Transcript: Waymo’s Highway Unlock Is Real. Its Moat Still Isn’t.

Executive Summary

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s “huge unlock” of highway driving, which is immediately undercut by a severe vehicle supply constraint, especially when compared to Tesla’s manufacturing scale, Grayson and Walt also break down Kodiak’s major progress in autonomous trucking, logging thousands of paid driverless hours and Uber’s “super app” strategy to build a walled garden full of experiences. 

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered

Key Autonomy Markets Topics & Timestamps

[00:00] Waymo’s “Correct” Highway Prediction 

Grayson and Walt open the show by noting their prediction that Waymo would unlock highways by the end of the year has been proven correct.

[01:05] The “Huge Unlock”: Waymo on Highways Cuts Ride Times 

Waymo’s highway expansion is called a “huge unlock” because Waymo believes it will reduce ride times by 50%. Walt noted that in his LA rides, highway access would have made the trips “twice as fast” compared to taking back roads.

[02:24] The Fine Print: Why is Highway Access “Select Riders Only”? 

Grayson points out that the announcement’s “fine print” specifies the service is for “select riders only” on “select rides”. Walt speculates this limitation is not due to hardware but rather a lack of vehicle “supply”.

[03:08] The Real Bottleneck: Waymo is Supply Constrained 

Grayson and Walt agree that Waymo’s main issue is being “supply constrained”. Despite the technology working well, there is “just not enough supply at Waymo” to service this new, larger area , and the company’s next focus must be to “ramp the supply”.

[03:58] Waymo’s Fleet Numbers vs. Tesla’s Manufacturing Scale 

According to Bloomberg data, Waymo’s fleet numbers approximately 1,000 vehicles in the Bay Area, 700 in LA, 500 in Phoenix, 200 in Austin, and 100 in Atlanta , for a total of 2,500. This is contrasted with Tesla, which, if it solves autonomy, could produce 2,500 cars in “a matter of… days, weeks, months”.

[06:25] “Science Project Mode”: Are Waymo’s OEM Partnerships Too Slow? 

Waymo’s OEM partnerships are not ramping “fast”. The recently spotted Hyundai Ioniq 5s are “upfitted” and “not manufacturing level” , which Walt describes as being “still effectively in science project mode”.

[08:15] Where Does Waymo Get More Cars? 

Grayson questions where Waymo will get more vehicles, noting Hyundai is only one manufacturer and the Toyota partnership was just a “two sentence press release”. Walt suggests the only path forward is more “upfitting”, as OEMs may be worried about partnering with Google and being “disintermediated”.

[10:55] New CFO: Is Waymo Pivoting to Focus on Scaling? 

The new CFO announcement is seen as a potential pivot in leadership at Waymo. The hosts suggest this hire, who has “public market experience”, signals a shift from an engineering focus (getting the tech to work) to a scaling focus (ramping supply and building a business model).

[16:45] Waymo’s San Jose Airport Expansion

The Mayor of San Jose became the first person to be picked up by a Waymo at the San Jose airport. This is contrasted with San Francisco (SFO), which still forces AVs to use the “kiss and fly zone” and does not allow them at the main airport terminal.

[18:58] Tesla FSD 14.7 Update: Honest Driver Feedback 

Tesla released FSD update 14.7. Walt expresses skepticism about influencer posts that claim every new update is “super smooth” , calling past claims “complete bullshit”. He states that, in his experience, the car still has “hesitant breaking” and is “not as smooth as 13”.

[21:07] Uber’s “Walled Garden”: The New Uber Ski Pass 

Uber announced the “Uber Ski Pass” in partnership with Vail’s Epic Pass. This is seen as part of Uber’s “walled garden” or “super app” strategy. The goal is to “keep you in that app” and build customer “stickiness” by bundling experiences, which helps them compete with the threat of autonomy.

[24:48] Kodiak’s Big News: 10 Fully Driverless Trucks in Operation 

Kodiak announced they have 10 fully driverless trucks operating with “no human observer on board”. These trucks are generating revenue in the Permian Basin and logged 5,200 hours of “paid driverless operations” in Q3, a 166% increase over Q2.

[25:59] Why Kodiak Can Launch Driverless Faster Than Aurora on Public Roads

Kodiak has a “clear path” to launch driverless operations because it “does not have an OEM relationship” with “contractual language” that could stop them. This is a key difference from Aurora, whose partner Paccar “prevented them” from taking the driver out.

[28:46] Foreign Autonomy Desk: Abu Dhabi and Singapore 

On the “Foreign Autonomy Desk”, Glydways announced a partnership with the Abu Dhabi investment office , and Baidu expanded its Apollo Go service to the same city. In Singapore, Grab and WeRide received permission to begin driverless operations.

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Walt here on autonomy markets, predictions are starting to look like roadmaps. We’ve called some things pretty good. You could say we’re lucky or we’re just good. I don’t know. Let let the audience decide there. We correctly called WMA would unlock highways by the end of the year. And drum roll please. Prediction. Correct. Waymo Unlocked Highways this week. Then there’s Uber. They’re trying to turn your ski experience into a full wall garden experience, channeling Apple, if you ask me, and then there’s Kodiak. They’re publicly announced that they’re producing real driverless miles with the key here, no driver in the cab. And then on the foreign autonomy desk, it’s Abu Dhabi to Singapore. Get your passports ready. We’ve got stamps. Let’s start with the Great Highway on lock. They did it, Walt. They did it.

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, it’s, and I’m glad it was done before the end of the year because at the start of every calendar year at LightShed, we do a bunch of TMT predictions and prediction seven was the following. Waymo expands service to highways and airports announces plans to enter New York and partners with Lyft. So I actually had three items in there. I wasn’t too worried ’cause I felt like highways were getting co I guess I was getting a little worried. It was, it was, it was extending and extending and extending. So, thank you Waymo. I can’t wait to do our end of year review, which is coming up in and not too long of a time. Um, and obviously Grayson and you and I have talked about this, um, at length over the past year or so, uh, and early on, and, and I think one of the key things here, one of the key benefits that they’re looking for is, , they think the highway service is gonna reduce times by 50%, , which makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, when I was in LA and I was taking rides, there was clearly moments when, if they hopped in the highway based on that, what Google Maps was telling me or was telling it to do, um, it would’ve been there twice as fast as opposed to taking back roads. So this is a huge unlock.

Grayson Brulte: It’s a huge unlock. Before we we break that down, I have to ask for LightShed, do you get to have three candles on your birthday cake this year? ’cause you got three predictions correct.

Walter Piecyk: Well, there was other, there was many other predictions. I’m sure we got many of the other ones wrong. Last year was terrible. We got a lot wrong this year where we, I think we did. Okay.

Grayson Brulte: It did. Okay. Well, we wanna see for our audience here a picture of that cake of how many predictions you successfully. It got right, but let’s get back to highways. So the highways were unlocked and I like hats. Last week I had the KPMG hat and on and other times I have the inspector clouseau hat on. And next week, who knows, we’ll have, I’ll have on next time, but I read the fine print select riders only for quote unquote. Select rides. Do you think that is because of the hardware potentially, perhaps it’s changing, or is it vehicle supply or is it, do you have to be a nice person aka a trusted traveler or rider to be able to use it?

Walter Piecyk: the bottom line is like, there’s never just a big announcement, right? It’s always like the announcement, but then it like starts with early user first employees and then test drivers and, and yes, that was very perceptive of you to, to notice that it’s not really, opening. More broadly, my guess is a, it’s because of an element that we’ve talked here a lot, a lot, which is just supply. There’s just not enough supply at Waymo to service this. So I think they’re just trying to show people that they can do something. But at the end of the day, and by the way, this new service area is now 260 square miles, which is very impressive size-wise. Great. Your technology works. This is great. But now what you have to do is Waymo. Is ramp the supply because you know, basically other technology, you know, developers, whether it’s Tesla, Nuro, Wayve, others are are hot on your tail to get to come after you.

Grayson Brulte: you’re right about being. Hot on their tail. We’ve discussed this many times on this podcast not necessarily being the first, it’s having the best wait times. And this goes back to the issue that you and I have continued to debate and we’re gonna debate today around vehicle supply. And we know vehicles for Waymo, their supply constrained, and we got a report from Bloomberg this week, which I was able to independently verify around fleet numbers for Waymo. And I wanna read those numbers here. According to Bloomberg data from Waymo, we have a thousand vehicles in the Bay Area. They have 700 vehicles in la, 500 in Phoenix, 200 in Austin, a hundred in Atlanta. The service areas are getting bigger and bigger, and the vehicle numbers don’t seem to be growing very, very quickly To keep up with that.

Walter Piecyk: I mean all due respect to to Bloomberg, and I’m sure that they got this directly from Waymo, but I’ve also seen videos, I think of someone from, whether it’s Waymo or Uber. Just within the past week saying over a hundred, implying that it was like not even at 200. So these numbers just feel low, 2,500 total. Like we’ve seen aerial photography of, you know, the jags getting processed. You know, there’s new, there’s new products on the market. But look at the end of the day, like, I’m not gonna sweat ’em for a hundred or 200, you know, one way or another. Maybe it’s 2,500 in service and there’s, there’s, you know, sensor issues that they constantly need to upgrade. The bigger issue here is, you know, 2,500 is not enough. And to put it very bluntly, like I realize that there are many people that, that just assume that Tesla will never get there. But you know, let’s just say for sake of argument, you’re wrong. Like, and that Tesla does somehow get there. Then you know, with their existing cars and the existing, at least the new hardware, the amount of cars that they have coming off the manufacturing line. They will get to that 2,500 in a matter of like what days, weeks, months, like in no time. So the question I guess, really needs to to start being asked of Waymo. Like, it’s great to announce a bunch of markets. It’s great to talk about highways, but when are you gonna start talking about when you’re gonna add thousands of cars? ’cause that’s really what’s gonna make a difference in terms of building a business model.

Grayson Brulte: You’re right about Tesla. To give some numbers here, year to date, Tesla sold over 451,000 vehicles. In the United States alone, this roughly 50% of the EV market share. So Tesla clearly has the ability to sell cars. I’ve said this in use of this many times, I believe that they will crack full self-driving unsupervised. It’s a matter of time, but Waymo, where’s that Toyota relationship? Yes, we have the Hyundai relationship. We’ve seen the vehicles popping up in San Francisco. But how fast can those ramp ’cause Tesla seemingly overnight can just start turning out thousands of vehicles?

Walter Piecyk: Not fast is the answer because you referenced the pictures that we’ve started to see of some of the Waymo Hyundai Inoniq 5s that are hitting the road. They’re up, they’re upfitted. That’s not coming off the manufacturing line. It may be coming from the plant, but this is not the car that we saw at CES. This is not manufacturing level. This is like starting of testing. If you look at like, look, we’ve seen Zeekrs, Zeekrs were starting to test in 2024. We’ve been seeing pictures, random pictures of Zeekrs throughout I think 2025 and may have my exact dates wrong, but you get it for months. So like it no longer impresses me that, you know, the car itself is on the road and it sounds to me like it’s gonna take like six to nine months te test out this new hardware. On these Hyundais before they get to the point where they’re going to production. So it’s, it’s, you know, end of 26, you’re starting maybe to get, what, a couple hundred, 500 maybe. And then you have to go into 27 when it ramps. So, so what, what does this mean? It means that when like Waymo announced that they hit highways, which we’ve talked about is this huge unlock Uber stock didn’t move. And why? Because I think investors get now that like, great. You unlocked the highways, but you’ve got no cars to actually run on those highways. So I think this is, this needs to be the primary focus. This should be the question that they get on earnings calls to the extent that the their CEOs ever appear, you know, and talk to the media. That is the question that, that should be asked of them. You know, why, you know, how long is it gonna take, you know, to ramp these volumes? ’cause that’s what it’s like if you don’t have the volumes. If you don’t have the ebitda, and if you don’t have the ebitda, then you know, maybe this aspiration to have an IPO or raise additional funds. It’s gonna be more challenging going forward.

Grayson Brulte: Well, I agree, but then I’m gonna push back and ask the question, where’s the supply come from? Hyundai’s, only one manufacturer, you had a two sentence press release from Toyota. Nothing else. Do they go to Ford? Where do they go? Because they need vehicles and, and they need them now.

Walter Piecyk: I don’t know. I mean, it’s gonna be a lot of upfitting , I’m gonna shift gears here. Let’s look at Kodiak, you know, which, who was kind of for Upfitting their trucks versus like working through these integrated partnerships with PACCAR or whoever Volvo, to have them come off the line. They have as almost as much revenue as Aurora does. You know, in this given quarter. Like this market is about upfitting. Upfitting is not like the process that you can use long term for Robotaxis for it to be a profitable business. It just isn’t. Like, or, or a, a largely successful business. We are still effectively in science project mode where you’re buying a car and then you’re buying sensors in your own technology and you’re screwing this stuff on. This leaves the door open for competition, you know, from a technology standpoint. And look, you could argue that other than Tesla, you know, if you are, you know, let’s call it,, Wayve or you know, Nuro, who’s partnering with these OEMs. You know that, you know, if they get their technology to work, they’re gonna be that many years behind Waymo. I’m not so sure that’s the case. If they partner more closely with a good OEM, maybe their OEMs are gonna work faster than Hyundai or faster than Zeekr has, or, or certainly better than what they had had to deal with in terms of Jaguar in giving limited supply. We don’t know that it’s, it’s gonna take necessarily, I know that is the, that is the traditional. Thinking of investors, oh, you don’t know autos, blah, blah, blah. I get it, I get it. I also know that Sterling Anderson is now a GM and that, you know, this is a, a new paradiGM where EV hasn’t worked. AV is is the future and you know, it’s gonna get a higher priority I think, going forward.

Grayson Brulte: It is gonna get a higher priority and the global OEMs are going to have to adjust. And this happens all the time in automotive. And we don’t know this’s not happening today, but I’m gonna ask you. Why is Waymo not sent 30, 40, 50 people embedded them into an OEM to accelerate this?

Walter Piecyk: I don’t know that they haven’t, we don’t know what Waymo’s relationship is with Hyundai. We have not been to the Hyundai plant obviously. Would love to go there. You know, so we don’t know what, what the situation is. And you know, I talked about this before in terms of the management. Like there’s sometimes management gets you to a point where they’re the engineers that got the technology to work, and it might take a different skillset, uh, in terms of management to to scale. Like you look at Tim Cook and its value to Apple. It was his, you know, his ability to scale the the product, right? It wasn’t his ability to innovate. They haven’t innovated for a decade, right? So it’s his ability to scale and that is gonna be an important next element. I don’t know if they’ve hired that person, right? They’ve hired A CFO, but have they hired someone that can help them scale the product that knows how to work those OEM relationships?

Grayson Brulte: The CFO announcement this week could potentially, that be the first of many things to change in leadership is inside of Waymo’s. They looked to potentially take that next step. Could we see a, a chief supply chain officer or some really high-end supply chain executive? Come on board.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, he is a CFO with public market experience. He knows what it takes. He knows this language that I am speaking right now and what investors, um, are gonna wanna see whether it’s the private markets or, or the public markets. So he would, I’m sure, provide that valuable advice to the senior management, uh, in terms of these positions need needing to be filled or. Maybe these positions are already filled, like delivering more results or giving the market more clarity right now, like, you know, I guess people are still impressed by these press releases. We were obviously thrilled to see Highway Out, but like the way it works, Grayson, as you know, is what have you done for me lately? So we’re at that point now, and that is the next question, when are you gonna get me a ton of cars? Because right now it doesn’t seem like it’s enough. To move the needle in terms of getting you to profitability and having an impact on the existing ride share guys that are in the market?

Grayson Brulte: And staying on the theme, you know what we haven’t seen lately? We haven’t seen any interesting drone footage from the Magna Waymo factory in Arizona. Been very awfully quiet on the drone footage format there.

Walter Piecyk: Well, we can’t fault, you know, I think as a young kid that actually does that, so I don’t know if that’s like, that’s a signpost other than maybe you had to go to class. I don’t know what this situation is there. Look, we do have other long-term views. NVIDIA’s talked about doing a hundred thousand cars across multiple OEMs through 2032. Again, these are not Waymo cars, right? These are all the others that I think still have an opportunity. And when you have a partner like Nvidia, you have an OEMs that maybe are awakened. Maybe you have new management at OEMs, like we’ve talked about Sterling Anderson at at GM. I think I saw some more news outta GM today that I kind of sensed that Sterling, , was behind. I don’t know. To me it just makes what we’re doing exciting. Yeah. Waymo’s in the lead, we get it. But like your lead is 2,500 cars. So for those of you that are like super bullish on Waymo, you’ve got 2,500 cars in the market, like you got a long way to go and there’s no path. That’s clear to me that you’re gonna deliver thousands and thousands of cars every month into this market in the us let alone it being a global opportunity.

Grayson Brulte: So then how does the market react? Say the Nuro Lucid vehicle delivers 5,000 vehicles to the market, or another company with a, with a developer, an OEM or an Upfitter delivers a larger number of the vehicles. Does the market start to ask the questions that you and I are asking of Waymo?

Walter Piecyk: I mean, look, the first thing I looked at is Hyundai IONIQ. Like what if, Uber with Avride gets, let’s call it 500 cars into Dallas in the second half of next year. How is that gonna compare to the number of cars that Waymo has? Let’s say it’s similar. Let’s say they both have 500 cars. Then the question is like, if Waymo is so far out ahead, why are they have the same number of, of Hyundais as Avride, which is effectively a startup, right? I mean, think about that. I I, and maybe I’m wrong, you know, maybe Waymo’s gonna get 2000, 3000 cars by the end of next year. Doesn’t sound like it. It doesn’t look like it based on the pictures that we’ve seen, that doesn’t look like a production type vehicle that, that’s coming off a line. I could be wrong. Happy to go visit that, you know, that plant. I think Grayson and you and I and you know, talked about this before, you think it might be production. I think it’s Upfitted. We’ll see. I doubt it. I really doubt it. Uh, anyway, just underscores, I think that guys like Avride Nuro great technology with Lucid with a, with, you know, a solid high-end product Wayve. Probably even on the better side of a multiple OEM type partnerships. , For sure. Those, those are all, I think in the game, and obviously the one that can kind of blow all these guys up a bit is if Tesla gets it. ’cause just the manufacturing capability is unmatched, assuming you don’t think that they’re gonna ultimately require to add additional hardware like lidar or whatever it is.

Grayson Brulte: Tesla’s the big X factor. And that’s the question is in my opinion, it’s just a matter of time. Individuals we’re gonna get comments on and say, oh, they’re never gonna do it, but I truly believe they’re gonna do it. And this is all hypothetical, let’s say. Tesla has 10,000 driver route Robotaxis on the road. Waymo has say, 4,000 to 5,000. Does Sundar or Ruth or somebody at Alphabet say, whoa, we, we, we, we, we, we’ve got attack and we’ve gotta change strategy here. ’cause it just seems they’re floating along.

Walter Piecyk: how do you do that? Your Google, right. We’ve seen how long it’s been taking to build the, the Zeekr relationship. We’ve seen how long it’s been taking to build the Hyundai cars. Like that is the process. So if Tesla starts lightening it up, like what? Like what’s your, there’s no like quick bandaid response. And then if you go rush to someone, to an OEM. They’re like, you’re Google. Like it gets back to the thing that we’ve talked about before, which is, well, I’m a little worried at partnering with a company that has effectively disintermediated so many other companies in market segments that they’ve entered. Do I really wanna enable this and ultimately it reduce the number of cars that I can, that I can sell. I mean, those are real issues that these big tech companies deal with. I don’t know what the answer is.

Grayson Brulte: Well, that’s the, the supply constraint debate that we’ll continue to watch. The other, the big news is the mayor of San Jose was the first person to ever get pick up the San Jose airport and go for a ride in a Waymo. So the California airport lock it started, but where’s s sfo?

Walter Piecyk: to me, this is almost like a regulatory segment, right? I mean, it’s, and I love the, the mayor from San Jose at the airport, you know, as, as a reminder, they’re also doing something with Glydways to deliver. You know, traffic directly to the airport there, a very technology forward, business friendly mayor. It appears. I, I’m sure, I don’t know everything that this person does, but now let’s, let’s look at San Francisco where, you know, they still want you to go out to the kiss and fly zone and, and not allow you in the airport. So look, these residents, I think, can travel back and forth when they see what, what’s, you know, evolving in San Jose and they see how great. Waymo is then hopefully they’ll just put pressure on their, on their local politicians, but we’ll see.

Grayson Brulte: The kiss and fly to me is annoying and stressful. The, the one advantage that SFO has over SJC, there’s more direct flights in the SFO from the East Coast versus SJC, but if we start to look from, say, uh, Texas onwards, there’s a lot of flights in San Jose. If San Jose starts seeing an uptick. In revenue service that could potentially force s FO’s hand. Let’s not forget, it all comes down to dollars and cents at the end of the day.

Walter Piecyk: I don’t know, Grayson, I may shift my, my future coastal flights to, to San Jose. I’m sure I can get, I think Jet Blue or someone flies there from, from JFK. Maybe I’ll fly into, into, San Jose instead and just deal with that extra ride. It’ll be a very comfortable ride. ’cause it’ll be autonomous, it’ll be clean, it’ll be reliable. In fact, I think there was someone joking on Twitter. Again, this is one of those classic Graysonisms. Why not just order a Waymo, you know, back and forth between San Francisco and San Jose and you have like, you know, you can sleep for four hours or whatever it is. Maybe, maybe traffic patterns change that’s early. Grayson you talking about, remember you said we’re gonna watch the Super Bowl or Waymo put a screen back there.

Grayson Brulte: Stand by that and I’m looking forward to that day. And then we have, you know, the Gemini News and we’re having CarPlay is going into Tesla. So yes, the experience will be in the Waymo sooner than later.

Walter Piecyk: Apple play apparently is going to Tesla, uh, as well, which could, uh, signal maybe improving relationships between, between Apple and and Elon. And, and there’s stuff that I look at on the space side of things that I think play into that as well in terms of the connectivity, uh, with those Teslas. By the way, the Tesla, they dropped the 14 seven this week. I have actually, I, even though I tweeted about it and said I’d be commenting on it on today’s podcast, I’ve had a very busy, and then again, earnings, wheat, the markets are crashing. Um, haven’t had a chance to test it. Have you,

Grayson Brulte: I have not. No. But next week I’m testing and we’re discussing.

Walter Piecyk: I will say this, that, you know, the quote unquote influencers that, that I see, uh, tweeting about it on X or X-ing about it, posting about it. Every time a new software, uh, you know, comes out, they’re like, oh, this is, you know, the best thing ever. It’s super smooth, no more breaking. And I’m like, like, I am not experiencing that whatsoever. So when they’re saying now that this 14.1 0.7 is completely solved, any of this breaking, like to our listeners, I’m sorry I don’t have the answer for you this week. I will have it for you next week. They’ve said this before and it’s been complete bullshit because in my experience you still get, you know, some of that hesitant breaking, you know, where it’s, I think being too safe and it’s just not as smooth as, as 13. I’m hoping, you know, 14.1 0.7 fixes that and let’s, you know, be clear, what Elon has said is like, you know, it’s really 14, two and three before you truly get to that, that great experience. Um. But, you know, I’m always hopeful, but I’m not, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna, like, I’m skeptical that these, that these gushing comments about.seven, uh, or six, I can’t remember what the number is, are gonna be, you know, as, as described.

Grayson Brulte: One of the greatest things about you. Walt, you’re honest. You’re not sitting here as a fan boy, you’re, you’re being honest, sometimes brutally honest, but you’re being honest. 13.2.9 was, was clearly the smoothest, the, the 14 is, is a much better driver, but we’ll, we’ll break it down next week.

Walter Piecyk: But I just don’t understand, like if you get 14.1 and you’re saying it’s great, and then you say 14.2, fix what was before, but this one’s great and perfect, and then the next one comes out and you’re like, oh, it fixed the breaking. I’m like, well, wait a minute. Didn’t you just tell me that the breaking was fixed in the last iteration? It’s, it’s kind of bizarre, but whatever.

Grayson Brulte: It is, but you know, you know it’s not bizarre. It’s when it snows you ski. That’s not bizarre. I gotta tell you, that’s not bizarre. And this week, Uber announced the Uber Ski Pass in partnership with Veil for the Epic Pass. I’ve talked about this for a long time with experiences. I wish that was autonomous, but it’s human driven, but it’s an interesting partnership. This goes back to this experience theme.

Walter Piecyk: this is another one of these early Grayson OG things. I think you need to go back to it. ’cause the, the world is coming to your view of the world, which is, you know, tying in. It’s just more of this experience and relationship. And even though you’ve been critical of, of Uber recently talking about divorces and, and what whatnot. Um, and which by the way was a big change from episode one when you had me convinced at that time that the Uber app mattered, and this is why Waymo is gonna have to use it. So you’ve kind of come full circle and you know, as we get new information here on autonomy markets, our opinions will change over time as they will going forward, as, as, as this market develops. Uh, but now they’re doing this Grayson and special because basically they’re trying to keep you in that app, right? They want you to buy your, your Lift ticket. They want to. You know, arrange for you scheduled 30 days in advance to take you up to the ski resort, give you your transportation while you’re there. Give you like, this is all about trapping you in the ecosystem. Why? Because you, you think about like why you’re holding onto that iPhone that hasn’t changed more or less for the past five or six iterations, right? Other than a better camera or maybe a better battery life. ’cause your last battery life just died. It’s your iMessage. There’s blue, you’re in the ecosystem, right? All those individual things that you’d have to give up, and I think that’s what Uber’s pattern’s gonna be. They clearly have time, right? Waymo has to ramp volumes. We’re still waiting for Tesla to get the tech right before they, they have time to build up that stickiness so that when Waymo needs to make that ultimate choice. There is a greater stickiness with their customers. And also there’s obviously a share battle that has to go on with Lyft. I think Lyft strategically is doing the right things. They claim their price to parity, but every time I go in the Lyft is cheaper, but I don’t know why they say it’s parity ’cause it always seems cheaper to me. So, um, you know, interesting thing in terms of Uber taking the next step and trying to build more dependency on their app.

Grayson Brulte: Uber. I mean, it’s been said many times. Dara’s jumped around the issue, never really directed it, but they wanna build a super app at the end of the day. I mean, that’s truly, they want to be the app that connects you to everything in your life. Moving or experiencing something. That’s where they want to go. And if this does successfully take off, I’ll make a prediction. Look for Airbnb to move in that direction. That’s a prediction.

Walter Piecyk: For sure, and then remember on the rider’s side, I think we talked about this last week. Trying to driver side, excuse me. Trying to get the drivers to earn money by giving, pulling them into the eco, into their ecosystem as well. So like, look, that ultimately is what they are, right? They’re a platform. They don’t wanna own the service centers, they don’t wanna own the cars. They want to be this platform and keep people into that platform as best they can. Unlike other big tech companies that seem to wanna do everything, they wanna make the equipment, they wanna make the software, they want to be the platform. Uber is at least staying consistent to this, um, this mantra and with the threat of autonomy clearly on its way, building up as much, um, loyalty to their app as they possibly can.

Grayson Brulte: And at the same time, they’re building loyalty with the fleet service provider. So I’m gonna look for those numbers to grow, because if you’re gonna schedule 30, 60, 90 days in advance, that’s most likely going to a fleet operator, not to an into an individual driver. So we should watch those numbers grow over time.

Walter Piecyk: Let’s shift to Kodiak, our friends who have just reported earnings. You know, I think we already talked early in the podcast about the concept of their choice to upfit, which has enabled them to generate revenue. We also talked a little bit on the call, you know, because they’re targeting end of next year to take a driver out on the highway. And remember that Aurora, who’s also in this autonomous trucking space. When they tried to take their driver out, their partner, Paccar basically prevented them from doing that. So they still have a human in there. So kind of asked Don Burnett, the CEO on the earnings call about this, and he’s like, look, there’s always risk. And look, they’re gonna have customers including JB Hunt that I think they’re gonna, they’re gonna, Don’s gonna try and at least get consensus. But it wasn’t like definitively like, Hey, yeah, for sure. We know that even though we’re ready to take the driver out. Second half of, of next year on the highways on these Dallas to multiple, uh, routes. , You know, it’s still some risks that they deal with the same, same type of challenges that Aurora does. How do you think that ends up playing out next year?

Grayson Brulte: There’s a key caveat there. Kodiak does not have an OEM relationship, so they don’t have the contractual language that stopped Aurora from launching. So legally, if they have all the insurance and the the regulatory approvals. They can go, there’s not an OEM to stop them doing ’cause the vehicle’s rough. So there’s really interesting technicality there that’s not really discussed a lot. So if they feel comfortable, they’re ready to do it and their partner is comfortable with it, they have a clear path to do it without the risk of the OEM saying no because they do not have an OEM relationship the same way that a Aurora does.

Walter Piecyk: But could it be that they’re customers? Who are just buying service don’t necessarily want their goods on an autonomy truck be, you know, I mean, I, I don’t think they, it should matter, right? I don’t think they’re gonna take liability if something terrible happens, but you never know. Like, is that, could that be an issue on the, on the revenue side of the equation?

Grayson Brulte: It could, it could be, yes. The, uh, the respectful thing to do, the right thing to do is to give the customer a heads up. Would you like to participate with us in this E? Yes or no? Nothing legally to stop it, but I think it’s the right thing to do. But I think that there’s enough demand in the market for driverless. We’re seeing what Secretary Duffy’s doing with the CDLs. Where you need the driverless capacity to lower the inflation that’s there in the current truck market. So I think if I’m a betting person, you’ll probably have a 90 to 95% positive Yes. From your customers that that will let you do that.

Walter Piecyk: At the end of the day, like it was a, it was a clean call. They were very definitive, X screw to Y, this is what we expect in 20, you know, 26. Um, I think they did a good job at packaging and delivering on, you know, again, revenue driving things and metrics. That they can hit, that can get people, um, excited about the space. I think deep, you know, good job, , by Kodiak, which is I think, good for the industry, right? The more you get people comfortable, that you have management teams that know what they’re doing in terms of building a business model, I think it is gonna, you know, draw greater investor interest to the area.

Grayson Brulte: It lifts. It lifts all boats, and we didn’t hit on the big, the big news that they announced 10 fully driverless trucks. No human observer on board. Operating in the Permian Basin today generating revenue and Q3 5,200 hours of paid driverless operations. 166% increase in Q2. So it’s clearly working, it’s, it’s clearly scaling. I know it’s the Permian Basin, but it’s not exactly the world’s cleanest, best driving environment. It’s actually pretty hostile.

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, it’s, it’s fine. I just, you know, it’s, it was clean, it was, it was defined sequential progress, which is, that’s what people like to see, investors like to see and, and with some defined expectations for next year, including. What they’re doing on the roads and what, and they’re, they were very specific about describing what was going on the roads today and what they expected for 2026. There was not a lot of like, I dunno what the term is, but it was just a, a cleanly well put together, I think earnings call.

Grayson Brulte: you know what’s the one? One of the greatest things is, is when you travel and there’s no delays because grab your passports. We’re going to the foreign autonomy desk. That’s where we’re going. Walt, what have we got on deck this week?

Walter Piecyk: Glydways. If they’re looking to deploy their autonomous transit system, these, this is the same type of transit system that you’re seeing in San Jose. This is more for the airport. This is more applicable, I think, for foreign markets that have, not that California has good infrastructure, but that, you know, places that have even worse infrastructure. But in this case, Abu Dhabi, they’re, they have a partnership with the Abu Dhabi investment office. I think they’re gonna do some transit system tests, , there.

Grayson Brulte: And then staying in Abu Dhabi. Baidu announced their Apollo Go expanding there. Baidu also this week announced they’ve completed 17 million rides across 22 cities, so they’re continuing to grow. And for Glydways. Tune in in a few weeks. We got a special episode with Glydways coming up, so be sure to to check that out. And then Grab, and WeRide over in Singapore. They got permission to start operating driverless vehicles. So the market is truly coming together. And as you and I know, autonomy is a global market. What do we need to look for in the autonomy markets next week?

Walter Piecyk: there’s some investor conferences, but I mean, this was kind of a, a big week for Wayne. Mo I can’t imagine Waymo has anything. So my prediction is that we, we have zero new news from Waymo next week. How’s that for a prediction? For Tesla? I don’t know. We’re still waiting for them to take that, um, that driver out of Austin, that can happen at any time or the, not the driver, but the, the safety attendant in the passenger seat. , That can happen at any time. You know, I think I’d like a week off can, maybe they can hold off for another couple weeks. Before we have some more for more big news there. , But otherwise that’s, that’s what we got. Grayson.

Grayson Brulte: I wouldn’t have known what to do if we had a week off. I might be lost. I thoroughly enjoy this

Walter Piecyk: Maybe I’m wrong, I’m gonna be shocked and Waymo’s gonna announce a new OEM partnership with an accelerated timeframe, but I can only hope.

Grayson Brulte: or the way they’re going. They could announce it as a new city. You never know. But be sure to tune in every week to autonomy markets where Walt and I break down the autonomy markets. The future is bright. The future autonomous. The future is vehicle supply. Walt. Until next week.