Hello and welcome to SAE Unplugged. I'm your host, Grayson Brulte. Are we about to enter the Golden Age of autonomy? All signs are pointing there. In a November 18th news article, Bloomberg is reporting that President Trump is looking to go all in on autonomy, and he's being advised by Mr. Elon Musk on that. Could President Trump work with Mr. Musk and soon-to-be Secretary Duffy, Secretary of Transportation, to usher in a national framework that will allow autonomy to scale across all 50 states? If President Trump decides to make that decision, what happens to the liability? Will the liability be solved at the federal level? Would the liability stay at the state levels as it relates to autonomous vehicles and autonomous trucks? Then you have to think about this: what happens? What are the economic benefits that come with autonomous vehicles being able to operate over state lines? Who benefits? What role does Tesla play? What role does Waymo play? What role does Cruise play? What role does Zoox play? Will it be easier for Zoox to scale the Zoox mobile, commonly referred to as a toaster, because of the new, perhaps lighter regulatory environment, also known as deregulation? Perhaps the exemptions go away and allows those vehicles to scale.
When you look at possibilities on the horizon in autonomy, there's a debate that's been brewing a lot lately in autonomy that one has to think about: dense urban environments versus highways, or some individuals call them freeways. Tesla is very successful driving on the freeway. I own a Tesla, I drive one on the highway. To use the term, to quote Mr. Musk, it's silky smooth. And the latest update of 12.5.2.6.1, it's getting really good on city streets. When you look at Waymo, Waymo's not operating on highways yet without a driver to the public in certain circumstances. They're operating with employees in the Phoenix region. Do we see that scale eventually to San Francisco and Los Angeles and opening to members of the public? And if they do, what are the implications for that? Waymo then would become the first company in history to be able to operate with no driver both on surface streets and freeways. Tesla can operate both on surface streets and freeways, but there's a safety driver, you, the driver. It's why it's called FSD Supervised. You're there to supervise the system. But if Waymo can pull off highway, how does that change? Does that accelerate the development? Do we begin to see more companies focus on highway driving from a passenger vehicle standpoint, perhaps? And if and when Waymo does, how does that change things? Because right now, if you look at the Waymo operating design domain in Los Angeles, it's 80 square miles, downtown LA to Santa Monica. Well, that's a clear example of where you'd want to use the freeway. You want to use the I-10, which if you live in LA, it's commonly called the Santa Monica Freeway. Great example. If you're going from, say, the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to Scottsdale, perhaps True North to play golf, you got to take the freeway. So those are use cases. But everyday use cases, is the highway important, or does the highway really just depend on where it's being used? If we're sitting here having this conversation about operating in Dallas or Houston, I was there last week. Boy, oh boy, oh boy, I got to tell you, you got to become good on the highways there. There's a lot of them, and there's a lot of traffic. And when we look at the focus on highways, do companies that are developing these stacks, do they have to completely rethink their technical approach? Because if you look at the autonomous vehicle developers, they've built their vehicle system strictly for dense urban environments, and now they're merging, or you can even use the term expanding, into freeway driving. When you look at the autonomous trucking developers, Kodiak, Aurora, Bot, Plus, Waabi stack, they were built for highways, and they're successful there. TuSimple is the only company in history, and they did it for a very limited time, I think, called Ghost Rider, where they did remove a human from an 18-wheeler on a truck. I mean, I will say that was in a controlled environment. There are public documents to back that up. It wasn't necessarily in the wild, and it was done late at night, but nonetheless, it was done, it was possible. And then what happens when trucks want to go into dense urban environments to operate? Light bulb, they're not going to operate there. They're going to operate about a mile and a half, two miles off of the freeway, going to a depot, operating mainly in commercial districts, which raises the question: what is the ultimate autonomous driving stack? And does the ultimate autonomous driving stack have to be everything to everybody? Does the ultimate autonomous driving stack have to be human level in terms of where it can drive? If we invoke the levels, that's technically level, SAE level five. That's been clarified and documented by some world-class engineers. Drive anywhere, drive anywhere, human, SAE level five. I don't believe in my lifetime, I could be wrong, but I don't believe in my lifetime, maybe at the end when I'm in the senior citizen home and you call me an old codger, that perhaps we will see an SAE level five autonomous vehicle. We will not see an SAE level five autonomous truck. But do we really even need an SAE level five autonomous vehicle or autonomous truck? The big question becomes: where are they going to operate, and how are they going to integrate into your lives? That's the question to watch. That's what you have to watch. And do you really need a freeway at the end of the day? Yes, but how often do you take the freeway? You can, perhaps you commute to work, go to see your grandparents or your in-laws, maybe take the freeway. But then would you take a robo-taxi for that? Or if we have personally owned autonomous vehicles, would you just take your Tesla? The Tesla can go anywhere. I own it. I've taken it on the highway for long, multi-hour drives, and it's fantastic. Do we get to the point where in the future there's a hybrid fleet where you have a robo-taxi when you're, call it, in town or you're in dense urban environments, and then you have your Tesla-type vehicle, commonly known as a personally owned autonomous vehicle, that could be GM. GM's building one. It's going to be special. Could that supplement that? Do we get to the point where the consumers downgrade from two-vehicle, three-vehicle households to one personally owned autonomous vehicle and then a bunch of robo-taxi subscriptions, depending on what your driving needs are? Anything's possible. But what I do know, and I do know for a fact, this is not possible without a national autonomous vehicle framework, because there's not regulatory certainty. Wall Street wants regulatory certainty before they truly invest in the sector. A national autonomous vehicle framework gives Wall Street certainty. When you have certainty, investors invest, and when investors invest, entrepreneurs have the fuel they need to build great companies. And I believe that we are going to get an autonomous vehicle national framework within the next 18 months. And when we do, we have entered the Golden Age of autonomy. What do you think? Let us know your thoughts. Send an email to
[email protected] or reach out to me on X. I'm pretty vocal on X. I've got a lot of opinions. It's at GBrulte. Send me your opinions. Let's have a conversation. Conversations are healthy. We're entering the Golden Age of autonomy, and for us to do that, we all have to come together, and we need the regulatory certainty. Thanks for listening to another episode of SAE Tomorrow Today Unplugged.
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