomy, providing the opportunity to save lives. 40,000 people die. On the road, on your roads every year. So when you actually come and attack, whether you’re a Tesla guy attacking the Waymo’s or a Waymo person attacking the Teslas, you’re not helping the overall kind of messaging. Not that it’s your job to help the messaging, but you’re literally cutting off your nose despite your face in terms of like, we want there to be more adoption because we all, I think, believe. That, maybe not all of us, but I think we should believe that autonomy provides an opportunity to, to save lives and to change our economy. Sorry for the long, the long, um, diatribe, but like, you know, that that is the thing that always strikes me when I get these like, what about this guy? What about this? Like the back and forth on what essentially are minor issues? Like why would you shut down an entire program because a car happened to freeze. At a stoplight in the case of Waymo or while making a left turn. That makes no sense.

Grayson Brulte: you’re right, it’s sad. 38,485 individuals lost their lives on the roads. It’s sad there’s a solution to fix that. A solution’s autonomy. Autonomous vehicles do not get drunk. They do not get distracted. And most importantly, ’cause this is a growing statistic that hopefully NHTSA publishes more data on, they don’t text and drive. I can’t tell you the last time I went for a ride in my vehicle where I did not see at least one person texting and driving. That’s scary. They’re distracted. These vehicles are weapons. They’re distracted. Autonomy will save lives, and autonomy is expanding. In Waymo, they announced on Friday that they are expanding testing officially to New York with eight vehicles. What do you make of this expansion?

Walter Piecyk: I mean, I think it’s great. It’s early, right? And interestingly, even though it’s only eight vehicles, even though there’s a safety driver in the car, you already have the pushback, right? And there’s a quote from former mayor, bill de Blassio. , Saying if there’s one place on earth that was not meant for self-driving cars, it’s New York City, this is a really bad idea. Like, so, you know, again, this is kind of an offshoot of what I was saying before, like there are bigger issues that we all have in terms of trying to educate, I think the broader populace about the opportunity for safety and for maybe reducing traffic or whatever it is. And, and all the benefits that it can bring to New York City and, and cities across and suburbs and rural across this, this country. So that’s gonna be the fascinating thing. We, we, obviously, we’ve seen the pushback in Boston labor getting involved there. So, you know, this is the problem in the northeast.

Grayson Brulte: There’s a lot of problems in the Northeast, and Mayor Adams put a tweet out about this, the current mayor of New York, and Mr. Adams said in quote, Waymo was operating under the nation’s strictest safety rules, but yet it’s very true. Waymo’s operating very safely. Then I started diving into this, where’s all the pushback coming from? Found it. I put on my inspector hat and I found it. It is coming from two individual main groups that are funding this, the Bike Coalition and the public Transits coalitions.

Walter Piecyk: The bike coalition. Hold on. You you talking about cyclists.

Grayson Brulte: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They’re involved in this. It’s all public documentation. It’s well out there. This is all public. We’re gonna cover it. And this week in the Autonomy Economy newsletter on Sunday, it’s all out there. It’s all public. They are afraid that this will take away union jobs and funding for public transport, and it will encourage people to get in more vehicles of vehicle miles traveled when they can’t go on bikes. Walt, I lived in New York for seven years, it gets cold in the winter. Your fingers freeze. I wanna go in a car. And this offers a safe solution, but that’s who’s putting up this fight. And if you think things are bad now all signs point to you. Look at the betting markets. You look at the New York polling, Mamdani’s gonna become the next mayor. Things could get a lot worse.

Walter Piecyk: Mond, not ma Ami. Ami look, I just moved my daughter into to the city. My single biggest fear. Safety wise is bikes, is literally her walking off a sidewalk or getting out of a taxi or a Uber, and hopefully at some point a waymo and getting hit by the bikes. It’s so ironic, and we’ve had some unfortunate incidents out here in the suburbs caused by bikers, caused by cyclists. Um, so if anyone, but even if I’m a cyclist, like the predictability of an autonomous car. So I, it’s, it’s bizarre to me that they would be the ones against autonomy. They should be forward. Autonomous car I think, is gonna be much more safe for a cyclist than it would be for these people. Like, I actually, by the way, I meant to mention this, like I, I parked on our street out here in, in, in town, and I was about to open my car, my Tesla car door, and there was a car coming. I knew it was coming. I was only gonna open a little bit. The Tesla prevented me from opening the car door because it knew the car was approaching from, from behind. So how are the cyclists part of the groups that are against this? Are you sure you have that right?

Grayson Brulte: I’m a hundred percent sure I have. Right? So let’s go into the Wayback machine. When I was co-chair for the Autonomous Vehicle Task Force for the City of Beverly Hills, one of the biggest thorns on our side was the Bike Coalition. The Bike Coalition. Walt, this is their manifesto. It’s all public, by the way. I wanna emphasize this is public data. They want to ban the personal ownership of vehicles. They want to ban vehicles and force people into alternative forms of transportation, micro mobility, and bicycles. That is their North star. That’s what they want to do.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, good luck with that. I don’t even know what to comment on on that. But aside from that, that that kind of crazy thesis. Again, let’s go back to just cars versus autonomy. Like an autonomous car is gonna be safer for you, the cyclists on the road and like, please ride your bicycle a little bit safer because you’re literally a menace on New York City roads and frankly in the suburban roads, uh, that I drive. And frankly, cause in my opinion, at least, I don’t have any data to support this more safety issues than anything. , At the, in the moment.

Grayson Brulte: I want to give you a personal story. A, a few months ago I took my family to New York, I went to a Yankees game, and the it, I mean, whoever planned New York City Urban Transit NE needs to go back to urban planning transit. So you, you have the hotel, you have the sidewalk, and then you have a bike lane. But it’s not a bike lane. Well, this is a speed lane. They’re going a hundred miles an hour down this thing. And my daughter’s going to get out of the car and the gentleman in the hotel’s putting his hands up, telling her to stop. ’cause this guy would not stop. And then he turns around and he throws up the middle finger at my daughter. It’s like it’s her problem. She’s trying to get out. She’s a little kid trying to go to the hotel, but they don’t stop. They don’t know, they don’t abide by the rules of the road. There’s no rules of the road for them. Oh boy. Oh boy.

Walter Piecyk: I’m glad I lit that fuse for you, Grayson. And look, there’s plenty of positives about the cyclists, but I’ve got my issues. But let’s switch. Let’s switch back to Tesla. Who, and again, we’ve talked about this ’cause I think there was, I think I heard some criticisms where people were ripping into the economics of what Tesla was doing in Las Vegas. ’cause you had right in that moment, people that were driving the Teslas through this tunnel that was in Las Vegas. So here we are, we’ve got some news that they’re already testing FSD.

Grayson Brulte: Interview with Fortune Steve Hill. The CEO of the Las Las Vegas Convention of Visitors Authority has confirmed that they are testing FSD supervised in the tunnels with a human and. Ready for this. They’re supervising the safety of that, and they have not had incidents, but yet the media tries to spin this. Oh, when they were doing the tunnel, they had a little oil leak. No, but the CEO Mr. Hill comes out and says they’re testing it safely. And Mr. Hill was very interesting. He said that there was a pathway to go fully autonomous. I must fell outta my chair on this. Mr. Hill stated in the interview that they, that, that you’re gonna have the FSD Supervised. You and I use our vehicles today, and then that safety driver will move to the back seat and then eventually be removed. This is all according to Mr. Hill in the Fortune interview. I don’t know how Mr. Hill’s gonna do it. We all see Las Vegas economy, the tourism falling off, but it seems like there is a very clear path for Tesla to operate fully autonomous in these tunnels in the regulatory environment that’s seemingly open to it. Maybe just a little bit. Now, what do you think?

Walter Piecyk: I mean, there couldn’t be an easier ODD than. The, the tunnels that are in Las Vegas. Right. So, uh, it’s shocking that, you know, it’s not already at that point, obviously, to your point, there’s some regulatory hit issues that they need to, to move forward on. My only point was like, this was a couple months ago, there were some people attacking this, you know, questioning the economics and pointing out the number of people involved, like. This is like, you know, criticizing Waymo for having $175,000 cars, which is what we covered last week. Assuming that they will never get to production level and get those prices down, like you have to have a little bit of vision here, , to see the opportunity. Look, I get that digging holes underground is, is super expensive and maybe that’s a limiting factor, but the hole is dug. Let’s get that thing autonomous, hopefully by CES, so we can hop into Tesla with no one in the driver’s seat, in the passenger seat, and take a, a nice autonomous ride from, you know, whatever the convention center to wherever that thing goes.

Grayson Brulte: This is a major hypothetical, Walt, but I want a prediction out of you. Tesla is hiring for an autopilot supervisor in Las Vegas Henderson, to be exact. That’s the first indicator that they’re looking at that market. If and when Tesla launches Robotaxi in Las Vegas, which I believe they will at some point, will they be able to use those tunnels to avoid the traffic? What’s your prediction on that?

Walter Piecyk: Why wouldn’t they? Of course they would. Like, why wouldn’t they? They have, they have. Tesla’s in there now. That’s silly, of course. And hopefully they’ll extend it because they’ll use the tunnel for the traffic that’s in that, in that area, and rather than loop back around and just deal with the tunnel, it’ll continue on and take you to wherever your destination is, further down the strip.

Grayson Brulte: It’s, it’s great technology. Let’s shift gears from Sin City to the Motor City. This week, Reuters is reporting that Stellantis shut down their SAE level three internal system. They weren’t getting the traction. They weren’t, they weren’t having the technical breakthroughs. To me, that’s a clear sign that we’ve spoken about this in depth, that the autonomous driving technology is going to be built by a series of developers. If it’s either Helm.ai, it’s Wayve, it’s Nuro, is this news lens, is this a sign of things to come that OEMs are gonna have to realize that this technology cannot be built inhouse and they’re gonna have to license.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, we’ve talked about a little about this, about this before in past,, pods and, and the direction that Ford has gone and, and, , you know, what is really happening at GM now that Sterling Anderson is there? And I, I’ve always asked you this, Grayson, like if you develop internally, if great, if, uh, Sterling hires additional people there, does that. Meaning that they don’t do external deals, because I think Toyota’s got their version of internal development of adas, and yet they do external deals like, so to me, if we’re looking at kind of incremental news items, if Stellantis is shutting down in-house development, even though it’s level three, it’s not level four, this just kind of opens up the opportunity. It’s not like autonomy autonomy’s going away. I’m sure Stellantis knows that this just opens the opportunity for partnerships with existing players. And now the question is like. If you’re Stellantis, are you afraid of partnering with, uh, Google through Waymo? Right? Where’s Waymo like? We had this kind of half release with Toyota, like we both want them to, to add additional OEMs to support the, the network and, and move them to the next step. If this is the great technology that we know, it is. Let’s get some more OEMs. And is this a precursor to Stellantis doing something with Waymo? Are they afraid of Google? And then is this an opportunity for Nuro to add a second, a second OEM for Wayve to add an OEM for May Mobility to add an OEM? So, um, I, I’m kind of not shocked that the OEMs would shut down even ADAS and, but I’m hoping that that means that we see something. In terms of new partnerships from Stellantis and GM and others with, with, uh, existing players in the market.

Grayson Brulte: Let’s not forget, Waymo has had a a longstanding relationship with Stellantis, going back to the Chrysler Pacifica minivans. So the relationships are there. Perhaps it happens, we don’t know. But what we do know, Walt, this weekend, it’s Labor Day, I’m gonna be grilling. It’s our one year anniversary of autonomy markets today to listeners and viewers that have been with us through this journey. Thank you, Walt. Please. Thank you. This has been a ton of fun. I’m looking forward to the next year. Actually, I’ll be very blunt and, and open. I’ll look for the next years to come. We’re not gonna go to the senior citizen years, but we’re looking at, have a lot of fun on on these years. Now that we’re getting into September, what do we need to look for in the autonomy markets over the coming week?

Walter Piecyk: Well, for those of you that are not empty nesters like I am, you’re sending kids back to school. You’ve got a couple of in, in the Wall Street World conferences that are kicking in. So you’ll see companies, sometimes they talk about, you know, new developments there. You get the football season. So next week I’ll be traveling down to Philly for the season opener and when we hang the banner for our, our Super Bowl championship. So if you’re in Philly and you know you’re in autonomy, let’s, let’s, uh, let’s do some tailgating Thursday.

Grayson Brulte: Do the tail getting with Walt. But Walt, I want one thing on your trip. I want a photo of a Waymo vehicle in Philadelphia. Can you make that happen for me?

Walter Piecyk: We’ll try and, and make that happen, and hopefully if things don’t get too rowdy and it doesn’t go near the parking lots, then it will get, get there safely, or escape the crowds safely. You know, Philly fans are passionate.

Grayson Brulte: Escape from Philadelphia. Philly fans are some of the best sports fans in the country. I used to go see flyers games when you had Lindros. They were really great. The future is bright. The future autonomous. The future is Autonomy Markets Walt until next week and have a great game.

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered