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

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s potential pivot away from HD maps, their 250,000 fully autonomous rides per week milestone, Tesla’s pending robotaxi launch and Aurora’s long-promised driver-out launch.

In a post announcing the milestone on X, Waymo used the term “generalizable Waymo Driver”, potentially hinting that the company may move away from HD maps. Could Waymo be moving towards an end-to-end approach in similar fashion to Tesla?

Tesla that is actively preparing to launch their robotaxis in Austin this June. Will they launch in June, or will they delay until July as Elon Musk hinted at on Tesla’s Q1 2025 earnings call. When Tesla launches their robotaxi network, the market will change and the question becomes how does Waymo react?

For the time being, all eyes are on Aurora, with just days left in April to meet their driver-out launch deadline, anxiety is building as the clock is ticking. The pressure is on to launch fully-autonomous, driver-out operations.

Episode Chapters

• 0:00 Waymo 250k Paid Rides a Week
• 1:04 Generalizable Waymo Driver
• 3:12 Highways Coming Soon for Waymo?
• 4:33 Personally-Owned Waymo Vehicles?
• 5:55 Personally-Owned Waymos Impact on Uber & Lyft
• 9:39 Tesla Robotaxi Launch
• 16:59 Tesla vs Waymo Robotaxi Costs
• 18:07 Testing FSD Supervised in Europe
• 19:02 Wayve Expands to Japan
• 22:48 Uber / VW Robotaxi Partnership
• 26:29 Toyota
• 27:46 U.S. DOT Automated Vehicle Framework
• 30:58 Aurora Driver-Out Countdown