Transcript: Waymo’s Pivot? Counting Teslas and Can Aurora Beat the Clock?

Executive Summary

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s signaling that the company might potentially be moving away from HD maps with its “generalizable driver” while hitting 250,000 fully autonomous rides per week.

All eyes are on Austin as Tesla prepares to launch its robotaxi service without a safety driver, creating a direct competitor for Waymo in the city. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for Aurora, which faces a critical end-of-month deadline to deliver on its promised driver-out commercial launch.

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered

Key Autonomy Markets Topics & Timestamps

[01:00] Waymo’s “Generalizable Driver”

In a social media post, Waymo used the phrase “generalizable Waymo driver,” which suggests a potential strategic shift away from its reliance on pre-built high-definition (HD) maps. This move could enable Waymo to scale and launch in new markets more quickly, adopting an approach closer to competitors Tesla and Wayve. However, the company has yet to provide full clarity on what this new term means for its technology stack.

[04:15] Waymo’s Potential New Business Models

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has indicated that Waymo is exploring “future optionality around personal ownership as well,” opening the door to licensing its technology to OEMs or even selling Waymo-powered vehicles directly to consumers. This move is seen as a potential response to the competitive threat from Tesla and a strategy to entice automotive manufacturers into partnerships.

[10:30] Tesla’s Austin Robotaxi Launch

Elon Musk has indicated Tesla is targeting a June or July launch for its robotaxi service in Austin. The service is expected to start with a fleet of 10 to 20 Model Ys operating without a safety driver, relying instead on remote assistance if a vehicle gets stuck. The operational area is anticipated to be comparable to Waymo’s current service area in the city.

[15:30] Cost Comparison: Tesla vs. Waymo

A key competitive advantage for Tesla is vehicle cost. Elon Musk claimed that producing a Tesla robotaxi could cost 20-25% of what it costs to produce a Waymo vehicle with all its sensors. While the current cost of Waymo’s pre-production vehicles is not indicative of final production costs, Tesla is still expected to have a significant cost advantage due to its ground-up engineering and manufacturing scale.

[18:30] Wayve’s Expansion to Japan

The AI-native autonomous vehicle company Wayve has expanded its operations to Japan, opening a new center in Yokohama to support testing and development. The company’s announcement referenced collaboration with multiple Japanese “OEMs,” suggesting that in addition to its known Nissan deal, a second or third partnership may be forthcoming. It’s predicted that Honda, a former partner of Cruise in Japan, could be one of these new partners.

[22:30] Uber and VW Partnership

Uber and Volkswagen announced a partnership to bring autonomous VW ID. Buzz electric vans onto the Uber network, starting in Los Angeles in 2026. The vehicles will be powered by Mobileye technology but will operate with a safety driver until at least 2027, raising questions about the maturity of the underlying autonomous system. This move follows a previously announced but unrealized plan by VW to launch an autonomous program in Austin in 2023.

[27:30] US Government’s Push for Autonomous Vehicle Innovation

A Trump administration official, Secretary Duffy, has stated a goal to accelerate deregulation and remove hurdles for the autonomous vehicle industry to ensure innovation happens in America. This push for a “Made in America” approach could have implications for companies like Waymo that are using foreign-made vehicles, such as the Chinese-made Zeekr.

[30:30] Aurora’s Approaching Deadline

Aurora is facing a critical, self-imposed deadline at the end of April to launch its driver-out commercial operations. Having already pushed the deadline back once, the industry is closely watching to see if the company will deliver on its promise. With just days remaining, CEO Chris Urmson is described as being “on the clock”.

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Walt that day has come. Elon’s going back to Tesla. Investors are roaring. Waymo is now completing 250,000 fully autonomous rises. A week Wave is expanding operations to Japan. Uber continues to fragment the market this time with a partnership with VW to put the mini ID buses. And Secretary Duffy says, we’re rolling back regulations. We’re scaling autonomy. Busy week. Let’s start with Waymo 250,000 fully autonomous rides a week. Does that become the new metric of how we measure success of robax deployments?

Walter Piecyk: We’ll gravitate to whatever metric that these companies are willing to give us, but that’s certainly a good number up from 200,000 just in February of 2025, so 12% in a very short period of time. Period of time. So yeah, obviously that’s great. We just need to get them to more cars and then we can really see what, what the growth rate would be like.

Grayson Brulte: More cars are coming and when Waymo promoted this announcement on X, they used the term, I’m gonna quote this here, Walt, powered by our generalizable Waymo driver. That means in theory, the Waymo driver does not have to rely on HD maps anymore. Are is somebody listening to autonomy markets? What’s going on?

Walter Piecyk: that was a great catch. That you found on that tweet generalizable Waymo driver? I don’t think we should tweet about this and see how many other people pick this up until after our podcast drops on on Saturday. But yeah, I mean if you just look at what that word means, it, it reflects this kind of debate that we’ve had on the podcast on many episodes in terms of the map, the old map approach, and that perhaps handcuffing Google. Or, or enabling their competitors to kinda launch forward versus, you know, what Tesla is doing. And so many of these other, startups like Wayve, , who we’ll talk about later in the podcast are doing. So maybe that’s an indication that Google is gonna make that switch. The question is, can they, because the only thing we’ve heard about out of Google in terms of a true end-to-end AI was that white paper at the end of 2024. And I can’t imagine that there’s, that they’ve made massive. , inroads in that, you know, since that paper. So what are they really referring to here?

Grayson Brulte: What they’re referring to. I’ll just say this point blank. We need more clarity on exactly what they’re referring to. Can they? Yes. They have the financial resources to do pretty much anything. I want to find out how they incorporated some of the, some of the Google DeepMind technology into this, and perhaps that’s starting to accelerate. We really, truly do. Need more clarity. Do you think that we will perhaps get that clarity from Waymo in the coming months?

Walter Piecyk: I certainly hope so, Grayson, you know, I think this call was more helpful than most in terms of information about Waymo. Whether they’re willing to really embrace this generalizable and just say, Hey, we’re flipping on this kind of map based approach. It would be great to get more clarification. I’m not gonna hold my breath, , with this company in terms of getting that information, but certainly that could be a pivot in how they’re perceived, the, how the perceived approach is from that company.

Grayson Brulte: It would be really nice. I think it would help investors properly value Waymo. And on the call, Sundar Phai gave us insight. Mr. Phai said, I’m gonna quote him here. Waymo continues progressing on two important capabilities for riders, airport access and freeway driving. It’s coming. That’s a direct quote from Mr. Phai. Perhaps we see it in Q2.

Walter Piecyk: I think he recognizes the obvious, which we’ve talked about literally since episode one here, in terms of the unlock of airports for users of, you know, any type of ride share service. And we’ll see what happens to Uber and Lyft’s market share when Waymo does unlock that San Francisco airport and the LA airport. Similarly, or even just in LA in general, just based on my experience there, where rides were, you know, almost twice as long as they should have been because the cars were unwilling to, to go on these high highways. So it’s not surprising that they recognize that this is an issue. I think it’s great that they, he at least acknowledges it on a call. And I think, to your point, Grayson. You probably don’t acknowledge a weakness on a call unless you’re, you’re about to solve it. So maybe Q2 is gonna be our quarter where we see some of these things opened up for Waymo to airports and on highways.

Grayson Brulte: It seems to me on the call. Sundar is clearly getting dialed into the autonomy economy and what’s happening in all things autonomy ’cause during the q and a. This is the first time Mr. Pisha has ever been asked a question about Waymo during the q and a. And this individual said, I’m gonna quote this here ’cause this is hot off the press, but it’s cut off the call here Walt. There are future optionality around personal ownership as well, so we are widely exploring and quote, Mr. Phai opened the door to licensing. He also opened the door to personal ownership of Waymo vehicles. Is he realizing the threat, as he said with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the deal book, that the threat that Tesla possesses to Waymo’s core business.

Walter Piecyk: I think that’s an amazing quote. It’s new information. I think you’re right. , personal ownership can mean one of two things. They could theoretically create their own car and sell it, doubtful that that’s the issue. Or they could move towards a licensing deal with an OEM. And look on recent podcasts we’ve talked about that maybe OEMs are concerned about doing a deal with them because you know, you’re basically inviting in the enemy. And you’ve talked about how Apple, there’s been concern about Apple CarPlay and how OEMs don’t wanna invite them into the car. So maybe in those discussions, they realize in order to entice OEMs to partner with them, they have to offer a future to the OEMs, which include licensing their technology so that the OEMs themselves can go out and sell these cars to individual users, you know, in terms of use. So that’s a fascinating thing. I think it’s the latter part for sure and then the question is, is that in your mind, good or bad for our rideshare companies, Uber and Lyft?

Grayson Brulte: It’s going to depend point blank on the, the price point of the vehicle. It’s going to depend on the terms of the service. Can the vehicle only operate on the Waymo network? Can it operate on the Uber network? If it can operate on the Uber network, Uber gets further fragmentation. It’s really going to come down to how is the service rolled out? What are the terms of services and, and the big question that we do not know yet, do consumers really wanna share their own personally owned autonomous vehicle? We do not know yet.

Walter Piecyk: First of all, on that latter question, I think we don’t have to know because I think in general. 2% of personal cars are people willing to share their cars anyway by doing ride share, so everyone doesn’t have to share their car in order to, to plug it into the, to the network. Secondly, like if your car is fully autonomous, maybe you just say, pick me up at the airport and you don’t have to use any ride share network. I mean, that is the true future. But I guess you know more specifically in terms of the, the licensing and, and one of the things you said earlier in your answer. Which was, depends on whether you can use it on the Waymo Network or other networks. And I think that’s a, that’s a key question. ’cause if you go back to the Lyft relationship with MobileEye, they didn’t talk about an OEM, but they referenced having a car that’s quote unquote Lyft ready. That implied to me that this little company, Lyft, $2 billion market cap, you can say like, okay, we’ll do this partnership. As long as whoever uses that autonomy only uses it on Lyft, that’s fine. It makes sense. Now tell me how a government would feel. If Google went to an OEM and said, we’re gonna enable you to sell these personally owned vehicles, but if it went into a Robo Taxii network, you’re only gonna be able to go into the Waymo network. I’m guessing that some governments around the world, including the United States, regardless of who is in office, is gonna have an issue if, if they try and attempt that type of, of, uh, of relationship. What are your thoughts on that?

Grayson Brulte: Somebody’s getting a very sternly written letter from the FTC. That’s my thought.

Grayson Brulte: I don’t really see it happening. I’m not saying somebody hasn’t thought about it or, or, or tried it. So you have the Lyft ready, and at some point we are going to get Uber ready. We’re gonna get Waymo ready. What’s going to happen, and we’ve seen this traditionally in automotive, that these companies are gonna come together and they’re gonna develop a standard where the vehicle is built to a certain standard that can go on any network, and that’s how it’s gonna end up going.

Walter Piecyk: So if that is the case, right, and if we think that. In part, especially with Google, the government will have influence and there’s this standard where you can’t lock into one of the rideshare networks. That’s a good new outcome or new, scenario for Uber, right? Because if the past scenario was just a Waymo only network, which just wipes out Uber, if now you have cars out there that are autonomous and you know, right now the best autonomy, you know, in the market today. Then they can more easily be plugged into the Uber network and Uber can maintain its dominance. Again, as long as private ownership and how we utilize cars in general just doesn’t dramatically change over the next 10 years.

Grayson Brulte: If the economics of the vehicle change, where if you’re leasing it and you have full autonomy and you can make money paying for it to go on a network, I think we’ll see a higher. Increase of vehicles going outta network. I think another trend to look for, I think you’re gonna start to see more families adopt a single vehicle family versus a multi-vehicle family, depending on how the economics work.

Walter Piecyk: Absolutely. I think that there’s a lot of things to think about in terms of how this changes. Look, a lot of the companies that are now out raising money for autonomy are gonna have to deal with this new reality in terms of what bucket you’re really putting. Waymo and really more specifically Waymo’s technology into.

Grayson Brulte: Then there’s the other aspect of Tesla. Will Tesla only allow Tesla robotaxis to operate on the Tesla network, or will they allow them for pressure going back to that standard? To operate on a non Tesla network, that’s gonna be something we’re gonna have to watch as well.

Walter Piecyk: who knows if they face the same government scrutiny as a company like Google? Tesla doesn’t have that kind of dominant, you know, viewpoint, uh, or the dominant presence that someone like Google does. In terms of how the, the agencies ha have looked at them. So I think in general that the, the bias for Tesla would be to say like, okay, it’s gonna build this massive robo taxii army, and even private owners would be locked into a Tesla, robo Taxii army that’s out there. I think that’s the way Elon is described. It could be that Elon just says, I don’t care, you know, if you want to use my cars and, and we’ll do a deal with Uber and plug it into them. I can certainly see that happening. We’ll just have to wait to see what Uber kind of, you know, indicates there. The bigger question with Uber, a company that has no cars on the road at the moment in, in terms of delivering service, you know, were their on their earnings call. And for me, you know, those comments on the call, this close to June, gave me a little bit more confidence or a lot of bit more confidence that I think gonna deliver on that June target for launching a robotaxis service. In Austin, you know, in June. And more importantly, I think based on his comments without a safety driver, we’ve debated that, that on past podcasts. , but it’s, I think when he’s referencing, yes, we will have a remote driver or someone basically saying, Hey, if the car gets stuck, we’re gonna move it. That by definition implies that there’s not gonna be someone sitting in the car driving one of these model Ys that’s out there.

Grayson Brulte: Correct, but you missed the, the key thing he said in the earnings call Mr. Musk hedged for July so it could get pushed in July. He, he hedged there. He also stated, as you said, as you clearly stated, the model wise 10 to 20 vehicles. We believe that there’s 35 Waymo vehicles currently operating. So if you look at way has 35 operating in their ODD. Tesla’s gonna launch 10 to 20 model Y. How large of an ODD do you see these vehicles being deployed?

Walter Piecyk: Again, that was a question that you and I debated on this podcast many times. So, and we, we were thinking like, oh, if it’s driver out, is it gonna be super limited, maybe only at a factory or whatever it is. But if it’s 10 to the, the way it was being described in 10 to 20 vehicles, I, I think, I think what you’re gonna see is a similar service area that Waymo launched with. Yes. Waymo had 35 cars, so that’s, you know, significantly more in percentage terms I guess. But like, is there really a difference between 20 and 35? The wait times for those Waymo cars was long because it launched during South by Southwest and you had a bunch of nerds that are, that were trying to hit the app often. So it was hard to get, I think, since South by Southwest. Perhaps they’ve added more cars to that network, but I think wait times have been a little bit better. So I think, I’m guessing if you’re trying to read the tea leaves that you’re gonna see a decent coverage area of Austin that approximates, I think what Waymo and Uber are jointly delivering to that market today.

Grayson Brulte: I agree with that, but I want to throw in a caveat here. Tesla’s a band. People travel all over the country to go to Tesla events to be part of, , Tesla history. Will Tesla be able to keep up with the demand of all the Tesla fans? Flocking into Austin for this launch.

Walter Piecyk: I hear you with that. They have a very, loyal, customer base. I don’t think it’s gonna be the same as like flying into Austin where people are coming in for South by Southwest. I don’t think you’re gonna see the same number of people in Austin the day that that Tesla launches. Certainly you and I are are planning on heading down there as soon as there any indication that, that it’s available. But I don’t, I don’t think you’re gonna see the same type of numbers that you saw it south by Southwest.

Grayson Brulte: We’ll be down there. And don’t forget, we’re gonna hit Terry Blacks and we’re gonna take an autonomous Tesla there. And then maybe since we’re autonomy markets and we’re not, we’re not autonomy partisan, we’ll take. Waymo back. That’s how we’ll roll over time. How large do you see the Tesla fleet becoming in Austin?

Walter Piecyk: I don’t really know. I think if you try to do some basic math like we did before in terms of the number of Waymo cars that you really need to serve California, you could say, you know, you know, there’s a couple hundred probably are necessary. For at least initial launch, and I think we did some, some, a little research and, and looked at that. There was probably about 8,000, 9,000 Teslas registered in the greater Austin area. And if you kind of match that to, you know, what percent of privately owned cars are actually used for rideshare, we used some California data and I think you get to about 2% of registered cars are probably used for rideshare. On a regular basis. So if you took the 2% of the 8,400 Teslas, there might not be the same correlation, right? A Tesla owner might be less willing to be an Uber driver and have their car shared, , than a regular driver. But if you just use the 2%, that gets you to an incremental 150 vehicles in addition to whatever Elon’s putting in the market is in terms of the owned vehicles, like the 10 to 20 that they start with. So you could get up to a couple, the couple hundred that you would need between. The shared people willing to put plug in their, their cars on the network as well as a, a lower capital investment that Tesla would need to do in order to launch in a new market. And look, and most importantly, no mapping, right? I mean, I know we talked earlier in the podcast about, , Waymo and maybe they’re switching their approach here to, to increase their ability to get to markets faster, but. The difference between Tesla launching a market right now and Waymo launching its seventh, eighth, or ninth market is, is without doing the mapping. That implies that maybe these things start cranking open at a much faster pace, and their ability to surpass Waymo in a very short timeframe, , becomes a viable, possibility.

Grayson Brulte: I wouldn’t necessarily say switching for Waymo, I would say modifying their approach. ’cause they realize that there’s competition on the horizon. So here’s a hypothetical. Let’s say the, the Tesla Robotaxis launch goes off without a hitch. We’re six months in. And we’re starting to get data now, real quantifiable data that the Tesla wait times are a lot lower than the Waymo’s and Tesla’s seeing significant uptick versus Waymo. Does that force alphabet’s hand to put more vehicles in the market and say, okay, we’re competing in this market.

Walter Piecyk: Grayson, this is like the, someone looking at the, the shipping times for an iPhone. The haters are gonna be like, oh, the wait times are low because no one feels safe about getting an Elon’s Tesla. , and if they’re long it’s like, oh, you know, they just don’t have enough cars in the market to address it. Or maybe the cars are not performing well. So, and in terms of the actual data. Yip it or otherwise, aren’t you? The one that is criticized YipIt data is, is something that we shouldn’t even be able to rely on.

Grayson Brulte: Yes, but I do believe that we will get factual data from Tesla, not YipIt data to help us make this comparison.

Walter Piecyk: Again, te Elon haters are gonna, are gonna challenge anything that comes outta Tesla. , in terms of when you say reliable data.

Grayson Brulte: Okay, so let’s have the Elon haters that there’s some listen here. Call me all sorts of weird names. Let’s have ’em challenge this data on the earnings call. Elon said that to make a Tesla probably cost 25 or 20% of Waymo with all the sensors included. If that’s true, Waymo is going to have to get their cost down. And can Hyundai truly unlock that cost saving?

Walter Piecyk: Look, it’s undeniable that the model Y is the number, the most popular car in the world, but. I’ve said this many, many times, like the cost of the Waymo today is, is frankly irrelevant ’cause they haven’t hit to their production level cars. And you know, it’s really where the future car is gonna be priced at. I, I still think that Tesla is gonna be able to be cheaper right. Than, than what Waymo can put together For sure. If, if all of this works as promised, right? , and not just because of the not having a couple hundred dollars. Front Lidar in there. I don’t think that’s gonna be the, the, you know, end all be all, but just how they’re engineering from the ground up, that product, you know, they’re gonna be much, they’re gonna be, it’s gonna enable them to leapfrog in terms of cost and, and frankly just volumes.

Grayson Brulte: As promised is the key, but we have government data. Tesla has expanded testing to the European continent. They’re now legally able to test FSD supervised with Tesla trained drivers, and they’re going to share data with the government of Norway. This is a very big step ’cause now Tesla’s in the European continent. What do you make of this move?

Walter Piecyk: I just make it as you have governments now willing for it to be tested where. It wasn’t long ago that people were insisting to us that there’s no way that autonomy can work without lidar and the approach that Elon is taking. And here we are a month or two away from them starting that service in Austin and governments in Europe, which I think generally have been pretty anti Elon, maybe not in this particular country that they were, that that’s, that’s, you know, enabling it Norway to allow them to come in and, and do some testing. I mean, that’s. Pretty positive.

Grayson Brulte: It’s very positive and we’re starting to see autonomy scale globally with one of the fastest growing markets in autonomy, being Japan. Our friends, Alex Kendall and the team over at Wayve, they opened an office this week and then lo and behold, he pops up with the founder of TIER IV who was on the Road to Autonomy podcast this week, and in the press release that Wayve put out announcing their expansion to Japan, they put some very, very clever language, and I’m gonna quote this from the Wayve press release here. The new Yokohama Center will support testing and development in Tokyo in surrounding regions, deepen collaboration with Japanese OEMs and accelerate product readiness and quote. Did you pick up on that? It was OEMs, plural, not single. That we know they have the Nissan deal. We covered it last week. There potentially looks like, based on that language, that there’s a second or third OEM deal coming.

Walter Piecyk: , this could be part of just trying to partner with the countries, right? So Nissan’s a Japanese automaker, is it not? So the fact that they’re actually gonna be doing this trial in Japan. And perhaps they need some government approvals to operate in Japan. I think it’s just, it makes sense. And whether it’s with Nissan or, or multiple other ones, , for them to do this, so good for them. And I think it relates to the OEM. The second thing I think about this that’s interesting is we’ve heard many people talk about how different cultures, you know, drive and walk ’em in their streets and things like that, and how this is a challenge and. May Mobility has talked about this at Olson in terms of like, you know, what they have to deal with in uh, Japan versus in the us. So I think it’s almost a flex too Wayve. Also, a company that’s not relying on mapping, right? AI first, AI native, end to end. No mapping to say, Hey, we can go to Japan. It’s different than Stuttgart, it’s different than the United States and it doesn’t matter. We’re doing three very different things. Let’s see how our technology performs in, in, in all these different, scenarios. So I think it’s a flex in some way some ways, but it’s also, I think, just a real, it, it just has to, has to do with the OEM partners that they happen to sign up this, this time around and props to them. Like, if, if it’s more than one Nissan and you’re signing up multiple OEMs at a time or in that process, then that’s obviously great news for, for Wayve.

Grayson Brulte: I’ll give you a prediction here. One of the partners will be Honda. And I say that because Honda was an investor and a partner in Cruise, Honda was the one bringing Cruise to Japan. And furthermore, I do know for a fact that Honda was very upset and disappointed when Cruise was shut down and Honda still has those autonomy ambitions. So that’s my prediction that Honda will be a partner with Wayve in the future.

Walter Piecyk: It’s great to see Wayve making these, these partnerships. I, where’s Nuro Grayson? I mean, shouldn’t we, we be seeing an OEm Partnership with Nuro pretty soon here.

Grayson Brulte: We have to, we, I would give Nuro three to six months to see an OEM partnership before investors begin to question, ’cause they just had the capital raise at a $6 billion valuation. But we do need to see some announcement with an OEM partner because when they get the OEM partner that unlocks the Uber partnership. Similar to wave that gets very, very interesting and gives

Walter Piecyk: Look, this is also stating the obvious, but Wayve with successful partnerships with more OEMs for whatever the reason. Is another positive for Uber in terms of creating fragmentation. If Wayve can leapfrog Waymo or even key pace with Tesla or or leapfrog Tesla. For all we know in terms of the functionality of the technology, that’s gonna be a positive for being able to plug into the Uber network.

Grayson Brulte: That’s a huge positive. Wayve is. Moving fast. Uber’s also moving fast, doing deals. Today we got an announcement that the VWID bus, the old hippie vans are now, they’re getting autonomous and they’re going on the Uber network starting Los Angeles in 2026. But me being the guy that reads all the fine print, Walt Catch safety drivers, they did not think that they can get, and this was in a tech crunch report that they can get drivers until 2027. It seems a little premature to make that announcement.

Walter Piecyk: Is this MobileEye wanting to make an announcement to their investors. It’s obviously additive for Uber to, to, you know, help technology companies along the way. It’s hard to know where MobileEye is Again, we, I talked about Lyft earlier in their relationship with MobileEye and having. You know, a lift ready car on, on the Mobileye platform, but didn’t even talk about a car. Like what is the car? Is it this vw? Is it something else? I don’t, I don’t even know.

Grayson Brulte: This was a Uber VW press release Mobileye was only mentioned in the bottom in the disclosure part of who’s gonna power the technology. They were not part of the overall press release. So that’s a sign there.

Walter Piecyk: so I take back then what I said in terms of Mobileye using this to help with the technology. This is just, I. I guess Uber and vw. I don’t know, man, I, until I see O Mobileye delivering on some actual autonomous products as opposed to, you know, ADAS type things, it, it’s hard to truly understand where they are in the market.

Grayson Brulte: Nobody understands. I don’t know one individual that’s been in the vehicle. And if you listen to Mobileye earnings call. They keep teasing that we’re gonna get this big win, this big win, but they’re never giving Wall Street the certainty. And if we look back at what happened, don’t forget, this is not the first rodeo for vw. I. Looking to deploy these autonomous vehicles. They were looking in July, 2023. They announced that they were going to launch a fully autonomous program in Austin with a fleet of 10 ID buses. That was 2023. It never happened. The program was shut down. Now they’re pivoting to la. Something doesn’t add up here. I think at some point VWs gonna look for a new autonomy partner.

Walter Piecyk: Well, what was the technology partner for the, what you were referring to in in Austin?

Grayson Brulte: It was Mobileye and there was a caveat in the contract that VW would not be allowed to operate that without a safety driver. And that’s similar language that we saw with the Uber announcement for LA must be a safety driver until at least end of 2026. So they can explore going driver out in 2027. There’s a pattern here.

Walter Piecyk: Let’s just put a pin in it. We look forward for our MobileEye listeners to reach out to us and help us understand kind of where you are on that, on that, or even our, even our VW listeners. Where are you on the roadmap? What technology you’re gonna use, and if you’re MobileEye, you know, what is your timeline in terms of getting to, to truly be competitive with what’s happening literally in the market today?

Grayson Brulte: And to vw. What are you doing in California? Because as of March 4th, 2025, you have not been granted an autonomous vehicle testing permit for testing either with a driver or without a driver. So where are these vehicles been testing if they have not been testing in, Austin. They’ve been, all the tests have been going on in Germany. We really, truly need some, some clarity from vw. So I say to the folks at vw, Allison Pascal, love for you to come on Autonomy Markets and really tell us truly what’s going on there. We really truly need clarity there. What do you think Walt?

Walter Piecyk: I love how, I just love how you pivot this into trying recruiting new guests. But Grayson, you never seem to have difficulty. Every week. You’ve got someone new that you’re interviewing. On the road to autonomy. So yes, of course, get VW out there and I think we’ve got a couple good road trips to some of these OEMs that we’re, that we’ve got queued up in the, in the coming months. So I’m looking forward to doing that together.

Grayson Brulte: I’m looking forward to, to doing it toge together with you and to seeing what’s being built there. One company that we discuss a lot on autonomy markets that just keeps to keep chugging along is Toyota. This week in partnership with Pony ai James Peng’s Company, they announced the Toyota BZ four X robo taxi custom built for pony. That’s their seventh generation. Don’t forget, Toyota has a strategic partnership with Uber. Could we potentially over time see these pony robo taxis go on the Uber network in Europe?

Walter Piecyk: Sure, why not? But I think the more interesting thing here is is, and we’ve talked about this before, Toyota just being a willing partner to autonomy and just that management team, you know, having their foot forward in, you know, trying to partner with what mobility, Aurora, they got a partnership with Uber. You’ve got this one now with with pony ai. I dunno. I think, I think that is probably the better approach. Hopefully it doesn’t backfire in that they’re so scattered in so many different directions that they can’t focus on the right one that’s gonna push them forward to sell as many cars as they can. But they’ve definitely been friendly to tech partners.

Grayson Brulte: Toyota could become the enabler that allows Uber to accelerate fragmentation, which they need. And then we have politics. Secretary Duffy is accelerating deregulation in autonomy. He came out today and said that he wants the innovation to happen here in America. He wants to remove the regulatory hurdles and he wants to work towards an autonomous vehicle framework. We finally have a comment from the Trump White House that they’re going in on autonomy. A big day-to-day in autonomy.

Walter Piecyk: I just hope that Secretary Duffy is so distracted with moving the framework forward that he ignores the fact that New York is ignoring his pleas to remove congestion pricing in New York City and leaves us alone with our traffic free or traffic lightened streets. But it was great to see the, the vehicle framework today. , do you think that implies. China is definitively out that there’s like a lockdown on these, Zeekr cars that Waymo is hoping to use or is actually already starting to use in in California.

Grayson Brulte: comments today by Secretary Duffy about having it made in America is a clear example. That I called it right. It was an unforced error. It’s time to pivot and accelerate your relationship with Hyundai and the vehicles are being built in Savannah, Georgia. The headline after this came out, this is the Bloomberg headline. US regulator takes initial steps to boost. Self-driving cars. Market reaction was muted to that. Why?

Walter Piecyk: What is the US regulators? What steps are they taking? Because when I, when I looked at that two page release, I didn’t really get that much out of it other than. I think it was saying something like foreign cars or import cars had some exceptions that enabled them to do self-driving and domestically made cars, didn’t have that. So they’re gonna try and clear that, first of all, that in itself doesn’t make sense. Why would you provide exemptions for imports, but not for the domestically made cars? So can you explain that to me?

Grayson Brulte: I can’t explain it to you because I’m not a Waymo Democrat, as Thomas L. Freeman wrote in the New York Times today. That’s why. What? Mr. Freeman laid out. No. Mr. Freeman actually made a really interesting case that the vehicles need to be built in America and they should be made with, with union labor for Robax. He is wrote a compelling case to make it. Amer, uh, built in America. So he had this really interesting divide where the secretary Duffy wants it made in America. Then you have Thomas l Friedman from the New York Times Penal columnist and three times Puler winner saying he wants it made there. So the question is, are Rob Robotaxis becoming a political voting block over time?

Walter Piecyk: Well, your initial question was like, did this regulator? Takes initial steps should excite investors. But if you’re telling me that it’s to force things to get made in America, I’m not sure that that investors are embracing that. Just like they didn’t embrace, you know, some of the early comments by some of our secretaries about making everything in the United States. Because at some point it’s better to make things in different, or get certain parts in different parts of the world so that you can generate a profit and more importantly, scale up as quickly as possible. The belief that you can just start to make a bunch of things or cars or whatever it is in the US overnight, I think is foolish.

Grayson Brulte: There is a lot of press conferences, improv press conferences, and we don’t know where this is going. That’s the thing I’ll say. We, we don’t know where this is going. Another thing where we don’t know where it’s going. Aurora, we’re recording this podcast on Thursday, April 24th. There is 30 days in the month of April. If we have not gotten in a filing, we have not gotten a press release, we have not gotten a post on X. If Aurora has done drive route, a lot of anxieties building with T minus six days, are they gonna pull it off? Walt?

Walter Piecyk: , I think you’ve kind of preempted what is normally your final question was what do we have for next week? And I’ve got a lot of earnings next week, that’s for sure. But. I think what we have for next week is May 1st, May 1st is next week. So you know tonight is ’cause we’re recording this on Thursday. Tonight is the NFL draft. So in the spirit of the NFL draft, I will say this, Chris Urmson, you’re on the clock.

Grayson Brulte: what happens if the clock runs out?

Walter Piecyk: I think we’ll discuss that next week. I am hopeful that our good friends at Aurora will deliver as promised. And let’s put, let’s put a, a note in. This was the initial promise. This is the pushback promise.

Grayson Brulte: Walt said it. We will be watching and if they do go drive route before next week, the next six days, ’cause we don’t record till then. We will speak about it on the episode. Until then. The clock is ticking. The anxiety’s building and me being me, somebody’s drinking a ton of vodka. Let’s hope they pull it off. Walt, this is fun. We got a lot to look forward to. The future is bright. The future is autonomous. The future is scaling and keeping promises. Walt, until next week.