Autonomy Markets: Robotaxis Go Curbside at Airports as Uber’s Robotaxi Boss Heads for the Exit

Right now, somewhere, a company is making a move in plain sight. The street reads the headline, "Autonomy AI sees the signal." We deliver it before the market catches up. Autonomy AI, your models, our intelligence. Request a private strategic briefing at autnmy.ai Walt, it's another week, and I'm on the road. And when I go on the road, I put the inspector hat in the car and let the folks know. The inspectors here, you better behave. And I had a great lunch yesterday with Ben Seidel from Laudalena at the Auto Lane House in Austin. And I walk in, they're playing 90's hip-hop, and Ben goes, "Where's Walt to curate the music to comment on it?" Well, Ben, here it is, I asked Walt where he was. He was back in the office, doing work. Well, you're back in the office, doing work. I've been riding in Ohai's in San Antonio, and I gotta tell you Walt, the airport experience is flat-out awesome. While I've been doing that, Tesla's been busy on X-Send Cybercabs are coming to Dallas. Where do you want to begin today? Because there's a lot to cover. Well, first of all, I hope you had a good time with Ben. And again, also always for full disclosure, light shed ventures does have an investment in auto lanes. I'm glad you had a happy visit there. But I think we should always start with field reports, because that's obviously a true area of differentiation that we have here on autonomous markets. Airports has been a key thing, Grayson. We've talked about San Francisco. I know everyone believes that market share gains have stabilized from Waymo in the California area. I think in part, at some point we're gonna dump a lot more cars into the market. But in other ways, some of the most highest value trips that a ride share company can offer is trips to the airport. So it's very critical for us. And for our long-time listeners, you know, we've discussed the factors that it takes to get not only access to the airport, but access in a convenient location. As many of you know in San Francisco, I think you're still at the Kiss and Fly-Lot. There might be a hotel that's thereby. So I'm very interested in the San Antonio Airport and how that experience was, Grayson. And how does it compare to the long walk at San Fran and other airports that you visited to have autonomy? There's no comparison to San Francisco. The Kiss and Fly, the 20-minute tram ride to the Hyatt by-by. This is great. Walt, it drops you off curbside right in front of the door. Ike's kidney not right in front of the door. I timed this because that's what we do with the autonomy markets. We timed things. And from the time I get out of the car to the time I got to the TSA gate, Walt, under four minutes, four minutes, that is perfection. And then when I got picked up in the airport, you go right to the TNC rideshare pickup zone, right on the outer curb, I say about six, seven minutes, eight minutes of the mouse when you're walking out of security, right there, the way I'm most waiting for you. Really great experience. Here's a very funny thing to point out, which you only learn in fieldwork and I have to tell you something funny about fieldwork in a minute. The speed limit posted coming into the San Antonio International Airport for those nerds, it's SAT airport code, it's 15 miles an hour. So what does the way I'm going to do 15 miles an hour? What does the general public do 45 miles an hour, flying value? Once you get used to that, it is a wonderful, wonderful experience. It's a model all airports should follow. That's definitely one of those quirks in terms of all time that you and I have experienced with FSD as well in terms of like SSA stop signs and it comes to that complete stop at the stop sign where I think most people don't do that. But just getting back to the airport, I will say, you know, San Antonio, I've been there, it's a smaller airport, so it's a little easier to keep those walks tighter. So it's perhaps an unfair comparison in some ways to San Fran, but San Fran does allow an uber black car to come to the curbside. I don't think functionally given the performance of some of these autonomous vehicles that we've seen, at least more the advanced ones like Waymo or Tesla, that they couldn't, they would be able to manage a curbside pickup at San Francisco. I'm just curious, if you agree with that, or is, is, are the dynamics of the size of San Antonio being much smaller, make it that much easier for them to accomplish that there while they can't do that in San Francisco? No, it's politics and leadership. The San Antonio airport leadership, so they wanted this technology, it's not a technical problem, it's San Francisco International Airport at least once a month. And in my experience of riding Waymo all around the country, suits right internationally, Waymo can handle the SFO airport. It handles it beautifully from the high, it handles it beautifully from the kiss and fly. There's no doubt in my mind that they can handle it from the curbside, and if SFO got their act together, which I believe they hopefully they will soon, Waymo is technically capable of doing it, and when they do it, you and I talk about flooding the market, let's hypothetically say, I'll go on the record here, Waymo wants on their 1200 cars to the Bay area, you're going to watch the myth of Waymo flat lining completely dissipate, and they're going to start to eat massively into market share. Right, I don't know if it's the airport alone that's going to do that, it could be when they get to the next version of car, or when they've got more volume of cars to, you know, to deepen the penetration in an existing market, maybe they just test one of these markets. I don't know if California is the right one to do it, but test what high volume of cars mean, in, you know, whatever city it's going to be, let's say Austin, and they finally punt their relationship with Uber, maybe they just dump a ton of cars there, just to see, show the market, show the world what it would look like when they had true volume of cars there, and then we'll see how those share numbers look in that individual market. But rather than, I think, you know, get too involved in, I think a new segment that we're going to talk about later now, red tape rundown on what it takes to airports, let's move on to another field report that I saw you, I think tweeting about a little bit, maybe we'll get a little bit more details here, motionals Las Vegas Technical Center, which I think you, you described to the public as super impressive, and person, tell us a little bit more about that here. The motional depot in Vegas is impressive, there's over a hundred vehicles there, it's completely state of the art, and I just want to say for the public, motionals have saved this many times publicly, but I want to re-emphasize it. The vehicles that motionals operating in Las Vegas come off the line in Singapore, at the innovation factory, it is a state-of-the-art facility, they're getting ready to go drive around by the end of the year, and it's just thoroughly, thoroughly impressive, and their command center, the whole team running it, is really impressive, and when you visit multiple factories and upfitting centers, you just realize the precision of the Hyundai engineers, the technology and the processes that they're putting into the emotional facility are world class wall. There's no other way to describe it as a world class facility. If we think of the variety of partners that Uber has, right, and when they're going to get driving, listen again, we're still early stage in this industry, so there's not enough cars out there to say that someone has, you know, is way out in front, but motional clearly seems, you know, like they're a leader. How does that relationship evolve over time? How does motional grow as a company, and you know, we've talked about, you know, companies that Uber might want to own a bigger stake of, if not outright, in the future, you know, where does motional fit there, and how would you see that playing out, if it didn't go down that path? Is that even possible? I think it really comes down to the Hyundai Motor Corporation. What does Hyundai want to do with motional, and I say that because Hyundai has an internal competing division, has been well-documented in the Korean press called 42. And I'll use the nice term, there's been a lot of headbutting between motional and 42. I think Laura, who's leading motional now, is doing a phenomenal job, but I ultimately think that the future of motional comes down to Hyundai, and I say that because Hyundai owns 98% of motional, there is an investment fund that owns 2% with Hyundai owning 98% of the company, so it's really going to come down to what Hyundai wants. But I want to caveat that and say that I visited AV rides upfitting factory in Austin yesterday, and how is the public going to be able to differentiate between a motional vehicle and an AV ride vehicle and a Waymo vehicle in the same market, because they're all three of them, actually, are running the Ionic 5. It's something that I'm starting to think about. And to the AV ride team, thank you for showing me the branding that you're working on, really, really impressive. And thank you for showing them the facility of how you're upfitting these vehicles also very impressive. But it's interesting when you have three different providers with Ionic 5s in the same market, how is the public going to know who is who? I mean, strategies can evolve over time, for sure. So, you know, and Hyundai, as we've, you know, padded them on the back, is certainly at the forefront in terms of being the vehicle of choice as a partner, whereas other OEMs have effectively circled the wagon. But it's possible that the initial motivation was to sell cars and being technology agnostic. And then voila, as they say, voila, all the sudden, motionals doing great. Hey, this is the tech that we own. Hey, wait a minute. Maybe the real future of autonomy is private ownership. I mean, just this past week, we had Mary Barrett talking up with that, she does not want her cars or her technology as part of a robot taxi fleet. She wants it for private ownership. She thinks that consumers want that in their driveway, the Steve Jobs approach. I don't care what you say you want. I'm going to tell you what you want, even though if you don't believe that today. But maybe Hyundai comes to that conclusion, says, look, the bigger opportunity for us here, you know, is our own technology, is private ownership. And by the way, if you think about this long term, You know, this, this cotton, this bull case thesis on ride share, whether it's from Tesla Robotaxi or Waymo, or Uber, is this concept of it representing one percent of share going to 30 percent. But it, but it works in the opposite if all of a sudden the OEMs are delivering a product where you can have autonomy in your garage. So I guess the question is, how do we get, what are the signals to watch? I know you like the term signals, it's, it's, it's what your AI beast is so good at. What are the signals that we should be looking at to understand, you know, which way Hyundai is going to take this in the future? And is this a risk, you know, to companies like Avie Ride and Waymo to rely too much on Hyundai as their OEM partner? The signals we don't necessarily know what the signals are in general. There is one signal that I will point out, Ben and I actually discussed it over lunches. You, in my opinion, will not be able to scale a personally owned autonomous vehicle with maps. Point blank, I'm sorry, Mary Barra, GM, you're never going to be able to scale a personally owned autonomous vehicle with maps. Two reasons why, if you don't map the ride to the school and you don't map the ride to the grocery store or to the little league field, it's never going to happen. And we're seeing all the success that you and I both own a Tesla with FSD, we're seeing the success of that. And then you're seeing the success that Wave is having with all the partnerships. They're lining up no maps. If Hyundai announces a no map strategy, then I think that becomes a signal. But at this time, it is my belief based on all the publicly available documentation that we have that Hyundai is fully committed to robotaxies and then to use a term that your partner Rich Greenfield will light shed side uses. They're an arm-stealer. They're saying, okay, like Rich says, we're selling our content to everybody, they're saying, no, we're going to sell our platform to everybody. And so I would watch for the map versus mapless strategy. So if that's true then, then their willingness to perhaps part ways with their economic stake emotional and be the arm-stealer, the guy that makes the car, should be there. And then that's maybe an opportunity for Uber to take a stake or maybe some other company to take a stake in the technology front and then look to license that out to other OEMs. And I'm going to guess what some of our listeners pushback would be on your last even though in that, I've heard this theory of having a geofenced map as it were autonomous solution. So I'm driving my car through some of the areas. But when I'm on the highway and I want to take a nap and that's mapped on the emotional that there's value there, I would say the problem with that is in using FSD, even when it's supervised. I think when you go from unsupervised, let's say on the highway, taking your nap between New York and Philly, to getting to that area, even if you have to supervise it, that's the experience you're going to, once you've experienced this, let me just assure you, this is the experience you're going to want. I don't think you're going to want to go from level four full autonomy, taking your nap to actually full in control. I think you're going to want to revert to some supervised. So I think it's a finer point, but it's definitely something to think about in terms of private ownership where you don't necessarily have to have ubiquity of autonomy. You could have a geofence in an area where that technology is providing it for you, which is I'm sure what Mary Barr or others would suggest. But then you're opening the can of worms around human factors. This is hypothetical. You leave your home, you get on 95, let's say you go to Walt Eagle's mode and you get all your Eagles highlights and you're having an Eagles time. While you're thinking about the Eagles, you're not thinking about the rotors, and it says, "Beep, beep, beep, you got to take over." It's like, "Uh oh, the human factors in the brain aren't ready, I don't think to comprehend that yet." I mean, there's transition things that you'd have to work out in that scenario, for sure. But if the human is not taking over, the car is obviously going to pull over. But I'm with you. Again, that's my point, is that I think that this transition from unsupervised to a supervised that we're experiencing with Tesla today seems like the experience that a consumer would want versus going cold turkey and having to be full attention from no attention at all. It doesn't seem like the right approach, but it's definitely something to watch, because as I build my long-term 10 and 20-year financial models to figure out what the ultimate value is to Whemo and Tesla and others, there is this kind of tension in this pool of like, "Okay, 20 years so now, are we going to have the co-cannis view of the world where it's 30% is rideshare?" Or, 20 years so now, do you have so many privately-owned AVs that in fact rideshare miles as a percent of total miles declined, because you're just your own car actually delivering that service to you? We don't know. I think it's definitely going to be a hybrid. I think at some point in the future, I don't know why, and it's going to go into a hybrid subscription where you'll have access to a robot accident, you'll have access to a personally owned and it's all going to be bundled into one lease payment or one subscription payment. I think that's coming. We had decades ago, Porsche tried it, Cadillac tried it. So I think that's coming. You're going to have this bundled experience, and especially when you include the insurance and the charging in it. Okay, but that's fine. But if it's a hybrid approach, how still I don't see how you get to the 30%, so I don't know. The models, you know, it's easier to build a model these days because you can use AI and Cloud to help you with it, but we can build sensitivities around this, but it's definitely something to keep in mind, especially again, when the OEMs are signaling, hey, we don't want to do robot taxis, right? GM is almost like saying, like, hey, we're not going to talk to you, wave or anyone else that's out there. We're doing this on our own because we want to sell private cars. I think that's a failed strategy because I don't think the OEMs have the culture to move this technology that quickly forward, no offense sterling, you know, but I think whatever. It's something that we'll have to watch, and clearly in the case of Hyundai, who's certainly further along than OEMs, any OEM, other than Tesla, as it relates to A, having their cars ready to be the partner of choice, and B, having a technology that, again, we're expecting to be driver out within the next couple of months. Yes, I'm looking forward to driver out. I will be there whenever they announce a publicly going for a ride, the emotional vehicle driver out looking forward to that. I mean, there is a lot changing in the general automotive sphere, and I'll say this point blank, a little bit off topic, Detroit's in a lot of trouble, just look what's happening in Europe with the rise of Chinese auto manufacturing. That comes into America, Detroit has a two-headed front. They're losing on autonomy and then losing on engineering, and then that is going to become a very, very big issue because it all comes down to price. What's the protectionist policies go away? Problems arise even more. Well, it will definitely be interesting to see how that plays out, but certainly that has dramatic impacts. I mean, again, the valuation for these things is all about where the mark is going to be 2010 or 20 years from now, so those are pretty big swing factors. But what else do we have in the field? Spencer, I think Dave Uber out, ferring out some new information, had their inspector hats on. What did they say? Yeah, it was great. Spencer produced a wonderful field report from the Big D dial, so he went to the Avis Depot, the temporary charging depot, and in the field report that came out earlier, we noticed O'Hai's were in Dallas, and a few days later, Waymo announces O'Hai's available. So go check that report out, and for the audience, we're ramping up fields reports. We're trying to do two or three a week. We're doing international. David was just in Paris. Now he's in London. Spencer was in Paris, so we're going to have a lot more international flare coming to that. And oh, when we go international, we go to the depots. Thanks to Omega. Omega knows where the depots are, and we go there and create field reports. And well, you want to the coolest thing about all of this now? A ride in the O'Hai last night back from dinner, and I said, Gemini, what do you know about atomic markets? And what is the first thing it said? Well, field reports. Gemini in the O'Hai knew all about field reports. And for the audience, it doesn't believe me. Go try it. Well, even has to be recording of it, because I was so proud. You did send that very excited. So yeah, it's true, but that's what it is. I mean, that's what that's one of the most important things, obviously, to understand in this market. Getting the cars, people just get in the cars and try them. And you can formulate your own judgments on where each of these technologies are. So I think we're having some personnel changes. Again, at Uber, you have Sarfra's Maria, leaving Uber after 12 years plus. That's a hell of a rain there. He was, he ran the global autonomous mobility and delivery. He's going to a top job outside of transportation, but the last time I heard that was Sterling Anderson leaving Aurora, apparently, you know, not doing anything competitive, yada yada, all of a sudden we see him a GM talking about perfectly autonomous cars. And now even yet this week, as I just mentioned, Mary Barrett talking about privately on autonomous cars. So I've heard this before when an executive in Autonomie leaves that they're not going to do anything that competes with us. But what do you think is going on here with Sarfra's response? Something's brewing to me. Sorry, with all due respect, this reads like corporate PR speak. And the reason I say something's brewing, Rebecca the head of Uber Freight gave a long and depth interview with the Wall Street Journal talking about how Uber wants to become a logistics platform. Like, oh, that's very interesting timing. So I don't know. You've got the head of Uber Freight coming out, giving interview to the Wall Street Journal about logistics. Then on the other side, you have, I'll just say, corporate PR speak. The question is, you're right, as we saw with Sterling, you're running mobility for 12 years and necessarily you're going to jump to something outside of mobility. One plus one equals two. This is one plus one equals three and it doesn't add up. I mean, Uber has been pretty persistent in saying that this third leg of the stool, the service component, that they want it fragmented. right? They've partnered with MOVE, EVOMO, and others to do that. Didn't want ownership of it, but I mean, you know, on LinkedIn, I'm seeing more people that they've been hiring from Tesla among other places that have done infrastructure, right? And figuring out charging stations. So, it's interesting that you say that because I have been mentioned, I have been noticing that this past week. Now, this person is not going to be replaced. I think the job dudes are going to be split up between some Martha and Aaron, you know, to do this, which is fine, but this is also following, you know, Guy Peterson left. He was the former head of AV Partnerships, Lando Juarez, a unit legal chief, leaving. So there's a decent amount of turnover. I mean, I know some people are going to say, like, well, the stock hasn't done much. Like, look, there are a lot of autonomy stocks that are getting destroyed right now. Like, you can complain about Uber stock, but it's been pretty stable at least. And, you know, from what people's beliefs are and their opportunity there, there can be growth in there. So I don't know, it's always important to keep an eye on, you know, some management terminal. This does not seem out of sorts, just to be clear. This is not crazy. It's kind of on the margin, but these are, you know, people in the area that we care about the most, which is autonomy. Yeah, I think it's something we're going to have to watch and see. We'll see where where he lands. I'm sure he'll announce it publicly on LinkedIn or their company. We'll announce it. Also, let's watch see if there is more personnel changes or perhaps there is a change of strategy. Maybe Uber lends a little more into infrastructure. It lends a little more into this or a little more into logistics. Or maybe they try and do something more with Uber Eats and run autonomy. I don't know, but I think there's something brewing is what I would say. Now, one of the things that relates to Uber is just going to, you know, last week for a long time. Listeners, you know that I kind of admitted that I may have botched my bet with Jason about waves progress on autonomy, apologies to wave on that. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll be right. Who knows? But I was trying to get a double for nothing this week because, you know, we talk about this. I kind of was like, shining Uber from always saying, oh, 15 markets launched by end of year. And I'm like, okay, the end of the day, does that really matter? It's driver out. So I tossed out a double or nothing to Jason, which I don't think he responded to. Maybe we'll after hearing this. That's saying that I don't think all 15 of those, you know, will be driver out by the end of of 27. And that's ultimately my point, right? That, okay, you're announcing 15. That's a good milestone. But like, that doesn't mean what you're going to get each of those to end or 27. So we'll say, and the bar here is 100 plus cars driver out, you know, and you have paying customers on those 15 markets. So we'll keep tabs on that. Hopefully I can clean up the bad bet I made on Wave with this, with this better bet. But maybe Jason knows not to take that back because he knows that all 15 won't in fact get to driver out. Either way, three of us will be enjoying stakes. The question is, who pays? Who's paying? Who's paying? It's going to be the question. So it's going to be a overlapped game there to figure it out. But I do want to emphasize is that announcements are one thing, deployments are completely another thing and getting to unsupervised is another thing. I don't think that a lot of individuals realize how difficult it is just to actually build out a commercial deployment that's unsupervised. And a credit to you and credit to us is that we actually go out in the field and look at this infrastructure because that infrastructure is key to scaling it. A press release, so you could write it with cloth. Sorry, I said it. Infrastructure building out deploying, you actually need boots on the ground. Yeah, and the other day, like, driver out is what matters. Like, that's literally the whole point of this. So, you know, like I said before, we've made progress in this industry. Now it's, you know, this is part of the inflection of this industry. Like, let's focus on the driver out. Speaking of a company that took a while to get driver out, we have Tesla official numbers saying they have 300 plus cybercabs serving Austin. That's an, I think, like, at 8x in 30 days, possibly, although that's obviously kind of a bullshit number because it's sorry, mom, it's a multiple of a very small number. We already knew that the DMV was showing registered cabs over 300. I guess my question is, oh, by the way, and you had, like, Twitter, excuse me, Tesla kind of dunking on themselves in a way, saying, but also saying, like, hey, we've actually delivered, saying we're, you know, because this is the two-year anniversary of we robot. They said at we robot that they would deliver cybercabin two years. And the quote was, we're learning to be on time. So that's like a kind of, like, an acknowledgement that things have not been on time in the past. But also, it's kind of puts pressure back on people that love to create these narratives about, like, now, there's all of these delays and they're never going to get there and they're never going to get there. Well, I think they're there, right? And I guess the question is, Grayson, do they get the green checkmark? Like, are there now a hundred cars that are operating effectively at the same time, at least in Austin charging rise? Has Austin been checkmarked in terms of how we determine this? Yes and no. And I want to give a very big caveat here. The number that is reported to the Texas DMV is not the actual number that's actually deployed in the wild. That is a number that is registered that could be deployed. We don't have the true number of what is deployed. So there is a big difference between this company has a thousand, this company has a hundred, this company has two hundred. That means they're registered, they can legally get deployed. But they're not necessarily deployed. And I learned that yesterday, and I won't name names, but I learned that yesterday. And for those that are subscribers to Omega, the data is in Omega. And if you're not subscriber, reach out, but well, there is a big, big swing there. Okay, so when these companies aren't going to tell us exactly how many cars are in service, this is something at some point we're going to have an estimate on. And by the way, I see plenty of videos of Austin where there's like these golden robot taxis, cybercams, excuse me, everywhere. So when do we give them the checkmark that yeah, they've hit that market, that market is commercially there? I would say commercially is my belief that there is over a hundred. You see them in all aspects of the mostly concentrating the downtown area, south of Congress area. You don't see a lot of them up in Techbridge by the Samsung Foundry. So the density is concentrated around the downtown south congress area where a lot of the activity is, a lot of the presses, a lot of the cameras are concentrated in there. They're not necessarily concentrated in the farther regions of the ODD going into the north, Austin area, north of UT. They're not necessarily all the place over there. They're concentrated. Give you an example, if you're up at Techbridge and you're visiting the Samsung Foundry, I experienced it yesterday. It's a 38 minute wait to get one up there. So they're not necessarily up there yet. So there's still room to go to get the ODD fully fully functioning. Well, that's a lot of words and this is like pulling teeth on what I think is supposed to be a monumentous occasion here. Do they or don't they have 100 cars active at any single time in that market? I get that you're going to have like a wait time on some perimeter that's going to be that needs to be addressed in that moment. But like when we can't be this subjective in terms of giving the green check mark. Yes, can we give the green check mark? Yes, is it impressive? Yes, is it at full scale yet? No. All right, this is the worst kind of reveal. You would think that when when autonomy markets is ready to give their green check on market launched, it would be like there they got it like bam, it's happening. So I think what we're going to have to wait for is since we're so unwilling to give them that clear green check mark, they're going to report next week. They're going to give themselves that green check mark. They're going to probably give more precise numbers. And then the market's going to react like this hasn't been talked about before. So I guess we'll wait for them. I think this was a fail on our part in not making this more dramatic. But let's go on to their next market because there was another portion that put on his tweet that said Dallas soon. So we know I think, you know, based on some field work about cybercaps that have been seen in Dallas is he's effectively confirmed that. How quickly do we think Dallas comes online? Dallas will come online. I'll just sit here and make a prediction. Dallas will come online before the end of the year. The cybercaps that Spencer has seen, I have seen, Moss has seen, other individuals have seen. And Dallas are not the cybercaps that are going into commercial production. They're mules commonly known as a test fleet. And how do you know that? If you read the Tesla first responders guide, Tesla has published the identification for first responders. They've made that data public on how do you identify? If the Robotaxi is not badged with Robotaxi written across the back. They want to call it Tesla's tramp stamp. Then it has a steering wheel. Those vehicles are not going into commercial service. Once we start seeing the stamp, the branded Robotaxis were getting close. It is my belief that they will launch that market by December 31st. We have not seen independent verified reports of the badged cybercaps yet in Dallas. I believe it's just a matter of time they'll get there before the end of the year. Well, I think you're wrong. And I'll tell you why. Because on Sunday, I had the Robotaxi app on my phone. And I got a pop-up as most people I think did that said more vehicles available in Dallas and basically come and come and use the product. So I think that's Tesla basically saying whether it's model wise or cybercaps or whatever, that they are ready to go in Dallas. So I know we've said on this podcast before, this is not like an all at once thing that I think some of the Uber Tesla bulls believe Steve is going to happen, but it seems to me. that Austin's kind of there and Dallas is about to be there, you know, with what I think we'll deserve a green check mark from Autonomy Market. Hopefully, we can be more concise and confirmative about this next week or the week after as these things happen. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It'll be a Dallas in the coming week. So hopefully, I'm wrong and I'll launch it sooner and then we'll produce a field report on it. We know with the vehicle stored at the depot, there's multiple depots for Tesla throughout Dallas. And hopefully we should use some badge cybercows in Dallas. Okay, so I'm sure we're going to get the Tesla bulls on my side on this one and the haters against you. So let me just give Tesla one nick on what happened this week. You know, one of the things we're looking at is this curfew, right? Where the robot taxi is not available past 11 p.m. You know, a month ago, it was said, you know, buy a truck that there's 24-hour service was would be around next month. And that was in September. Next month is here, October 15th, still nothing. So that might be a part of it. Again, they report on the 21st. So it would be, I think, good timing for them to kind of go 24 hours on, you know, the 20th or the 21st. So that's why I'm going to predict that that happens on the 20th. But it hasn't happened since then. And maybe that's another reason why we withhold the check mark until we have 24-hour service in the market. And I will give another interesting nugget after midnight. You can't get that J.J. Kale clapped a song after midnight. Let it all hang down. I spotted cybercaps on the highway in Austin. Yes, they were being supervised. They were unbashed. But after midnight, there were cybercaps testing on the freeways around Austin. Yeah, I mean, you got to use the car and the new vehicle to test in the individual market. This is why it's not an all one thing. But every market you go to, I think that testing time frame, we saw how long it wasn't Austin, which was what much faster than expected. It has to be shorter, right? In other markets, because it's not just about the car at that point. It's just about the market itself, right? So in Dallas, for example, like when I was taking the robot taxi, which was the model, effectively the model Y, he was avoiding certain areas. It was creating these circuitous routes. They have to work those things out more so than whether the cybercab works there. But we'll see that soon enough. I think I'm more optimistic than you are, but we'll find out. Shall we move on to WEMO? Always making progress. Steady Eddie, right? Continuing to go. They started airport rides at Nashville. Obviously, that's a great interest to us. Given Flex Drive, Lifts, Holy One subsidiary, they own this thing and the infrastructure side of it at a time when maybe Uber is re-evaluating infrastructure. So we hope to get down to Nashville soon to see how that operation is working. And then you've got San Antonio, San Diego and Tampa that are now no invite. Anyone can download the app and ride. So again, not like a massive data point. This would have been a massive data point like a year ago, but this is just par for the course regular news for WEMO now, moving multiple markets at a time into fully available to anyone downloading the app. I will say that a field report from the BNA National Airport is coming in the coming weeks, followed by another field report at the Depot. Flex Drive will be hosting us. You'll be joining me. So we're looking forward to producing that for the audience. And the field reports continue as WEMO continues to scale. And I said this earlier, but you really truly learn a lot from getting out in the field and riding in vehicles and visiting depots. Speaking of visiting depots, Walt, I found a WEMO charging station on South Congress in Austin, first time I've ever been there. A lot of vehicles going in and out of there. But unfortunately, there was a common denominator with the EVOMO Depot, the big one that we found. The cars were dirty. They weren't being cleaned. I sat there for an hour, Walt and I watched. I didn't witness one person clean a car. And then I sat at the exit and I watched. They were dirty. I have not yet to see a clean WEMO in Austin. But yet the Cybercaps, they're clean. The WEMOs, they're dirty. It's a tale of two cars is what I would say. No pun intended. I mean, it's a fascinating part of our coverage here. How this third leg of the stool is going to happen. Again, it's possible Uber strategy. Might be changing here. I think some of the existing partners might not necessarily be performing that great as we've covered before Avis hurts whoever have an opportunity here. And it's also just interesting to see what structure is going to work. Is it going to be one major service center with smaller individual service centers? This is open field right now. Obviously, the field work you guys and even myself are doing is certainly going to be helpful to understanding how that evolves. And there will be companies that will fall by the wayside. No doubt. And others, you know, will pick up the pick up the assets. And I think ultimately that market consolidate. I think it's going to be very hard for Uber to force a fragmentation in that market. It just seems like something that when someone does it well and they get the capital behind them, it's going to be replicated city after city. Correct. You're 100% by somebody's going to emerge. If you want to say that's going to do with them, they're going to develop the best practices. They're going to have the capital. They're going to have the policies, procedures in place. And what are they going to have? They're going to have energy specialists on the team that know strategically where to put these in order to get the energy. That is another leg of this thing. You have to have energy specialists on these depot teams to truly understand how to scale. And as a reminder for maybe more recent listeners, because we've talked about this before, when you don't have power in a location, that doesn't stop these companies from trying to get these locations. They just roll up a generator. The challenge with that is like, you know, you're going to get a 60 minutes report about the generator that was stuck behind someone's apartment complex. And they're not going to be too happy about it. And there's going to be another version of pushback on autonomy. And this is what's going to be used by the local politicians to push back on this. So, you know, this is a long, you know, a long lead time type item that needs to be addressed. But we're on it. We will let you know how it goes. Grayson, Waymo was not the only person, excuse me, company, expanding this week. Nitsa gave Zooks its third authorization this time in Hayward, California. This is its ninth area. They stole this cap at 600 vehicles. 600 vehicles is nothing to sneeze at, especially when you're talking about Hayward. That should be enough to give a basic level of service. This feels to me, honestly, a little bit like, I'm going to go Telco corner now, like T-Mobile in the early days, where it's like John Ledger, not the early early days, but when John Ledger takes over, they don't, you know, the Deutsche Telecom is effectively starved their ability to invest in the network, meaning the technology is not great, but they're promising and moving and expanding as at the same time they're developing the product. I think smart from Zooks' standpoint, to continue to move forward, I just wonder, like, is the product itself still has to be good enough so that when they're going to face competition in Hayward, people are going to want to get in their vehicles as opposed to the other autonomy solutions that might be out there. Have you ever been to Hayward Bolt? I don't believe I have. Rob and I have been to Hayward. They are not launching a service in Hayward. Hayward is an industrial commercial area of Oakland with large logistic parks. We're going to release this as a field report soon. We went there, we visited. Tesla has three facilities. There's two that are publicly known, but there also is a third that road to autonomy we uncovered. And I will give a hint, they're not exactly on the same side of the street. So what this allows the test, what this allows Zooks to do is to go from the storage lot to the upfitting facilities. And for the record, they are not factories. For the record, they are not factories. And if you know, you know, if you're an Omega subscriber, you know exactly what that means. All right, well, that was very teasing. So let's just move on before I try and push on something that I think I'm going to get an answer to. I don't know. We'll continue to watch Zooks as you know. I'm a little bit more on the skeptical side. Next time I'm getting in a Zooks, there'll be in a couple of months, yes, hopefully my experience is better. Let's go across the pond to the UK where our friends at Wave were chosen by VW to supply AI for the driver assistance in the Audi and the Porsche. This is according to three insiders on their Spiegel. I don't think there was a contract sign, but their Spiegel is reporting that maybe VW has selected Wave. You know, even this, this is like an FSD replicant. This is obviously an important progress, as we've talked about before, getting revenue and profits of fund, you know, continuing development into level four, which I think Wave has all the intentions on delivering. What else am I missing? How do you read this VW deal? First of all, it's pronounced Porsche. And I pitched this idea of Porsche doing an L2+ system years ago, starting with the Cayenne. I was told from this executive that I was basically a looney tune. Well, based on this report from Zooks Spiegel, it doesn't appear that I'm a looney tune. It appears that that's where they're going, but that all the side, this is a huge blow to mobile eye. Where's mobile eye? We've have sent field individuals that work with us to try and find the VW Moe de Poe in Austin. We found it because that's what we do. And guess what Walt, zero cars, zero cars, zero cars. car. So, mobilized robot taxi business we know is in fundamental trouble. There's zero cars in Austin that we could find. It is my belief based on publicly available data and photographs that they're not going to launch with Uber in LA by the end of the year, which Uber triumphantly put out in this massive press release of their kind of all these vehicles. Don't see that happening. And now they're losing their L2 business to Wave. Where does mobile I go? I think that is the, if you want to call it, that's the big question in all this. I mean, I think you can chide Uber that much. They're trying to support as many partners as possible. It's unclear which of these partners will, you know, take the lead. So, they want to support as many as they can. But let's focus on the positive here, which is that for Wave, this is their fourth OEM. I think it was just last week that we had the Nissan stuff, right? So, you got Nissan's, the Lantis, Mercedes, Mercedes, or Mercedes also, by the way, a partner of NVIDIA's full stack. But a lot of momentum on Wave, you know, I don't know, I don't know where they are capitalizing. I know they had raised some cash earlier the year, but with this many victories, maybe it's an opportunity to market up and raise some more capital. I'll give you a pun. The Wave team is surfing the Wave. They're doing really good, locking up these contracts. And I can't wait to see these vehicles get into commercial production. Wave has stated, the Lantis has stated, which is also a part of theirs. Next year, it looks like we're going to get the Jeep Grand Cherokee with the Wave technologies. We're looking forward to testing that. And, you know, they got the Fiat stuff. They got the Maserati going, Wave is surfing all the waves. If you want to say this, Alex, you're riding the Maverick, buddy. You're riding the Maverick. But Jason, don't get too excited because this is FSD type technology and our bed is based on driver out. So, that's a completely different thing. So, don't get too excited. Speaking of capital raising, you have your buddies applied intuition. I think there was some story in the information, a credible news source, like some of the others that we've cited over the years, that is looking at a $30 billion valuation. Billion. I mean, that is a big, big number. And this is potentially maybe like a, you know, a large realm, let's call it, that is probably going to be off of this. That doubles the, I think they did a $15 billion series F in June of 25. So, that would be a huge uptick. I still don't really understand what applied intuition does. Jason, like, are they the software stack that's going to be in cars that are autonomous? Are they the, you know, a military company now? Like, what exactly, where does applied intuition fit within the autonomy landscape? I said this before, and I'll say this again, applied intuition is the most interesting company in autonomy. And I'll also share a little tidbit with you. Caster and Peter, the co-founder of applied division, have been on the road to autonomy podcast as guests more than any other company, any other guest, I'm big believers in the company. What applied intuition's done and Caster's done a brilliant job long this with Peter is that they're the picks and shovels. They started by giving, building the tools. Here's the tools to build the software for the vehicles. Here's the tools to build the autonomy kit. And now, they're actually building the autonomy on their own. They're deploying that and they're moving up stack and they're becoming the most important company, not just in autonomy, but they're slowly becoming the most important company in automotive and they're doing it all through software. And, frankly, they're running a brilliant strategy and they're executing and Caster, sir, you're doing a really, really, really great job. Keep going and Peter, keep building, sir, and keep shipping. That is what I'll say. Well, I'd love to continue to learn more about it. Maybe we can add them to the California trip that we do in the spring of next year and expose them to some more investors. Although it doesn't seem like they need it with that $30 billion price that they build up over the years. Let's move on to a segment which I'm just going to call red tape rundown. And this is, you know, whether it's local or federal, the regulations that are either helping or hindering this, the autonomy industry. And this week, you know, if anyone's ever seen the sick on Portlandia, they may have a better sense of this. In Portland, they, the PBOT briefed the council's public works committee on robot taxi rules. They were proposing a 75 vehicle cap per company, 225 driverless taxi city wise in year one. And before there's any paid ride, there has to be 50,000 miles on the Portland street. That sounds like a WEMO type of insertion there. And 25,000 with the driver 25,000 without. You also have the typical stuff, the first responder pans, the first responder plans have to be in place. Correct crash and trip data to this city. Typical regulation stuff. Do you see this as I think good or bad in Portland? To me, in a way, while there are limitations, at least there is a path for robot taxi in Portland, of all places. Politics, politics, politics. Is there some, if you want to call it, positive light there? Yes. Overall, no, this is what, what do you do, 225 cars? And if you multiply that across multiple companies, but here's the kicker and I haven't read all the legalities around this, can one company run the tables and get the 225 and lock somebody out of the market? That could be interesting. I haven't read everything yet, so I don't want to comment on that, but if that's the case, that could be interesting. But politics, it's like, well, the proposal is 75 per company, but that's only for year one. Now, look, the risk here is that year two, they say it's 100, right? But it's not, you know, it's not like an outright band, like we've seen in other cities, right? At least there's providing some opportunity to provide some amount of cars, even though 75 doesn't even qualify for the autonomy market, checkmark, but at least there's something, but I agree with you, it's not positive, but it's not as bad as it could be, especially given the perception of Portlandia. I was sitting here laughing and you're trying to find the hope every which plan. You've got the great autonomy hope. That's Walt, the great autonomy hope. Here it comes, the great hope, the great hope. I don't like it. Is he your bet with Jason based on that hope that this will happen? Or is it just that there will be some federal mandate that will prevent the PBOT from preventing cars from entering their market? The federal mandate is called preemption. That's a national framework. When that comes, I don't know. Every year, there's starts and stops and there's hopes and there's dreams that all suddenly, like most bills in Congress, it evaporates and goes away. It's going to be a long time until we get a national framework. And if this becomes legislation and Portland, it's not overroading by the Oregon State government. It's going to be a long road, no pun intended, until AV is truly scale and Portland. Well, it's funny you say Oregon State government, because in fact, Oregon, the state has even more restrictions where they still require a human operator in most cases. So the city rules sit on top of that. So I don't know how that works out, like who gets present? Like, can they, can Portland remove the requirement that the state has already implemented, I think, for a human operator? I don't know. The state always preempts the city, unless they get an exemption. I haven't studied it, so I don't want to offer comments. I have studied the proposed legislation. You know, Jason, as a resident of Florida, there's always a lot of good memes about Florida man, but I think the better memes now are Minneapolis man. And the kind of crazy shit that we see that comes out of that city. So in St. Paul, the council president had a resolution that directing the city to study AV labor in community protections before any launch. God knows what that means. But I think that the override to the mayor of Minneapolis who vetoed some of these attempts to stop autonomy, these nine votes, they're still stuck at seven. So Minneapolis is still kind of Minneapolis. Let's put it that way. And, you know, we'll see how that progresses. I'm not in this case as optimistic as I am. As you point out, I had that hope for perhaps Oregon. No, it's on the Minneapolis side. You have a mayor. This is we have to be pro business. The mayor came out to the wonderful interview and basically called it an outright ban. And on the St. Paul side, they want to put together a study group to study the impacts. I mean, give me a break. The question is, who's funding all of this activity? Because it's popping up in multiple states with the same playbook. There's consistency here, Walt. What do we do here? We look for signals and we find patterns. There's a consistency pattern in all this. And it seems like it's a coordinated effort across multiple states. Well, I think we've seen one company show their hand in that regard in some other states, because they've had to write in terms of public disclosures. So there's other things that need to be unveiled. But let's move on to Tesla, where you have, you know, in this case, this NHTSA has this, I guess they call it a defect petition, DP26-010, and the allegation, robot taxi speed in active school zones, four incidents are in the file. This is from social media, none of the none from I think the Tesla reports. I'm not sure what this is, but does this add a wrinkle in the process that they're going through in Austin, where the cybercats have launched? Or is this something completely different? It's my opinion, it's different, but obviously that decision is going to be made by NHTSA, but it's just, you see individuals, certain individuals are trying to hype up certain things. I think that NHTSA under the leadership of Administrative Morrison is doing a very fair level balance job, and they're putting safety first, and they're doing a really good job at that. And hopefully, they get it approved. I'm not going to speculate. one way or another, but hopefully they get a group. But I want to say that I'm going to demonstrate a more. So in the team, it's doing a fantastic job of putting safety first. Well, on the cyber cap front, I think there are answers that Tesla has to answer, I guess, by October 30. Again, become before the earnings day. I'm sure they don't have to wait till October 30 in order to deliver those answers. I'm just going to speculate and assume that they are providing those answers to NETS at a time, so I don't know. I mean, I guess it feels like we're getting closer. I guess, you know, this is probably one of the more important earnings calls to get more detailed updates on whether they truly hit that inflection point or maybe providing a more precise timeline from when that inflection point comes in Austin. And then I think soon after Dallas, hopefully, and if you look at the last two earnings call, there's a common denominator. A few days before, Robotaxi announces a new market. It's a common denominator. The question is, what's the new market? What's the expansion? Maybe it's Dallas. Maybe it's not, but if you look at historically, there's a track record here in the third time for effect, so I'm expecting some sort of Robotaxi announcement leading into that potentially a new market expansion. Now, the last topic on our red tape rundown is something that you always laid up about and talk about, and I start to like zone out because I don't know what the hell you're talking about. In London, TFL, APS, there's a lot of acronyms that they use for who gets what license and I know you're very passionate about. Does Uber get the license? Does this guy get the license? But I guess there's a London assembly committee called for the TFL powers over the APS permits plus fleet caps. I have no idea what that sends, that sends that I just read even means. So can you dissect what that means and explain to us Luddites, what the hell, how this all works in London once again? Well, I'd like to do it over a pint in London with you, so that would be better to do it over a pint. The APS is the automated passenger service permit, and what does that mean in simple terms? That's the power. He who holds the APS permit controls their own destiny. If Biden, Pony, Wave all get the permit through Uber, hypothetically Uber could fire them, then they cannot legally deploy a driver out service in London. If Wave, Uber, Pony get the APS permit on their own, they control it. They control their own destiny and they could fire Uber. See what I'm going here? We do know Waymo has stated this publicly that Waymo is getting the APS permit, and we do know from House of Commons filings in the UK that Waymo has started the type certification process. So what does that all mean in a nutshell? I'm going on the record. I'm saying by Q1 Waymo launches commercial driver out service with their own APS permit in the UK, but he who holds the permit holds the keys. And since it's London and there's a monarchy, he who holds the permit is a king. That's your best explanation yet. Very clean, very concise. However, here's my follow-up question. Now that I understand what the APS is, so it sounds like this data point that we got from London Assembly, from this London Assembly Committee is that they want, I don't know what this is, TFL powers. They want the TFL, I guess, to control these APS permits and the flea caps. So what is the TFL, who controls the APS permits now and what is the TFL and how would, if TFL had the power over these APS permits, what could that possibly mean for the future of autonomy in London or the UK? TFL does control the APS. There is a transport for London. They're the controlling agency for that. So they control the power by what it seemed like this politicians are trying to take more control over it. And what we're seeing in the UK play out, and I got to say that the UK tabloids are brilliant, Walton. I mean, they're probably the best tabloids in the world when they do things, is there's a power struggle. And there are certain politicians that want to limit where the robotaxies can go in the capital. I said, how great would it be to go from the natural portrait gallery to Buckingham Palace to go here, to go there, to go to Parliament? Right now, they're focused on Brent. That's right now we're majority of the vehicles are testing. Wayma was testing in downtown proper London, but you're starting to see political jockeying of, wait, let's limit where these vehicles can go. And that goes back to the TFL, which I believe, and I'm speculating here that wants to control the traditional London black caps. There is a lot of pushback there, the financial times. I will say for the record has done a fantastic job. Obviously they're based in London of covering this. They did a really great segment in the paper on the pushback from the black caps. And there was an individually interview, there was a black cab driver, and I'll put it to you this way. He used some very colorful language in an FT interview. Not very proper, I might add, describing his thoughts and feelings towards robotaxies. Great. So let's cross the channel and go to Europe. Yes, that's correct. London is not in Europe. Tesla renamed the FSD in Europe. It's now Tesla assisted driving. This is all rooted in Germany. Their transport minister was calling FSD misleading. And Tesla is the one that basically came up with the new name itself. Like, honestly, call it whatever you want. Like, but get it in the hands of these Europeans. Like, whenever I'm in my car, which now is, I think, I mentioned, I think I'm up to like 10,000 FSD miles. Like, it full self driving is basically what it is, right? I mean, yeah, I'm obviously supervising it, but I don't give a shit. Call it whatever you want, get it in the hands of people, and they will decide for themselves if they want it. So now Germany is now backing the wide approval for the EU. Slovakia became the ninth country. So I think you have an EU vote, excuse me, coming up in December. So you could, you could be like basically 15 of the 27 states, I believe, of the EU. So this is 65% of the population. Nine countries, plus Germany is 32%. I mean, it just seems like there's momentum to get FSD available more broadly in Europe. There seems to be momentum, and we're wishing Tesla well to deploy in Europe, and they could be great technology for Europe. And we'll watch and see how it rolls out, but Europe is becoming a massive, massive hotbed for robotics. So you have, and the Tesla and the L2+ side with FSD, and then you have it on the Robo Taxi side of the L4. Europe is becoming a very important market, and frankly, it's a very strategically important market. Honestly, FSD to me is an entry-level drug into full autonomy in terms of consumers experiencing this, and then wanting more out of it, and seeing the power of what it can do. CyberCab is going to be at the Paris Motor Show. France always a problem, right? And I think they're trying to get France on board with all this. Good luck with that. They've got their own issues, but, you know, to your point, best of luck. And for European listeners, you're missing out by not being able to get FSD. I got to say it's amazing. Speaking of Europe, we've got Vern and Saga, which we know about, but they began testing their fully driverless rides. I think just this past week, they have 30 vehicles. They have about 1500 users. They talk about 10,000 on the wait list. And in Vern's case, they're hoping that they're going to get two driverless rides to the public at some point next year. We'll see. I do want to clarify something. Pony has made public statements. They sent out a press email and they made this public today. Vern is becoming the fleet management partner. They have nothing to do with the technology. Uber is the platform for the connectivity. Pony is the driver. Vern is the infrastructure depot layer. That is a big change in how this has evolved over the last couple of years. I just want to point out that is very, very, very interesting, especially as the Pony, Vern, Uber, relationship continues to scale into the UK with London and Manchester. So this is getting very interesting, a big pivot for Vern. This trend holds a Vern becoming the infrastructure layer. Yeah, that's an important correction. So I appreciate that. I was I was reading that as if Vern was the guy, Pony is the tech, right? And they also, by the way, announced I think they're going to Manchester. So this is the second UK city in six days. They're starting to test there. So good job with Pony. Obviously Chinese technology competing with we ride is also trying to expand internationally, given the, you know, I don't know how much opportunity they're going to have in their home country, certainly significant in size, but, you know, facing their own regulatory challenges there is they want to try and balance the market as always in China. So yeah, Pony is at the root here. So maybe rather than ever saying Vern again, I'll just always, whatever I see the word Vern, I'll just read it as Pony. That sounds great. And I will put this out there, not to plug field reports again. David Moss is in the UK looking for cars. So if the Pony cars are there, Mr Moss is going to find them and we're going to publish it as a field report. David, if you're listening, go to the footman pub. It's wonderful. It's a nice, nice area. May fair. See if you can take an autonomy car there and have a have a pint or the yield, chester cat or cat ale house, whatever they've got the oak, the oak barrel. Bitter. So delicious. Enjoy your time there looking forward to your field report. David, I will say Walt has made those pub recommendations to me and I have been to both and they were fantastic. Walt, this has been an incredible show. Lots of field work going on. What do we need to look for in the markets next week? Because it just feels like every week autonomy just keeps heating up, heating up and getting hot. I've kind of said this throughout the podcast already. October 21st Tesla's Q3 earnings could be one of the more interesting ones as it relates to what's going on in autonomy. got the NITSA issue that's going on with Tesla and whether we can give it the full green check mark, kind of those number of cars, looking at what's actually happening in Dallas. There's a lot of Tesla things, I think, to look for in the coming week. Obviously, at the same time, you have a lot of these other companies that have promised Q4 driver out, whether it's emotional or neuro or others, that you never know if they're going to deliver some news for us in the upcoming week. You never know, but what I know is that you and I are going to be here each and every week covering this, and for the audience, no surprise, the inspectors going back out in the field again next week, not telling you where I'm going, all I'll say is the inspectors going back out in the field, and the field work is going to continue. The future is bright, the future autonomous, the future is field work and Walt travel recommendations. Walt, until next week. Autonomies here are, as of the recording date, may change without notice, and do not necessarily reflect the views of autonomy AI, incorporated, its affiliates, or any speaker's employer. Content, including the road to autonomy indices, is for informational and educational purposes only. Autonomy, AI is not a registered investment advisor or broker dealer, and does not give investment, legal, accounting or tax advice. Comparing in our public or gated content is investment advice, a recommendation, an offer, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security or financial product, and should not be relied on to evaluate any transaction. This program may contain forward-looking statements, investments involve risk, including loss of principle. Past performance is not indicative of future results. 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