Waymo Goes to Wall Street

Waymo secured a $5 billion term loan, its first ever, signaling aggressive growth plans on top of its $16 billion equity raise earlier in the year. The episode covers fully autonomous testing now underway in Detroit, a massive vehicle buildup spotted at Waymo’s Dallas depot, and a field report revealing Zoox’s costly and unreliable Las Vegas rider experience.

Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk also debate the London autonomous vehicle hat trick of Wayve, Baidu, and Pony.ai on Uber’s platform, the Minneapolis autonomous vehicle ban veto, and Kodiak‘s autonomous trucking safety case reaching 96%.

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered

Autonomy Markets Topics & Timestamps

[0:00] Atoms and Zoox Field Reports

The Atoms field report drew strong feedback, with private confirmation and a like on X from Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. In Las Vegas, a Zoox ride from Resorts World to the Golden Knights game cost $42.26 and took 28 minutes with loops around the Excalibur parking lot, compared to $18.68 for a Waymo Ojai ride.

[05:15] Autonomy Roulette on Uber in Las Vegas

It took 10 spins of the Uber app to get paired with a Motional vehicle, and Uber has promised an autonomy tier but has not given a date. With a Nuro test track at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Grayson believes Vegas could soon have three autonomous options on one platform.

[08:20] Waymo Raises $5 Billion in Debt

Waymo’s first ever loan follows its $16 billion equity round at a $126 billion valuation in February. Grayson reads the raise as growth, Walt sees access to the capital markets as a strategic advantage, and Waymo is refreshing the Ojai with new colors, new interiors and wireless charging.

[12:20] Waymo Launches Unsupervised Testing in Detroit

Walt predicts commercial service in Motown by Thanksgiving, while Grayson expects it before New Year’s Eve. A field report on Monday from Waymo’s Avis depot will show Waymo preparing to massively expand in Dallas.

[14:53] Tesla Robotaxi 24/7 Timeline in Austin

Tesla is testing Cybercab with no one inside and running Robotaxi loops around the Zoox depot that is still under construction in Austin. Walt predicts 24/7 service by the end of October, and Grayson expects it after Halloween as Tesla errs on the side of safety.

[18:33] Uber and Pony.ai Head to London

Pony.ai joins Wayve and Baidu on Uber’s London platform. Grayson says the most important thing to watch is who will own the APS permit, and he predicts Waymo will operate fully unsupervised in London by Q1 2027.

[25:12] How Long Until Wayve Goes Unsupervised?

Grayson expects Wayve to launch unsupervised commercial service in London or another European city within 12 to 18 months, and in 36 months across multiple markets. Stellantis is testing Wayve’s technology in Italy and in the Detroit region, with a product expected in 2027.

[33:21] Minneapolis Mayor Vetoes Driver-In Mandate as California Mandates U.S. Remote Operations

Mayor Frey vetoed the City Council’s 7 to 6 vote requiring a human in the driver’s seat, and the council does not have the nine votes it needs to override him. California’s SB 1246 requires remote operators to be domiciled in the United States.

[37:30] Autonomous Trucking, Cleared for Take-Off

Kodiak hit 96% on its safety case, an FMCSA blanket waiver resolved the warning triangle issue for the industry, and Volvo and Waabi began customer runs from Dallas to Houston. On delivery, Coco grew from 50 to 5,000 brands in two years and Zipline is now live in Austin.

[42:36] Foreign Autonomy Desk

XPeng named its robotaxi service YoYo, and Stellantis chose Momenta over Wayve for its Peugeot and Jeep brands in mainland China. The Road to Autonomy Special Field Correspondents are in Paris, so Foreign Autonomy field reports are on the way.

[44:34] Next Week

Raquel Urtasun of Waabi speaks at TechCrunch, Tesla holds its Roadster event, and Pony.ai could begin testing on the streets of London.

Full Episode Transcript

Atoms Car Field Report & Dara’s Mysterious Like

Grayson Brulte: Walt, I’m not gonna sing the Charlie Daniels song that the devil went down to Georgia, but I am gonna say that Waymo went down to Wall Street. As Waymo goes down to Wall Street, they went fully autonomous in Motown. Let’s queue up some Stevie Wonder there, keeping with the musical theme as they do that. Pony.ai announced they’re getting ready to launch commercial service with Uber in London, and what does that mean for hockey fans? That’s a hat trick. Why is that a hat trick? You got Wayve, you’ve got Baidu, and now you have Pony. Three competitors, one platform in London. Be very interesting to watch. And oh, as the audience knows, we’ve been on the road a lot. Shall we start with field reports today, or where do you wanna go?

Walter Piecyk: We should always start with field reports unless there’s some type of groundbreaking news, which I don’t think there’s any major groundbreak- breaking news. But I think I wanted to come back to the breaking news that we had here last week where you’ve discovered these Atoms car and, and put some pictures up. But then, you know, you dropped this video which gave a little bit more detail. There were some great you know, circles around the cars or whatever y- that you have. I, I know you blurred out some pictures, but how was the feedback on the video in terms of Atoms? Did you get any any pushback? I mean, I’m just. It– I’m still fascinated that given Travis’s reputation, given Anthony’s reputation and the lack of really any information about what Atoms is doing, that, that this didn’t create more buzz.

Grayson Brulte: The feedback was good. We, in private, we did get confirmation, and I will say this, which was a very interesting sign or a signal, Dara liked the post on X. What that means, I don’t know. I just find it very, very interesting, but really good feedback. And to the individuals that asked, yes, we’re gonna have a lot more field reports coming, and yes, we’ll continue to cover Adam. So overall, really good feedback. The Dara clicking the Like button is super interesting

Walter Piecyk: I think that might’ve been an accident. I’m, I’m not gonna read too much into that. That might’ve been an accidentally swiping through, like, “Oh, no, gotta get this guy off my screen,” and he accidentally hit the. I j- I’m kidding, obviously. who knows what that means? But you can refer back to our podcast with Jason Calacanis about our views on, you know, the future for, for Travis. Anyway, we also had some additional field work. I know David Moss is part of the The Road to Autonomy family, and I saw some interesting videos of Zoox where, I mean, I think I’ve been pretty consistent with my, with some of my questions around Zoox and my own personal experiences in Las Vegas. Did David experience anything differently or better in terms of the Zoox progress in Las Vegas?

Zoox Las Vegas Field Report: High Cost, Poor Experience

Grayson Brulte: Unfortunately, no. And I have to say that unfortunately, ’cause we’re rooting for Zoox to do well. David was taken to go to the Golden Knights for, for hockey, and an hour before, he tried to order a Zoox, due to high demand, couldn’t get a ride. And then he finally gets a ride out after waiting at Resorts World, and then lo and behold, I don’t know what happened, Walt, if the Zoox wanted to go jousting and it thought it was from the Excalibur days, but the Zoox was doing loops in the Excalibur parking lot. It, it took him a while to get there, not to mention there was a $20 drop fee to get dropped at the game. So long time to get there, high drop fee, not an overall great experience

Walter Piecyk: I mean, anyone that’s been to Vegas realizes getting through those parking lots in and out of the casinos is a major challenge. I mean, we think about, you know, we talk about, oh, different weather, you know, autonomous cars working at night, but, but being able to navigate to get from point A to point B in Vegas is certainly a challenge. I’m gonna give them a slight pass on that. And the drop fee, that, that is again, you know, a nature of the beast and, and the cost of doing business in Vegas. I’m not sure how you break through those type of things, but I don’t know. Maybe they should– we should drop some Zoox in some additional markets rather than Vegas. But, you know, looking forward to, to trying it again and see, yes, and you know what else I’m gonna be getting when I’m waiting for my Zoox Grayson? That, that Topgolf chicken Caesar that you know I like

Grayson Brulte: That I know you’ll like it. I’ll give some numbers here for the audience that we released in the field report. The Zoox ride cost $42.26. That’s compared to the Waymo Ojai ride that cost $18.68. Ride took 28 minutes in the Zoox, 11 minutes in a rideshare traditional vehicle. So there’s still some things to do while some things still to be fixed, and that is a big swing in price, and both services are autonomous

Walter Piecyk: And speaking of CES, let us know if you’re going. We’ve got some interesting things planned for this year’s CES. It’s kind of a funky couple days, whether it’s, you know, it starts a little, like a day later, so not sure exactly when we’re gonna plan it, these, this stuff out. I know the LightShed party is, is, is Wednesday. That’s already set, but we’re building some other stuff. So, you know, let us know if you’re gonna be in town and what days and we’ll, and we’ll figure some stuff out. what else did David Moss, our good friend experience in Vegas? ‘Cause I think, you know, Uber this week specifically Balaji, the CFO, was talking about like, you know, the under the radar of the Motional vehicle. I’m like, hold on for a second. Motional is not under the radar on autonomy markets or The Road to Autonomy. This is stuff we’ve talked about for a while. And then even more specifically, David, I think, was, was trying to get paired with some Motional vehicles. So, you know, I guess that this is under the rodar- radar, but, you know, for someone that’s not a listener of the, of autonomy markets, what did he have to say?

Grayson Brulte: I guess what certain people do in Vegas, and I’m not one of them, you gamble. And so David didn’t go to the craps tables or the roulette table and gambled. No, he opened the Uber app and played, as we coined it, autonomy roulette. Not one spin, two spins, but 10 spins of the Uber autonomy roulette wheel until he finally got paired with emotional. I know people like to gamble in Vegas, Walt, but that is one heck of a gamble. And depending if you’re going high roller Michael Jordan style, that’s gonna get very expensive

Walter Piecyk: Well, I have a more direct answer then, Grayson, directed directly to our Uber listeners. If you don’t want them to be under the radar, then give us an extra tier where we can specifically pick autonomy and pick motional so we don’t have to hit the roulette wheel. Maybe that’s why it’s under the radar, because you’ve limited the ability to pick that on the autonomy tier. What am I missing here?

Grayson Brulte: No, you’re, you’re right. It, it, it is missing on the tier. I’ve written to Mac, Andrew MacDonald on, on X, and he’s publicly stated that an autonomy tier is coming. We do not have a date on that. This is not a great experience. And then if you look at it, what are you gonna get in London? You got, you got three choices, and we, we know that at some point Zoox is gonna go live in Vegas with motion. Also, how do I know what I’m gonna get paired with? What if I get motion sickness? That is a real issue with the Zoox vehicles. There is no consistency in the platform. And let’s not forget, here’s the other one. There is a very high potential Nuro could deploy in Vegas, and why do I say that? ‘Cause Nuro has a test track facility at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. So there we go. Then you, then you got a hat trick, or if you wanna say a jackpot, the triple sevens in Vegas here. I, I don’t know, Walt, but I’ll tell you one thing. We will continue to produce field reports going in the field. We’re expanding, we’re hiring, and we are ramping up field reports

Waymo Raises $5 Billion in Debt — First Loan Ever

Walter Piecyk: I mean, just because they have a test track in Vegas doesn’t mean they’re gonna actually show up in Vegas. But, you know, I’ve doubted you in the past and, and then it comes through and you text me, “I told you what I told you,” and we have to go and give you the clappy hat. But we’ll see if they, if Nuro shows up in Vegas. I just want, want them to show up anywhere, getting this thing, whether it’s California, Houston, Houston as I like to call it you know, or Vegas. Let’s get, let’s get Nuro on the road. They’re, they’re, you know, one of the ones that we’re a little bit more optimistic about. But let’s move to the, the beast, the giant, the leader, the winner in the space. Waymo, majority and controlled by Google, Just raised $5 billion of debt. This is its first loan ov- ever. A very diverse group of lenders, very high quality names as you would expect, This is on top of the 16 billion equity that they did back in February. That was at 126 billion, valuation. By the way, you play around with some of these robotaxi models, especially if you put a Calacanis-type assumption in there in terms of the share of rideshare in total miles, you can get much higher numbers than $126 billion valuation y- you know, depending on that, how this industry plays out. But it’s, it’s fun to, to, to pull the levers in the model to see how value can build here. But look, but good news obviously for Waymo to get some cash and, and start to accelerate growth ’cause competition’s coming.

Grayson Brulte: Five billion’s a lot. I’ve run some of the numbers. It’s like, that’s a lot of cars and, and a lot of depots. To me, just reading the headlines, looking at this, it signals growth, growth, growth. I mean, that’s how I’m reading this

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, it’s also, you know, you like to get credit guys in there in, in terms of raising money. They, they, they have a different approach than maybe a venture or late stage growth investor. So, you know, it’s nice to have that, that term lan- term loan there. But capital, we’ve talked about this obviously continuously, especially for the smaller companies. The ability to fund growth is a strategic advantage. And, and obviously, you know, aside from being owned by a company that generates a lot of cash, which that company is obviously using to invest in AI at the moment the ability to access the capital markets not always easy, so that’s obviously a positive, and 5 billion is a nice chunk of change

Grayson Brulte: It is. Does this signal anything besides my opinion of growth? Should we read anything into this

Walter Piecyk: I think money means growth. That’s, that’s obviously what it means. When you ask co- You know, when a company’s asking for money, where are you gonna spend it? It’s obviously for, for ways to generate greater revenue getting to EBITDA positive and free cash flow positive sooner, and that’s, those, those, the expectations. There could be some assets underlying it you know. But whatever. Get- getting capital on the balance sheet, as we’ve said many times before, this is Captain Obvious here, is obviously essential for any of these companies i, in the space, regardless of their size. But let’s move on to their operations because this Ojai, this, this Zeekr, the, the, the classic from episode one, the unforced error. The error is getting modified Grayson, and there’s, there’s been some new colors, some new interiors, some wireless charging. I mean, you know, we’ve, we’ve seen in the past, you know, things that get, that got added to the Jags in terms of the user interface. I mean, I think, you know, while Waymo is still kind of building new markets, they’re making these tweaks to the existing product to make their consumers happier

Grayson Brulte: To me, it seems that Waymo is listening to the rider feedback that’s been very vocally shared on X. And the Ojai is not a luxury product. It’s not nearly as nice as the Jaguar, and it seems like Waymo is really taking that to heart and, and modifying it. And you’ll notice a lot of changes. The steering wheel no longer says Zeekr Geely, it says Ojai, so branding there. And what’s funny is Waymo changed the branding throughout the entire vehicle to Ojai. And guess wha- guess what? Geely announced they’re going to Canada today. So very interesting times for Geely

Waymo Goes Fully Autonomous in Detroit & Eyes Dallas Expansion

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, so that’s good. again, you know, so early, just get the cars out on the road. I’m less concerned about their pleather seats and their wireless charging than I am just getting more of those cars on the road at an affordable price to, to fulfill the demand so we can stop hearing Uber saying that their share is stable in these markets. Let’s dump 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 or 10,000 cars in those markets and see how that share sustains. Meanwhile Waymo does has moved on and has fully autonomous testing now in Detroit, Motown. so what do you think here in terms of when we go fully commercial in, in Detroit?

Grayson Brulte: In Motown, fully commercial operations before New Year’s Eve is, is what I’ll put out there as a marker. That, that’s where I think they’re going. What do you think?

Walter Piecyk: I don’t know. I think the paces is I mean, I g- I shouldn’t say that. It’s already October 9th, man. This year is going fast. I was gonna say the pace is faster, but, you know, end of year is, is right around the corner. I’m gonna say however well, eh, end of year is, is f- I’m gonna, I’m just gonna go aggressive here. Let’s go by Thanksgiving. I think they, they, you know, in, in, I think Detroit still hosts a Thanksgiving Day game. It would be great to have you know, something launched commercially for the Thanksgiving Day football games

Grayson Brulte: And how great would it be if you could take an Ojai to Ford Stadium and not have to pay a drop fee? Now how great would that be?

Walter Piecyk: I don’t think Detroit is gonna have a $20 dra- draw fee or they won’t have much business there. Vegas, maybe.

Grayson Brulte: But you mentioned taking market share, and we have a field report coming out on Monday about this. Spencer, another special field correspondent for The The Road to Autonomy, went and visited Waymo’s Avis Depot, and wait till you see that video. You wanna talk about flooding a market with vehicles, what we s- we’re gonna release in that vi- in that video. It appears that Waymo is getting ready to massively expand in the Dallas market based on what we’re gonna show in that video on Monday

Walter Piecyk: I mean, Dallas feels like this hotbed. Like, on one hand, you’ve got this, these, these get a new city, get your three, 400 cars in there, move on, like, get the footprint going. But then there’s, like, certain markets, obviously San Francisco, California and Texas, Dallas, where you’ve got multiple competitors, or Austin even, where Cybercab is first launching, that, you know, it maybe makes sense to, to dump more in there just, you know, ’cause they know that The Road to Autonomy is gonna be down there doing field work. So they wanna see that, you know, as you’re trying to film that AV ride for Uber, that you have 15 frigging Waymo’s driving by. and look, Tesla, I think you’ve done some good field work there and seeing some of the lots and the number of Cybercabs that I would sense are probably soon gonna be flooding the streets of Dallas as well. So Dallas, you know, should be a good autonomy city for us. so looking forward to seeing more of that.

Tesla Cybercab Austin Testing & 24-Hour Robotaxi Debate

Grayson Brulte: It’s funny you mention The Road to Autonomy and our, myself and our field correspondents, David and, and Spencer getting out there. I gotta say something about Tesla. If this is Elon, I commend you, sir. Whoever’s doing this, Tesla in Austin is, is testing Cybercab. Nobody in the cab, and they’re also testing Robotaxi, doing loops around Zoox’s under-construction Austin depot. You can’t make this up, Walt. I sat there and you’re just watching, “Doo, da, doo, da, doo. Doo, da, doo, da, doo.” I mean, do you wanna talk about epic trolling? This is Trump-style trolling. I mean, it’s well, well done

Walter Piecyk: Hopefully they don’t get complaints from, from the neighbors ’cause they’re circling around too much. But speaking of Tesla, what, what is the latest there? I mean, we still have a curfew on these cars. Elon’s talking about, like, he’s worried about gray kittens versus black kittens versus white kittens. Like, i- is there anything new here or, or are we just basically still in this holding pattern until we kind of have that all systems go clearance from our good friends at NHTSA?

Grayson Brulte: We’re, I would say we’re still in the early stages. I don’t wanna necessarily call it a holding pattern. You talked about this many episodes ago, and we saw it when we were at, at Giga. Tesla truly cares about safety and they have a culture of safety. And it is my opinion that Tesla is doing this rollout the right way. They’re not rushing it, so I think they’re, they’re doing it right and, and they’re being cautious about it. Moss went for a ride after PM and so successful there. So to me, it’s, it’s a positive step in, in, in the right direction, and I don’t necessarily feel they’re in a holding pattern. I just feel they’re taking safety very, very seriously

Walter Piecyk: I hear that, but I think there was some tweet, you know, by at least someone from Tesla, not Elon talking about 24-hour driverless being around next month. We’re kind of getting close to that ’cause I think this was, like, late September that this t- this tweet was, was out there. So I don’t know, like, because it’s getting to the prediction tank again. I would think maybe by Halloween will be 24 hours. So when that, you know, when the, what do they call, the Headless Horseman is, is running down the streets of, of make it weird Austin on Halloween, hopefully you can run to your Cybercab and hop in there at when the Headless Horseman is, is running, running through, or even when you’re coming out of one of those great, great bars in Austin. What do you think? Can we get there 24 hours, you know, in Austin by Oc- by, by Halloween?

Grayson Brulte: I’m confident the technology can handle it. I just think that potentially Halloween could be a major m- Here we go. Three, two, one. I think pushing it to Halloween is a little bit of risk perhaps, because it could be some interesting edge cases that could pop up with the, the goblins and all the, the children out, if children are out in different parts of Austin. So I’m gonna say post-Halloween for Tesla to err on the side of safety

Walter Piecyk: All right. You’re, you’re going long on all your predictions. I’m going short there and saying we’re coming in by the end of the month, 24 hours. We’ll see who’s right. Mark it down. We don’t need to bet more stakes, but we, we can just mark this one down. Yes, I think, I think end of the month, 24 hours

Grayson Brulte: You’re getting aggressive. I’ll, I’ll be in Austin next week, so if it is 24/7, I’ll get up at o’clock in the morning and go for a ride and film a field report

Walter Piecyk: You better. You better, but don’t get that one– Don’t go to that one. Yeah, let’s not go there. Anyway, so let’s move on to Uber bringing a Chinese robotaxi to London. What is going on with this? I mean, this is not the first robotaxi. This is not new, right? But this is, ’cause I think you had the Baidu thing already, right, as a partner. So now you had Uber and Pony, you know, talking about a London robotaxi service. This is on the Gen 7 vehicle. It rode– This is just an announcement, right? Road testing’s probably gonna start in a couple of weeks. so if you think, if you’re Uber, I guess they’ve got Wayve in London, right? They’ve got Pony there, and don’t they also have Baidu? So isn’t this the, isn’t this like a three-horse race for them?

London AV Hat Trick: Uber Partners with Pony.ai, Wayve & Baidu

Grayson Brulte: It’s a hat trick. Said in the opening, it’s a hat trick. And what we know, because the way that, that TFL and the regulators are rolling this out, this is not all of London. You cannot go to the pub and then go see Buckingham Palace, then go to the Portrait Gallery. Not allowed. They’re, they’re operating in limited areas. In Brent, we do not have a public service map for what Wayve is operating, but Wayve is operating under Uber’s permit, and that, those are supervised, so it is my assumption, and I, we do not have any data, it is an assumption that they’re able to operate in a vast majority of London, but it’s only 15 vehicles that Wayve is doing. And I will say something for the audience, and I’ve been harping on this, and I am not gonna stop harping on this until I get an on-the-record public clarification from the following companies. I’d like to get public clarification from Uber, Baidu, and Wayve for, for one simple question: Who is going to own the APS permit? The APS permit in London is control. Who’s gonna control the relationship? Is Uber gonna get it, and then everybody’s gonna run under Uber so they can never leave Uber? Or are the companies gonna get it so they can have their flexibility and freedom? That, to me, is the most important thing to watch in the London market. And then also watch as companies start to begin the type certification process, which is required to deploy, I’ll use government language, an automated vehicle on the streets of London

Walter Piecyk: I don’t know. You– That was a lot of words. This, this to me sounds like a bit of a hodgepodge. Like, you got a handful of cars, you got, you know, you have a, a driver in the driver’s seat, safety driver in the driver’s seat, you have small service areas. Is like, is any of these things even close to being a r- even if you said there was a safety driver, like, close to being something that would be a real service in London anytime soon?

Grayson Brulte: For every company not named Waymo, no. And I will say by Q1 of next year, Waymo will be operating fully autonomous unsupervised service in London, while Uber races to play catch up with their partners

Walter Piecyk: But catch up with what? They have three partners, which sounds impressive, but if they’re like, again, 5 or 10 cars driver in, in small service areas, like what does that even mean? Like, how would you even match with one of those cars?

Grayson Brulte: It’s gonna go back to, if you wanna call it, L- London roulette. So I’ll give you an example. It’s gonna be like Jekyll and Hyde. Perhaps o- one is driver-out operating in one ar- area, a- a- and one is driver, and we don’t, we do not have enough clarity from Uber of how this is going to work. We do not have enough clarity from the partners along timelines of when they’re going to work to achieve u- unsupervised. There, it’s. I, you know, I harp on this. There’s a lot of press releases with a lot of grandiose headlines and not a lot of details

Walter Piecyk: Okay. So, I’m gonna, you know, I’ve criticized you for being a little bit too negative, but I’m gonna put on my Grayson grumpy hat and just point out that, like, this is another one of these cities, and when, you know, Uber talks about these, oh, 15 cities globally by year-end, like, what that means is, you know, there’s a safety driver there, and with varying, you know, service areas. Like, that is, that’s what 15 cities. So, if this is, like, meant as, like, some type of. Again, that’s a positive. Certainly, it’s better to have 15 things in process, but it’s 2026, man. This industry, we’ve been doing this podcast for a while now, over 100 episodes, whatever it is, 120, whatever. You know, we’re not at the point where it’s like, “Okay, enough with this, and let’s, let’s start talking about the numbers that matter,” which is fully unsupervised driver-out. That’s what, that’s what’s gonna drive the economics. That’s what’s gonna allow you to borrow $5 billion from, you know, from credit guys to build a business. Like, that’s the whole point of all of this, is, is driver-out. Sorry for, that I digressed, but this was a little frustrating, honestly. In this London update, I’m not even sure where– I still don’t really understand what all that means. It doesn’t seem like much of much. The 15 cities is like, okay, you’re driver-in. We’ve been in those cars. We know how they are. I don’t know. It’s 2027, we’re endeavoring now to give only numbers on driver-out, I think. That should be a new autonomy markets policy, and just ignore some of these other things until, until they hit real commercial driver-out service. Sorry I had to have that little digression there. How does the Chinese AV play in London work if, you know, in terms of how Washington, US, the US sees or perceives Uber or how they examine their own? I know US is a leader. These are, you know, whatever. They’re not gonna, like, just ’cause London’s doing it or the UK’s doing it, you know, do the same. But, you know, for our, for our friends in the US, whether it’s NHTSA or in the administration, like, how are they viewing this, if at all? W- Are, are they paying attention to what’s going, going on with some of these US companies and, and what they’re doing in, in foreign markets?

Grayson Brulte: It’s my belief and my assumption that yes, they’re monitoring all companies and their, their foreign activities. As it relates to how closely, I would say, you know, the ambassador to London with the Court of St. James would probably have a, a better explanation of that. But I don’t know. I, I keep looking at what happened under the Cameron administration, under the Johnson administration in the UK when China tried to come in with all the telecoms, and we, we saw what happened there. And, you know, maybe I have a case of PTSD, but with Huawei, what, what happened could potentially happen again. We don’t, we don’t have any clear indications from the current prime minister of the UK for his feelings on this, but we do know that his staff has made public statements that they are not fans of autonomy. So that’s gonna get very, very interesting to see how that evolves

Walter Piecyk: So let’s move on to Wayve. So last week, Grayson, you gave, like, a long-term expectation for Wayve, 36 months. I don’t know if you got feedback from the company or not, but you got feedback from our good friend Jason Calacanis, who’s like, “What?” And now you sucked me into this because, you know, I kind of rely on you, especially as it relates to Wayve. So, so Calacanis is like, by the end of next year, I think, or in a year, but did he say year-end? I can’t remember. But it was, it was, it was tight. No, end of next year, that Wayve would have unsupervised and commercial by the end of 2027. Now I’m on the hook for one of his expensive stakes ’cause I said mid-2028, and then, and that’s, but I’m a lot shorter than you. I thought I was being aggressive ’cause you were saying it’s gonna take Wayve three years to deliver unsupervised and commercial. So, and by the way, after I got roped into this, this, this stake bet with Jason, you, like, disappeared. You ghosted me on Twitter. So are, are you pulling back on your three years, or you’re still saying three years unsupervised, three years before Wayve can deliver unsupervised and commercial in, in a, in a rideshare market?

Grayson Brulte: You know, Walt, there’s a little thing I like, technical little minute details. I asked Jason which market, and then I would give a more defined which market in his commercial. Jason, you ghosted me on that. If we can get a definition on that, then I will throw out a timeline on that because markets make a very big difference for, for commercial unsupervised operations

Walter Piecyk: Well, let’s just say anywhere. When, how long do you think it takes Wayve to deliver unsupervised commercial anywhere?

Grayson Brulte: Well, you can’t really define anywhere ’cause that’s a quagmire. It, it could be anything to anybody. We have, we have to narrow into the specifics of, of where it is

Walter Piecyk: A city. Like, I don’t, and you’re, you’re trying to split hairs here. This sounds like, you know, it depends what the definition of, of he is or whatever, whatever that famous saying was. Pick a city. It doesn’t matter. Like, Wayve, like, I’m gonna go to a city, and whether it’s through an Uber app or not, I can get and pay for a r- a unsupervised ride in a Wayve car. When is that gonna happen?

Grayson Brulte: Okay, so here we go. You most likely will be a European city or London, depending if Wayve gets the APS permit. If Wayve does not get the APS permit, it will be a European city, not a UK city 12 to 18 months

Walter Piecyk: All right. So what was the th- when you said this three years thing, then what were you talking about with the three years? ‘Cause to me, that counts. That is a bet way. So if it’s, so now I’m basically, now I’m on the hook for a stake is what you’re telling me, that Wayve is gonna deliver, and I’m gonna have to pay for Jason’s stake. So what the hell were you saying in terms of the three years then? What, what was your, what was your qualifier on that?

Grayson Brulte: Well, you cannot forget me ’cause I like steak, so it goes yummy in my tummy. So you can’t leave me out of that. My qualifier for that is, is, is across a variety of markets, not just one specific market. If you look at across a v- a variety of markets, let’s just say Wayve hypothetically, it’s hypothetical, wanted to launch unsupervised robotaxi service in California, you’re probably at a 14 to 18 monthly just on regulatory alone, not technology. And you factor in technology, so that’s how you’re getting to 36 months. So really, th- you have to look at all the markets combined to get you to 36 months. If you narrow in on a specific market, you can get to a shorter timeframe

Walter Piecyk: Okay. That, yeah, it sounds like you moved, you moved the, the goalpost there, but, so we’ll, we’ll drop it there. We’ll drop it there, but, like, we- this was always about when they go driver-out in a market. Just like we’re not saying f- we’re not saying for Tesla, like, “Hey, we’re not gonna say that, that Tesla’s done until they’re in three or four markets.” Like, if they get 100 cars unsupervised in Austin, that counts. They’re done. Check. Green check mark with a bacon thing. So, the same should apply to Wayve. I’m glad to see that you’re more optimistic that it’s a 12 to 18-month timeframe. It’s look like I’m buying dinner for everybody. Meanwhile, Alex Kendall, the, the CEO of Wayve, he posted on, on on our, our f- the Twitter app, X they call it now, that he was driving this Fiat 500e. I don’t know what a Fiat 500e, sounds like a fun car, Fiat, in through Turin with Stellantis. I don’t think Stellantis is at the top of our list of OEMs, but this sounds like good news. Look, I tweeted at Alex, I’m gonna be in Italy in a couple of months, January-ish timeframe. I would, I don’t, I would, I don’t know if I can fit in a Fiat, but I would love to be able to get in to Fiat because he’s right. These streets in Italy are crazy. Like, I, I. There was one time we were, we were in Rome, we were gonna drive out to the, to the countryside, and the circles are going around, and people are coming this way. It’s, it’s it’s kind of a hectic timeframe, so I would love to be able to, to, to check that out in Italy. Can that, can that happen, do you think?

Grayson Brulte: I think it can. You just have to put on your honorary field inspector hat

Walter Piecyk: Is that all it takes? I just have to put the inspector’s hat?

Grayson Brulte: Inspector Hat works magic

Walter Piecyk: So there you go. So he’s testing the Stellantis in Italy. When, when– Here’s a more specific question. Like, if you’re gonna predict when a Stellantis car, you know, will be on the roads and I don’t know if this is probably more for FSD, right? I think that’s what it was. This was more of like a, a competitor to what what Tesla’s doing. That’s fine. even, even that I’d like to, that, that I’d like to try. But when, when do you think we can test one of these cars? Or when do you think s- actually better yet, when is Stellantis gonna deliver a Wayve-powered FSD car to the market? F- And, and I’m using now FSD as the generic term. Like, you know how if you have Kleenex for a tissue? FSD is, is this supervised, you know supervised driving. ‘Cause I think that’s the best way to describe it. So when is, again, to the question, when will Wayve deliver an FSD-powered Stellantis you know, in for a cu-customer to purchase anywhere in the world?

Grayson Brulte: According to Stellantis IR and press releases next year. I can confirm to you that they are currently testing a Jeep Grand Cherokee in the Detroit region that was put into a public blog post by Stellantis. So according to their press release, I don’t have any reason to doubt it. I don’t have any reason to doubt it that we’re going to see it in 2027

Walter Piecyk: Well, I, I, now that I’ve got about 10,000 miles on my my Tesla FSD, I consider myself an expert, so I will hop in that car and tell you if it, if it merits or where it stands relative to the performance of Tesla FSD in Italy or any other country. Well, not any other country. I do have some limitations. You know, send me a country, I’m gonna go check out your FSD. And yes, I’m gonna call it F- and yes, I’m gonna call it FSD, by the way

Grayson Brulte: Well, paging Spencer for countries. That dinner that we had with Joe on your team, oh my God, Spencer’s got country stories there. But the question I wanna know, Walt, the FSD Cannonball record that David Moss set was just broken. Perhaps me, you, and David should go try and break that record since you’re the expert

Walter Piecyk: Listen, you will not catch me dead in a truck that travels four hours autonomously or an FSD that drives across this country. There is no. as much as I love getting in cars, I don’t need to sit in a car for God knows. No offense, David, I appreciate everything that you do, but there’s no chance you’ll, you’ll get me in a c- in a car or a tr- especially not a truck for that extended period of time. So no. No, thank you

Grayson Brulte: Okay, well, and I mean, it’s a great sign for like, “No soup for you.” So no Long drive for

Walter Piecyk: And no FSD for me. But I c- I. It doesn’t take me long, just like I can judge people pretty quickly, it doesn’t take me long to hop in a car and get the feel for, you know, how is it relative to other cars in the markets. and I’m always willing to have that debate and meet anyone anywhere and hop into any of these cars, including in my own FSD car. All right, what’s going on in politics, Grayson? I saw, you know, last week we were, we were shotting this, this Minneapolis councilman who was, who was worried about cats getting hit, which was all gave us a laugh, and there’s the mayor vetoed it. Is this thing going away, and, like, what’s going on in local politics in, in in The world of autonomy?

Minneapolis AV Ban Vetoed & California Remote Driver Law SB 1246

Grayson Brulte: The Minneapolis City Council voted seven to six to effectively ban autonomous vehicles in Minneapolis. And when I say ban, require a human in an autonomous vehicle s- in driver’s seat at all times. This was a union-driven effort. The Mayor Frey, he banned it. He vetoed it. He said, “Nope, not happening. This is an, this is an effective backdoor ban. It’s anti-business. Minneapolis is open for business. We’re not going to allow this.” Here’s the, thing

Walter Piecyk: But does the Mayor have that power though? I mean, ca- is there not a way for the city council or whatever they, they have there to over- override this? It seems like there’s no laws in Minneapolis in many ways, so how does it work here in this case?

Grayson Brulte: Your statement is valid. They need nine votes to, to override the mayor’s veto, and they do not have the nine votes to do it.

Walter Piecyk: Let’s hope common sense takes over, but I, you, you can’t. This is, again, this is one of the, going back to some of our Jason debates and the original stake bet in terms of these cities. I don’t have a lot of faith that in the city of Minneapolis that, you know, some of these votes are not gonna go against autonomy, I’m sorry to Say

Grayson Brulte: I would say for the listeners and viewers that are interested, this week’s Autonomy Signals, Rob and I did a 30-minute deep dive on the policy and what it means because the embers are warm and they’re hot in Minneapolis, and it really could affect the Midwest as it relates to the rollout of autonomy. So I’d encourage l- the listeners to watch or listen to that podcast because there’s a lot of good nuggets in there, and this is not over

Walter Piecyk: Okay. So meanwhile in California, which, you know, I’ve been giving more props to recently, ’cause look, there’s a lot of great autonomy that’s there, but there’s a new law, I guess you’d call it SB 1246. This is relating to remote drivers. One of these things that I picked out of there, I like the fact that he, that he or the g- the state wants drivers to be located in the United States. Remember when Waymo was testifying, they were talking about staff in the Philippines. I don’t think anyone wants that to be the case. So I think that was a, talk about an unforced error. That was a terrible one on the side of Waymo. But what, what exactly is happening in California? What is, what is presidential hopeful Newsom wanting to do in terms of, remote drivers

Grayson Brulte: Remote drivers, remote supervisors, any term you wanna use, must be domiciled in the United States and possess a US driver’s license. I believe it might have to be a California license. I’m, I’m not sure. You’d have to verify that. But domiciled here in the United States, no more foreign labor having the ability to remotely suggest where a vehicle can go, and that’s very, very important, suggest, ’cause these remote operators cannot take over and move the vehicle any which way they want. As you and I have seen at May Mobility and at other companies, there is safety built into the remote operation

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, and I think, you know, at one point Tesla did have someone that was driving the vehicle, but I, I’ve seen some recent videos and, and we always said that that was gonna be kind of phase one and then phase two would be the car always drives, it’s just helping them out of tight spots. I think there were some recent videos that maybe suggest that Tesla has moved on to that next step. We don’t know if that’s true. It’s obviously something that we’ll continue to, to ask around about. but that would be another important step in terms of Tesla’s journey to becoming a, a full robotaxi operator, and an important one

Grayson Brulte: It is a big step. I remember seven years, eight years ago, Mark, Mark Rosekind, former NHTSA administrator, hosted me at Zoox, and he showed me how Zoox was, was building out the remote operations on this big, I don’t know if you remember, at the big Microsoft tabletops, and how he said, “Okay, well, try and make the vehicle,” this is a simulation, “Try and make the vehicle go on the sidewalk,” and it wouldn’t go. And all these safety guardrails were built in there, and it was just truly the early stages of, of, of where we are today.

Autonomous Trucking Momentum: Kodiak at 96%, Volvo-Waabi Launch

Walter Piecyk: All right, let’s move on to trucking, autonomous trucking. It’s, you know, we don’t get a lot of interest in this when we do, when we do episodes that feature trucking, the hits aren’t high, but this is obviously super important to the economy. and given the challenges that it, that they have right now to find truckers and safe truckers you know, something that’s important. Or Kodiak, you know, they have this safety case, right? It’s, he, you know, Don Burnette, the CEO, has made it very simple. “Hey, let’s get to 100% at the safety case.” You got this little, this little meter that keeps going up closer and closer to when they can be driver-out in terms of their autonomy on roads. We already know that Kodiak has a revenue-generating business, you know, in the Permian Basin, which is, you know, in some ways even more challenging than, than roads. But on the safety case for roads, they hit 96%, so we’ve got, you know, only a few percentage more. It seems like they’re on track for going driver-out. At the same time, they had a deal with a company called Charger Logistics, basically. And, you know, in the tweet, again, Don says, like, “Look, there’s, there, there is a safety driver who’s behind the wheel today with driverless plan once our safety case is complete,” which we think is gonna happen before the end of the year. So things are kind of lining up for this company to have, you know, more or to have driverless trucks on our freeways, highways, whatever you wanna call them. So a, a positive and, and at a time when obviously things are progressing in autonomous trucking Overall.

Grayson Brulte: Autonomous trucking is finally starting to take off and, and the technology is getting there where multiple companies will soon be operating fully autonomous, no human behind the wheel. And FMCSA granted a blanket waiver to the company, so the warning triangle issue has now been resolved. So if you wanna use the NASA term, autonomous trucking is cleared for launch

Walter Piecyk: So this waiver that was launched, was that just for them? ‘Cause I saw some stuff on Twitter that was, it was sounding like, or this was an Aurora thing. Like who, who got this waiver? How did this exemption happen? Was this for everyone? Was this just for Kodiak? Was this just for Aurora? How did this all go down?

Grayson Brulte: It is a blanket waiver across the autonomous trucking industry that has a positive implications for all the companies developing and deploying autonomous trucks on the roads of the United States

Walter Piecyk: And then lastly, I guess we’ve got Volvo and Waabi starting their first customer runs on October 5th. This is also, again, driver in. This is also, remember, Volvo’s, you know, being effectively a carrier, being the service provider. so this is an LTL network on the Dallas to Houston route, one that we know obviously fairly well. So we’ll see. I mean, it’s a good step for them, but again, you know, as Grayson likes to say, autonomy is driver-out

Grayson Brulte: It is. And then staying on the trucking theme, Bot Auto did a simulation here with a K9 unit from Texas DPS, so that was really cool to see. So, a lot of good movement on the regulatory front, a lot of good movement with the police, and a- a- autonomous trucking is getting ready to have its time in the sun or its moment in the sun

Walter Piecyk: So before we hit the autonomy desk, I just wanna highlight two things. I mean, y- you know, autonomy is not only about moving people, it’s also about moving goods and services. and, you know, I was– I, I listened to the AutoLane podcast that you did. I thought that was fascinating, and obviously that’s gonna be, play an important role in moving goods and services. Full disclosure, I have an investment in, in AutoLane. But it, it brings up some of the options that exist there. and specifically in, in, you know, Coco Robotics, which has also been on The Road to Autonomy, and I visited with them, which has these. It, it’s like the Serve Robotics. It’s like the AVride. It’s, it’s the, the robots that are delivering food. This is a company that’s gone from 50 brands to 5,000 in two years. That’s tremendous, I think tremendous growth for them. And at the same– So this is one way to get goods. The other way is Zipline. And now Zipline, this is the thing where it’s like a drone up here, so it’s not, you know, not too noisy. And then the, then the cord or the rope drops down, and it drops the package. There’s a lot of functional benefits doing it that way. This is a company that has, has raised a lot of money, has a lot of valuation. Now they’re live in Austin, so maybe when you’re there next week, Grayson, you know, you can try and get one of these Zipline drone deliveries and, and give us some field work video on that. Let’s see if we can make that happen.

Drone Delivery Heats Up: Zipline in Austin & DoorDash Air

Grayson Brulte: I’d love to visit with Zipline. We know you folks listen, so reach out to me. We are meeting with another drone company when we’re in Texas, so we’re gonna start doing drone field reports, so stay tuned for that. While we’re, we’re, we’re going vertical, and two, was it two weeks ago? Last week when I was in San Francisco, got to see DoorDash Air their drone, what they’re doing. This the drone space is truly heating up, and it’s very interesting how DoorDash is building it in-house, and I said that they’re, they’re hedging their, their partner risk, which very well done there, but the delivery drone sector is really truly starting to heat up.

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, I agree with you and, and I, I love your use of, of vertical. We wanna vertically integrate our coverage of autonomy in that w- which will include drones. So for those of you listeners out there that are in that side of the business, we’re gonna be spending more time, so let us know if you wanna chat. We’d love to learn about your company. So what do we have on the foreign autonomy desk, Grayson?

Grayson Brulte: Xpeng, they’ve announced their robotaxi, and it’s called YoYo Not Yo-Yo Ma, incredible cellist, not yo-yo that we played with as kids, but YoYo. So Xpeng’s robotaxi service has a name. Next step is commercial operations

Walter Piecyk: So I guess it’s Guangzhou first. I’m not sure how large of a service area that’s gonna be. I think our information on this is relatively limited. but yeah, obviously, you know, I think it’s– for me, it’s important ’cause we spent a lot more time with Pony and with WeRide to understand, like, what are the other competitors in China, and how much balance does the government need there in terms of, you know, is there any limitation on the growth that they put on, on Pony or, or WeRide, you know, so that they can have a robust, you know, national competitors that, that are in the market. So you know, we’ll we’ll, we’ll keep our Eye on That one.

Grayson Brulte: And staying in China, Stellantis, Wayve’s partner, signed a deal with Momenta, which is backed partially by GM, publicly traded in the Hong Kong exchange, to build s- autonomous systems for the Peugeot and the Jeep brands on the mainland. Very, very interesting that, that Stellantis chose a homegrown Chinese brand and not Wayve for the mainland. So perhaps that’s a sign of things to come where these JVs continue to evolve as they have historically in automotive. It’s something to watch

Walter Piecyk: I mean, it’s spreading their bets and also just playing to the local you know, the local technology needs

Grayson Brulte: Walt, well that’s the, the Foreign Autonomy. Yes, little light this week. David Moss and Spencer, The Road to Autonomy field correspondent, they’re on the road. They’re international. They’re in Paris, and it’s Foreign Autonomy field reports coming, so that’s coming. Next week, while they’re in Paris, I’m hitting the road again and doing field work. I’m going all over. We got lots more content as we’re on the road. What do we need to watch for in the markets?

Walter Piecyk: I can’t believe you’re sending these guys to Paris of all places right now. That’s the last place I’d wanna go right now. there’s a– I think TechCrunch is gonna have some, some some, some autonomy CEOs on stage. Raquel, I believe, is speaking there. I don’t think we’ve heard from her since the podcast that she had done a while ago when she got all that cash from Uber, so it’ll be interesting to get an update on, you know, the balance between what’s Waabi doing between trucking, where I know that, you know, we talked earlier in the podcast about making progress you know, with, with Volvo autonomous solutions. But I think people are more interested in, in, you know, is there any progress on the car front? They hadn’t named anything. Other than receiving the money and saying they’re gonna do cars, they didn’t really say anything about it, so maybe we get some details there. I think Tesla’s got this event with the Roadster, which they’re gonna shoot it off into space or God knows what. You know, we’ll, we’re always looking for any updates on the Tesla. I don’t really expect much out of them in terms of Cybercabs or, or based on what we talked about earlier with the NHTSA the NHTSA process. and, and I think that’s about it. Maybe Uber and Parney, and Pony are gonna start doing some London tests, and maybe some of our listeners send us some, some pictures of some some Pony cars out and about on the roads of London. I’ll have to, I’ll have to tap into my Eagle fra- fans over the weekend who will be in London for the game against the Jags this weekend. Maybe they can find a Pony car for us. Go Birds.

Grayson Brulte: Oh, of course. How do we not have an Autonomy Markets without a “Go Birds,” slogan here in football season? The future is bright, the future is autonomous, the future is unsupervised commercial operations. Walt, until next week

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