Walt? This week, Alphabet reported, Tesla reported, the Mobileye CEO stepped down, and I'm listening to the Tesla earnings call, I said, "Oh my goodness, it's Walt!" You asked the great question about Tesla Semi with FSD, so that entered the picture. On that same call, we did get some color from Robo-Taxi. What were your takeaways from the Tesla call?
I mean, overall, the Bloomberg messaging that I was getting from investors during the call was that the call sounded downbeat. And right around the time I was getting those messages, I think Elon chimed in that he was actually feeling under the weather, so you know, that was an issue. Investors react to a lot of different things. Obviously, the CAPEX was up. Not sure why that is a major surprise.
But to me and to our listeners, the key thing, I think, was just getting some more indications of, you know, what's going on in Austin and some of these other autonomous markets for them, and what and when and why we can expect scaling.
The nice thing on the call was we did get some color on the autonomous miles, 380,000 unsupervised miles. That was a nice number to get, but it pales in comparison to Waymo's numbers.
Yeah, it was also interesting he talked about zero notable incidents. And I think I forget, I should have got his exact quote, but talked about people that were in the market trying to initiate problems for the cars, and we know that all too well about some people that are trying to create problems down there.
But, you know, we kind of knew if you do the mileage on that, and they're saying they're doing it all day, the math works out in terms of that many miles. But the issue, Grayson, is, you know, Cybercab being on the road last week, I'm getting, you know, hyped up, maybe that means we're close for all these different reasons, you know, NHTSA kind of moving their way as well in terms of removing some of these pedal and steering wheel requirements.
But on the call they talked about the fact that, look, they're going to have to put — this is a new chassis, a new shape, right? They have to put miles. And I think we've talked about that on this program. This is something, whether it's trucking or cars or whatever, that you need miles that are specific to a new form factor. Just like, you know, Waymo was dealing with when they moved to Olli and then ultimately to Hyundai. So this is just, you know, a further potential timeline buffer, delay, whatever you want to call it, until I think we see a number of cars. Unless I'm wrong and they drop a ton of Model Ys in the market, but it doesn't sound like that's the case.
No, what it reemphasizes is what you and I have talked about, and we've gotten some interesting inbound on it. It is not as easy as some individuals think to take one autonomous driving stack and port it to another vehicle, to another vehicle, to another vehicle. It's actually a complex process, and what we learned on that Tesla call is that all of a sudden, all at once, it's not necessarily true. It's taking a long time and it's a long process to go from the Y to Cybercab. That ramp, I believe, will be slower than most individuals are expecting.
So it's a noisy day in the market. Again, people are focused on different things in the quarter. That to me is one of the bigger things in terms of the timing of the Cybercab. Ultimately, you're going to start getting this question more and more. So, how many miles do you need to get to? And I'm sure the company will be asked that question in the future.
If we're gauging 380,000, like if I'm going to say best-case scenario with the number of Cybercabs that we see them dumping in these individual markets, I'm going to say it's at least 250,000 miles that they're going to want to log on the new chassis. And if you kind of work out the math on that, depending on the number of cars that they're putting in the market with drivers, right, safety drivers behind a wheel, you know, best case, maybe you're saying end of the year is when they get to what I call the Autonomy Markets benchmark of 100 cars in Austin or maybe one of these Florida markets, whichever they decide to scale first.
I think that's a very, very valid assumption. And at that same time, hopefully as they add the miles on, the ODDs expand. And the one thing that we're clearly seeing from our field reporting, we're seeing the photos and next that Cybertrucks are showing up in larger and larger numbers in markets, and that's a clear validator to your thesis of having to get to at least 250,000 miles until they can activate it.
And aside from these quantitative numbers, there was also some qualitative commentary. I think it was from Elon, maybe it was another one of the management team, just saying safety first, safety first. And like, you know, we want it to be safe before we unleash it. This is stuff that I've talked about over the past year, that the culture of safety at Tesla and SpaceX is a much higher bar than I think a lot of people had assumed.
It became very clear on the call to anybody who's paying attention, Tesla's not cutting corners when it comes to safety. And Elon had the line, if there was one incident, a bump, it would be international headlines. And he's right about that. The risk to the safety for Tesla is probably higher than any company out there right now just because Elon is such a polarizing figure to so many individuals.
Now, the other indication that we might have had is that, you know, when we were at the Gigafactory, and we saw the Cybertruck line being brought up, and it was delivered on schedule in Q2. There was some discussion about how it would take maybe nine months or a year to get up to full capacity. Now, if on the call they're saying the production of the Cybertruck is pacing to the validation miles, and not the other way around, right, then again, that could be an indication that you're probably talking six to nine months down the road until you're getting that full production of the Cybertrucks, which is simultaneous with when you have those validation miles and ready to go. So, we're probably going to see these gold Cybertrucks being stacked up to a certain extent in a lot of the lots that you have identified through your field work.
That raises the question of the timeline. Are we realistically looking at January, February, perhaps, of Cybercab going into some sort of service?
Well, like I said, best case scenario, end of year.
So, best case scenario is not necessarily your highest probability scenario. That's just a different way of saying it.
There's a lot of ways to say things, and it's going to be super, super interesting. The one thing that I found fascinating, and this goes into your world with Telco Corner, the Starlink integration. What do you make of that? And I got to ask you from a Telco perspective, what do you truly think that's there for?
Well, I loved how they kind of drummed up what you said even prior to Autonomy Markets, what you used to pitch on Road to Autonomy, like getting in a car and watching the Super Bowl. And they were talking about the types of ubiquitous speed, excuse me, download speeds that were available to watch movies or whatever in the back of these cars, because obviously people's times are going to be freed up.
The flip side of that is what I was asking about is on the SpaceX side of things, there's a lot of discussion about SpaceX becoming a competitor with AT&T and T-Mobile and others. They're going to need ways to offload that capacity. If you're basically using Starlink to backhaul from the car, you know, back up to space, then that car itself becomes a hotspot for any mobile users that are around it. So, I think I asked Elon about that on the call, and that's kind of more of a Telco Corner question, but I figured since it was a Tesla product, I could probably sneak that in there. So, we got that validation, which is what I suspected was the case.
I mean, you did a really great job asking your questions. I was watching CNBC and John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T, was asked that direct question. Will Starlink become a direct competitor of AT&T? Mr. Stankey was talking about their fiber, which I'm proud to report my fiber is working. And yes, there is Starlink backup now, but the fiber is working. So, it seems to me that any which way you slice this, there's a lot of moving parts in the Tesla empire and so a lot of things for us to watch.
The other thing that was interesting from the call, I don't know if this was a one-off, but there's kind of a new framing in terms of expansion, where there was some reference to scaling to the entire state as opposed to going city by city. But then, you know, I think there was maybe some kind of countervailing commentary. Do you think that's really the case that they would just basically continue to broaden out in the state rather than just adding more cities like the Waymo model is?
It really just depends on the regulatory environment. If you look at the California regulatory environment, you have multiple paths. You can apply for a region, a city permit, or you can go for the state all at once. So, perhaps that is a reference to California trying to get a statewide permit all at once. I do not know, purely speculating there. As it relates to encompassing the state, I think realistically it's just going to expand out of major metropolitan areas where people are because there's a lot of states with very rural areas running a robo-taxi service, economically won't make sense. Unless there's bigger plans for FSD, which on the call we learned that the growth of that's been pretty substantial.
We also had chatted briefly with Lars on the call about, you know, the federal unlock, obviously what Jonathan Morrison is doing at NHTSA, which he called them a very good partner. Obviously Jersey and what's going on there is disheartening when they're talking about mandating sensors, which obviously is kind of a crazy concept, but it didn't seem to me that they thought, other than what is going forward with NHTSA, that they needed anything more in terms of their scaling. They just have to deal with these states on a state-by-state basis. It didn't feel like there was a national framework beyond, again, removing these requirements for the brake pedal and the steering wheel.
The comments from Lars, the comments from Elon and Ashok to me signaled confidence that Tesla believes that they have a path forward to do this. So, I think there's a lot of confidence there as they're getting ready to roll this out. And you said this in past episodes, and I believe you're 100% correct, that Cybercab will ultimately be the ultimate scale vehicle for the Robo-Taxi service.
Now, this last one, which I really want to get a clappy hat for, because we do cover autonomy broadly here, including autonomous trucking, but I did slip in a question about asking about the roadmap for autonomy on the Semi. You know, they've been talking a lot more about Semi recently. A lot of people think that this could be very disruptive to ICE engine type of deployment, you know, so everyone's optimistic there.
But remember, when this thing was first talked about, I think it was early as like 2017, they were talking about whatever, these long, I forget the word for it is, but a convoy, I guess, of semis in autonomy. It wasn't really talked about, so I had to throw that in the hopper. And of course, Elon gave a very aggressive timeline saying that he thought that they could get autonomy on the semi truck by the end of the year. He obviously played that down saying like, "Look, the primary focus is what we're doing with Cybercab." But I mean, these guys can walk and chew at the same time, so I'm sure we'll see more words around autonomy with the Semi as the quarters unfold.
I'm going to give you a clappy, two clappy hats. One clap, two claps. One clap for getting on the call and asking great questions. And two, thank you for the FSD Semi question because if you talk to Matt McLelland at Covenant, he's been for test rides. He said his drivers at Covenant, the largest overnighter in the country, they love driving the Semi. David Moss, who's a friend of ours, he's actually ridden in Semi. He thought it was cool. First time he's ever been in there.
And then on the backside of that, you're getting research out of Argonne National Laboratory, one of our national labs, around megawatt charging. So the pieces are coming together from an infrastructure standpoint to scale. And all of a sudden, you put FSD in Semi, that gets very compelling, very interesting when you combine it with a robotic charging arm, which a lot of professors and researchers believe that you need to truly scale megawatt Semi level charging. So great question, and a lot of questions are going to arise out of that.
Yeah, and obviously there's a lot of public or a few public, a lot of private companies that we've talked about in this podcast. I do think trucking is obviously a very large opportunity. Probably is not as sexy as investors to look at right now. But you know, there is Aurora, a $12 billion market company, public company, that's out there. Now, there's Kodiak, there's Plus that attempted to do a SPAC and didn't quite work out. And there's other companies, right? You know, Waabi, which got some money from Uber, but still had a historical trucking business.
There's a lot of companies. And look, I've experienced this on the telecom side, right? With SpaceX and launching their satellites, it's been a tremendous overnight. You referenced John Stankey from AT&T talking about CNBC and having to answer questions about satellites. The same thing is now going to happen to Aurora and Kodiak and everyone else about like, okay, what happens when, you know, the Semi gets there? And if it's right around the corner, and it doesn't have to be next quarter that it's occurring.
And the challenge then is like these companies, you know, are not AT&T. AT&T generates free cash flow, right? And is a sustained business. These other companies are still in this kind of startup phase where there's going to need capital now potentially having this overhang if having to deal with, you know, talking about Tesla and a potential autonomous semi truck.
And the industry also have Gatik, which is private. You have Stack, which is a subsidiary of SoftBank. So, you have a lot of moving parts there, but to me, let's remove the whose autonomy stack is better from this. Tesla with Semi eliminates one of the biggest risks that we've seen play out publicly in this market. The OEM risk. They're the OEM. They're vertically integrated. They're taking out that risk. That alone becomes very, very interesting, especially as they look to integrate, test, validate, and scale FSD and Semi because that risk is gone.
I mean, this OEM problem crosses trucking as well as cars, you know, in terms of the companies. I mean, again, to your point, Tesla kind of sees through that. That's why they're, even though they don't necessarily have a 100 car market yet, that's why they're still in the mix because once it works, they control the volumes. Waymo is still kind of eking out the volumes based on their existing partners, and I would guess it's a challenge for them to continue to add partners just because of the fear of Google. You know, that's why I don't think we've seen potentially additional partners there.
Trucking is even more challenging, I think, in that regard for a variety of reasons. So, but look, the flip side of that, Grayson, though, is maybe if these trucking companies see that, you know, Tesla Semi is heading their direction, maybe that forces them to rethink how they've been so, you know, apprehensive about embracing technology. And when I say apprehensive, the case in point, PACCAR. Right? PACCAR with their relationship with Aurora forcing them, you know, to put someone in that driver seat. But I don't think PACCAR's alone. I think it's an industry which is going to be a challenge to deal with.
There's a lot of challenges and it goes down to the supplier level, supply part A, supply part B. It's a lot of challenges in that ecosystem. And for individuals who want to go back in history and do the research and do the homework, it's been covered in depth in the LA Times. Look at the Mark Fields original Google self-driving car negotiations. The LA Times Russ Mitchell did a good job covering it. Go read that and that will give you a very clear insight into the correlations that's happening in trucking, too. There is a lot of, I'll use the term, there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen that are extending their ability to override the master.
With that said, these companies are fighting the good fight. These are smart people. They're pushing what we think is good technology. Like we said, we hope for all of them to succeed. It's unlikely that's going to happen, but, you know, just this week, Aurora, you know, we've talked about this on the show before, you know, where they're buying these International series trucks and putting their hardware on them, right? Because this is how do you deal with PACCAR doing what they're doing and waiting for Volvo? So, they're kidding International. They've got a relationship with an upfitter that they can get hundreds of these trucks on the road and start to do their own version of scaling.
Also, they showed a video with no one in the driver seat. So, unlike the PACCARs, where, you know, you can kind of see the guy eating the chips, now we can watch videos where there's no one in that driver seat. So, that's, you know, a very positive, I think, step for Aurora, potentially just overshadowed by a rough overall financial market this week, but also, you know, these statements by Tesla.
It's a positive, but you know me, I put on the inspector hat and read the fine print. And in the fine print on Aurora's public blog post, the following was stated: There may be a member of its roadside assistance team riding in the rear seat on some trips on board to gather feedback and provide support like roadside assistance. That was an official blog. So I have the following questions and I'm going to be that guy, very polite though. The questions that I think that should be answered.
The first question is, does the backseat team member hold a CDL and do they have access to an emergency stop button or kill switch while the truck is moving? The second question is, do they take over manual driving after a potential incident or drive the truck during any phase of the trip, yard, docks, or shoulder recoveries? Third question, if an onboard human has any active safety or monitoring duties during transit, it would be considered supervised. Do they? That's the question.
And the final one, and this is a very important one for those who know the ecosystem, is the presence of this team member strictly optional or is it required by insurance underwriters, truck OEM partners, or suppliers? Those are the questions that I'd like to see answered, but it's a positive step, but there's still some lingering questions.
I mean, I think you should detail all of those questions in your Sunday newsletter, which everyone should subscribe to if they don't already do that, because that was a lot to digest, four different questions. And I think they're valid ones as part of the process of getting to commercial. Like the driving at the, you know, driving the full way, that's not as relevant to me as long as that trip is occurring over whatever many miles, 100 miles, 200 miles, whatever.
Let me look at Kodiak even in the Permian Basin, like they take that stand at 5 miles an hour. At the end of the day, someone then gets in the truck and then parks it in order to accept the sand into the truck. They're going to move past that at some point, just like Aurora will move past parts of these times when maybe a human has to drive in the truck, but you got to start somewhere. It just underscores kind of where we are with autonomy in trucking, right? There's still work to be done. There's still money that needs to be invested. And now you potentially have Aurora and, excuse me, Tesla.
The other question I have, Grayson, is like, maybe Elon is different. Elon is — what do you mean maybe? Elon is definitely different. But typically in corporate America, when a competitor does something, it evokes a response. So like, if you're Waymo — maybe Waymo could care less about Tesla. But if Tesla starts talking about trucking, right, and autonomy on the Semi, do we potentially see Waymo starting to indicate that they're going to revive their trucking business that has been put aside?
That is one of the greatest parlor games that's currently going on in the traditional trucking industry and in autonomous trucking. Charlie Chap previously ran the program, and the clear indicator of everything in the parlor game is no. There is not even a whisper of a noise to go there. That's just what's been going on. Everybody asks the question and everybody comes to the same conclusion. No. But you never know. You never know.
