Transcript: Waymo Leaves Uber in Austin and the Tesla Double Standard

Executive Summary

This episode of Autonomy Markets dives into Waymo’s surprising expansion into Dallas, not with Uber, but with a renewed, multi-year partnership with Avis. We explore the media and public’s double standard when it comes to Tesla’s autonomous vehicle development versus competitors like Waymo. Additionally, we cover the Boston City Council’s move to ban autonomous vehicles and the latest developments in the autonomous trucking sector, including insights from Aurora’s recent earnings call.

Key Topics & Timestamps

[00:00] Waymo’s Expansion to Dallas Without Uber

Waymo expands its services to Dallas, but notably without continuing its partnership with Uber, causing Uber’s stock to drop 5% and sparking discussion about the future of their collaboration.

[02:00] Waymo’s New Multi-Year Partnership with Avis

Waymo announces a multi-year deal with Avis for its Dallas operations, marking their first agreement since 2017 and signaling a strategy of exploring different fleet management partners.

[05:00] The Role of Avis in AV Maintenance and Infrastructure

The discussion explores whether Avis will invest in the specialized engineers and infrastructure needed for sensor calibration and maintenance of autonomous vehicles.

[08:00] Rental Car Companies’ Renewed Interest in Autonomy

A look at the history of rental car companies in the AV space, including past projects by Hertz and Enterprise, and why they are poised to re-enter the market.

[10:00] Will Hertz Re-Enter the AV Market?

A prediction that Hertz, led by former Cruise COO Gil West, will make a significant move in the autonomous vehicle space by 2025 in response to Avis’s partnership with Waymo.

[12:00] Waymo Makes Progress on Highway Driving

A Waymo engineer posts a video of a driverless vehicle on a California highway, a strong indicator that the company is getting closer to unlocking highway travel and airport routes.

[13:00] Boston City Council’s Push to Ban Autonomous Vehicles

Boston politicians are attempting to ban AVs, citing safety and job concerns, and are creating an advisory committee heavily stacked with union representatives who would recommend if AVs can operate in the city.

[19:00] Tesla Launches Ride-Hail Service in the Bay Area

Tesla has started a paid ride-hailing service with human safety attendants in a large operational design domain in the San Francisco Bay Area.

[22:00] The “Tesla Double Standard” in Media and Public Perception

An analysis of how minor incidents involving Tesla’s FSD receive major negative headlines, while similar or worse incidents from competitors like Waymo go largely unnoticed.

[30:00] Aurora’s Timeline for Driver-Out Operations Pushed to 2026 

Analysis of Aurora’s earnings call reveals that fully driverless commercial trucking operations are not expected until at least 2026, a delay from previous estimates.

[32:00] Competitive Landscape: PACCAR, Volvo, and Kodiak

Discussion on the competitive pressures in autonomous trucking, including Kodiak’s progress on night driving and the prediction that Aurora’s first driver-out vehicle will be a Volvo VNL truck.

[36:00] What to Watch Next: Uber and Lyft Earnings

The episode concludes by looking ahead to the upcoming earnings reports from Uber and Lyft, where questions about their respective autonomy strategies are expected to be a major focus.

Watch the Full Episode of Autonomy Markets

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Walt, welcome to August. It’s a great time to go surfing, so get your board out and and hit the waves. As we hit the waves. The autonomy market keeps on moving. Tesla announced an expansion of the Bay Area for a ride hailing service. You have some news from the Aurora earnings call.

And Waymo, who’s been the leader on the road to autonomy leaderboard for six consecutive quarters has expanded to Dallas. And as our listeners and viewers know, not with Uber, I repeat not with Uber. What do you make of Waymo’s expansion to Dallas?

Walter Piecyk: I think for listeners of autonomy markets, this is not a surprise, but as you may recall, you know, and we did a podcast on this and I think we sent some clips out on our social earlier this week after Uber and Waymo launched in Austin, there was some citations of Yit data. So showing the growth and, and I think we picked apart that data on the podcast talking about looking at Phoenix and, and.

And San Fran and, and saying like, you know, maybe this doesn’t give the signal that everyone was interpolating about how, again, to the point that people thought that this meant that going forward Uber and Waymo were tied at the hip. And look what a great job Uber did for Waymo. I don’t wanna take anything away from Uber and the value that they bring to Waymo in Austin.

’cause they certainly do, perhaps primarily financially, you know, in terms of what and what they’re paying there. But like I I, I go back to what I’ve said many times, I just don’t think the decision here has yet been made. So I’m not even gonna say like, no, you know, I’m gonna go uber negative on Uber.

Um, to use the term, my only point is I don’t know. And I don’t think anyone that, that know, that, that insists that it’s gonna be Uber and Waymo in the future or, or conversely insist that it’s gonna be Waymo and only in the future. I don’t think either of them know. So I think the options are still open.

But certainly you saw the reaction in the stock, grace, and I mean, Uber stock was off like 5% on the news that, you know, they launched Dallas, um, without Waymo, or that Waymo launched Dallas basically without Uber.

Grayson Brulte: The stock sold off and then. You and, and I know this, the headlines went crazy. Waymo launches, market leaves Uber behind. But as part of this announcement, there was a twist, if you want to use the terms. Waymo went home. They brought Avis along on this journey. Not a move, not a Omo, not Uber, but Avis. This is the first time they’ve had an agreement since 2017 in Phoenix.

What do you make of Waymo bringing Avis to the table again?

Walter Piecyk: I mean, I, again, I think this is par for the course, like Waymo is still in experiment mode, right? They’re still, you know, buying cars and putting sensors on them, you know, at a location in Phoenix. They are not at what, what I think even they would consider is true kind of commercialization and scale. So they’re gonna partner with different people on individual markets.

This is actually a positive for Uber ’cause I think Uber does want fragmentation, , in the market. , And look, Avis is someone that’s gonna have locations at airports around the country. In this case, I, I would think that Uber wants to try and get involved with, with Avis. I don’t think that they wanna be left out in any of these markets in terms of what their participation is.

So, but the Avis thing was, was not, again, not shocking, but again, I think interesting development on how we see this market evolve.

Grayson Brulte: Avis has 10,250 rental locations in 180 countries, so they clearly have the real estate there. And reading the press release on Avis Investor relations page, Avis made it known very publicly. This is a multi-year deal. This is a multi-year deal. Could this be a multi-market deal? As we see Waymo’s now going back for a second time to Nashville, could potentially Avis go to Nashville with them?

And if Avis does, what does that signal to the market?

Walter Piecyk: I think it’s, it certainly makes sense for them to continue to part partner with Avis and whoever else out there, you know, has these locations. I think Grayson. I was able to infiltrate the, the PACCAR earnings call. Maybe I should infiltrate an Avis, an Avis call. I don’t even know, frankly, if they’re, they’re public and, and find out what is their capital investment plans in terms of bringing power to those locations.

We know they’ve got cleaning and management. They’re physically in good locations. They are distributed within cities. So this fits kind of checks the box and all the things that, that you and I have discussed on this podcast historically, but. I’m not sure where they are on, on, on powering some of these cars up, which is a critical item right now in terms of autonomy.

Grayson Brulte: As you and I have seen, it’s been well documented, well reported on historically the rental car industry has struggled with electrification, electric charging infrastructure. Perhaps that could change. And yes, Walt, the Avis Budget Group is publicly traded and they have one of the greatest tickers out there, CAR car.

That’s the budget that, that’s their ticker. How great of a ticker is that?

Walter Piecyk: That is a great ticker. I will try and get on the earnings call and ask about, ask about this deal and, and their commitment to investing and bringing, bringing power and superchargers to the, to the, to those locations.

Grayson Brulte: Because you should, because in the, in the investor relations release from Avis. They stated that the company is gonna do end-to-end services, including infrastructure, vehicle readiness, maintenance, and depot operations. Don’t mention the power, so I think we need to get you on the earnings call to get some clarity there.

Walter Piecyk: Well, the maintenance thing I also wanna bring up though, because maintenance in the context of Waymo as we know it today, is more than just cleaning out that car. It’s, you know, checking out the sensors and recalibrating and doing, doing all of those things that you and I saw and posted videos about in Austin and I also saw in la So are we to believe that Avis is going to invest in the engineers that know how to fix, replace, and calibrate these sensor?

Grayson Brulte: There has been a lot of dialogue in the industry. SAE International, through their ITC division, has been leading us doing a really good job. Of, I’ll use the term very loosely, of building a best practice of getting all the engineers together to build a best practice how to maintain autonomous vehicles.

So that’s been happening. So let’s just say hypothetically, you work for Avis. This individual works for Waymo. This individual works for AV Ride to have a set standard to create job creation. So there is a lot of movement in the industry. Nothing formal yet, but there is a lot of movement coming on.

Walter Piecyk: Was there any indication, Grayson, in that press release that this is exclusive? I mean, I know we were expecting AV ride to launch in Dallas, with Uber at the end of the year. So two questions for you. A. You know, is it possible that AV Ride can utilize Avis as well, and B, do you think that Waymo’s decision to do Waymo One, was a ref as opposed to with Uber, was because that they knew that there, that Uber already had a partner in this market, in AV ride.

Grayson Brulte: That very well could be because we have not seen an Uber autonomy market where yet, where there are multiple autonomous vehicles running on that. So that could be, perhaps Waymo wanted to protect their brand and if the relationship with Uber does continue, do we eventually see a Waymo One app in the tier?

That’s something to watch. But you’re, you bring up a very good point with, with AV Ride. Perhaps that’s why it is. And in the official IR press release, there was no mention of exclusivity. And the other thing, there was no mention of no mention of who’s gonna own the assets either.

Walter Piecyk: I think we’re just gonna assume for sake of argument that as always, Waymo, , will own those assets. And once again, when this market opens, we’ll go to Dallas, great city, check it out, flip down that fr down that sun visor and probably see the same thing that we saw in Austin. Property of Waymo.

, Now whether the economics are such that, you know, even though they technically own it, you know, maybe Avis has some type of financial relationship where, you know, they’re providing some capital, you know, in terms of lease payments or otherwise, you know, that effectively help Waymo expand into that market.

Again, these are all things that I think we just need to do more work on to understand, you know, how those relationships work. , So you don’t think. AV ride is exclusive, you know, in that market to Uber or that AV ride or that, or that the, um, Avis relationship is exclusive to, to Waymo, that there’s an opportunity for perhaps some cross pollination among the, among those companies.

Grayson Brulte: I’m under the assumption that the AV ride, Uber, Dallas market is exclusive from a maintenance standpoint. We, we have no indicators of the market. I could easily see Avis building up, if you wanna call it an autonomy ready business. And gambling that. And I can also see Hertz doing that. I can also see Enterprise doing that or any of the other rental car companies.

And so I’m really looking for when did the rental car companies come back into the market because they were really hot and heavy. In 2018, we saw announcement after announcement in 2018, Hertz put out a press release managing the 75 vehicles. The APTA fleet in Las Vegas Enterprise was doing the management of the voyage vehicles in the villages.

And Enterprise also through their Enterprise Mobility division, also invested in Voyage. So there’s a history of rental car companies getting involved in this industry. Nothing has happened yet, but we gotta kind of see really where this goes from here.

Walter Piecyk: we’re almost at a year of doing this podcast, and the reason we did this in the first place. The inflection point that we both saw in the autonomy market, and that has only like AI accelerated as the year has gone by. So if you are anywhere touching this industry, whether you’re an OEM, whether you are a car rental company, whether you know you are a ride share company, it’s coming and it’s coming fast.

So I think any past. Involvements are getting rethought. These are on the whiteboards of the boardrooms of these companies. So yeah, a hundred percent. I would think that these rental car companies are gonna be coming hot and heavy because it’s not hard for anyone to imagine the impact to rental car companies when autonomy truly hits.

There’s private ownership of autonomous cars and, and there’s autonomy, you know, within the, within the Rideshare program. So, yeah, I mean, the writing’s on the wall there, Grayson.

Grayson Brulte: And let’s not forget, the current CEO of Hertz is Mr. Gil West, friend of the show. Really great gentleman. On a personal level. Former COO of Cruz and before that COO of Delta, Mr. West understands logistics and operations just about better than anybody understands turnarounds. He has the history, he has the experience, and we all know he has the knowledge.

I’m gonna ask you to make a little bit of prediction here. Do we, in 2026, do we see Hertz dip their toe into follow Avis?

Walter Piecyk: 26. Why not 2025? I mean, it’s only August. And at the pace that this, that this industry is evolving, I would think that, you know, they’re, they’re gonna be in there with an announcement in, in 2025. I mean, I’ve seen this, you know, companies are always reactive. You want them to be proactive if you’re the investor, but they typically are, they see their competitor peer do something.

They go back to the boardroom, they reevaluate, they, they get the updates on where autonomy is and they’re like, oh, maybe we should probably be doing something. And, and then they, they reach out. By the way, the other company not mentioned anywhere here was Lyft, right? Lyft Waymo was something that was at one point, you know, however many months ago, something that was, that was contemplated not even in the, in the dialogue In terms of, of Dallas or additional markets.

What do you think is going on there?

Grayson Brulte: I think Lyft has lost the narrative, and I’m really not sure, and I say this with all due respect to, to Richard and the Lyft team. Announcing shuttles is making a 2015 announcement. I, I, I don’t see where Lyft is going. I feel that they’re adrift and they really need to get that major tier one partner to go into autonomy, or they’re gonna have to, as you said, go back to the drawing board.

Walter Piecyk: And meanwhile, Waymo is plowing forward number one on your industry leaderboard as, as you mentioned, another market getting launched, showing that they can partner, you know, with a variety of partners and see who wins. Like they are in the quote unquote driver’s seat, even though there’s no one in the driver’s seat like there are for others.

and Grayson, I also noticed on, on Twitter that, that one of their engineers was showing himself. And on a highway, I think was the driver out or was there someone in the driver’s seat there? I think the driver was out on the highway in California. So maybe some indication that they’re getting closer to, to what we’ve talked about, you know, for, you know, week after week as, as a potential huge unlock for Waymo to get on the highways, which will then also unlock, uh, the airports assuming they get through, you know, some of the regulatory issues there.

Grayson Brulte: He post the video. The first thing I respond to it, I said, when’s the great highway lock on coming? Crickets, crickets, crickets. But you’re right. It is an indicator that it is coming sooner rather than later.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, you know, unless this is just like a rogue engineer that’s just so excited to be in the car that he posted something, he shouldn’t, we’ll have to monitor that account and see, see if it’s, it’s still, uh, still exists in a, in a couple of days. But, , you know, certainly I think a good sign for Waymo and again.

Shows this kind of pace of evolution, of autonomy and why when we’re modeling this stuff out over the next 3, 5, 10 years, , how quickly we can see those miles traveled sh potentially shift to autonomous, um, from human drivers.

Grayson Brulte: I got a feeling it is an official account because Waymo’s head of Communication said, great shot, great angle. So that leads to me to believe that this is not a a, a rogue engineer. And if you wanna stay in the topic of Rogue, no, this is not a Star Wars remake. That wasn’t very good that they went rogue to make.

Boston City Council is going rogue and trying to ban Waymo, not just Waymo, but all autonomous vehicles from Boston. They are citing safety concerns. They are citing job concerns. Well, you know what’s really interesting about that, Walt? You see, this week we had the very big news in railroads that Union Pacific and North Fork Southern are going to merge.

And lo and behold, the same talking points are out safety and jobs. Hey, this is, this is just boilerplate politics. What do you make of this resistance in the Commonwealth, the Massachusetts, and the city of Boston to say, Nope, we don’t want you.

Walter Piecyk: you know, my view on this is are, are pretty consistent. Resistance is, is futile as they say that, you know, this is inevitable. These are though, you know, speed bumps that you have to deal with, um, from market to market. It’s funny because, you know, Massachusetts and Boston, you know, pushes itself is this like technology forward area.

They have all these universities, they’ve got that whole new. Tech area that they’ve invested in and to kind of circle the wagons and go old school like this and nimby it, uh, which I’ve seen in, in many industries before, , is disappointing. But that’s fine. There’ll be other states that will move forward without them, and then they will feel pressure from their own citizens, you know, to change or, or, or effectively get voted out, you know, and, but this is just a politics game, which you’re probably more familiar with than, than me.

So what are your thoughts on how this plays out in timeline?

Grayson Brulte: First thing Walt did I hear about? Estonian accent come out. Is that what I heard?

Walter Piecyk: Well, I’m currently in Massachusetts in the moment, so, so sometimes it rub rubs off of me.

Grayson Brulte: Okay. So Walt’s got a little Boston flare there and how, how this works out, it’s gonna be complicated because there are two city councils that approached an ordinance, Walt, that would prohibit commercial vehicles. And as part of that ordinance, and I’m gonna read this for you, a quote for quote, you’re gonna have to do a study.

And this is, you can’t file this under, you can’t make this up. So we ha we have unforced error. We, we have the file. You can’t make this up. And I’m gonna read this for you. End quote. Following the study’s completion, the advisory committee, which will have to include representatives from the APT Drivers Union, the Greater Boston Labor Council.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the local United Food and Commercial Workers Union would recommend to the mayor whether autonomous vehicle should be allowed to operate in the city at all.

You can’t make this up.

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, fear. And, and where is, where are the organizations that are there for, , mothers Against Drunk Drivers? Or, you know, anyone that’s, that wants to have safer roads and save citizens’ lives for the, you know, tens of thousands of people that are killed on our roads, you know, nationally, uh, because of, because of poor driving.

When, when do they get, when do they get represented?

Grayson Brulte: They should be represented. Now, they should be out there saying, this is blasphemy. You. You’re you. This is, I’ll use the Donald J. Trump term. I’m sorry, there’s paperwork now this is rigged. I’ll just say it based on what this, this is clearly rigged to ban autonomous vehicles in Boston, and I want to caveat that because.

At the state level, there is a a preemption bill that’s coming. And now what you’re going to see, you’re gonna see Boston City counselors are gonna look for a carve out where the preemption would not apply to the city of Boston if that were to happen. And they get the carve out, even if they get preemption at the state level.

Autonomous vehicles in the state of Massachusetts are dead on arrival. I’m very sorry, Walt. You can’t go from downtown Boston to the Cape. It, it won’t be possible because of what special interests got.

Walter Piecyk: I think for the time being though, it’ll be fine because if you have service in Boston, it get, it builds. Demand among the users there and obviously out-of-towners can see the benefit to them. So I think that’s at least something. And the United States is a, is a large place and you know, I think you’re gonna see, you know, autonomy expand to a number of different markets.

If, if Massachusetts want wants to be left behind then, and so be it for now, we’ll see how that plays out. Where does the national framework Grayson play into this, if at all?

Grayson Brulte: The national framework would preempt the city ordinance, so preempt the state ordinance and it would allow autonomous vehicles to, despite this. Nonsense coming through to operate in Boston because they were going to create a lot of good for the residents of Boston. And let’s just call a spade a spade.

We were all kids at one point, and when you go to college, you drink and then this gives you a very safe alternative to get around. And it also gives women a safe way to get around Boston at night without the fear of driver. And we, and we have data to back that up because Uber recently announced the woman, uh, driver for women.

So there’s precedence here. Waymo would be very good for Boston. It would make the road safer. Point blank.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, you’re talking about unforced errors. You, that’s one of your favorite things. Isn’t this an unforced error from local politicians where, you know, let’s say they’re from one party and they’re restricting this technology, that that saves, you know, that makes it more safe for you. That allows your daughter or or wife to travel in a car that, that doesn’t have a driver that potentially threatens them, or at least creates some anxiety, you know, on that ride.

And then here comes in the federal government of a different party that says like, no, we got your back. We’re gonna prevent your local politicians from doing this. Kind of an interesting juxta juxtaposition of, of, you know, how politics can work.

Grayson Brulte: Let’s go enter the 36 chambers and I’ll throw down some Wu-Tang for you. Dollar. Dollar bill, y’all. I mean, this is cream cash rules, everything around me. Cream at the money. Dollar, dollar bill y. All. That’s how, this is clearly looking from a political donation standpoint. ’cause it’s w Wu-Tang for the children here.

Walter Piecyk: Oh boy. Oh boy. Autonomy markets is now completely off the rails. Maybe we should shift to the next topic after that one. Do not edit that out. That was great. That was great.

Grayson Brulte: I’m not adding that out. ’cause Wu-Tang for the children, Wang for autonomy. and I could digress. And I, and I did meet several of those members and I did see them perform, uh, before ODDB passed away. And the, the rage woo. Tour was great, but I, I, I digress. And, and let’s get on to, to the next topic here.

Tesla. Elon’s got the cream. He’s the world’s richest man staying on the W theme here. They launched a ride hail service in the San Francisco Bay Area. A very large ODD. They’re charging for rides because the vehicles are owned by Tesla and they’re Tesla employees as the quote unquote safety attendants.

What do you make of Tesla’s moving to one of the largest ride hail markets in the world?

Walter Piecyk: I mean, fine. I understand it. You, you know, it’s good I guess because you’re in the market, but I already don’t like the optics because you, you know, the, this guy that’s trying to promote. Tesla and he is, oh, I’m so excited. ’cause it’s there and all they’re doing is showing a driver whose hands are like hovering right over the driving wheel.

I’m like, I do that every day with not even maybe that Robo Taxii software. So it, it’s unfortunate that California, you know, has these, has these restrictions. But you know, it at least enables, you know, Tesla to move forward at least in that state. But I, think it highlights why they should be expanding. To Dallas, Houston, whatever other states, rather than even bother with, with California, with this type of nonsense where they have someone in the driver’s seat.

Grayson Brulte: I asked the same thing and I said, why the heck are you going to California? They told me it’s one of the largest ride hailing markets, and, and that’s why they’re going there. A, as they go through the CUPC, which is the California Public Utilities Commissions process to get the permit to go drive, route to charge, this is all gonna come out in public filings.

The thing, what we need to watch in autonomy markets, who opposes Tesla for these, permits and why? So we need to, we need, we need to watch those hearings as, as I said, it’s, all gonna be public. Videos are out there, documents are gonna be out there. That’s gonna be something very, very, very interesting to watch.

Walter Piecyk: yes, it is. And my prediction is gonna be that some of these people won’t even be able to contain themselves by bringing in their, views, uh, about Elon to what should be their objective views about whether you want to have driver out in this market. We’ll watch, I hope I’m wrong.

I’m guessing that they’re so dumb that they won’t even, they won’t even hold back in conflating, um, two different things. I understand if you’ve got concerns about the safety or you wanna debate lidar, this, that, and the other thing. But we all know, you know, the underlying kind of issues that, that, um, happens.

In fact, even as it relates to, you know, what Tesla’s doing in Austin, I mean. Everyone lost their brains when, like the, the, the Tesla car pulled in momentarily because it was in the wrong lane, back into the right lane when there was no actual, you know, immediate threat. Obviously the car would’ve stopped if there was immediate threat, threat to an threat to an accident.

But these same people that were tweeting at me, where’s your tweet about the two Waymo cars that just got into an accident in Phoenix? Like, and are you now calling for Phoenix to shut down all operations? Because of this. And again, I’m not picking on Waymo ’cause I think, you know, who knows what, what the backstory was there.

It was a small fender bender. And you know,

again, it’s, it’s, it’s my belief that this is the process that we’re going through to get to reducing the tens of thousands of people that are dying on our roads and changing our economy by utilizing ai to push autonomy forward.

Grayson Brulte: And you know, that if that incident that occurred in Phoenix was Tesla, it would be national headlines, it would be out with pitchforks to get it. It’s a, it, it, it’s two sides to a story. It’s, it’s really truly amazing because no matter if you’re pro Waymo, you’re pro Tesla, you’re pro autonomy, autonomy’s gonna save lives. It’s gonna make a road safer. It’s gonna give my grandmother the ability to go to the beauty parlor and have a gin and tonic without having to worry about getting attacked by a driver. it’s going to give children the ability to go to school. It’s gonna give better to go to better charter schools, to go to private schools, and their parents can’t drive from there.

Autonomy unlocks the economy and to sit there and attack this because you don’t like this or you don’t like this, or you’re invested in lidar, It’s, not nonsense. Drop it. Autonomy is good for everybody.

Walter Piecyk: I don’t think they should drop it, but maybe a little less hyperbole. It’s, it’s important to focus on safety and debate the topics. I kind of sense your frustration. I’ll give you another example. I just saw a video where there was a Tesla going around in a circle because the person was trying to see how it would react when cones blocked off.

Someone took a snippet of that and like, oh my God, this thing’s going around in circles. Shut down the whole program. Once again, I remember an almost identical video. From Waymo where a car was going around in a circle and the guy was talking to, you know, someone on whatever the service, no one was a threat of being injured.

It was just, you know, part of what that process was. It was quickly resolved in, you know, and likely in, in both cases, you know, when I say quickly, like, okay, it’s going around in a circle, didn’t have to, you know, get resolved in five minutes if it was about to hit someone. It might have stopped or it would’ve stopped.

So, , it’s the double standard is, I think it’s getting a bit, a bit much, and I think now we maybe should have a segment every week calling out the double standard.

Grayson Brulte: Yes, and we need to identify who’s on the Waymo Sports Team and who’s on the Tesla sports team. ’cause this seems like this is a heated rivalry here.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, that’s perfect. That that’s fine though. I mean, and, and when you’re early in game changing technologies. People get what I call religion on the names that they, that they like. And this drives stocks up and, and this drives stocks down, but you get very dug in camps that, that want to hear. Um, one version of it.

I hope we don’t do that. You know, obviously everyone’s human, they’re gonna have their biases. We we’re gonna challenge ourselves and, and continue to challenge us, you know, in the various ways that you can online or with direct emails. About where you think that we’re not keeping an open mind, but um, we’re keeping an open mind of both.

And just to restate, Waymo is clearly the leader now. There’s no doubt about that. And to also clearly state AI changes a lot of things including autonomy.

Grayson Brulte: I mean, AI is changing. The economy does, does Just look at the growth of Microsoft and Meta last night from the earnings. Those were incredible, incredible growth metrics. Gonna get Amazon tonight, and I’m sure we’re gonna see growth in AWS unsure, but I’m, I’m sure based on that, we probably will. The interesting thing, if you look at from the growth perspective to me, even though Tesla’s going into a market that they’re not ready from a regulatory standpoint, to me it signals that they are very, very serious about robax.

The ODD goes all the way from San Jose to Berkeley, remove the regulatory environment. The operating full drive route. Any estimates of how many thousands of vehicles they’re gonna need to keep the wait time, say sub 10 minutes.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, that’s way too early for us to, to start speculating on that. But I think it’s it, it is, I think, valid for you to point out the size of the ODD. The theory would be that. If that goes well in that large ODD and they can go drive her out from a, from a regulatory standpoint, they do And it’s not like an Austin situation where it kind of starts here, gets to a larger object type size thing and then, you maybe, maybe gets larger, um, larger from there.

When do you think, by the way, that Austin will, will increase Its, its footprint for the robot taxi.

Grayson Brulte: we’re recording this on July 31st. We’re looking at our third expansion, I would say by the end of September for the third Austin expansion.

Walter Piecyk: Wow, that late. I, I disagree. I’d say by the end of the summer we’re gonna see an, a notable expansion in, in Austin with, uh, with, um, with, Tesla. And I would also say you’re gonna start seeing other good signal, meaning, you know, different people that they’re gonna allow in there more, adding more cars. I think there’s always already some indication of a car.

I think I saw a tweet that Ed Ludlow is gonna be heading to Austin in September. Um, so I’m sure if he’s a Bloomberg reporter, so clearly, you know, Tesla’s getting to the point where they’re broadening out The

type of people as if, if this is the first podcast you’re listening to, you should check our one from several weeks ago where Grayson and I spent three days, you know, Austin checking out the service there.

Grayson Brulte: The surface was impressive and I’ll, I’ll give you another prediction. I would say by uh, October, no safety tenant, fully open to the public in Austin.

Walter Piecyk: a good one too. All right. We got a lot of good predictions for Tesla. Let’s hope they deliver.

Grayson Brulte: we have a lot of predictions, but I, I want get back to California and, and the, the, the look at the future, I, and again, I’m gonna ask you from a hypothetical standpoint. I know you really don’t want to forecast, but I have to ask you. Tesla’s operating full robax in the state of California licensed by the CUPC.

Waymo is operating full drive route as they have been for, for years now. What impact does that have on Uber?

Walter Piecyk: Again, it’ll depend on the number of cars. It’ll depend on are they going to the airport, and it’ll depend on the highway miles we’ve already seen the impact on, on Uber. In terms of the numbers and you know, many argue that Waymo’s already larger than Lyft in some of these markets. So that obviously is gonna expand it, um, even further for them.

So, and I think in, in the case of Uber, it is such a large company. It’s a global company, right? This is a huge business. It’s, it’s less about the actual financial impact in the near term. It’s the implications on what this means for their business in the long term. ’cause then you get more people’s light bulbs going off and like, oh.

They look at autonomy and they say, you know, what’s that autonomy mix in five or 10 years? And what’s Uber’s share, assuming autonomy’s there, and how much is that reliant on partnering with Waymo and, and what Tesla’s impact? So I think it’s really more about, and this, is what stocks do, Grayson and they discount future, um, revenue.

It’s not about what you did, it’s about what you’re about to do. And I think that’s, that is the, that’s the bigger implication as, as things expand in California.

Grayson Brulte: let’s move on to trucking. This week, David Welch from Bloomberg put out an article about autonomous trucking. And their safe approach to scaling and ramping up commercial service with companies looking at 2026 and and 2027 to really ramp up from an industry perspective, what is your thoughts on how the autonomous trucking industry is approaching commercialization?

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, I mean, interesting article and he’s, and he’s right and you know, there’s, everyone’s got a full. Focus on safety. Even if you went to, if we went back to the Tesla earnings call, you know, the, the comments around safety were, there, were preeminent, and I think this is speaks to, to Aurora. They, they have this kind of saying, crawl, walk, run, or whatever, you know, whatever they’re talking about as they should, right?

You have these large trucks that are in the market, , in the case of Aurora, you know, which has a lead on the competition. You know, it’s questionable how many years or months or weeks that that might be. Maybe they better start running, you know, soon. Um, ’cause they’ve been crawling and walking, you know, for an extended period of time.

And you know, I think when we go to the Aurora call specifically, you know, there was a lot of questions that stemmed from that question I asked on the PACCAR call a week ago. Just saying like, Hey, when can you actually pull that driver, um, out of the driver’s seat? And it didn’t sound like it was happening.

In 2025, it sounded like at the earliest, you’re, you’re thinking is a 2026 event.

Grayson Brulte: That’s what a clear indicators on the, on the call if what if another autonomous trucking company hypothetically launched driver route commercial paid operations? Before Aurora do, do people start to then question their approach to this?

Walter Piecyk: Well, Aurora already has paid operations, so they are, they did book a million dollars of revenue, which generated a great quarter guys for them on their earnings call. Um, so they already have paid operations, but to your point, there is someone, what they would call an observer sitting in the driver’s seat.

I’ve got confirmation, uh, from their CFO that in fact that, you know, observer, I guess never touched the wheel, um, or whatever. So that’s, you know, in their minds, you know, that’s where they’re at. I also did see a video on LinkedIn of a Kodiak truck that was on a road, and I think one of the criticisms that have existed about Kodiak relative to Aurora, it’s like, oh, it’s just in the basin.

These are not real roads. And, you know, discounting the weather challenges that Kodiak has. Um, and now we’re seeing videos of, of, you know, a truck on the road. I don’t know, did you see that same video that I did

Grayson Brulte: I saw it on YouTube, a matter of fact, and it was from four years ago and the truck was driving

Walter Piecyk: oh, four years ago?

Grayson Brulte: at night four years ago. Kodiak was driving at night. Then Aurora just stated that they just started it, but Kodiak was doing it, four years ago. ’cause there’s video proof.

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, the night weather thing, it, you know, Aurora appears to be making progress on they, they were really emphasizing that on their earnings call. , But again, like the issue is, you know, if for this economically to work, you obviously have to have the driver out of that seat. Now it’s early, who cares if the driver’s in the seat, you’re still proving.

I think the technology adding lanes, it’s kinda like criticizing Waymo to say, Hey, you have $150,000 card. No, you’re just trying to establish the market first. So I’m gonna give them a pa aurora a pass for having an observer. It’s not their decision to do that. It’s the requirement of these OEMs. I’m a little disappointed that it sounds like when Volvo delivers them trucks, they will also be these prototype type trucks.

Um, so if they get them in 2025. The, um, Volvo trucks for Aurora will also have a, effectively a safety driver there, but hopefully as we progress to 2026, they can get the drivers out of both of them. And that’s gonna rely on me going back to PAC Army, like, when are your production line trucks, , gonna be available when you have all your parts in there and not, you know, some of these prototype parts.

So what, what’s your view on if and when PACCAR gets to that point?

Grayson Brulte: I don’t know if PACCAR will ever get to that point. And I, and I, and I say that very bluntly, I am unsure if PACCAR will ever get to that point.

Walter Piecyk: Well, if I don’t, I mean, I disagree with that. ’cause why are they, why would they be wasting time developing a truck that has redundancy in it? Or do you think that even that that development of a truck that has their own redundancy in it, the timeline for that production vehicle. Is not gonna occur even in 2026 that it’s a, 2027 timeline.

Grayson Brulte: I’m not gonna give a a timeline or speculate on when it might happen. I, I will. Give a prediction that the next time Aurora removes the driver, not an attendant, not an observer

from the truck, it will be a Volvo VNL truck, and when that will be, will most likely be in 2026, not 2025.

Walter Piecyk: So getting back to, to Paccar, um, first of all, I, I disagree because at some point they have to look at their business and if the future is autonomy, as we both agree, they have to make adjustments, right? In terms of, of what their plans are. Um, again, there’s, there’s indications that they’re, that they’re building these trucks.

I guess the question is what if they get to production? And they have this truck. So they’ve, they’ve defined that as, Hey, we have all our own parts in there. We’re, we’re fine with it. They still have to do, they still have to make that decision of like, we’re fine with taking that driver out. And I still think there is apprehension.

My sense is at the senior level at at PACCAR for enabling that to happen. But I guess we’ll just have to, you know, see how this plays out. It’s unfortunately, will, will not be playing out, um, in 2025. In the meantime. Aurora can continue to get tens of trucks continue on with Volvo, expand the routes, like they’re gonna add this Phoenix to, I think Dallas route, which is like a thousand miles.

Um, and kind of prove out that model. And hopefully at some point we can get into one of these trucks ourselves. I’d be happy to sit in the backseat, even if you have the observer there, or I’ll be observing online to see if there’s any interventions when, when, uh, you know, when they’re pushing these videos online.

Grayson Brulte: Watch the videos, but it just seems Now if you look at, go Google data. You look at general interest that has seemed that there’s more interest in autonomous trucking with, with Kodiak and Plus preparing to go public this fall. is the, the general interest is building, is the investor interest also building in the sector?

Walter Piecyk: Aurora’s stock is up 5% after last lane’s print. I’m not sure they said anything on the call that necessarily, you know, justifies that. But yeah, there’s. Still a very, you know, there’s a lot of, uh, cap valuation there. I think these SPACs are going relatively well. And there’s just interesting, there’s interest in autonomy already and there’s just not a lot of ways to invest it.

So a hundred percent I think, you know, people care. We’ll just have to see, you know, how things, how things develop. With Aurora, it’s also, you know, interesting in terms of the models. Again, Aurora is sticking to this, like, Hey, they’re dealing with carriers as opposed to what we talked about in prior podcasts, bot auto.

Selling to the end customer. so we’ll see if there are any challenges. You know, ’cause as they add trucks, even if it has the observer, we’ll see if they face any challenges as signing up signing up. Customers so far they’ve, you know, they’ve added one or two or three, right? These are small numbers.

We’ll, we’ll see, you know, as, as things go forward, you know, can you get, like JB Hunt a lot of big orders from JB Hunt and others.

Grayson Brulte: There’s a lot to see and a lot to watch in the market, especially Thomas Trucking. From a model perspective, as we look at the market, what do we need to watch for next week? It’s the first week of August. Anything big coming down the pipe.

Walter Piecyk: Since we’re doing this before Amazon earnings, maybe we’ll get a Zoox comment on the Amazon call. No, no chance. No chance that there’s, there’s Amazon comments. . But the big ones are, are Uber and Lyft reporting next week on the same day. Uber in The morning, Lyft in the afternoon. Also, dirt, DoorDash, Instacart, serve, robotics, Ouster, I mean, you know, the earning season continues strong for me next week,

Grayson Brulte: The one thing that you and I both know next week, Uber’s gonna get a lot of questions on autonomy and we’re probably gonna get a lot of really good insight into their autonomy strategy. Until then, the future is bright. The future autonomous. The future is revenue. Walt. Until next week,

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered