Transcript: Waymo Launches in LA, Zoox Debuts in San Francisco and Bot Auto Emerges 

Executive Summary

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s official launch in Los Angeles, covering an impressive 80 square miles but facing challenges with long wait times and a notable absence from freeways.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s Zoox began operating its purpose-built vehicles on the streets of San Francisco, though currently limited to employees. They also turned their attention to Texas, where a new player, Bot Auto, is making waves in the autonomous trucking space with claims of achieving intervention-free, dock-to-dock runs.

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered

Key Autonomy Markets Topics & Timestamps

[00:00] Waymo’s Public Launch in LA 

Waymo’s service is now open to the public in Los Angeles with no waitlist, covering an 80-square-mile area that is larger than its San Francisco operation. The launch caused average wait times to increase significantly, from five minutes to 40 minutes, leading to questions about whether Waymo’s fleet of roughly 700 vehicles is sufficient to meet demand. The timing, however, allows Waymo to gather data from visitors over the Thanksgiving holiday when city traffic is lighter.

[01:57] Waymo’s Freeway Problem 

A primary issue with Waymo’s LA service is that the vehicles do not operate on freeways, leading to user complaints about slow and inefficient routing on surface streets. This restriction is a major hurdle to improving the service’s utility, especially for valuable airport routes. Waymo is reportedly testing on freeways in both LA and San Francisco but is taking an extremely cautious “steady as she goes approach” because its technology was originally developed for lower-speed urban environments, not highways.

[06:05] New York’s Regulatory Hurdles for Autonomous Vehicles  

Autonomous vehicles are not deployed in New York City due to the state’s highly strenuous regulatory environment. A specific state law mandates that a driver must keep at least one hand on the steering wheel at all times. This law has made operations impractical, with past testing attempts by companies like Audi requiring a paid police escort for the vehicle. The only AV operations have been on private property, such as the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is not subject to these state regulations.

[09:55] Zoox Debuts in San Francisco 

Amazon’s Zoox has started operating its purpose-built autonomous vehicles, nicknamed “toasters,” on the streets of San Francisco. The service is currently limited to employees and operates only in the South of Market area, near the company’s engineering office. There are calls for Zoox and Amazon to provide more public transparency regarding their investment, milestones, and plans. Analysts predict a potential timeline for a public rollout, with an invite-only program by mid-2025 and full availability by the end of 2025.

[15:35] Political & Supply Chain Risks for Zoox 

Zoox faces potential political risks, as its regulatory team is composed of staff from prior Democratic administrations, which could make it difficult to build relationships with the incoming Trump administration. Furthermore, the vehicle’s reliance on Chinese components, including Hesai lidars, presents a significant supply chain risk, as the new administration is expected to include “China hawks” who may enact unfavorable regulations. These factors could potentially delay the company’s public launch timeline.

[18:03] A New Player: Bot Auto in Autonomous Trucking 

Bot Auto, a Houston-based company, is emerging as a new contender in the autonomous trucking industry. The company claims it has successfully achieved intervention-free, “dock to dock” runs with a fully loaded 18-wheeler, navigating both freeways and surface roads. If these claims are validated, it could position Bot Auto as one of the “big three” in autonomous trucking, alongside established players like Aurora and Kodiak.

[23:30] The Autonomous Trucking Market Landscape 

The autonomous trucking market is expected to consolidate around three or four major companies. Aurora and Kodiak are viewed as likely survivors; Aurora has a key partnership with Uber Freight, while Kodiak has a capital-efficient, diversified business generating revenue from defense and off-road applications. Bot Auto is differentiating itself by planning to operate its own trucking service instead of partnering with logistics firms. A key technical advantage for newer companies like Kodiak and Bot Auto is that they were built on an “AI first” stack, unlike older companies that had to rebuild a traditional robotics stack.

[28:10] Instacart’s Stance on Autonomy 

Autonomy is not currently a focus for Instacart or its investors, as the service’s core model depends on human shoppers physically picking groceries in stores. The company’s CEO has stated that it is “early” for autonomous trials and has not committed to any for 2025. Instead of investing in autonomous delivery, Instacart is using its available cash for stock buybacks.

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Walt, lo and behold, my prediction came true. A little early, we haven’t had the Thanksgiving dinner yet, Waymo’s operating in LA, no wait list, no early rider, open to the public. What’s next? 

Walter Piecyk: Well, first of all, congratulations on getting that pick. Right. I actually sent someone a, a code to get into LA a week earlier. So now I seem kind of, that wasn’t necessarily a great gift to provide if it was an only word for a week. I think the, the number I looked at was 80 square miles, which is much larger than San Francisco. It just shows that these guys are sticking to a schedule. There’s clearly not a supply issue or tech or incremental technical issues. I think it’s pretty impressive that Waymo has kind of moved to that next step in LA and then hopefully this helps my prediction come true in terms of hitting 300, 000. Rides per week, paid rides per week up from, you know, what is it? 150 was our last data point after the last quarter. And I think, where are you on that 200, 250? 

Grayson Brulte: 250. I still believe, and I do not have enough concrete data, but I do have some data from riders. When they opened the list, the average wait time went from five minutes to 40 minutes. So the question is, does Waymo have enough vehicles? Brad Templeton, he wrote up in Forbes, that there’s roughly 700 vehicles in the entire Waymo fleet. It seems to me that Waymo is going to need a lot more vehicles. One, to get the wait time down and get the miles traveled up.

Walter Piecyk: So your argument is they shouldn’t have now launched because they clearly didn’t have the supply that they needed for LA. I mean, there could be a lot of kind of early adopters. They heard the thing and they hit it and it made the numbers look higher. Let’s, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and see where it is a week or two from now. But, guess, bad planning. Cause you don’t want to have people, no one’s going to wait 40 minutes for.

Grayson Brulte: It was the right time. I’m not saying it wasn’t the right time. It is the right time because when Thanksgiving comes, LA clears out, so they’re going to be able to get some pretty intense data from visitors. The thing that I’m really watching for LA, and we’re seeing a lot of complaints on Reddit and X, the vehicles do not go on freeways. And some of the routing is wonky, going through some of these streets, going down Wilshire, going down Pico, it is slow, slow, slow. So hopefully highways come online soon.

Walter Piecyk: I thought LA was, you didn’t want to be on the freeways cause that’s where all the traffic was.

Grayson Brulte: There’s traffic everywhere in LA doesn’t, doesn’t matter. Maybe two o’clock in the morning, there’s no traffic, but otherwise it’s traffic, traffic, traffic.

Walter Piecyk: but wasn’t there a report this week also that they’re going to start testing the freeways in San Francisco? Cause if you think about it, there’s that one, I think there’s that one freeway that kind of goes around it. That’s not used for a lot of the trips . and do you think they would start in San Francisco or L. A. or do you think they’ll just, you know, if they’re going to test freeways, test, test them in both locations.

Grayson Brulte: I am under the assumption. This is just photos that have been posted on Reddit and X don’t have data to confirm this, but that’s where the data sources are coming from that they’re testing both freeways in Los Angeles with a human driver in San Francisco. Without a driver the big question to watch in la actually there’s a couple major things to watch for the la market one does Waymo start testing the 405 to go into the valley Because then all suddenly now the waymo vehicle could be used as a commuter vehicle that becomes interesting Two when does waymo start to map and test the hollywood hills north of sunset? And three the big one that a lot of folks want you look at on the waymo subreddit One of the biggest requests is airport. Those are the three things that I’m watching. As Waymo expands in LA.

Walter Piecyk: the same thing exists, I think, in San Francisco to get to the airport, you’d have to take a freeway. So this restriction on freeways. Clearly, is the gating factor that’s really going to open up the usability functionality. And obviously he’s going to increase the demand. Maybe there’s not a big push. To do the freeways because they don’t have physically enough cars to handle the incremental demand that would exist if all of a sudden I can take a, Waymo to the San Francisco airport or to the L. A. airport versus, an existing Uber, which I guess begs the question. Like, so what is it about. The freeways that are more challenging because. Anecdotally, I would say that it feels more naturally in Tesla FSD to be on a highway. And the lane changes that it makes . than when I’ve been using it, locally on, getting around streets that maybe aren’t lined or whatever the case may be. What do you think the freeway issue is? 

Grayson Brulte: the Waymo vehicles, the way that they were designed and tested was for local dense urban environments, and now they’re working up the testing to build for freeway speeds. Where the Tesla FSDs, historically, this goes back to when Sterling Anderson was at Tesla, were built for highways. That was Tesla’s first, if you wanna call it ODD or Waymo’s first, ODD was urban, so they’re kind of reversing.

Walter Piecyk: So I may be saying something really dumb right now for our listeners that are very technical, but isn’t that Some of the additional sensors that Waymo has should make it more suitable for higher speed driving to see things further away. And maybe without the eyesight of the cameras. Isn’t it ironic that . you’re saying FSD in this case is better with camera only, or at least that’s where they’ve been testing it. As opposed to a Waymo, which has all these sensors that theoretically should be able to help it with. Obstacles that are further away, they’re going to come to you more quickly at the speeds that you’re on a highway.

Grayson Brulte: You can make the clear argument that radar could assist with that. Radar could be the defining factor to do at highway speeds. You do not need LiDAR. You could do it very well with camera radar. You can do very well with camera. Wayve is currently operating with camera radar, no LiDAR . could, in theory, technically help accelerate Waymo on highways. Whether it will or it won’t, I’m unsure. But it technically could help them accelerate the deployment on highways.

Walter Piecyk: Well, it should be a good unlock. It would be great to know some timeline. This gets back to a common theme that we’ve talked about on autonomy markets . where the companies maybe should provide some. Timeline and scope and get people hype saying, okay, we’re going to start testing freeways now and hope to have them within a certain. A timeframe, and to get people excited about using the product beyond just kind of these local. I wonder if that impacts their willingness to kind of use, to expand this product in additional markets. I mean. If highways are the thing that you’re is your next kind of frontier. Why wouldn’t why isn’t waymo launching in New York? I mean, we don’t really have, I mean, other than around the island, which I don’t think many people. Use that much. It’s not as necessary, but just inner city. Traffic. Why don’t, why isn’t waymo just launching in New York? 

Grayson Brulte: Regulatory environment. I get to give a lot of credit to Brad Sterz who runs the government for Audi North America on this one. There is a law in the state of New York. You must have one hand on the steering wheel at all times. It’s a law on the books. And when Brad wanted Audi to do some early testing and Mr. Sterz worked on trying to change the regulatory law to make it more comfortable and inviting to autonomy, Mr. Sterz with Audi was going to have to follow a police route and they were going to have to pay police officers to go in front of the vehicle and behind the vehicle at all times to escort it. The regulatory environment in New York , is one of the most strenuous. In the whole country for deploying autonomous vehicles. That’s why you currently do not see any autonomous vehicles deployed in New York outside of the very small ones that you had out in Brooklyn at that Navy yard because that’s private property. So you’re not turned into the state regulations.

Walter Piecyk: So, where do we go from here with Waymo? Do you. Focus on freeways and expanding the geographic footprint in the markets that have already been launched and the ones that are on the agenda for 2025. Or do you try and push it and be like, you know, we can, as I like to say a lot, we can walk into gum at the same time. Expand the new cities. At the same time, you know try to expand the geographic area Via freeway usage in your existing markets. What’s the game plan? 

Grayson Brulte: The big question comes down to Waymo’s strategy in Atlanta. We know for a fact that Atlanta is going to run on Uber. That’s the one fact that we know. And we also know that Waymo at some point, they said first half of 2025, that they will be operating Atlanta. Atlanta is a highway city to go from downtown to Buckhead. You’re going on a freeway. So I’ll be very curious to see what is the routing in Atlanta and does Waymo make that say a highway first city that’ll be a big tell sign of where I see Waymo going. When I looked at 2025, I expect to see four announcements of cities that will be coming on online over the next 16 to 18 months. I fully expect Miami because of the regulatory environment, the population, and also the investors inside of Waymo have offices there. And operate there. So I expect to see Miami to be one of those markets and perhaps Nashville, the other two markets, , I’m unsure of at the moment,.

Walter Piecyk: So just to be clear Is this a regulatory issue in la and san francisco on the freeway issue, or is it a technical issue because? It sounds like it’s more of a technical issue than regulatory. Otherwise if it’s not it’s regulatory then I would say okay sure, georgia Florida are states that are going to be more willing to enable, this type of service on their roads, on their . freeways.

Grayson Brulte: the original Waymo’s going back to the Google self driving car project where highway only they have the technology. This is a, in my opinion, this is a, let’s not make a boo boo maneuver. I think that’s truly where this is the way I’m always being very, very, very, very, very cautious getting into a crash at 15 miles an hour versus 65 miles an hour. It’s a pretty. Significant difference. So I think this is a steady as she goes approach.

Walter Piecyk: Well, well, well, it remains to be seen, but I think that for this industry to kind of move forward, you’re clearly going to have to hit the freeways,.

Grayson Brulte: You have no choice if You have to do it tesla can do the freeways today. Very very well We just got the new 12 . update pushed out widely today. It’s full end to end They’re going to have to do freeways if you look at some of these distances if you Go back to atlanta public market. You’re going on the freeway to go to the airport. You have to get on freeways.

Walter Piecyk: But even in San Francisco, just to increase the utility value . by enabling you to actually go to the airport. These are the high value rides that you want to capture. It would be ideally suited for that.

Grayson Brulte: Or I want to be able to go from downtown San Francisco to Palo Alto Mountain View. You’re going to the 101 you’re going to one on one. I want to be able to . do that.

Walter Piecyk: sure, absolutely.

Grayson Brulte: it’s coming. It’s just a matter of time. And I’m unsure what the technical expertise is. But if you look at technical expertise in the industry, the Zoox toaster or the, what I call the Zoox mobile, , it’s out there on the roads of San Francisco. I’ve been operating both. We’ve had videos and photos from nighttime. In daytime, but they’re only operating in south of market. We talked about that. Why? Because the, their engineering office is there, but what are your thoughts on the Zoox mobile starting to roll around San Francisco,.

Walter Piecyk: well, every time I see that, those, the tweets of my Twitter or X fee is filled up with San Fran, I think about you. And your negativity towards this great. What you call a toaster of what many people call a toaster oven product. I will say that. Apparently, there’s only employees in there, so they’re not even letting, you know, test rides going right now, but. I’m very excited for Zoox and for Amazon and hopefully they will. You know, they will have rides without incident with their employees and they’ll quickly move on to the next step. And and allow at least some test people in. I mean, you know, I’ve driven or been in a Zoox, out in the valley on there, in a controlled environment on their campus, or I guess not really on the campus. But, you know, it was a. It was a, you know, a different route than downtown San Fran, but , I thought it was a great product. I think we wish the best for them and would love to know more about when it’s going to open up to more people in the San Francisco. Area.

Grayson Brulte: a hundred percent, wish Zoox the best I’m not, I know. Yes. Am I a little bit harsh on them? Yes. Am I negative? No, I wish them well. There’s just, there’s two things that I want to see and I’m not going to stop until I see it. I’d like to see Mr. Jassy make a statement on the earnings call or an official release from Amazon about the amount of capital invested What they’re looking at give some sort of milestones. Mr. Sundar Pichai at Alphabet does it very simple. Mr Jassy, you can do one line in an earnings release and give some clarity and for the Zoox this is to the Zoox staff please Change your communications and give some more transparency what you’re building. You’re building a vehicle from the ground up you hired Mr. Rosekind to design your safety You’re a very safe vehicle. Just give some, some insight and clarity on what your plans are, and let the public believe in what you’re building.

Walter Piecyk: I hear you and I agree with what you’re saying. On the, you know, on the thing, the thing we also have been a little harsh on them is the partnerships and, you know, I think whatever Lyft and Uber more than willing to sign partnerships with companies that don’t have necessarily a product on the road today, that’s for sure . but I think if you’re Zoox and you’re Amazon and you’ve got, a good balance sheet behind you. You can wait and see how the product develops in San Francisco , and then launch it. So I, I think that just because they haven’t necessarily announced a partnership with Uber today, or with Lyft today, that that isn’t potentially still a possibility as this product kind of moves along in its life cycle. And I think at some point we just have to be analysts about this, Grayson, and come up with some reasonable guesses on our own. And then, by the way, If they don’t meet those guesses, then that’s on them , for disappointing the market. So let’s establish some benchmarks for them right now in San Francisco. When is a reasonable amount of time that you transition from your employees being in there to, I guess, where Uber was as of a week ago, where you’re getting special codes for, individual people. And then. As the writer, you can hand out your codes. When does that happen? 

Grayson Brulte: I would love to see it done in Q1.

Walter Piecyk: I think that’s aggressive. I think that’s, I think you’re setting what I think is a bear trap. Meaning that you’re trying to provide a deadline that they’re going to miss and be like, they didn’t make it. So I am going to say. I’m going to say by. Not too much longer than you that if they can’t transition by June 30th, 2025. To the next phase. Then we need to start asking questions again. So that’s my prediction. In June, not earlier, anything earlier, you’ve done a good job , in June. Maybe early July 4th, Independence Day. You should have transitioned by Independence Day and that should be your internal goal if you’re there, but some 2 year. You know, goal that they have internally to move to that. And by the way, we’re not even saying Open it up to. Random people, this is like invites and then I’ll say, I’m going to provide my next milestone. I will predict that Zoox by the end of 2025, you’ll be able to download a Zoox app or go into uber app and pick or uber lyft whatever, and take a Zoox ride. Any consumer in that market. Here’s my risk as the words are coming out of my mouth. That you probably were going to tap me with anyway, Waymo has got a machine. They’re, they’re, you know, they’re getting these Jag Jaguars. This is a. I don’t know where Amazon is with the construction of this vehicle, how much it has to change. Can they get up to scale? So these are all these are all risks that I’m sure exist in the market. So maybe even my deadline are going to be, are going to be too aggressive. So where are you on them? Putting just random people downloading an app and getting in the cars or do you have any other commentary on what I just laid out for you? 

Grayson Brulte: I just want to highlight this for the record. July 4th, the Zoox Explorers Early Rider Program. December 31st, open to the public. Okay. It’s, I, I think that You are a little. Pessimistic on the December 31st. If it doesn’t happen before, then I’m, I am going to get a very loud microphone.

Walter Piecyk: You can still do that. We can still pester them and say that they need to, where are they with that? But I’m going to, I’m just going to like understand that, they have a very specific product. They’re not taking a Jaguar or whatever, a Zeker or some other random thing and then fitting it. I would think that creating enough of them to get to that point is its own challenge, let alone the technology to work. So I wish I could later. I’ll go back and draw the analogy with Waymo. Where did Waymo start where they were first having, Waymo cars in the market versus how they hit these steps. And then maybe I’ll revise , my self proclaimed targets for them.

Grayson Brulte: the biggest risk that they have right now. Obama, all the regulatory staff at Zoox is all ex Obama, ex Biden. They do not have relationships that. As far as I know, with the new incoming Trump administration, And if NHTSA or DOT changes the regulation, not in their favor, they’re going to have a very, very big issue. So that could delay your timeline. That’s something very important to watch out because this new administration, as we’ve talked about, and as I know, , is going to make autonomy a top priority. So that’s a big risk there.

Walter Piecyk: But I’m going to take the other side of that is that as a top priority, they want to push forward. Innovation, whether that’s funding or otherwise, , I don’t think these toaster ovens are made in China, so there’s no risk on that front. And like, to me, the, to me, my perception right now is it’s the technical challenge of both getting it to work where you’re safe putting, early adopters in. And then scaling the product enough where you can actually open it up and not have a 40 minute wait, or whatever it is not, whether the regulator in that market is going to let you do something or not. And by the way, if that is an issue. Just because these happen to be, , ex, Biden administration people, I still think it’s going to fall under the umbrella of an overall national framework. That’s more permitting and aggressive than what we’ve seen over the past 4 years.

Grayson Brulte: The issue, depending on how the politics play out, the Zoox vehicle is full of Chinese components. Including Hesai lidars That this started under the biden administration and we don’t have a direct ruling on that That could be a potential issue because it’s full of chinese components depending on how far and this is very public information President trump is stacking his cabinet administration with china hawks. So that’s that could be a potential risk to watch there.

Walter Piecyk: that’s fair. We’ll just have to see how how it plays out. But congrats to the Zoox team for at least showing a product in San Francisco that people can see driving by, at least that’s building some awareness. And look at the end of the day, that’s good for the industry. The more autonomous vehicles people see on the road, the more comfortable I believe that they will get with them.

Grayson Brulte: It’s very good for the industry and we also saw Zoox is going to start testing on the vegas strip we’ve joked about that That’s a positive whether or not you get a ride during CES I want to see this and the other thing today Zoox put out a press release. They have a partnership With f1 racing. I’m unsure if it’s an engineering partnership again goes back to the communications of Zoo Got up the game a little very vague on details, but they do have an f1 Partnership now and they’re gonna become the official Robo taxi autonomous vehicle partner of the Las Vegas race.

Walter Piecyk: I’m not sure what that means. That might be like that company we talked about from last week that has, basically autonomous. Trips from, where is it? The, where they play tennis in Paris,. Roland Garros. We ride. So that’s like a, we ride, you have like, you do trips at Roland Garros and it’s like there for the two weeks that, that the tournament’s on and then, and then what happens, so what, what’s great about , this industry, Grayson is, you’ve got people on the West coast, you’ve got people in London. You got people in Pittsburgh, you got people in Texas, you’ve got distributed development that’s occurring around the country, which I think is great. You’re headed to one of these locations, Texas. I will be heading there in early December for any of our listeners , that want to link up and talk autonomy . know, but you’re headed there like tonight. What are you hoping to see in Texas? 

Grayson Brulte: I’m looking forward to it. I’m headed off to Houston and I’m going to visit Bot Auto. I have been told that Bot Auto has achieved dock to dock, no interventions. And I’m going there to witness it with my own two eyes. So it’d be very interesting to see how the truck performs.

Walter Piecyk: Hold on, you’re saying doc to doc, . explain more.

Grayson Brulte: Dock to Dock When you’re going to the Walmart dock to the shipping center, freeways, surface roads. The whole shebang, no interventions. An 18 wheeler with a full load. I’m going for a ride.

Walter Piecyk: So it’s another company in the 18 wheeler space. It seems like there’s a couple of these companies that exist. And in this case, I assume that they still have a safety driver.

Grayson Brulte: There will still be a safety driver in the truck with me, but in under a year, the development to do this, to be going dock to dock is pretty amazing. As far as I know, and this is industry rumors and chatters because these companies will not put me in their trucks . and StackAV have been unable to do that. I’ve asked for rides. I’ve been denied rides. So I can’t go in here and prove it. Kodiak has been able to do it very successfully. And so is Aurora. If bot can do it, then perhaps we have the formation of the big three forming in autonomous trucking. And that’s what I’m going there to see because I’ve been in the Kodiak truck multiple times. I’ve been in the Aurora truck. And now as of tomorrow morning, I’ll be in the bot truck. So there’s a lot really happening in the autonomous trucking sector.

Walter Piecyk: look, we know the narrative of why there’s demand for this, shortage of drivers. These are not the rides that they want in many cases. I don’t know if Dr doc is one of them, but I think maybe more of the long haul stuff . can the market support 3 or 4? Competitors, or is this really a race to who can get driver out first and then lock up the enterprise customers? And have you seen, you talk to Aurora, they already have a lot of relationships with enterprise customers, fleets that exist. Where is this company with that? Where is, where’s Kodiak with that? And what ends up being the winning factor? I mean, I think to answer my own question, you got to get it to work first. Drive around . but you know, we have these debates at Lightshed all the time on ai. Is it gonna be like, is one AI gonna be better than the other? Are they gonna get there first and then dominate the market as a result? Or are they all gonna kind of get there around the same time? And then there’s gonna be other components of why one of these 3, 4, 5 companies is gonna be successful based on the relationships that they’ve already started to build. With the trucking companies or, or Uber who’s, you know, has their freight business obviously connected to Aurora. What are your thoughts on how that market evolves? 

Grayson Brulte: The market’s going to consolidate. We’re going to have three or four major autonomous trucking companies that will emerge. As of now, I will go on the record and say two of the four will be Aurora and Kodiak. Aurora has the partnership with Uber freight. Uber is also for the record is the largest individual, largest shareholder, individual shareholder inside of Aurora. And that gets really interesting. That’s mostly going to be focused on the first route is going to be Dallas to Houston. And then they’re going to go from El Paso to Dallas. So we’re going to start to see that emerge. Kodiak, I would say point blank. It’s special. This goes back to ABC Capital Cities. And I’ve publicly said this many times. I believe what Don Burnette and the team is building is ABC Capital Cities. And I say it from terms of capital efficiency and return on invested dollar. We’re Kodiak’s a diversified business. They have a thriving defense business. They have an off road business backed by Atlas Energy. And they also have an over the road long haul trucking. So I view them as a very diversified business, very capital efficient. One of those, actually, the interesting thing about Kodiak, it’s one of the smallest, lowest burn rates in all of autonomous trucking.

Walter Piecyk: So what you’re saying from an investor perspective is now you’ve segmented the market and , you’re saying Kodiak and what they’re going after military or otherwise can take a segment of the market and maybe is not as much in this pressure race. On these kind of long haul dock to dock type trips.

Grayson Brulte: The thing about Kodiak, they’re generating revenue today. That’s a very, very big difference. They’re generating revenue and staying on the 18 wheeler side. If you look at different models of segment to the market, bot doesn’t need partnerships. They’re going to operate the trucking service themselves. That gets really, really interesting. So if somebody gets the UPS contract, the FedEx contract, the Warner, the Schneider contract, bot doesn’t need it. They’re going to operate it themselves. And they’ll be really interesting to see how that model goes into the market.

Walter Piecyk: Maybe the answer is the market is large enough to support 3 because of the demand that exists ., relative to humans. I just don’t know. Like, you’d have to look at what scale does each of them need to get up to individually. Regardless of what percentage of the overall market that is, and does that get you to decent profitability to be successful? I just feel like I can’t, like we have two in the ride share right now, right? Uber in wireless. We have three, the government’s pushing really hard for four market can’t support four. I don’t think we’ll see. I mean, you know, a lot of faith in the guys at dish, but that’s a fully penetrated market. It feels like three, four, five is way too high of a number that you’re going to, and when the end game is here, it’s two, maybe three that win. And that success is going to be driven by who’s again, getting to driver out firstly, what am I missing here? About this industry. I mean, yeah, someone can have great connections with Uber, have those enterprise relationships, but if your competitors are getting to drive her out faster than you are, with just one customer, that’s going to give them and share can shift pretty quickly as a result, . no,.

Grayson Brulte: The question is, this goes back to market segmentation. How do you define driver out? Kodiak has done driver out. They are currently operating driver out in the Permian Basin off road with Atlas. And the reason I keep harping on that one,.

Walter Piecyk: in that market, in that segment of the market, that’s fine.

Grayson Brulte: It’s a consistent route. It’s back, forth, back, forth, back, and it’s generating revenue. Aurora, as we unfortunately saw had to delay till April. Do I believe the first company to go driver out? On a over the road long haul trucking will be the winner No, I think that is a technical milestone the development of that company It does not clarify to me from an investor standpoint that it’s necessarily going to be the winner I really am concerned with some companies burn rates. These burn rates are pretty high at some of these companies.

Walter Piecyk: But if you get to drive around and you get contracts, your burn rates are ameliorated by the fact that someone’s going to give you more money because you’ve hit a pretty significant milestone. And look, I’ll agree with you that just because you’re 1st doesn’t mean you’re going to win like in wireless, just because you turn on a network. No, it’s the guy that gets to the 1st 100, 000 individual market or whatever it is. So there’s certain there’s scale, but that mile, but hitting that milestone before someone else. Mhm. It’s going to open up more capital market activity to you to get to the next step. And that thing kind of snowballs on itself.

Grayson Brulte: And that’s where I’ll go into what you said. That’s where you’ll have, if you want to call them the big three, perhaps the big three is Kodiak, Aurora , Bot that very well could happen because depending on what I see tomorrow in Texas, we’ll talk about it next week. I can leave Texas on Friday with a high confidence, a high degree of confidence that bot can go driver out through the most people think. Good than that. And then all of a sudden, , now you’ve, got three horses competing.

Walter Piecyk: So explain to me how these companies with generally limited resources compared to Waymo and Google. Can have a vehicle of that size and weight traveling at 60 miles an hour down a highway and be fine, but somehow there’s, concern on the Waymo side of this thing. How is that? How do those 2 things work? 

Grayson Brulte: Technical approach. Let’s go back. Waymo is a, has an advantage, a disadvantage. Waymo’s disadvantage is that it was built on a traditional robotics stack. Where Waymo was built around mapping, waypoint finding. Where if you talk to Andy, he’s a CTO, he’s a wonderful gentleman, the CTO of Kodiak. Andy was an original Waymo employee and he said this is going to be a hindrance to scale. We’re not going to be able to scale this. So he built what we call a mapless, a map light technology that’s allowing Kodiak to do that. And then Kodiak was built from an AI first stack from the ground up. Bot was built from an AI first stack from the ground up. Waymo was built from a ROS, which is a robotic stack. So they’re having to go rebuild it. And I’ll give you an example. Torc, which is owned by Daimler truck. Sorry, you’re not independent subsidary. You’re owned. They own 80 percent of your shares. They were a robotic stack. They had to completely gut it and rebuild it from an AI stack from the ground up. And now they’re starting to see performance.

Walter Piecyk: part of this is also these, , for my, some of the visits, all this redundancy that they put in there. Maybe that maybe some of this redundancy to the level that it exists. Like a Kodiak or an Aurora truck. Is it necessarily in a Waymo don’t know. We’re still looking into that, but maybe that’s part of the equation as well. There’s just the cost that they’ve invested in this vehicle is just significantly significantly more. So they’re more ready to hit those, hit those, highways.

Grayson Brulte: They were built for highways. They weren’t necessarily built to run a dense urban environment. They’ll run a mile mile and a half off of the highway, which is easier driving, but they were built for highway driving from the ground up. Hence the other advantage for highway driving,.

Walter Piecyk: What’s interesting is for investors, you’ve got, Aurora is already a public company. These other companies. These are more direct ways to invest versus having to deal with, , a Waymo , or a Zoox, which is within these larger companies. So there’s probably, more bang for the buck in terms of understanding what’s going on in trucking because there’s more ways to make it. Make money on them, them as investors directly that way, then trying to play it through, through Google, which has their own issues on how AI is attacking their search. So we will continue to pursue this and have a great trip. And I look forward to learning more myself on, on my trip to Texas.

Grayson Brulte: I love learning, and I didn’t sit on this earnings call, but you sat in on the Instacart earnings call. What did you learn on the Instacart call on the after call as it relates to autonomy? 

Walter Piecyk: Well, if you. If you were on the call, you didn’t hear anything about autonomy on the regular call, but a lot of companies, they do second calls where they have sell side analysts engage a little bit more directly with management. So, as our autonomy representative, I had to ask about it, you know, for the, for instance, the cart, it’s clearly not top of mind for those investors because the way that service works is you actually have to have a shopper and go in the stores and pick stuff for you. And they do a great job. , and they tell you if something’s missing much better than other services that I’ve used Before they hop in their car and deliver it to you So that doesn’t mean that the driving aspect of that service is not going to be an opportunity for autonomy in fact It can and perhaps with vehicles that are not full cars like a waymo although or a tesla Although that clearly can be a possibility So I was at and I was asking her in the context of the way we’ve talked about it here Which is like look, you know Um, Umar particularly and Lyft are trying to build the narrative of autonomy. Where is your narrative? Who are you talking to? What are the trials that you have planned? , this is to Fiji, the CEO of, of Instacart, on their, this post call and look, they get it, they’ve already leaned into AI on other things. They’ve got that smart cart, , that they have for advertising. But when I really was pushing for. Will we even see a trial in 25 all the circular talking was not around seeing a trial. So that’s unfortunate. I think that’s maybe a lost opportunity because I think, when you talk about goods as opposed to people, the form factor. And even going air versus ground or whatever there’s a broader opportunity set for them. And they have the cash to do it. They’re using cash to buy stock back. So it’s not like they don’t have the ability To fund trials. Well, it’s just saying it’s early. It’s early. I’m like, yeah, I get it’s early, but you know There are trials that you can do so , I don’t think It didn’t feel like fiji had the same pressure That clearly david richer at lyft seems to have because he’s getting those questions on his regular call And again, I get it a shopper does something different, but at some point Like you could have a shop like pay someone just to shop in the stores Or cut deals with these stores to have shoppers and then hand it off to an autonomous, delivery service,.

Grayson Brulte: Why no partnerships. I could see you could do a partnership with Waymo. You have the shoppers in there. They put it in the bag. They put it in the Waymo. Away it goes. It seems to can be more efficient.

Walter Piecyk: it’s just or a fleet like, you know, I don’t know if we talked about this last week, but The concept of, the percentage of drivers for Waymo, that are just fleets, whether it’s autonomous or not. Like, how about a fleet of autonomous vehicles that approaches Instacart and says, okay, in this market, we’re going to handle it. You just have someone in the market. Let’s do a trial where we have someone picking the products and then they drop it into 1 of our vehicles.

Grayson Brulte: Do you think if investor pressure picked up analysts on the main call started asking your questions We might start to see a little shift in strategy relates to autonomy with instacart.

Walter Piecyk: Sure. Sure. But it’s just a matter of, who’s asking the question. Are they more interested in and the latest, increase in order flow from having the Uber relationship or how ads are getting placed to me? That’s it’s just not. Hasn’t been an error area of focus. People are more concerned about what it does, you know, look like in the 4th quarter, which is why that stock is getting cream today as opposed to what the market opportunity is for them. Going forward.

Grayson Brulte: When you look at market opportunities, it seems that investors in autonomy are looking at different aspects We have investors looking at pure plays and autonomous trucking We have investors trying to value waymo instead of alphabet investors trying to value Zoox inside of amazon And then there’s a there’s another set of investors mainly being driven by the the large miners and people Rio Tinto being one of them, they’re operating 50 large off road autonomous trucks in Western Australia. Is that market starting to emerge to institutional investors would say, wait a second, there’s this very large market in off road autonomy and Caterpillar’s got their seven, seven sevens going at a quarry in Virginia. Now it’s, it seems that market’s starting to really evolve.

Walter Piecyk: No, definitely not. And I think the entry into that is what we were talking about earlier with. , the fact that you have Aurora potentially Kodiak and, a couple of these other companies. That could be more direct ways to play autonomy. Like, if there’s, if you get bulled up about AI and autonomy, you look for alternative ways to play them. So those things emerge, sure, but I don’t think anyone’s focusing on what’s going on in some mine in Australia at the moment in terms of direct investment.

Grayson Brulte: Could that change since those are highly profitable routes? If somebody owned control the fleet, perhaps a safe AI or from the private market standpoint, somebody kind of tips their toes in there.

Walter Piecyk: in the private market there’s certainly going to be people searching for investment opportunities there. Absolutely, anything that’s, that is leveraging AI and hitting autonomy. That’s going to be of interest, but, to your point earlier on again, the truckers in the U. S. where are you relative to revenue and hitting profitability? What’s that? What’s the timeline on that market? How much more do we have to fund this? Because you can fund something privately. And it can be a great idea, but by the time it gets to profitability or your exit, you’ve been diluted 4 times from the different funding rounds that you’ve had to try and get to them to the point of. Driver out scale, whatever it is.

Grayson Brulte: Lots change in this autonomy market keeps evolving. What do we need to look for in the autonomy market over the next week? 

Walter Piecyk: Well, grayson earnings are over So this is the time to get out in the field get out there figure out what’s going on Where we are in these technological developments keep an eye on la You In the case of Waymo, keep an eye on those freeways in San Francisco for our San Francisco listeners. If you happen to see a Waymo on the freeway without a driver, let us know. Cause we’re definitely interested in every step along that way.

Grayson Brulte: Send us a photo. I’m off to Texas. I’m putting my Explorer hat on and I’m going exploring and for ride and then 18 wheeler. We’ll talk about it next week. The future is bright. The future autonomous. The future is profitable. Walt, until next week.