Walt, at Autonomy Markets, we keep on trucking. We're out in the field every week doing field reports, wearing our inspector hats, and I gotta tell you, Walt, this is a funny story. I'm on a plane. This gentleman's looking like this to his phone and points at me and points down. He's a fan of the show. I met a guy on a Southwest flight that was a fan of this show. While we were doing that, Tesla and Elon were giving an update on FSD on the Tesla Print. While he did that, Steve Cohen's family office invested in robotaxi operations. And how can we forget DC? It's swampy because something fishy's going on up there. Somebody's trying to stop robotaxis in the nation's capital. But let's start with the field work. Walt, I was in Nashville and Dallas. I uncovered quite a bit. What do you wanna know?
Yeah, it was a very busy week. We had a lot of earnings as well, which we'll hit on some of the things that came out of there, and particularly on the Tesla call, which is, as we expected, fairly informative. But I mean, in Nashville — now, were you in Nashville to check out that FlexDrive location? I thought we were doing that in a couple of months.
We are, but the inspector has to go do pre-inspections now. That's the new thing. We do inspections and then pre-inspections. So yes, I was there to inspect the two depots, 'cause there are two depots, which I found both, and to also ride in the vehicles, try the airport, and it's in the Ojai market, so I had to try that as well.
And so how was the — you know, first of all, what did the — how did the FlexDrive, how did the FlexDrive depot look from your outward observations?
From my outward observations, and I gotta — if this was Lyft that did this, Flex tried to do this, or Waymo that did this, I'm gonna give you credit. I don't like this, but I'm gonna give you credit. Well, it was the most secure depot we've been to. It's built into a hill. You can't see much, but have no fear, the inspector saw quite a bit and there's gonna be a field report coming on that. It was like a James Bond basic, you know, depot that was happening here in the side of a volcano. I'm not a side of a volcano — a side of a Shakira hill, so a little bit of James Bondage. But I was double-O inspector, so don't worry about that.
What was the — how — what was it like getting a Waymo? Did you try both on the Waymo app as well as the Lyft app? And I guess we know with the Waymo app how that works. How did it work with the Lyft app?
I'm sorry, Team Lyft wasn't good. I was told to go down to Broadway, which is, if you wanna call it Honky Tonk Row, where there's all sorts of individuals going in and out of honky tonk bars to try and get paired. I stayed there and I'm gonna be releasing a field report on this next week. 25 minutes playing autonomy roulette, 25 minutes. The interesting insight: I went over the 10, the 10-limit mark where David Moss was banned. I still wasn't banned, but after 25 minutes of getting paired, I finally gave up. It was not a very good experience.
What was the David Moss ban? Like, why would he get banned for the wait time being too long? Wouldn't it go the opposite way, where he would ban using the app if the wait time is too long?
It wasn't the wait time, it's playing autonomy roulette. So Mr. Moss ordered, canceled, ordered, canceled, ordered, canceled, and I was on the phone with him when it was happening.
Got it. So as a reminder, the way this market is different than Phoenix, which was the market where Uber and Waymo launched together, was in Phoenix they had two separate fleets. Now, what we learned later was the cars allocated to Uber were only about a dozen, and Waymo had a lot more. In Nashville, that shouldn't have mattered because there's one singular fleet that is shared across both apps, the Waymo app and the Lyft app. So it's curious why the way the algo works is that when you try to get it from the Waymo app — I assume your wait times were a lot shorter than the Lyft app. Like, that shouldn't necessarily make sense, right?
In theory, it should. In all of my Waymo waits throughout the city, because I do what we do, we went throughout the entire ODD. The longest wait I had was seven minutes. Some were even two to three minutes. So really good wait times there inside of the Waymo app.
Sorry if I missed this, but did Lyft have an autonomous tier specifically, or were you basically just, again, doing the roulette at a comfort tier trying to get allocated in a Waymo?
No dedicated tier, but however, when I did open the Lyft app at the BNA Airport, it said, 'Would you like to opt into Waymo Ride?' So I did that and I still was not paired, so I played roulette.
Okay. Well, I think that leaves some unopened questions, because I think we were led to believe that the single fleet could handle these apps a bit better than what the Uber relationship was. I think Lyft made a big point about this, is how different it is from the — and structurally, I guess it is different, but experience-wise, I guess it doesn't appear to be very different at all. So that experience, not necessarily positive. It's like, it's early. The one I'm more interested in is obviously getting into that depot, seeing how FlexDrive is, 'cause that obviously, as we pointed out before, you know, is a different strategy that Lyft has, owning and operating, you know, these service centers, which in and of itself could be its own large business over time. So whatever. Anything else you saw in Nashville? Any other — do you see any Teslas or other autonomous vehicles trying to train on that market?
Yes, before we get to the other vehicles in the airport, I just want to say to the team at Lyft, FlexDrive, and Waymo: great location. While it literally butts up to the airport, you can probably hit a nine iron and hit the airport. It's a really great strategic location there. As I got picked up at the airport, which we'll get into in a minute, it was a fantastic experience. I said, 'I must be lucky today. I must have triple sevens. I saw the gold Cybercab testing.' And then it went on to a wonderful day, so I did see a Tesla Cybercab testing on the streets of Nashville.
I mean, that fits to what we heard on the Tesla call in terms of new markets, but I think we'll get to that later. You know, you always talk about these good locations near airports for some of these depots, and yet airports seem to be one of the harder things for these autonomous companies to get signed up, and that becomes its own milestone. And do you see the irony there?
What I saw and what I experienced in Nashville and what I experienced in San Antonio — I'm gonna say this for the record: Uber has a serious problem coming. These Waymos are going into the airports. To give you an example here, at BNA, Nashville Airport, from the door to the Waymo pickup area — because we do things here right — two minutes and 20 seconds. I timed it. And how Waymo struck this deal, I don't know, but Team Waymo Airports, well done on this. Walt, they're on the outside lane. As my father-in-law would say, they got the pole position. They don't have to deal with all the rideshare traffic in the middle. They go right to the VIP — very important Waymo rider line — right on the outside, four dedicated spots. You don't have to sit in all the congestion. Right out of the airport you go. Beautiful, beautiful experience.
I mean, we've talked about this since the earliest episodes in terms of when you interpret these numbers in some of the earlier markets — excuse me — that Waymo is participating in, that without really good airport access, these are the most valuable rides. These are obviously gonna drive significant share as it relates to overall share in that market. So, you know, when we're quoting or when others quote whatever the share numbers are in San Francisco, when Waymo is still stuck in the kiss-and-fly lot or the Hilton or whatever the hotel is that you have to get to, versus a two, three-minute experience — or like Uber experiences in San Francisco with a black car service curbside pickup, which I think approximates to your two to three or five — obviously San Francisco is a much bigger airport. As those hurdles, you know, get unlocked, you know, those are pretty material in terms of the impact that it can have for Waymo and I guess soon Tesla's share in these markets.
Big time. And I wanna say it's a great consistent experience. You're coming off a flight. I'm sorry, you don't necessarily feel good, so all you wanna do is take a shower. You don't necessarily wanna talk to anybody. You get into the Waymo, it's a great consistent experience. And yes, I could see this ramping big time at the Nashville Airport just purely based on the location. And I will go on the record here and say I would estimate that that depot could probably handle 300 to 500 cars. That's how large that depot is. And there is two depots. There was a temporary depot, which we believe no activity there. But you wanna know something interesting about that? They're both on opposite sides of the airport, so in theory, Waymo could push multiple cars, hundreds of cars to the airport at any one time if they needed.
Okay, let's shift to Dallas. This is Dallas week for the Eagles. We're playing, it's Monday Night Football. Both these teams not exactly playing that well. I've always hated the Dallas Cowboys, but Dallas is one of my favorite cities, great people, and now it's — I like it even more given the amount of autonomy that we see there. So, it's only been a couple weeks since I've been there, but what's new in Dallas?
What's new in Dallas is that I'm calling it, for the record, the robotaxi capital of America. Sorry, San Francisco Bay Area. Dallas is emerging, especially up in the Parks area, the Uptown area of Dallas. Walt, cars are everywhere. I was very fortunate and lucky. I was paired with an Ojai, so for the record, I've ridden an Ojai in every Texas market. I am gonna say that I like the Ojai better now, for the record, 'cause I like being up higher and I like the experience. Really, really good experience. But the amount of Waymo cars in Dallas, the amount of AV Ride cars in Dallas, truly, truly scaling. I saw a few unbadged Cybercabs testing. Spencer and I went to the test lot. There was hundreds of them there, fully unbadged, sitting there. No badge, I wanna say for the record. Spencer and I did not see one badged robotaxi. But the AV Rides are scaling up. The Waymos are scaling up. The one thing I'm waiting to see in the Dallas market, and for those that know the DFW Metroplex, it's going to have to spread out to the east and west and to the north and south, because I didn't realize how many major communities are inside of the DFW region that aren't yet connected.
Well, I told Spencer on Twitter that I'm looking forward to the day that I can get out of DFW, hop in a Cybercab, and take a ride to the Hotel Drover. Love that the stockyards hanging out there, you know, for that big Forward Fort Worth conference every year. But I just wanna go back to your Ojai, 'cause look, I love the fact — I think it's great when people can, you know, you get new information and you change your opinion. So where — can you rank all these, the cars that you're in? Or do you put the Ojai, in terms of your comfort experience, above the Cybercab now? Is that what you were trying to say, or just that you enjoy the Ojai more than you did before?
I enjoy the Ojai more than I did before, and I want to state for the record that it is my belief that Waymo tunes the vehicles per market. We have no external confirmation, but having ridden the Jaguar and the Ojai in every Texas market, I believe that they are tuned differently to each market. I've said that publicly on X. I won't disclose who, but I will say a few Waymo engineers liked the post when I said that. One even said, 'Thank you for noticing.' So is that confirmation? I'm not gonna say it is, but I prefer the Ojai in Waymo markets. I do enjoy the Cybercab as well, and I'll just say this: I just enjoy autonomy in general. It really just depends on where am I going, but there's something special about riding up.
Well, sure. It's also better than the inconsistency of whatever human driver you get in the roulette of, you know, picking Uber cars. I mean, I think it's also funny to our listeners who know — our longtime listeners that know that Grayson has called this Ojai previously called — well, let's not go through its variety of names, but it's a Chinese-made vehicle, obviously upfit with American technology, you know, here at these different facilities in the United States. So here, Grayson Brulte is saying positive things about a vehicle that he has called in the past an unforced error for Waymo. What do you have to say to defend yourself?
Opinions changed. It was still an unforced error, yes. Was the timing early? Yes. But the vehicle has grown on me, and I will state this for the record — I stated this last week, but I'll state this again: it is only a matter of time until Chinese vehicles come into America. Michael Dunne does a really great job covering this as an independent analyst. The vehicles are in Canada and they are in Mexico. It's just a matter of time until they come over the border. I'm just gonna say it there for the record.
Well, we'll see about that. Political winds can change very quickly. And with the winds come fires, and fires travel with wind. And clearly, if the issues that we have with China elevate going forward, that not only could impact the Ojai, but obviously Uber's involvement with many, many Chinese companies overseas. But we'll just have to see how those things play out. We have an election coming up in two weeks, and we'll see how the fallout goes there. So on the Avis side of things, you know, again, we've talked about the depots. Obviously FlexDrive is a big one. I think in the past you've talked about Hertz. We've talked about our concerns about Avomo, right? We've spent time with — oh God, I'm blanking on the names. There's so many right now, but let's focus on Avis for a moment, 'cause, you know, we knew that they were involved and then it kind of went quiet. We tried to see these depots before. What are your impressions? Give us more detail on your impressions of Avis' involvement in this game in terms of building depots and service centers for the autonomy industry.
I'll say it from a firsthand ground-truth observation: Avis is doing things right. Avis is spending significant CapEx to build these depots. They are not cutting corners. There are pavers, Walt, like really nice pavers that you would put in your house at these depots. Beautiful charging infrastructure, and when you go and visit the site in Dallas, the construction is moving quickly. And I say quickly. Whoever Avis hired, well done, Team Avis. Your construction team is moving, I'll say, at lightning pace. You're making incredible progress. More and more chargers are coming online. If you want, like, the core energy infrastructure is there. The roads in and around the depot are finished. And I want to compare and contrast this, and I don't mean to go down a rabbit hole, Walt, but Spencer and I also went and visited the Zoox depot. Very little progress compared to the construction team that Avis is making. It's The Tortoise and the Hare, and I'm not gonna say who's gonna win, but man, Team Avis is just going for it and doing a really great, beautiful job from a construction perspective.
Good to know. It's gonna be a fascinating market. You know, it can be obviously a sizable one. The one I've related to is something I've covered for a long time, the tower industry, which supports the wireless industry, which as an aside got an extra boost this week as well because SpaceX gave some more information about building wireless networks, which is gonna include these tower companies. So profiles these large REITs, and obviously we see the same opportunity, if not larger, for what's going on in autonomy. Autonomy obviously a market changer in so many different ways. But let's move on to Houston. Not one of my favorite cities. Very hot and humid in Houston for many parts of the year. But one of interest to us because, you know, we've outlined the challenges that we think that Nuro might have in California because of the regulatory environment there, and thought that maybe Houston — Houston, excuse me — can be an alternative market for Nuro and Uber. What did you learn in Houston?
Walt, he likes to talk like a New Yorker. That's how I'll sum that up there. Yes, I did. I'm sorry, Uber. I know you sent somebody to follow me, but I was on public property on a public trail, so I'll have you know I had the legal right to be on that trail and inspect your depot. Just for the PSA there for the individual that followed me, as I was followed. They have a depot. It is in a very, I'll say, odd location. Outside of the depot you have to go under a bridge, and then after you go under the bridge, where do you go into? A construction zone. A one-way street, and on the way out, a construction zone. Very odd location to say the least. Six vehicles is what I counted there on the ground, and that does not include the two original Prius vehicles that they were using as test mules for when they were doing the delivery bots. Not a lot of activity. I saw one vehicle that had a safety driver and a safety engineer. Six vehicles, I'll say it, it was very premature. The market was not advanced, and no activity going in and out of the depot. The gate, the doors, the roll-up doors never went up. Not a lot of activity. I did see one in the museum district driving around that only had one safety driver, no safety engineer. I did not see anything that was unsupervised.
Well, that's a bit disappointing, I have to say, 'cause I thought that one of your predictions — you know, when we realized or you guys realized, because of the great AI work from your, from Omega, that, you know, maybe Houston would be an alternative market for them versus California. So that doesn't sound like there's dramatic progress there, you know, for Nuro, you know, in that market. So, I don't know. I mean, what else is there to say on the Houston market?
Realistically, what it comes down to for Uber, Nuro, Lucid is regulatory environment. Based on the regulatory filings, there is no path for Uber, Nuro, Lucid to launch driver-out service commercially paid in California by the end of the year. There is a legal path in Houston, whether they do it one vehicle to say they launched the market, I'm not gonna speculate on that. But based on what I saw from an infrastructure perspective and what we've seen on the ground and what we're seeing in San Francisco, I'm just gonna say this for the record: it's gonna be a while till that service gets to meaningful scale in either market. As for what else we saw in Houston, this is not talked about a lot, but there are public filings to back this up, and yes, we are inspectors, and we went. Tesla is building a very significant depot butted up to — you guessed it — the airport, the George Bush International Airport, IAH. Tesla's building a big depot there.
Okay. Well, good to know. So, and then lastly, I guess not necessarily feel worried. By the way, you know, when you said you're getting followed around, let's put this in context. I mean, you're wearing an Inspector Clouseau hat, you have a very distinctive beard, and you oftentimes wear very colorful clothes. Maybe that person was following you because maybe that look stands out a bit in the city of Houston.
You're very kind, and I do wear bright colors, and everybody knows that. Was that kind? It was kind, 'cause obviously they see me coming. I won't say what company, but my wife has a belief that my photo's on the wall of a certain company 'cause every time I get out of a vehicle on the sidewalk, somebody walks out to confront me. It happens in every market. I won't say what company that is, but I think you all know what company that is. Why this individual came up to me, I don't know, but I will say this for the record: this individual did have an employee badge, and I won't say what company was on the employee badge out of privacy purposes, but the individual did have an employee badge.
Good to know. You can actually say it, I think, if it's on public property and the person's coming up to you. Anyway, let's move on. In any event, I believe for SAE, you did an interview with NHTSA Administrator John Morrison, who we've cited many times on this podcast, obviously a very important figure in the world of autonomy. You know, given we're the, you know, the weekly podcast for this industry, maybe we should have like an end-of-the-year award, the 10 most influential people in autonomy. Certainly Morrison would rank at the top of that list or near the top of that list. Can you give us some preview? I don't know if it's out or not yet, but topics covered, things that are relevant for our Autonomy Markets listener base.
The podcast is out, and Administrator Morrison on the podcast talks about not sitting still, embracing the future, and updating the FMVSS standards. And on Thursday, we had a press release where they're taking that first step. And then the bottom line is Administrator Morrison cares about safety and realizes for America to compete and to lead on this technology, the FMVSS standards have to be updated. So that's a little teaser of a preview. But Mr. Administrator Morrison is clearly on the right path and wants to see this technology scale safely in America.
Okay, let's move on. So Grayson, I had a very busy week this week with our good friend Elon Musk. Both SpaceX and Tesla reported. Appeared on CNBC to talk about some of the SpaceX side of things. Obviously last week had done that podcast with The Verge and the Decoder podcast talking about SpaceX. For those interested in learning about that, just check out the Decoder. Just got into detail on what his plans are to offer you, the American consumer, an alternative to these three telcos. But that's not what this podcast is about. It's about autonomy. So let's talk about the Tesla podcast. And there was, I thought, for me at least, a lot of good information there. I mean, and, you know, some of it was more so about FSD attach rates being at 75%. I mean, that's a pretty, you know, stunning number given, you know, in quarters past where we queried, like, why are more people not doing it? I think the bottom line is word has gotten out at how good FSD is, and it's obviously showing up now in the attach rates, and I think obviously gonna drive demand for the cars. You're seeing GM scramble, you know, in terms of talking more about, you know, what I believe their version of FSD is. Other OEMs I think are gonna be left by the wayside, you know, unless you have some term, some type of FSD, ADAS, whatever strategy you want. The strategy — you know, you want — and what you want, let me tell you, is a car where you press a button and it drives you to your destination and you're supervising it. That's it. End of story. So others are gonna have to catch up. Obviously, it's starting to resonate with Tesla given the advancements that have occurred in FSD. They went one step further, Grayson, talking about the software that is, you know, in the cars in Austin where there is commercial service appearing in your car at home, your Model Y, maybe at some point in the next year or two, maybe you get some version of a Cybercab, and then contributing that car into the fleet. Now, look, this is one of those things that I am not gonna stick by the timeline that Tesla gives, right? 'Cause it could take some time. The bigger issue here, though, or the bigger point here, though, is for all those that think that the only reason or one of the primary reasons that Uber will ultimately survive is because you could not fund a fleet of 20 or $30,000 cars and have some sit idle waiting for those peak times — which I think that premise for a $30,000 car is wrong, you know, at the outset. Like, I think given the cost of the car and the overall utilization, you can have cars sit fallow waiting for those peak hours. But let's put that concept aside and let's acknowledge that, no, maybe that's wrong and maybe you do need part-time fleet. Already talking about the fact that private owners for those peak hours can contribute those cars into the system within a reasonable timeframe. Right, we're not — like, again, let's say it doesn't happen in '27 and '28. That's not why Uber is at $66. It's not about the cars in '27. It's not about the cars even in '28. It is the amount of cars, whether Waymo or Tesla, that are gonna be in the road in 2030 and the percentage of rideshare that that could represent. And this is an example, you know, on the roadmap and, you know, clearly logical for how you address one of those, you know, supposed moats that Uber would have in terms of sizing the fleet. So again, these are not necessarily new things that were said on the call. But again, now that we're getting closer to, you know, adding hundreds and thousands of cars, not only into Austin, but several markets by the end of the year — another thing, you know, said on the call — that you get a step closer in terms of this process.
It's happening. I'm not going to necessarily agree with a timeline or give a timeline on when vehicles will be able to go into the fleet. But what is not talked about on the earnings call, which is not talked about in the bulls and the bears on the Uber side and the Tesla side, is Tesla is spending significant dollars on building out an infrastructure for this to scale. Probably second only to what Waymo's doing. And then you have to — we do this all the time. We get on the ground and we do the field work. If you wanna look at this from an infrastructure standpoint of who's building out the infrastructure to scale, it's Waymo and Tesla. They are buying up, leasing up real estate, building depots, building charging infrastructure. They're getting ready to go. Yes, is Uber buying and leasing some depots for their partners? Yes. But Walt, this is not nearly at a scale to scale autonomy the way that Waymo and Tesla are doing. I think that is a point that is not discussed enough.
I mean, I just think it's funny that you are talking about depots as a limiting factor when for most of these episodes for Waymo, it hasn't been about the depots, it's been about how many cars that they can put on the road. Why is that happening? Why? Because as a reminder, you and I have seen it, like the amount of Cybercabs that these guys can crank out, you know, in a year, in a month, in a week, you know, that is the unlock, right? And the only limiting factor really had been whether they can get the software to a point where it was comfortable to do that. Now, I think they're kind of there, although, look, they still have talked about safety cases that they need to address on a call. There's certainly issues that are out there. These things are not perfect, but they're much better obviously than — and yes, I said obviously — obviously than humans. But, you know, those things are less challenging I think than, you know, getting the cars on the road. You know, I'm gonna fast-forward real quick and then we're gonna come back to Tesla. In the meantime, you know, there was a Semaphore report that came out this week and, you know, I'm pretty bullish on autonomy. I think I've established that. I have estimates for Waymo. Semaphore came out with numbers. You know, Waymo or Google has not affirmed these numbers, so I don't have enough experience with Semaphore to know whether they're accurate or not. But these numbers were much higher than what I had, specifically by the end of next year, 20,000. They're saying that Waymo is gonna get to 20,000 cars by the end of next year. We were at 15,000. So that's a pretty big difference and certainly validates, again, the number that matters, which is like when these near-term — and I've seen this in wireless — when these near-term net adds are validated, then the number you...
really get to where the value is 2030, 2035, where the value is created, 2040. That ramp looks more obviously believable when you're hitting your near-term targets faster than expected. Now look, there could be some mix of international versus domestic, and mine was more of a domestic number. I don't—you know, we'll see how those numbers specifically play out, but what a great validation in terms of the volume that's occurring in this industry. So it's great.
I mean, we're here, we are pulling into the end of the year and both of these companies, the leaders—yeah, Tesla is a leader now, right? They've got basically more cars than anyone else other than Waymo in the U.S. market, you know, with unsupervised. Their unsupervised miles are growing double digit every week. Double digit growth every week. I mean, to throw shade at them not being, not going through the scaling process at this point is just, it's silly. So we're, you know, we're kind of at that inflection point.
Now look, let's take a shot at them now. They were talking about like, you know, full-time service. Now it's like we're—they're gonna go to 2:00 a.m. pretty soon. So they're not a 24/7 service, but let's again put context around that as well. Do you need 24/7 service for it? I mean, the whole point of like 3:00 in the morning is like, okay, that's—there's not a lot of demand. Well, maybe in Nashville there is at 3:00 in the morning. They talked about getting to 24/7, 24 hours, seven days a week service by the end of the year. So there's still obviously some kinks to work out.
There are some kinks to work out, and not to give Tesla pushback, but you and I love disclosures and the market loves disclosures. I'd love to see how many of those unsupervised miles are paid versus how many are deadhead miles. I think that would be a really interesting number to see, and then from that data, we can really model it. But at the end of the day, there's a common denominator between Tesla and Waymo. Both are scaling without Uber. That's the common denominator.
And just wait until robotaxi gets into airports. That's gonna get very, very interesting. When you have Tesla and Waymo operating at the same airports, wow. Then you wanna know, here's the golden jewel to look at, and I base this off of publicly available rideshare data. Once the spigots open at LAX and Tesla robotaxi gets in there and Waymo gets in there, buckle up. That's all I'll say is buckle up.
