Walt, it was another busy week in the autonomy markets, and once again this week I hit the road. This week I headed to Houston to go on a journey up to Dallas, where I witnessed Bot Auto go fully autonomous — no human in the cab — delivering a commercial load from Houston to Dallas. While Bot was busy preparing for their commercial launch, Aurora announced an expanded partnership with Hirschbach. But then the most interesting thing that happened: Uber's CTO put a post on X that I'll say, frankly, was taking a shot at Waymo. Interesting signals there. Let's start with Bot Auto. What do you make of the 231-mile fully autonomous launch?
So you were in the cab of this truck for 230 — or 231 — because I was in a Kodiak truck, as you know. You know, I wouldn't necessarily say it's the most comfortable ride to sit in one of these trucks. And you were in there for 230 miles?
I was not in the truck. I asked, and the insurance would not approve it. And for clarification, there was no human, no individual with a CDL, no supervisor, nobody, period, in the cab — completely humanless.
Are you sure there wasn't someone hiding in there down below, like holding the steering wheel at all? Did you check in the cabin before and after, like, you know, like it's a magic trick type of thing?
I did. That's why I have the inspector hat. I looked in there and I shut the door and made sure nobody was in there. So fully inspected, inspector approved.
That's kind of crazy. I think that is probably, in terms of highways, like the first time we've seen like an 18-wheeler with literally no one in the cab at all.
That's correct. And what I witnessed was impressive, and I want to highlight for the audience: Houston is the land of 40 minutes. Everything is on a freeway. It's amazing — the sprawling metropolis with no zoning laws. This Bot Auto truck left from deep Houston. This was not in the Woodlands. This is from deep, deep Houston. Had to get through the Houstonian traffic before basically hitting the open freeway. And when we hit the open freeway, there's a lot of traffic late at night. It was a very complex journey.
Was this the first — or this is not the — I mean, let me rephrase this. Was this the first time ever that they've had no one in the cab, or the first time that they did it commercially, or the first time that they happened to show someone other than themselves?
This is the first time that it's ever been done without a human or an observer actually in the cab. And this was a commercial paid run, which we did independently verify.
I mean, that's a good honor for you to get that. That's crazy. Where was Governor Abbott? Shouldn't Governor Abbott have been there checking this out?
I'm unsure where the governor was, but it was an honor to be there, and it goes into the work that you and I have done, and I do with Road to Autonomy with Rob Grant, is that we get access to these things, and we're very thankful that we can present this to our audience to show them truly what's happening there. We're on the ground. That's what we do.
So in terms of Bot Auto, like, which is not a public company, what does this mean in terms of — like, I mean, obviously a huge milestone, right? Massive. Like, what's next in terms of them commercializing this and starting to actually book revenue off of these rides?
So that ride was revenue. I do not know the number. The next thing to look for, and this is based on my conversations with the management team, that this was at night. You will next see daytime operations, and then I believe that you will see Dallas to Houston, perhaps followed by other lanes, and look for an increase of more and more fully autonomous rides to expand.
I feel like you should have brought like a drone or something to circle around the cab as it was cruising down the road. I'm guessing the cab was so high up that you couldn't see people reacting to the fact that there was no one in the driver's seat.
We — because I was in a vehicle behind this — you could not see any human reaction, but if you did go by the side, which we did, you could tell clearly that there was no human in the cab. There was no human in the driver's seat because the windows were not tinted. I want to highlight that the windows were not tinted, and we will be releasing a Road to Autonomy field report next Tuesday because we filmed and documented the whole thing, and Bot Auto will be releasing a four-and-a-half-hour fully unedited video showing everything as well next week.
I'd rather watch your video than the four-and-a-half-hour unedited video. I think I might skip that one. No offense to Bot Auto, and look forward to your Tuesday reveal. That's amazing. That's clearly a major milestone, right? I mean, how many — we talk about this all the time — the very few number of companies, cars or trucks alike, that have trucks on the road, no driver, and I mean, in this case also generating, obviously, revenue, at least on this particular ride. That is a rare occurrence, right? A lot of these companies that get a lot of press, there's still like a safety driver or someone sitting there. But yeah, I mean, that's obviously a good milestone. So I guess congrats to their team and congrats to you to see it firsthand. That's a feat.
Thanks. It's really great, and it's been a really good two weeks for us because the week before this, we were in the Permian Basin with Kodiak, where they're operating fully autonomous, no human in the cab, for paid operations. To me, if you look at what I saw in the Permian Basin — which that will be released on May 17th, that video — and what we saw with Bot Auto is a clear indication that autonomous trucking is soon to have its Waymo robo-taxi moment, where this technology is about to scale with no human in the loop. It's coming. It's going to be closer than we think.
I'm always about what's next, though. So let's get those things scaled up and generating revenue, right? Get people buying them. But that's obviously a good milestone. Let's switch to another player in this space, Aurora, who had their own press release this week with Hirschbach, which I believe does like chilled goods or something, or a carrier, like someone that takes, I guess, you know, frozen or cold goods from point A to point B. So they purchased trucks, and then they have their own drivers, I suspect. They did a 500-truck commitment with Aurora. It's an MOU. Not a lot of details. It says starting in '27. I'm not sure that that implies all 500 are going to get delivered in '27. I don't know if, given the number of trucks that Hirschbach has, that would be a pretty big percentage of their fleet. Again, we don't have those details. And I don't think there's an OEM, like an actual truck, selected. So what were your takeaways from this announcement? Got a lot of buzz. Aurora, as many people know, is a public company. Stock was up, I think, like 15, 20% at one point on this announcement.
Hirschbach specializes in reefers. Not reefer madness from the marijuana smoke, but reefers to move refrigerated goods. I read the press release several times. A few things stood out to me. As you said, no details on who the OEM is. And the fact that it was non-binding. And if you look at the number, that would be roughly 15% of Hirschbach's fleet. So I would ask, where are the more concrete details on this? Is it a positive? 100%, it's a positive. But it would be nice to get more details. And you know, we always harp on the details here on Autonomy Markets.
I mean, I feel you on the details, but I'd rather have this and know about this as it progresses than not. I mean, obviously Waymo had their own press release with Toyota last year talking about an MOU with something with Toyota for private vehicles. We haven't heard anything about that since. I suspect that we're going to hear more details from Aurora as things progress here. My other question, I guess, is like, that's a lot of trucks again, the 15%. Who knows if they're happening in '27? Like, how many do they buy per year? And if it's like incremental to their regular truck purchases, you know, do they have the type of balance sheet to be able to fund this, or do you think there's going to be a financing partner that ends up being part of this?
What I think it goes back to is more questions and more details. I don't have enough insight into Hirschbach to give you an answer on the balance sheet. It just seems, based on 15% of the fleet, it's going to be a very, very large, significant number.
Okay, so we have Bot Auto with literally no one in the cabin. We've got the Permian Basin, literally no one in the cabin. We got Aurora — okay, they got a guy there. This is PacCar, you know, our friends at Volvo. I think hopefully they'll start delivering, and you know, I see tweets from Sasco on this a lot, or things on LinkedIn. So looking forward to seeing those trucks on the road. And yet here in California, we have a congressman by the name of Ro Khanna. I'm sure many people are familiar with him, that tweeted this week: 'I stand with Teamsters. We do not have planes without pilots. We need drivers on trucks for safety and edge cases and inclement weather. AI should be for the people, not just build billionaires.' So I don't really quite get the connection here. I actually quote-tweeted this, like, I'm not sure what this has to do with billionaires. Like, autonomy is for us all to save lives on the roads, 10,000 of them, but also in your own state. I seem to see a lot of stuff on Twitter about people that are given licenses to drive trucks that then crash those trucks because they don't sleep or they're on drugs or whatever. Like, so of all states to talk about this, for him to say that and then somehow relate this to some social war of money when autonomy is about, again, saving people's lives and making rides cheaper. I mean, you look at some of the quotes that even going back to what Aurora said in their press release with Hirschbach, you know, about the routes that they want these autonomous trucks for. It just seems like completely disconnected. And again, one of these states that's going to limit technological development even though it saves the lives of their citizens.
Politics. There's no other way to describe it. It's politics. Trucking is a dangerous job. If you look at the wonderful work that Secretary Buttigieg has done at the US Department of Transportation, there are individuals — hey, guess what? Public data. A lot of them got their CDL in an unscrupulous way through the state of California. Why don't you start enforcing the laws instead of attacking the quote-unquote billionaire class when they're the ones who provide the jobs? It is clearly out of touch, and I got to give a shout-out to Jason Calacanis and the All-In team. They've done a really good job breaking this down with Ro Khanna and his shifting policies, and the All-In team even invited Congressman Khanna to debate, which he declined. So All-In, hopefully if you get the congressman on the podcast, ask him about the changing narrative.
I just don't get the connection to the billionaires. Like, what do the billionaires have to do with any of this in terms of autonomous trucks? It literally makes no sense, but it's like, 'Oh, hit a button that resonates with people.' It's crazy. Let's move on because I don't want to spend more time with this nonsense. Uber and Hertz, they have a deal this week. You know, Hertz is going to be basically providing — this is the, you know, look, on this podcast, I think we alone have continued to push the importance of what I call the third or maybe fourth leg of the stool for autonomy, which is these cars need to be serviced, right? And so Hertz is going to be the partner for the Nuro relationship that exists with Uber. And you know, look, when you think about all the Uber relationships that are happening, like when you look at the press, you talk about looking at the details, like this Nuro one seems to be the one that's getting managed the best. I do worry a little bit about Lucid as the partner. I mean, we need more people buying, I think, EVs to support Lucid and maybe Rivian as well. With gas on the rise, maybe we get some of those purchases there, but this was definitely, I think, encouraging for that relationship. But like, what do you make of Hertz in the context of other options out there like Avis or all the stuff that you do when you go on the road every week and look for these depots?
I will tease the audience. One of the partners named here, I will be visiting an operational depot next week. So stay tuned for that. I think it's a really good move for Hertz. Gil West, who's CEO of Hertz, former CEO of Cruise, now that he's starting to get that business shaped around it. It's a good move. You want to say it's coming full circle because in the early days of autonomy, this is when Waymo was just ramping up Chandler, all the autonomy companies that were competing with Waymo at the time all had a rental car partnership. So I think that it's a really good sign. You want to say it's coming full circle because rental car companies know how to service fleets. They know how to charge. They know how to do the inspections. They know how to do if there's drug paraphernalia in the car. All the things that have to be done to truly operate a fleet at scale, they know how to do that.
How you throw in the drug paraphernalia. I mean, look, yes, they do. It might be at a different pace. I think we're definitely excited to see what Flexdrive can do, which is owned by Lyft. And there's other companies out there that, you know, have been early Uber partners that haven't impressed as much. Market still wide open here. Look, at the end of the day, this is important. Like, there was some stuff on Twitter this week because Uber announced this basically new thing where you get your Uber driver, they can pick you up a coffee or some food. Everyone's like, 'Oh my god, I can't believe you'd have food in the back of the cab and someone might, you know, get sick.' Like, well, that's what these service centers are for, right? What happens if it's in an autonomous car? Like, the autonomous car sees that something happened because there's a camera, or maybe the next passenger reports that something happened. And then the car self-drives itself to the Hertz, to the Avis, to the Flexdrive, wherever it is, and it gets cleaned and gets sent back out on the road, which happens to like any taxi service or black car service. Like, that's what happens, and like you probably charge the customer for that and probably make some margin in the process. So like to me, this is, you know, again, so I applaud actually Uber and Dara's adding of that, of linking Uber Eats and trying to use his ecosystem of assets at Uber to do it. You know, if there's pushback from the drivers, like, 'Okay, good luck, driver, because guess what? Autonomous is coming for you, and the autonomous companies will have no problem with customers eating or getting food put in their cars ahead of their trip.'
You're right about the revenue streams. We don't know how it's going to go, but there are going to be multiple revenue streams there. Another really important thing to point out there is that rental car companies such as Hertz, Avis, Sixt, they all have prime real estate adjacent to airports. And why is that important? If you look at it from a service perspective, the vehicle, this is in theory, could get to the airport a lot quicker leaving the Hertz rental depot at the airport to pick the person up than coming from a depot far away. So there's a lot of strategic advantages to working with the rental car company outside of just the potential services that they offer. It's also strategic locations of the real estate that they own.
I mean, you love the airports. I respect that. And a lot of the ports or whatever, the areas where the cars are stored that we've identified this far are typically located close to the airport. Like if you just look back on our past videos of that. In fact, last week when you unveiled that, you know, the Tesla filing for the private charging station, I think it was — I don't know if it was by an airport, but it was out and large, like many charging things. But the other thing that these rental car agencies have, I don't know if they own them, but like when I rent a car, sometimes if I'm in a city, like I don't go out to the airport to rent the car. Hertz has locations, as all these rental cars do, like in the cities that have places where the cars are also cleaned and charged. And I think ultimately, and we've debated this back and forth, you know, on Autonomy Markets, like where are these service centers located? Do you always want all of these cars going back to this like central location, or do you want like, you know, smaller areas throughout the city that maybe in some cases Hertz and Avis have already upgraded the power for and have charging capabilities that would be needed for autonomy. So it's not just to me the airport real estate. It's also those locations. I don't know if they own them, they're franchises, but there is branding for these rental car companies in a lot of those locations.
You bring up a very valid point. I call them satellite depots. And if you look at the filings that we uncovered for Tesla, one is to the northern region of Phoenix Metro, one is to the south. And they are to the east of the airport. So you could say satellite hubs. And if you just look at the locations of Hertz and Avis, they have, if you want to call it, the motherships at the major international airports, then they have the satellites around. And we're starting to see that same model from depots that we've uncovered. If you look at Miami with Waymo, there's a depot by the airport, then there's a satellite in Wynwood. And if you look at Waymo in Dallas, we've been there too. There's satellites surrounded, and then when the commercial area, there's a more formal depot. So if you want to call it, this hub-and-spoke model is going to emerge, and the rental car agencies already have that infrastructure, and you could say perhaps they might have a better advantage of getting power sooner because they've been established in that community for longer than a new operator who might be entering it.
They may already have the power there because they were, you know, leasing electric cars at least for some time. I think some of them have kind of ended that, but, you know, that was a green option at least as some of them have. By the way, Grayson, the other issue is like, you know, we know in California people have complained about Waymo's kind of circling around. There's been like white papers claiming, 'Oh, there's going to be all this excess traffic in a market as the autonomous cars are sitting there in some of the lower hours rather than having somewhere to park.' Well, maybe these depots that Avis, Hertz, or whoever have are also locations just for the cars to kind of park for a while and get out of the regular traffic of the streets.
You know what you just did? You hit the nail on the head, so you're going to get a clappy hat for this one, Walt. The areas, the satellites where Hertz, Avis, Enterprise operate, they're zoned properly for commercial use already. The zoning's done. Clappy hat for you for picking up on that one.
I will say, but we haven't seen much of Avis in Dallas with Waymo. Yes, again, early-stage market. We're still looking for interesting companies that are going to benefit here. You know, one of the companies that we've had a hard time even talking to, but we've, you know, found their locations and been able to evaluate them, is Avomo. This is Avomo, is formerly Move. They have a different Move, and they own part of this company. But like, what happened to them? Like, what is going on with Avomo, which is an Uber company that they don't control, and their partnership with Waymo?
We don't know. We don't have details. But what we do know is if you go on Avomo's website, you will only see two depot locations in the United States listed: Atlanta and Austin. Well, why is that important? Those are both the hybrid Uber-Waymo markets. You do not see any other markets. They do not have an active social media presence anywhere. And then furthermore, where is Moov? Is this a sign that Uber is moving away from Moov? No pun intended. And the reason I bring it up is because Moov is clearly bear-hugging or trying to deepen the relationship with Waymo, and yet they're not coming up. But we need to put this into perspective here. Uber is an investor in Avomo, and they're an investor in Moov. And now they're doing a deal with Hertz. I'm trying to figure out Uber's strategy here.
Well, Uber's strategy is always to, you know, spread it around, you know, split it up, diversify it, fragment the market so they're not overly reliant on one party, and hopefully, or in their hope, that someone doesn't come and kind of aggregate that market up and become an aggressive counterparty to them if they're successful in autonomy. But that is the game plan for them. But given like, I'm not sure at least in this segment of the market — I know Moov does other things — that they have enough traction that you really want to spread it thin already and bring Hertz into the game this early. But you know, who knows? It's still early stages. It's definitely the seed of the market. I mean, the other kind of overall overriding thing here that I think ties Avomo together to all this is that is the Uber — that's a market where you have to get a Waymo on an Uber app and it's going to an Avomo, which is partly owned by Uber, the service station. Hopefully I didn't botch that in people's brains. That is precisely the market that we think there's been some issues. And then this week, you know, on that same kind of topic, which, you know, Grayson, you have been the most vocal person, bar none, in terms of questioning this relationship between, you know, Waymo and Uber. I've been more tempered. You know, I'm like, 'Wait, you know, Waymo's announced...
these markets. It's still possible that they bring Uber in. That is not happening.
So, like I've been kind of shifting to your bucket. And what do we have this week? We have a tweet by the CTO of Uber saying, "Scary Waymo moment in San Francisco today. It overtook a Muni bus in the wrong lane at a signal, didn't stop, and aggressively tried to squeeze between me and the bus. Had the bus driver and I not steered away, this could have been a serious incident. Big fan of AVs, but perception does not equal judgment. Edge cases matter." So, you have the CTO of Uber basically dunking on Waymo, who is their primary autonomy partner. It is the only car, I think. Well, I'm sorry, maybe WeRide. The only car that you can book on the Uber app and have no one in the driver's seat. At least in the US. So, like, what is going on with this?
It's a sign of the times. And the fact that this post on X has not been taken down for over 48 hours now and it's still live as of right now is a sign of the deteriorating relationship, and perhaps it's a sign the relationship's over, or it's a sign of absolute frustration, or perhaps this individual is lashing out because the relationship is coming to an end. But partners don't do this to partners in a very public forum, which is X. It reinforces everything that you and I have discussed here on Autonomy Markets about the deteriorating relationship, which I have very publicly said is on the verge of divorce. This is another sign that goes into what we've been saying for months now.
And we're not talking about like a market GM in an autonomous market or someone like, you know, not that there's anything wrong. Those people are all valid people, but like this is literally the CTO of the company to tweet this. It's kind of wild that it's up and it stayed up. And I'm noticing that other people are noticing finally. Again, like Grayson, you've been talking about this for months and quarters. Like, and now all of a sudden I'm seeing on social media like, oh, maybe this doesn't look so well for Waymo. Like, really? At least acknowledge Grayson for having been on this for quite some time.
No, it's truly, truly amazing the amount of talking points that emerge from this podcast that get regurgitated and not credited back to the hard work that we do, including the field work that you and I get on planes and go and visit to try and uncover everything for our audience here on Autonomy Markets.
It is what it is. We will survive, but I don't know. We'll see what the next step is. I guess we'll just have to keep watching Austin to see what happens there. Meanwhile, Waymo, going back to, you know, this is like the pat Grayson on the back podcast.
I have to get my own clappy hat. Back on February 28th, for a long time podcast, that's not even a long time podcast. For our more recent podcast listeners, Grayson Brulte said the next city for Waymo will be Portland. And you think he gave it a time frame and it's actually ahead of schedule. But what's interesting, and by the way, you were right, the next city, it took some period of time, which is kind of interesting in its own right. Like, you know, Waymo cranks out a lot of new developments, but like they haven't really announced a new city since, you know, before February 28th. And the very next city that was announced in terms of, hey, we're getting into this market, was in fact Portland. Now, what I said on that podcast, and I need to bring up a list, but the one after Portland is Cincinnati. And let me just give you a list. You know, just to back up. What list am I talking about? I just looked at like the 35 most populous markets in America and like where is Waymo not today? First, Riverside is still not there. That's fine. Whatever. I think they'll get there. It's California expansion. But beyond the kind of Portland and Cincinnati, after that you've got Kansas City, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Cleveland. They've already done Nashville, which is smaller, and there's, you know, other markets like Buffalo, which have been announced, which are smaller. But of the Cincinnati, KC, Columbus, Indianapolis, Cleveland, what do you think's going to be next? Or maybe you have another city that's not even on that list.
Kansas City post World Cup. But when I say Kansas City, I do not know if it's going to be on the Kansas side or the Missouri side.
I mean, come on. What do you, you can't do one side or the other, right? You have to provide. What do you think Waymo's just going to stop dead right when it's... We're not... It's going to be like the Dukes of Hazzard. Once you cross the line, it's going to... It won't work.
