Walt, I'm not wearing a hat, but have no fear. Inspector Crusoe is coming out later today. When it is, can't tell you. Just got to tease you because you gotta watch the show in your home state of New York. What is going on with the governor? Yes, we'll make AVs. Oh, nope. Can't have New York City. Oh, can't call Frank Sinatra. Then down in Austin, Waymo's taunting Tesla. I guess bigger is better in Texas. Then we got a great foreign autonomy desk. Maybe I'll bust out a hat, maybe I won't. And most importantly, let's go to Telco Corner first. What the heck happened with Verizon this week? I mean, come on. Can you hear me?
There has been a big demand to bring back Telco Corner on the LightShed podcast. So, I think we'll extend it over here because it's actually, I think we can relate it to the Waymo experience, as many of our watchers and listeners may have experienced. Your Verizon phone just stopped working for a day. And like Waymo, when they finally got it back up, the response was not from the CEO of the company. It was like some PR. They didn't provide an explanation for what exactly went wrong with the network. And you know, they're offering a $20 credit, but it's one of these classic opt-in things, Grayson, where you know, hopefully you'll figure out what link to go and fill in the information. The reality is that, you know, a minority of people end up figuring out how to collect on that $20 credit. So, yeah, it was a busy week in telco land. This is coming from a company with a new CEO that just fired what, 15% of the workforce. So, I mean, not shocking that something like this might happen. I'll sum it up as the kids say. Not good. It's not good.
No bueno. You know what's not good also? New York. What's going on? The governor Hochul's out there. Yes, we will introduce a bill to legalize autonomous vehicles, but lo and behold, you got to love us. We read the fine print on Autonomy Markets. No, New York City.
I mean, there you go again with your negativity. Why not focus on the positive that you have a governor that wants to introduce legislation that can expand the autonomous vehicle pilot? I don't live in New York City. Obviously, I spent a lot of time there, but don't live there. That is the positive, right? I mean, obviously, there is the negative about New York City, even though this governor is working closely with our new mayor, and I think the mayor himself had a quote on autonomous vehicles this week. Do we have that for our listeners?
We do, Walt. We have a quote from Mayor Mamdani of New York City. I'm going to read this quote for you here, word for word. End quote. I do take the arrival of autonomous vehicles very seriously and we'll always make sure that our policy and our decision-making is focused on the drivers who are here alongside me, in front of me, behind me, who keep our city moving. It sounds to me that it's going to be an uphill battle to deploy autonomous vehicles in New York City based on that and based on where the mayor gave that speech.
I assume that means he was standing in front of a bunch of taxi drivers. But obviously they're protecting a medallion system that notably has made Michael Bloomberg some extra money as one of the largest medallion owners. Talk about like an old system that makes a few people rich, which he's endorsing. I mean, the other thing that's obviously that I would nitpick on the text is why would your policy and decision-making not be focused on all of the New York City users, like the citizens of New York who are looking for clean and safe ways to get around the city? Like why would it be focused on, if you're a mayor for the entire city, why is the policy and decision-making focused on the drivers as opposed to all of the voters of New York City? So whatever, like one of many things that I find interesting about our new mayor and some of the decisions and things that he said out of the gate, and also obviously consistent with what we've talked about here on Autonomy Markets, the risks of some of these cities. At the end of the day, like guys like this will come and go, but autonomy is here forever. And you know, if they want to anger their electorate by not enabling a technology that people I believe firmly will want, you know, they will face the consequences ultimately and they will go, and autonomy will ultimately make it to New York. The bigger challenge in New York, Grayson, I think, is less about politicians like this grandstanding and more about like can you get the servicing function, the cars that would be required to truly launch in New York City. That again to me seems like the bigger challenge here.
The challenge is, and as you rightly said, the voters will vote. They'll go to the ballot box and vote that individual out, and perhaps it's that policy with other policies, and that's why we have a democracy and you can vote. Politics go far left, they go far right, and then eventually they get to the middle. But studying New York, and I did spend some time doing this, you look at the currently available real estate and you look at, and this is not a mafia term, but you look at the families and you know this multigeneration families that own a lot of this commercial real estate in the city. The commercial real estate that's zoned for parking is very limited. And the other issue that's not discussed a lot, there is energy shortage usage in New York. Getting into these garages, it's going to be very tough to find it, to deploy and hose these vehicles in New York City. I know I'm going into a controversial topic here, but do the vehicles have to go to New Jersey and end up paying the commuter tax just because the availability of energy and land to service these vehicles?
I mean, there's a lot to unpack in what you just said there, but to the root of it, I mean, no, I don't think ultimately that's going to be the case. I think there's a lot of smart money and people going after preparing for the autonomous wave that is to come, including New York, which can be very profitable given the population density. You know, hopefully there's an opportunity to partner with people in governments and hopefully maybe other cities show the way for this. I think the mayor of San Jose has been a standup example of someone wanting to partner with industry and you can see the positives that maybe they can occur from that. But no, I don't think you're going to have to shove these cars out into a different state, but we'll see. You know, we'll see what happens.
Do you think, because having lived in the city for a long time, do you think we'll have staging areas perhaps the Upper East Side, Upper West, Lower East, Lower West, Midtown, that they'll have staging areas just because of the traffic and the way the city's laid out?
I've seen and heard and I'm starting to see ideas for how this autonomy market will evolve over time. I think what you and I have seen up to this point, you know, the one we like to pick on is a Waymo in Austin, is, you know, and this is not like heavy analysis, is the least efficient way that cars will be serviced over time. There is a most efficient way. It does not necessarily require a ton of real estate. There's obviously a lot of garages in the city. Obviously, to your point, there's some infrastructure upgrades that need to occur particularly on the energy side of things. You know, but I think our governor talked about some investments in energy and nuclear or whatever it was or getting, you know, greater power there as well, you know. So, I think there will be solutions and you don't need like these mega centers like we saw in Austin. There's, you know, you'd probably, there's probably other ways to store and maintain these vehicles. It's clearly not working in Santa Monica, right? We know the complaints that those residents have with where Waymo is, but again, we're still early days and I think there's obvious solutions that will take some time to roll out and we will report back to our listeners as they start to get deployed and funded.
We will. The bottom line is you don't need a Costcoized infrastructure to deploy a fleet of autonomous vehicles. The other bottom line is the value for AVs in New York is in the city, not upstate. That's the bottom line.
I think that's a very limited viewpoint because when you say upstate, again, I don't know, that means a lot of different things, but I mean ultimately if you think about the opportunity in autonomy for even private ownership, I mean I need to get to the airport. I mean I think there's definitely a market for it. Obviously, population density is where you go after the most, but like I mean some of the topography that we saw in Austin is no different than what you see in Westchester or southern Connecticut. So I think to say it's a city-only thing is being a bit shortsighted at the broader opportunity for autonomy, especially here we go for non-geofenced autonomous options that are being developed.
That do not rely on HD maps. You forgot the key part there, Walt.
It was a layup. Let's go down to a state where autonomy is legal. Austin. There are no carveouts. You can go in Dallas, you can go in Austin, San Antonio. There's no carveouts. You can go anywhere you want in the state of Texas. Still, Tesla has not opened commercial service for the robo taxi without a safety attendant yet. We're still waiting.
Yeah, I mean, it's disappointing to say the least. I think it's January 15th. We're hoping that they hit that milestone, start to scale up. I got a little optimistic this week because of all things I see a tweet from our friends at Waymo saying that they're increasing their coverage area, their geofenced area in Austin. I'm like, 'Oh, wow. This typically happens if they know, right, Tesla is about to launch. It's like that preemptive strike that we've covered so many times here that, you know, the companies sometimes claim is coincidental, but we know better.' So, I was getting optimistic when Waymo increased their coverage area. I'm like, 'Oh, yes, it's about to happen.' It didn't happen. It did not in fact happen this week.
You know what did happen this week? There's a lot of great data on X. A lot of folks write stuff on X. And I noticed something. Andrew McDonald, COO of Uber, put up a tweet retweeting the gentleman Reed from Waymo and said, 'Available on Uber.' And if you go through Mr. McDonald's archive and other Uber executives' archives, the language before said exclusively available on Uber. Now it just says available on Uber. I know I'm reading tea leaves here, Walt, but that's what I do. There's a slight change in that language. I mean, executives should be very precise with the language. Maybe they are.
I love that you're putting on your Inspector Clouseau hat early in the episode. I don't know. I tend to, I'm going to err on the side of conservatism on there. I don't know if that really makes a difference, but you know, we'll see. You know, I think we're on record on this podcast more so than anything else out in the market about our concerns about that relationship. So, we'll see if that comes to fruition one way or another.
I had to put the hat on early because we notice things. That's what we do on Autonomy Markets. We look for things and we address them here and the hat's coming back on later. Don't worry.
And by the way, you and I are planning on getting down to Austin. I'm not going to reveal exact dates, especially after all the attention we got at CES. But we will be back in Austin and hopefully by the time we're back there, we can shoot some videos. We can check out Waymo's broader footprint. We can check out Auro. See how that's doing, among other things. So, I'm looking forward to get back to one of my favorite states, the state of Texas.
I'm looking forward to it, too. And I got to ask you a question before we go on here. What if I wore the Inspector Clouseau hat? Would I be able to get into these meetings? Are they saying, 'Oh, Mr. Fine Prince here?'
I don't know. I think between the beard and the shirt and the pants, I think people, they're already expecting some level of show when you show up for our meetings or when we're showing up outside some of these depots. So, tossing a hat on there. Sure, why not?
It can just add to the cultness or if you want to say the weirdness or trying to figure it outness, whatever you want. The one thing that I'm trying to figure out,
Hold on. Before we go on, I just want to throw this out to our listeners as well. As you may have seen on The Road to Autonomy, which by the way has the largest library of autonomous information and interviews, bar none. Literally bar none. There is merch there. It's a tny, whatever it is. I think Grayson puts it up. You can check it out. By the way, buy some. That's fine. We need Autonomy Markets merch. And I would like something, you know, to kind of reflect our style, which is a bit more brash, not as understated, not your like GB shirts, which are like kind of Vineyard Vines understated. So, if our listeners have any ideas of graphics, because when at LightShed, we had WWE, I think, create shirts for us. A big skull on the back and it's like Jed 316, something like in your face, so that when we go to CES or some of these other locations that we can really have the branding to show people. So send in your ideas in the comments, email, text, otherwise. Thank you.
Yeah, I think it would be awesome and I promise you, send it in, I will get you a selfie with Walt. That's my guarantee if you send it in. You were getting a lot of selfies at CES. I got to say you were pretty popular. I know you're a tall gentleman, but you were pretty popular there.
To be fair, some of them were based on some of the media and telco stuff as well.
Okay. Well, you're still a nice guy. Now, let's get back to the most important part of the show here, the information. As I said earlier, lot of information on X this week. Elon being Elon, he's a master of numbers. On Valentine's Day of all days, that's it. You can no longer buy FSD. You can only subscribe to it. One side and it's a mutual friend of ours, Mr. Mightyfly, is having a meltdown over it and then you got another part of the audience that likes it. What are your thoughts on only being able to subscribe to FSD, no longer able to buy it?
You know, I don't remember the whole root of all of this. Like, was it only first available as a purchase, I think, before it was available as a subscription? I mean, it only makes sense to have it as a subscription. I'm not sure why you'd necessarily purchase it. Even time value of money based on that number versus what they charge you every month doesn't really make sense to purchase it. I think there's the ability to transfer it. And then look, on top of this, getting a recurring revenue, getting a recurring payment, I think is generally more attractive to investors. I don't really think that's the way they did it because like, you know, we'll see how things play out with the robo taxi network and maybe that you roll in insurance and there's other things that play into this. So, they're just setting the stage. I guess the bottom line is it never made sense to me in the first place to have it as a purchase. It should have always been something that was a subscription. And frankly, it's a deal. I know everyone's excited about Rivian being $50 or about to $100, but like, okay, I'm in my Tesla today and it works. Like, is there a Rivian today that can drive me to Philly where I'm not touching the steering wheel? No. The answer is no. There's no other car that I'm aware of, let me know if I'm wrong, that I can sit in my garage, press a button, and it drives me to Philly. Stop. End of story. Stop. Right. So, I digressed off of the subscription topic. But, you know, again, subscription makes the most sense, and it always has.
It always has. Yes. Originally, you were able to buy it, then it went to hybrid subscription buy. Now, it's going to subscription. But for our longtime listeners and viewers, you can take it to your world famous fish market and I want to get a report when you actually give the owner a ride one day. And I love the post you put up on X. You have 14.2.2.3. I have 14.2.2.2. What's the difference between the 2 to 3? What have you noticed?
I haven't actually, I think, been in that car enough to notice the difference. Frankly, since you hit 14, whatever too, I can't remember. There really hasn't been for me any type of notable changes. Like now it's up to that level where you're not getting that kind of stutter stopping that exists. So it's all pretty much, you know, I think been the same. So yeah, I didn't get many comments on the fact that I'm almost at a thousand FSD hands-off miles. I was hoping to get some more feedback on that. Grayson, what happened?
