Waymo Goes to Wall Street

We should always start with field reports unless there's some type of groundbreaking news, which I don't think there's any major groundbreaking news. But I think I wanted to come back to the breaking news that we had here last week, where you discovered these Zoox cars and put some pictures up, but then you dropped this video which gave a little bit more details. There were some great circles around the cars or whatever that you have. I know you blurred out some pictures, but how was the feedback on the video? In terms of Zoox, did you get any pushback? I mean, I'm just, I'm still fascinated that given Travis's reputation, given Anony's reputation, and the lack of really any information about what Zoox is doing, that this didn't create more buzz.

I think that might have been an accident. I'm not going to read too much into that. That might have been accidentally swiping through like, oh no, got to get this guy off my screen, and he accidentally hit the... I'm kidding, obviously. Who knows what that means, but you can refer back to our podcast with Jason Calacanis about our views on, you know, the future for Travis. Anyway, we also had some additional fieldwork. I know David Moss is part of the Road to Autonomy family, and I saw some interesting videos of Zoox where, I mean, I think I've been pretty consistent with some of my questions around Zoox and my own personal experiences in Las Vegas. Did David experience anything differently or better in terms of the Zoox's progress in Las Vegas?

I mean, anyone that's been to Vegas realizes getting through those parking lots in and out of the casinos is a major challenge. I mean, we think about, you know, we talk about, oh, different weather, you know, autonomous cars working at night, but being able to navigate to get from point A to point B in Vegas is certainly a challenge. I'm going to give them a slight pass on that. And the drop fee, that is again, you know, a nature of the beast and the cost of doing business in Vegas. I'm not sure how you break through those type of things, but I don't know, maybe we should drop some Zoox in some additional markets rather than Vegas. But, you know, I'm looking forward to trying it again at CES. And you know what else I'm going to be getting when I'm waiting for my Zoox, Grayson? That Topgolf chicken Caesar that you know I like.

Speaking of CES, let us know if you're going. We've got some interesting things planned for this year's CES. It's kind of a funky couple of days, whether it's, you know, it starts a little like a day later. So, not sure exactly when we're going to plan this stuff out. I know the LightShed party is Wednesday. That's already set, but we're building some other stuff. So, you know, let us know if you're going to be in town and what days, and we'll figure some stuff out. What else did David Moss, our good friend, experience in Vegas? Because I think, you know, Uber this week, specifically Nelson, the CFO, was talking about like, you know, under the radar of Motional vehicles. I'm like, hold on for a second. Motional is not under the radar on Autonomy Markets or Road to Autonomy. This is stuff we've talked about for a while. And then even more specifically, David, I think, was trying to get paired with some Motional vehicles. So, you know, I guess this is under the radar, but you know, for someone that's not a listener of Autonomy Markets, what did he have to say?

Well, I have a more direct answer then, Grayson. Directed directly to our Uber listeners. If you don't want them to be under the radar, then give us an extra tier where we can specifically pick autonomy and pick Motional so we don't have to hit the roulette wheel. Maybe that's why it's under the radar because you've limited the ability to pick that on the autonomy tier. What am I missing here?

I mean, just because they have a test track in Vegas doesn't mean they're going to actually show up in Vegas. But you know, I've doubted you in the past, and then it comes through and you text me, 'I told you, I told you,' and we have to go and give you the clappy hat. But we'll see if Nuro shows up in Vegas. I'm just one of the ones I'm sure will show up anywhere getting this thing, whether it's California, Houston, H-town as I like to call it, you know, or Vegas. Let's get Nuro on the road. They're, you know, one of the ones that we're a little bit more optimistic about. But let's move to the beast, the giant, the leader, the winner in the space. Waymo, majority and controlled by Google, just raised $5 billion of debt. This is its first loan ever. A very diverse group of lenders. Very high quality names, as you would expect. This is on top of the $16 billion equity that they did back in February that was at $126 billion valuation. By the way, you play around with some of these robotaxi models, especially if you put a Calacanis-type assumption in there in terms of the share of rideshare in total miles, you can get much higher numbers than a $126 billion valuation. You know, depending on how this industry plays out, but it's fun to pull the levers in the model to see how value can build here. But look, good news obviously for Waymo to get some cash and start to accelerate growth because competition's coming.

Yeah. It's also, you know, you like to get credit guys in there in terms of raising money. They have a different approach than maybe a venture or late-stage growth investor. So, you know, it's nice to have that term loan there, but capital, we've talked about this obviously continuously, especially for the smaller companies, the ability to fund growth is a strategic advantage. And obviously, you know, aside from being owned by a company that generates a lot of cash, which that company is obviously using to invest in AI at the moment, the ability to access the capital markets, not always easy. So, that's obviously a positive. And $5 billion is a nice chunk of change.

I think money means growth. That's obviously what it means. When you ask, you know, when a company's asking for money, where are you going to spend it? It's obviously for ways to generate greater revenue, getting to EBITDA positive and free cash flow positive sooner. And that's those expectations. There could be some assets underlying it. You know, but whatever. Getting capital on the balance sheet, as we said many times before, this is Captain Obvious here, is obviously essential for any of these companies in the space regardless of their size. But let's move on to their operations. Because this Rodeo, this Zeekr, the classic from episode one, the unforced error, the error is getting modified. Grayson, and there's been some new colors, some new interiors, some wireless charging. I mean, you know, we've seen in the past, you know, things that got added to the Jaguars in terms of the user interface. I mean, I think, you know, while Waymo is still kind of building new markets, they're making these tweaks to the existing product to make their consumers happier.

Yeah. So that's good. Again, you know, so early, just get the cars out on the road. I'm less concerned about their pleather seats and their wireless charging than I am just getting more of those cars on the road at an affordable price to fulfill the demand. So we can stop hearing Uber saying that their share is stable in these markets. Let's dump 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 or 10,000 cars in those markets and see how that share sustains. Meanwhile, Waymo has moved on and has fully autonomous testing now in Detroit, Motown. So what do you think here in terms of when we go fully commercial in Detroit in Motown?

I don't know. I think the pace is... I mean, I shouldn't say that. It's already October 9th, man. This year is going fast. I was going to say the pace is faster, but you know, end of year is right around the corner. I'm going to say, however... well, end of year is... I'm just going to go aggressive here. Let's go by Thanksgiving. I think they, you know, I think Detroit still hosts a Thanksgiving Day game. It would be great to have, you know, something launched commercially for the Thanksgiving Day football games. And how great would it be if you could take a Rodeo to Ford Stadium and not have to pay a drop fee? Now, how great would that be?

I mean, Dallas feels like this hotbed. Like on one hand, you've got these, get a new city, get your 300, 400 cars in there, move on, like get the footprint going. But then there's like certain markets obviously, San Francisco, California and Texas, Dallas, where you've got multiple competitors, or Austin even where Cybercab is first launching, that, you know, it maybe makes sense to dump more in there just, you know, because they know that Road to Autonomy is going to be down there doing field work. So they want to see that, you know, as you're trying to film that AV ride for Uber, that you have 15 freaking Waymos driving by. And look, Tesla, I think you've done some good field work there and seeing some of the lots and the number of Cybercabs that I would sense are probably soon going to be flooding the streets of Dallas as well. So Dallas, you know, should be a good autonomy city for us. So looking forward to seeing more of that.

Hopefully they don't get complaints from the neighbors because they're circling around too much. But speaking of Tesla, what is the latest there? I mean, we still have a curfew on these cars. 10:00, 11:00. Elon's talking about like he's worried about gray kittens versus black kittens versus white kittens. Like, is there anything new here? Are we just basically still in this holding pattern until we kind of have that all-systems-go clearance from our good friends at NHTSA?

I hear that, but I think there was some tweet, you know, by at least someone from Tesla, not Elon, talking about 24-hour driverless being around next month. We're kind of getting close to that because I think this was like late September that this tweet was out there. So I don't know, like, let's get into the prediction tank again. I would think maybe by Halloween we'll be 24 hours. So when that, you know, when the, what do they call the Headless Horseman is running down the streets of Make-It-Weird Austin on Halloween, hopefully you can run to your Cybercab and hop in there at 12:00 when the Headless Horseman is running through, or even 1:00 when you're coming out of one of those great, great bars in Austin. What do you think? Can we get there 24 hours, you know, in Austin by Halloween?

All right. You're going long on all your predictions. I'm going short there and saying we're coming in by the end of the month, 24 hours. We'll see who's right. Mark it down.

You're getting aggressive. I'll be in Austin next week. So, if it is 24/7, I'll get up at 3:00 in the morning and go for a ride and film a field report.

What is going on with this? I mean, this is not the first robotaxi. This is not new, right? But this is because I think you had the WeRide thing already, right? As a partner. So now you have Uber and Pony, you know, talking about a London robotaxi service. This is on the Gen 7 vehicle. This is just an announcement, right? Road testing is probably going to start in a couple of weeks. So if you think, if you're Uber, I guess they've got WeRide in London, right? They've got Pony there. And don't they also have WeRide? So isn't this like a three-horse race for them?

I don't know, that was a lot of words. This to me sounds like a bit of a hodgepodge. Like you got a handful of cars, you have a driver in the driver's seat, safety driver in the driver's seat, you have small service areas. Is any of these things even close to being, even if you said there was a safety driver, like close to being something that would be a real service in London anytime soon?

Catch up with what? They have three partners, which sounds impressive, but if they're like, again, five or 10 cars, driver in, in small service areas, like what does that even mean? Like how would you even match with one of those cars?

Okay. So here I'm going to, you know, I've criticized you for being a little bit too negative, but I'm going to put on my Grayson grumpy hat and just point out that like this is another one of these cities. And when, you know, Uber talks about these, oh, 15 cities globally by year end, like what that means is, you know, there's a safety driver there and with varying, you know, service areas, like that is, that's what 15 cities. So if this is like meant as like some type of... again, that's a positive. Certainly it's better to have 15 things in process, but it's 2026, man. This industry, we've been doing this podcast for a while now, over 100 episodes, whatever it is, 120, what, you know, we're not at the point where it's like, okay, enough with this and let's start talking about the numbers that matter, which is fully unsupervised driver out. That's what's going to drive the economics. That's what's going to allow you to borrow $5 billion from, you know, from credit guys to build a business. Like that's the whole point of all this is driver out. Sorry for that digression, but this was a little frustrating honestly in this London update. I'm not even sure. I still don't really understand what all that means. It doesn't seem like much. The 15 cities is like, okay, you're driver in. We've been in those cars. We know how they are. I don't know. It's 2027. We're endeavoring now to give only numbers on driver out. I think that should be a new Autonomy Markets policy and just ignore some of these other things until they hit real commercial driver out service. Sorry. I had to have that little digression there. How does the Chinese AV play in London work? If you know, in terms of how Washington, the US sees or perceives Uber or how they examine their own... I know the US is a leader, these are, you know, whatever, they're not going to just because London's doing or the UK is doing it, you know, do the same. But you know, for our friends in the US, whether it's NHTSA or in the administration, like how are they viewing this, if at all? Are they paying attention to what's going on with some of these US companies and...

and what they're doing in foreign markets.

So let's move on to Wayve. So last week, Grayson, you gave like a long-term expectation for Wayve, 36 months. I don't know if you got feedback from the company or not, but you got feedback from our good friend Jason Kanis. He's like, "What?" And now you sucked me into this because, you know, I kind of rely on you, especially as it relates to Wayve. So KCanis is like, by the end of next year, I think, or in a year — but did he say year end? I can't remember, but it was tight. No, end of next year, that Wayve would have unsupervised and commercial by the end of 2027. Now I'm on the hook for one of his expensive steaks because I said mid-2028, and that's — but I'm a lot shorter than you. I thought I was being aggressive because you were saying it's going to take Wayve three years to deliver unsupervised and commercial. So — and by the way, after I got roped into this stake bet with Jason, you like disappeared. You ghosted me on Twitter. So, are you pulling back on your three years, or are you still saying three years unsupervised and commercial in a rideshare market?