Speaker 1: Thanks for downloading Making a Killing. I'm Bethany mc lean.
Speaker 1: We've had some amazingly fun conversations so far in the series.
Speaker 1: My favorite, I think, is my old friend Alex Gibney
Speaker 1: talking about the line between a visionary and a fraudster.
Speaker 1: It's a theme that we return to again and again.
Speaker 1: Picture this, when it's time to drive your children to
Speaker 1: school and go to the office. You don't search frantically
Speaker 1: for your keys and head out to your garage, worried
Speaker 1: already about congestion parking you name it. Instead, you simply
Speaker 1: use an app that summons a car, but not a
Speaker 1: ride share as we know it, rather a driverless electric
Speaker 1: car that will arrive within minutes and whisk you and
Speaker 1: your children to your destinations. Because everyone else is doing
Speaker 1: the same thing and often sharing rides, there will be
Speaker 1: less traffic. The world will be cleaner. Mackenzie has claimed
Speaker 1: that self driving cars could reduce traffic related carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: ambitions by as much as sixty percent. It will be safer.
Speaker 1: Driverless car certainly can't text and drive, much less drink
Speaker 1: and drive. Bloomberg wrote that the self driving car could
Speaker 1: be a lifesaver in the same class as penicillin in
Speaker 1: the smallpox vaccine. You won't have to have a garage.
Speaker 1: That's exciting, and the evangelists say our economy will save
Speaker 1: billions of dollars or as my guest today, tech crunches
Speaker 1: Kirsten Kurosak wrote in a recent piece, autonomous vehicles are
Speaker 1: often painted as a utopian light technology that will transform
Speaker 1: parking lots into parks and eliminate traffic fatalities. She quotes
Speaker 1: a source who says that there are some two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy eight million cars globally on the road today
Speaker 1: and that that number is expected to plummet to as
Speaker 1: low as forty five million once autonomous vehicles take over.
Speaker 1: Some say that day is now. The BBC said recently,
Speaker 1: you have probably already bought your last car. Talk about disruptive.
Speaker 1: From the dawn of the railroads to the advent of
Speaker 1: the automobile, our economy has shaped and been shaped by transportation.
Speaker 1: A line in the car sales in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: just might have been a spark for the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: And owe the money there is to be made. Ford
Speaker 1: Motor CEO has sent the market for autonomous vehicles and
Speaker 1: other mobility services could reach ten trillion dollars, half the
Speaker 1: size of the US GDP. It sure sounds like we
Speaker 1: are on the cusp of dramatic change, but is that
Speaker 1: future really all it's cracked up to be. It seems
Speaker 1: to me that there are many unanswered questions and that
Speaker 1: so far the path from here to there has been
Speaker 1: way more difficult than the evangelists would have told you.
Speaker 1: And while the talk is big, some of the statistics
Speaker 1: are pointing in a different direction. Car sales in the
Speaker 1: United States are at their highest level in forty years.
Speaker 1: According to a Deloitte survey of twenty five thousand consumers,
Speaker 1: half half of them said they didn't believe autonomous vehicles
Speaker 1: would be safe. So I'm delighted to be here at
Speaker 1: a studio near Silicon Valley, which, as an asside, may
Speaker 1: not end up owning this revolution with Kirsten, who is
Speaker 1: a top thinker about these issues, and her peace, who
Speaker 1: will own the future of transportation? She writes, Even if
Speaker 1: as many predict autonomous vehicles are deployed in mass, the
Speaker 1: road to that future promises to be long, chaotic, and complex. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so Kirsten, welcome, Thanks. What's the promise here in its
Speaker 1: grandest terms. When you've spoken to the biggest believers and
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicles, what do they tell you about what this
Speaker 1: holds for the future. Well, it's sort of recently laid
Speaker 1: it out in the story that you referenced, which is
Speaker 1: really this utopian vision of zero emissions, because there's oftentimes
Speaker 1: this link with electric vehicles being used for autonomous vehicles,
Speaker 1: this idea of access for all, and this idea of
Speaker 1: the zero deaths and then parking lots suddenly becoming parks.
Speaker 1: One of the larger design and architecture firms in the world, Gensler,
Speaker 1: actually advises people to change the way that they design
Speaker 1: their parking garages in large city or regional project because
Speaker 1: they imagine a day and they are true believers. I've
Speaker 1: talked to the co CEO before. They believe that there
Speaker 1: will be a time pretty soon in which these parking
Speaker 1: garages aren't used to park cars anymore. They can be
Speaker 1: converted to offices. So it's a whole, this whole reclaiming
Speaker 1: space back and then the access piece, and then of
Speaker 1: course there is zero death's piece. That's the big promise.
Speaker 1: That's what a true believer envisions and visions sooner rather
Speaker 1: than later. And when you talk about the access piece,
Speaker 1: what do you mean by that? So, if you listen
Speaker 1: to pretty much any autonomous vehicle company, if they've ever
Speaker 1: made a pitch or a lobbying message, or even in
Speaker 1: some of their marketing, they talk about reaching people who
Speaker 1: are elderly, who have people's with disabilities, that type of access,
Speaker 1: people who might not have a license, and even in
Speaker 1: other cases, you know kids, So if you don't have
Speaker 1: a license and you have the inability to drive, well,
Speaker 1: suddenly now you will have access or so now kids
Speaker 1: aren't dependent on their parents to get them to their
Speaker 1: sports whatever. And it's an equalizer, right, And that the
Speaker 1: child who otherwise wouldn't have had a parent able to
Speaker 1: take them somewhere the old person is disabled can suddenly
Speaker 1: now have transportation. Yeah, it does sound like a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty world. No, it sounds like an amazing world. And
Speaker 1: you know, as any kind of innovation that happens in
Speaker 1: our world, it is never easy to get there. And
Speaker 1: there's also consequences that we might not be considering. Before
Speaker 1: we move on, let's pause on something you said often
Speaker 1: this conflation between autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles, right, Mary Bara,
Speaker 1: the CEO of General Motors, recently said she said this
Speaker 1: was GM's mission, zero missions, zero crashes, zero congestion. So
Speaker 1: is that electric? Is that automotive? Why do these get conflated?
Speaker 1: Where are they the same and where are they different?
Speaker 1: So that all goes back to this idea of the
Speaker 1: robotaxi and not necessarily the idea of a privately owned
Speaker 1: passenger vehicle. The belief, I should say for the unit
Speaker 1: economics is that in order to make money on this
Speaker 1: type of the future of autonomous vehicles, traditional conventional thinking
Speaker 1: is that these need to be right hailing, and then
Speaker 1: right hailing oftentimes happens in cities with increased emissions regulations.
Speaker 1: You would need hybrid or a low emissions or zero
Speaker 1: emissions vehicle, and so there is this idea of going
Speaker 1: towards electric. In the beginning, a lot of the test
Speaker 1: vehicles were actually hybrids. But there is this, you know,
Speaker 1: pushing forward of this future of transportation vision and tying
Speaker 1: it in with evs. Now you see some companies talking
Speaker 1: about what has always been considered even a more distant future,
Speaker 1: which is people being able to personally buy a vehicle
Speaker 1: and have that be an autonomous vehicle, and we're not
Speaker 1: talking about Tesla but everyone else. That has always been
Speaker 1: kind of like an outlier. But you're kind of hearing
Speaker 1: that a little bit more. But when Mary Barrow talks
Speaker 1: about eliminating congestion, eliminating does and eliminating emissions, it's a
Speaker 1: tall order because so far we haven't seen other experiments
Speaker 1: in transportation translate to that. One of the big promises
Speaker 1: of right hailing was to give people access who didn't
Speaker 1: normally have access, which it has. There's definitely demand there.
Speaker 1: They also had a promise of eliminating congestion, and research
Speaker 1: shows us that is had the opposite effect. Man, try
Speaker 1: getting around any urban area now Ork to Chicago exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So the thing is they haven't solved a single occupancy problem.
Speaker 1: And so you know what we found is that people
Speaker 1: don't really love sharing. I mean, as someone who used
Speaker 1: to live in Chicago, like yeah, after a while wears
Speaker 1: on you to be on the l for like and
Speaker 1: jammed like the sardine. And so when people have the
Speaker 1: means to opt for a single occupancy they do. How
Speaker 1: are av is going to change that? So maybe they
Speaker 1: are electric, but are they going to eliminate congestion, and
Speaker 1: are they going to also eliminate dust? I mean, will
Speaker 1: it completely eliminate every crash? Well, we're going to get
Speaker 1: to that. But it's true we as Americans like to
Speaker 1: be in our own little bubble of a car, right,
Speaker 1: And so just because there's an EV or just because
Speaker 1: there's ride sharing available, doesn't mean everybody's going to take
Speaker 1: advantage of it. And I guess you can think of
Speaker 1: these things in different spheres, right. So you have evs,
Speaker 1: and then you have autonomous driving, which could be either
Speaker 1: people driving their own vehicles autonomously or could be this
Speaker 1: idea of a fleet where people no longer own their
Speaker 1: own cars, right. And then there's this idea of the shuttle.
Speaker 1: So Zoos is kind of an interesting company because they
Speaker 1: won't even use the term car. They're building their vehicle
Speaker 1: from the ground up, and whether or not they're successful
Speaker 1: in that because it is incredibly capitally intensive effort that
Speaker 1: they're making. I mean, to build it from the ground
Speaker 1: up and then to operate the services a huge task.
Speaker 1: But there are some companies like that that are talking
Speaker 1: about these sort of shuttle unlike car like of vehicles
Speaker 1: that will change the way that we think about vehicles
Speaker 1: and then maybe then we'll share. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: know if that will happen yet, but even if they
Speaker 1: did that, how is that different than the subway. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a vehicle we all share, right right. It seems
Speaker 1: to work pretty well, at least until they are stopped
Speaker 1: repairing their subways. But that's another story, right well, but
Speaker 1: it does speak to infrastructure though, so you know, we
Speaker 1: could all improve our infrastructure here, but it is capitally intensive.
Speaker 1: It's another thing, you know, building trains, high speed trains.
Speaker 1: I mean, the US is behind when it comes to
Speaker 1: high speed trains. If you were to compare ourselves to
Speaker 1: Europe or Asia and infrastructure without it, then the answer is, well,
Speaker 1: instead of these fixed points trains and subways the l
Speaker 1: in Chicago, we'll have a more dynamic, on demand type
Speaker 1: of shuttle and then also make it autonomous. And so
Speaker 1: that's considered the solution that could potentially be. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's really going to be lower costs, but
Speaker 1: that is the one of the promises, right, So that
Speaker 1: will eliminate transit deserts, you know, people who can't access
Speaker 1: public transits now and just to use Chicago as an example,
Speaker 1: because we both live there, have lived there, are you
Speaker 1: live there now? The closer you are to the L,
Speaker 1: the higher price the apartment right oftentimes, and so if
Speaker 1: you have to if you can't afford that and you
Speaker 1: live far away, then how do you get there? All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, this idea of a non fixed point
Speaker 1: dynamic on demand avy shuttle seems really encouraging and something
Speaker 1: that why wouldn't you want right at zero degrees and snow?
Speaker 1: Of course? Yeah, who wants to walk like several blocks
Speaker 1: to the L. So I mean that's the promise. You
Speaker 1: can see why people really have jumped on it. And
Speaker 1: there's also potentially money to be made there, Yes, a
Speaker 1: lot of money to be made, right, So where are
Speaker 1: we technologically speaking? And would you say, is it fair
Speaker 1: to say that it's been much harder technologically than people
Speaker 1: thought it would be to do this? You know a
Speaker 1: lot of this existed in academia for years, and the
Speaker 1: early Darba challenges, you know, show that there was a
Speaker 1: possibility to do this. It's not a question. God, pause
Speaker 1: for a minute and just tell people what DARPA is,
Speaker 1: just speaking just in case listeners. So DARPA is an
Speaker 1: extension of the US government, and in the mid two
Speaker 1: thousands there were a few of these challenges that were
Speaker 1: issued to see if teams could send an autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: around a course. The first year, no one made it,
Speaker 1: and through Dave Hall, who founded Velodine as a result
Speaker 1: of creating this light r the following year teams. It
Speaker 1: all came out of academia, and then there were some
Speaker 1: companies that were backing these efforts. They were able to
Speaker 1: actually complete it. And what happened and why that's important,
Speaker 1: is that many of these people went back into academia,
Speaker 1: not all of them did. A direct result of DARPA
Speaker 1: Grand Challenge led to Google making its own moon shot
Speaker 1: of the Google self driving project now named Weymo right
Speaker 1: now named Weymo, and a number of these other people
Speaker 1: who were involved in different teams out of CMU, out
Speaker 1: of Michigan and all these major universities have now gone
Speaker 1: on to being part of some of the more promising
Speaker 1: startups and companies working on autonomous vehicle technology. So Argo
Speaker 1: has an investment from Ford VW. I mean the folks
Speaker 1: from there had participated in in DARPA as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: so there's there's all sorts of really interesting connections. If
Speaker 1: you were to look at every single team member at
Speaker 1: every single university, you would start to see a picture
Speaker 1: of oh, I know, I know these names. Now they're
Speaker 1: at this startup or this startup working really assassinating scatter grow. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: So technically speaking, what most people in the autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: on the technical side will tell you is that, you know,
Speaker 1: we've been at ninety nine percent for a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's that last nine nines that is the difficult part,
Speaker 1: and there's all sorts of reasons why that is. But
Speaker 1: we do have better compute than we've ever had before.
Speaker 1: Sensor technology has absolutely gotten a lot better, and depending
Speaker 1: on the approach that you use, you could argue that
Speaker 1: we're right on the cusp of that. But yes, I
Speaker 1: would say, in a very simplistic way, yes, people I
Speaker 1: think got excited or thought that they were farther ahead
Speaker 1: than they were and that that last piece has taken
Speaker 1: a lot longer. And really, to me, it comes down
Speaker 1: to when will companies decide that what the product they
Speaker 1: have is safe enough? And that's a question that actually
Speaker 1: people have a very hard time answering is how safe
Speaker 1: is safe enough? And so what we're going to see
Speaker 1: because of some of the difficulty of answering that question,
Speaker 1: We're going to see what is called geofenced robotaxi deployments.
Speaker 1: And a geofence means you think of it in your
Speaker 1: operational domain, right, which is where does this vehicle operate.
Speaker 1: A geofence can be a a geographic fence. Think of
Speaker 1: it that way, a barrier if you will, that that
Speaker 1: car cannot operate outside of that actual space. But it
Speaker 1: can also mean limitations on when it operates, so maybe
Speaker 1: never in rain, or how it operates, so maybe never
Speaker 1: making a left hand turn. So when people say autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles will be here tomorrow, well yeah, that you could
Speaker 1: technically say that WYMO is now pulled the safety driver
Speaker 1: out of some of its vehicles in a very specific
Speaker 1: geofenced area in the suburbs of Phoenix, completely driverless. We
Speaker 1: just had a freelance reporter take we think one of
Speaker 1: the first drives first journalism or journalist drives at least
Speaker 1: in this driver lists vehicle using an app and inhaling
Speaker 1: it on public streets. I might be terrified, Well, it's
Speaker 1: people get used to early fast. I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: on a number of these autonomous vehicle drives and it's
Speaker 1: amazing how easily we kind of give give up concern
Speaker 1: on them. And that's kind of the difficulty, is that
Speaker 1: people kind of like opt in and trust it. Maybe
Speaker 1: before this shit, I'm not sure, like I've certainly trusted it,
Speaker 1: trusted things like that before. And so Waimo is an example.
Speaker 1: They are they're not charging it, so these are free,
Speaker 1: but you could see a time soon I would say,
Speaker 1: I would say before the end of the year where
Speaker 1: they're going to start charging. I mean, that's my prediction.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. So there's a fascinating psychological component involved here.
Speaker 1: What does it take us to trust them? And then
Speaker 1: when we do trust them, do we trust too much? Right? Right?
Speaker 1: And then there's this moral question that you raise, which
Speaker 1: which is really interesting too because it's a different one
Speaker 1: for Silicon Valley to contend with, because Silicon Valley is
Speaker 1: a customed to rolling out vaporware products that don't work perfectly,
Speaker 1: and you'll figure out how to make them work as
Speaker 1: users iterate. But here it's really different. For some reason,
Speaker 1: we have we're okay with people killing people, but we're
Speaker 1: not okay with machines killing people. Right, So there's this
Speaker 1: idea that the driverless car has to be perfect before
Speaker 1: before it can be rolled out, and can we ever
Speaker 1: get to perfect? Well, so doctor gil Pratt, who's with
Speaker 1: the Toyota Research Institute, is a really interesting guy, and
Speaker 1: he has talked about this very thing, which is that robots,
Speaker 1: we don't give them the same forgiveness value. Right, we
Speaker 1: have thirty seven thousand i think traffic desks last year
Speaker 1: in the United States. But would humans even accept one
Speaker 1: death from a robot? Well, we've had a couple, right
Speaker 1: sort of, Well, yeah, we've had We've had the one
Speaker 1: fatal crash in Tempe with an Uber self driving car
Speaker 1: which did have a human safety driver behind the wheel.
Speaker 1: But he's he checked out back to your other points, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he actually would agree with you and say that
Speaker 1: that there isn't a lot of the comfort level with
Speaker 1: in the forgiveness level, I'd say it's pretty low. It's
Speaker 1: kind of informing how Toyota is approaching this whole idea
Speaker 1: of autonomy, and they have this philosophy where it will
Speaker 1: act as a guardian sort of operating in the background.
Speaker 1: And we'll take over if you need. And it's actually,
Speaker 1: in my mind, almost a harder challenge in a way,
Speaker 1: but it is informing some of what Toyota is doing.
Speaker 1: For example, if that's the direction that goes, doesn't it
Speaker 1: obviate the advantages? In other words, suddenly, if you have
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicles but a human still has to be there,
Speaker 1: aren't we taking away some of the utopian promise of this? Well.
Speaker 1: Toyota's approach is kind of a dual approach, which is,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, they absolutely see a desire to
Speaker 1: have what we would call full fully driverless, meaning our
Speaker 1: human being does not need to be in the loop
Speaker 1: at all. And then they also see a need for
Speaker 1: essentially having automation in privately owned vehicles, so which would
Speaker 1: get them closer to that zero death goal as opposed
Speaker 1: to just going all in with a VS for everyone
Speaker 1: and have them all be robotaxis. So they're taking a
Speaker 1: dual approach, And there's some automakers by the way, that
Speaker 1: are like kind of they won't necessarily spelled out, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of like that seems to be how it's
Speaker 1: shaking out, just that they're all taking a little bit
Speaker 1: slightly different technical approaches. So when you look at the
Speaker 1: competitive landscape, who's most interesting to you? Who do you
Speaker 1: think of as the leaders in this? Or is that
Speaker 1: shifting so quickly that it's hard to even keep track
Speaker 1: of that. I mean, so I could give you some
Speaker 1: names and then a year from now I'll have a
Speaker 1: whole new group of names. There's a few startups I'm
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on, and so I'll put them in category.
Speaker 1: So there are companies like, of course, I'm always going
Speaker 1: to pay attention to what Tesla's doing because they sort
Speaker 1: of do everything backwards in a lot of ways and
Speaker 1: just throw you know, they throw technology out there. They
Speaker 1: have huge fan base that is absolutely happy to be
Speaker 1: beta testers, and the Muscans weeping right, and then the
Speaker 1: rest of us are like, you know, shocked and scared
Speaker 1: about what's going to happen. So I always pay attention
Speaker 1: to them. Before you go on pause a little on
Speaker 1: that point. They do everything backwards, what do you mean, Well,
Speaker 1: Tesla is very good design and prototyping and thinking on
Speaker 1: their feet, but they do things backwards. From a traditional automaker,
Speaker 1: a traditional automaker would take seven years to bring to
Speaker 1: ensure that every piece of their vehicle is of automotive
Speaker 1: grade that it would gone through a number of iterations.
Speaker 1: It would be on the and this is changing by
Speaker 1: the way, but it would go on the auto shows
Speaker 1: circuit and it would be very specific. And Tesla has
Speaker 1: done none of that, right, So they made headlines and
Speaker 1: made their model less. One of them are popular cars
Speaker 1: and like very innovative with this seventeen inch screen, but
Speaker 1: it's not automotive grade, right, But they put it out there.
Speaker 1: They will roll out software updates and you know, with
Speaker 1: fun games and also changing the performance of the vehicle
Speaker 1: or fixing software bugs. Other automakers don't do that. So
Speaker 1: it's completely different from how other automakers have ever acted
Speaker 1: or conducted their business before. And I'm not saying it
Speaker 1: is as good or bad. It's just it's just different.
Speaker 1: It's just different in reality. Yeah, So before we come
Speaker 1: back to Tesla, let's finish just thinking about the competitive
Speaker 1: landscape and Weymo, right, you pay it's a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: I pay a lot of attension to Weymo. I pay
Speaker 1: a lot of tension to Zoos because I'm fascinated with
Speaker 1: this idea of building a vehicle from the ground up.
Speaker 1: And what they're going to do with it. I think
Speaker 1: it's a mistake to not be considering some of the
Speaker 1: Chinese startups and also what some of the OEMs in
Speaker 1: Korea and Japan are doing. Hundai just as basically put
Speaker 1: like thirty five billion dollars towards this idea of autonomous
Speaker 1: of vehicles any five billion oh Man and mobility, and
Speaker 1: in the Korean government is you know, doubling down also
Speaker 1: on that in making huge efforts and mobility. So to
Speaker 1: not focus on those companies a huge mistake. Just to
Speaker 1: focus on SLOC and Valley would be a huge mistake.
Speaker 1: But then there are other companies like Voyage is really interesting.
Speaker 1: They're an autonomous vehicle company. They're operating in retirement communities.
Speaker 1: And one is the Villages, which is in Florida, and
Speaker 1: it's it's like two hundred thousand people there. It goes
Speaker 1: across county lines. It's huge, and there's a human safe
Speaker 1: driver behind the wheel right now. But they are getting
Speaker 1: closer and closer to pulling that person out. But they're
Speaker 1: starting and that's their business model right now. They're starting
Speaker 1: in these retirement communities and then they're going to slowly
Speaker 1: have that geofence, that operational design domain expand, and so
Speaker 1: about providing access to people who haven't had it before.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, right, So it's interesting, although I will say
Speaker 1: that they have a vehicle that you could not put
Speaker 1: a wheelchair in right now, no one does. So I'm
Speaker 1: waiting for that idea to come around. I'm waiting for
Speaker 1: that vehicle that essentially replaces paratransit because if you speak
Speaker 1: to anyone, any person with a disability who is wheelchair abound,
Speaker 1: it is a huge problem for them to be able
Speaker 1: to get a ride. So I'm waiting for that one.
Speaker 1: But there's there's a number you get kind of the picture.
Speaker 1: There's there's there's companies in Michigan. There's companies. I mean,
Speaker 1: I pay attention to what Argo's doing. They have investment
Speaker 1: from two major automakers. Mean to not focus on them
Speaker 1: is again another huge mistake. So and then there's like
Speaker 1: these smaller startups that no one's ever heard of. I
Speaker 1: think you're going to hear about them more. There's a
Speaker 1: company called Ghost that I'm keeping an eye on, and
Speaker 1: they have a very interesting approach and really basically turning
Speaker 1: your personal vehicle into an autonomous vehicle. Ah, so taking
Speaker 1: your existing car and turning it into an autonomous vehica.
Speaker 1: I mean there are certain requirements like is be a
Speaker 1: newer model or whatever, and so there I think a
Speaker 1: company to watch and just that they're taking a different approach.
Speaker 1: Of course, I always like to pay attention to what
Speaker 1: Comma dot Ai is doing. I don't even know who
Speaker 1: that is. So that is founded by George Hots. George
Speaker 1: Hots also known as Geohote. It was the well he
Speaker 1: was a kid at the time. He was one who
Speaker 1: jailbroke the iPhone. He's done a number of other things too,
Speaker 1: But Comma dot Ai is an aftermarket kit that he
Speaker 1: was creating. He has some venture backing him that you
Speaker 1: could turn certain model cars into kind of a Level
Speaker 1: two meaning an advanced driver assistant system that handles some
Speaker 1: highway driving. Got a letter from NITZA and then he
Speaker 1: basically open sourced everything. So it wasn't a season to
Speaker 1: desist order, but I think it was treated a little
Speaker 1: bit like that, and so they kind of pivoted a
Speaker 1: bit and they've kind of open sourced all there. So
Speaker 1: if you were really motivated, you can buy their kit,
Speaker 1: the hardware piece, and then you can hack your own car. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I have two thoughts coming to mind and hearing this.
Speaker 1: One is that it is analogis in some ways to
Speaker 1: the early days of the personal computer revolution, right listening
Speaker 1: to you talk with these tools that people can use
Speaker 1: to essentially hack things themselves. But the other thing that's
Speaker 1: so interesting we got used to over the last however,
Speaker 1: many decades of thinking of the car industry. The vehicle
Speaker 1: industry is just dominated by a handful of big names, right,
Speaker 1: But that's not the way it was back in the
Speaker 1: heyday when the auto industry was first getting started in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds, in early nineteen hundreds, they were
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of companies and then they all kind
Speaker 1: of got combined into GM, Chrysler, Ford. So we're almost
Speaker 1: back in that time of creative proliferation, right in a
Speaker 1: way that's really interesting. Yeah. I mean with a couple
Speaker 1: of caveats. One is manufacturing making cars is still hard,
Speaker 1: and I think that Tesla would be the first to
Speaker 1: agree they were right around. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: remember this, but post recession we're still sort of in
Speaker 1: the drugs of that. In two thousand and nine, two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, there was a lot of interest around
Speaker 1: clean tech, and there were a number of car companies
Speaker 1: that were little startups Coda, Fisker, Tesla and all those
Speaker 1: None of those survived early. Tesla is the one of
Speaker 1: the few so still are one of the only ones.
Speaker 1: So we still haven't seen any car manufacturer, like new
Speaker 1: car companies come up that have had the same level
Speaker 1: of success as Tesla. They've folded or whatever. What we
Speaker 1: are seeing, though, to agree with you, is this kind
Speaker 1: of interesting revolution and evolution of the autonomous vehicle industry
Speaker 1: and the number of companies. And I will say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that we've already seen some closed down, and
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna get a second wave and then
Speaker 1: we're going to see more consolidation again. And it'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see how many of these little startups actually
Speaker 1: turn into big companies and if the rest of them
Speaker 1: just get gobbled up by automakers. I don't think all
Speaker 1: of them will. I think some of them will be
Speaker 1: come eventually like the size of a Weymo today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just don't know which ones. I mean, I could guess,
Speaker 1: but I'd probably be wrong. And there's something encouraging about that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Tesla, but talk about Tesla versus Weymo
Speaker 1: because it's interesting, right. Weymo seems to me to be
Speaker 1: fairly quiet. You don't hear a lot of big promises
Speaker 1: from them about what they're doing. And then you have
Speaker 1: Elon Musk on the other hand saying there's going to
Speaker 1: be a fleet of what a million robotaxis on the
Speaker 1: road by twenty twenty. How do you think about those
Speaker 1: two companies? I treat them totally differently. Okay, yeah, well yeah,
Speaker 1: Weymo is pretty relatively quiet. Well, first of all, there's
Speaker 1: the obvious. I mean, Elon Musk is a personality and
Speaker 1: a lot of people are committed to him as a person.
Speaker 1: He's incredibly high profile. Waymo doesn't really have. They certainly
Speaker 1: have executives, but there's just no one. I can't think
Speaker 1: of many other companies that have like this, almost a
Speaker 1: cult of personality around them, and a lot of followers
Speaker 1: who believe in what he says, and so anything he
Speaker 1: says or anything that he tweets, I should say, gets
Speaker 1: covered and is written about in a way that we
Speaker 1: if Weymo does, it just doesn't. So yeah, Weymo also
Speaker 1: just look at how it was started. It was started
Speaker 1: under this premise of not necessarily initially being like this
Speaker 1: is going to be a commercial business. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was considered a project. Now internally, there's probably some aspirations
Speaker 1: early on to turn that into a commercial business, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't treated as such. It wasn't already a company
Speaker 1: that had a product it And there I've definitely heard
Speaker 1: some criticism of people saying, well, why did it take
Speaker 1: them so long to get here? You know a lot
Speaker 1: of people have jumped on those coattails and were worked
Speaker 1: there and now have gone and start their own companies.
Speaker 1: Tussla is doing something very different whiches. You know, they
Speaker 1: are selling vehicles and they are using over their software
Speaker 1: updates to improve the performance of the vehicle and improve
Speaker 1: some of the advanced driver assistance features in the vehicle.
Speaker 1: But we should say right now tuslas are not self driving.
Speaker 1: So let's be clear, like, these are not self driving cars.
Speaker 1: They are considered level two plus, which is kind of
Speaker 1: the SAE terms are difficult, not everyone understands them, but
Speaker 1: this is an advanced driver assistance system with increasing levels
Speaker 1: of automation, but is not fully self driving car. A
Speaker 1: driver has to be in the loop and absolutely should be,
Speaker 1: and we've all seen the videos of people not doing that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is not a driver least car. But even
Speaker 1: the name is a little bit of a game or
Speaker 1: a wink when they call it autopilot right well, and
Speaker 1: also don't forget that they're selling an upgrade package that
Speaker 1: they call full self driving AH or the acronyms FSD.
Speaker 1: And so the interesting thing is when FSD was first
Speaker 1: put as an option, it was put out my believe
Speaker 1: it was in twenty sixteen, and so people leasing those
Speaker 1: cars leased them and paid you know that amount, and
Speaker 1: right now the cost kids is going up. It's about
Speaker 1: six thousand dollars now for this upgrade. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you leased a car, those leases are up now
Speaker 1: and you never actually got your full self driving. And
Speaker 1: you know, there are people who have absolutely pushed back
Speaker 1: and they're no longer super fans, but there are a
Speaker 1: ton of fans still who's seem willing to just throw
Speaker 1: the money and in the hopes of being part of
Speaker 1: this revolution. But my guess is, and sort of my
Speaker 1: theory all along has been the more cars they sell,
Speaker 1: the less tolerance some people will be. Because early adopters
Speaker 1: are always going to be like up for the fun
Speaker 1: of it, right, and they're going to be more forgiving
Speaker 1: of the mistakes. Absolutely. I mean I've talked to numerous
Speaker 1: owners over the years who loved Tesla and are always
Speaker 1: like constantly annoyed by their cars, but they love being
Speaker 1: a part of this big experiment. And it's just it's
Speaker 1: an interesting study in like human psychology. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's for another show that now that's totally fascinating. It
Speaker 1: is definitely part of it's part of this whole thing, right,
Speaker 1: here's the interesting thing. So, like, if Tesla is successful
Speaker 1: in what they're doing, and I have some real doubts
Speaker 1: about it, on you know, they do have a new
Speaker 1: computer chip, the custom chip that they build that they
Speaker 1: have in their newer models, that is supposed to be
Speaker 1: able to handle basically to unlock this full self driving,
Speaker 1: and that the only thing that has left if you
Speaker 1: were to listen and fully believe everything Elon Musk is saying,
Speaker 1: is that once it gets to quote unquote feature complete,
Speaker 1: it's really just the regulatory bodies that are going to
Speaker 1: be preventing that. But on a federal level, to be clear,
Speaker 1: if you're have a vehicle that has passed FMBSS, which
Speaker 1: is like you have to have a seatbelt, and you
Speaker 1: have to have you know, breaks and pedals and things.
Speaker 1: If your car meets all those standards. There is technically,
Speaker 1: right now, not a federal guideline that would prevent you
Speaker 1: having an autonomous vehicle. Really, that doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: can't be right hailing. You can't charge money in the
Speaker 1: state of California, you know, you can't. You know, there's
Speaker 1: all these other things that could you know, happen and
Speaker 1: prevent certain things. But right now, on a federal level,
Speaker 1: there's no regulation preventing this. I mean, there's nothing that's
Speaker 1: going to prevent like let's say Comma, dat Ai or
Speaker 1: ghost you know, as far as I know, and I've
Speaker 1: asked federal regulators, there are guidelines, but they're not. So
Speaker 1: this is a different This is a different thing. So
Speaker 1: WAYMA is trying to do a ride hailing service. They're also,
Speaker 1: by the way, working on other things too. They're working
Speaker 1: on self driving trucks and other uses for their technology.
Speaker 1: But if we're talking about the Robotoxi service, they would
Speaker 1: they would operate the service. These would not be privately
Speaker 1: owned cars. This is very different from what Tesla is doing,
Speaker 1: which is they're privately owned cars that are in their view,
Speaker 1: going to get better over time in terms of automation,
Speaker 1: and that then those people can use those. So it's
Speaker 1: a bit of an aside. Is the regulatory system lagging
Speaker 1: behind where it needs to be? Yeah, I mean there
Speaker 1: are guidelines right now, but we also live in a
Speaker 1: country where there's states rights as well, and so some
Speaker 1: states have jumped forward to bring in business by the way,
Speaker 1: to make it more welcoming, and others. Some are more
Speaker 1: regulatory averse and some are welcoming of the regulation, in
Speaker 1: California being one of them as a hotbed of testing activity. Right,
Speaker 1: So you have the DMV in the state of California,
Speaker 1: you have to have a permit to test your autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles on public roads. But if you want to operate
Speaker 1: a ride healing service, that is through the Public Utilities Commission,
Speaker 1: and you're not allowed to charge for rides. So it's
Speaker 1: two different permits and it's so it's so this is
Speaker 1: really regulatory either arbitrage you could think of it, or
Speaker 1: just a regulatory morass through which you have to tread sure,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's in part because Calvinia is
Speaker 1: a hotbed of or a test beat, if you will,
Speaker 1: and where a lot of these companies are located. And
Speaker 1: also on many of these cities were burned by ride healing,
Speaker 1: and so they do not want that to happen again,
Speaker 1: burned by ride hailing in the sense that it increased congestion,
Speaker 1: rather than they're dating it. And also it just there
Speaker 1: were a lot of let's look at the very early
Speaker 1: days of Uber was all about going into a city
Speaker 1: and then asking for forgiveness in some cases, and so
Speaker 1: that created a lot of chaos. And while a lot
Speaker 1: of that has been worked out, I mean, people kind
Speaker 1: of might forget about those very early days, and but
Speaker 1: they're scars. Yeah, for sure, it'sn't that interesting. I hadn't.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that, And that's that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: And there's a Bloomberg headline recently Tesla's autopilot could save
Speaker 1: the lives of millions, but it will kill some people first.
Speaker 1: And I did think it was interesting that because of
Speaker 1: the way Tesla is innovating and letting these first adopters
Speaker 1: test and in some cases rest their lives, right, but
Speaker 1: they're getting the real time feedback. That's what's key to
Speaker 1: developing the software to make this work. So there is
Speaker 1: some argument maybe that being aggressive could and being aggressive
Speaker 1: with the rules and with the safety could actually let
Speaker 1: Tesla make a breakthrough ahead of other people. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Ellon would agree with you. And in fact,
Speaker 1: he has aggressively come out against journalists who have brought
Speaker 1: up concerns about autopilot because there have been a few
Speaker 1: deaths in which autopilot was engaged, the most famous being
Speaker 1: in Josh Brown in Florida, yea, and that reporting around
Speaker 1: that and even questioning even the name autopilot and in
Speaker 1: just any kind of reporting around it has He has
Speaker 1: push back and said, you are essentially killing people by
Speaker 1: reporting on this, because if regulatory bodies come in and
Speaker 1: prevent autopilot being used, then you'll cause more deaths as
Speaker 1: a result. And so he would agree with this an
Speaker 1: interesting version it's not my fault. It's your fault for
Speaker 1: telling people this is happening, right, not my fault for
Speaker 1: causing it. Right. Journalists are easy targets. But I do
Speaker 1: think that it goes to an interesting point that I
Speaker 1: wish he did more of, which is, let's forget about
Speaker 1: autopilot for a minute, and let's talk about the whole
Speaker 1: idea of zero deaths. There are things that we could
Speaker 1: do today as a society and federal and state regulatory
Speaker 1: bodies that could help decrease the number of people who
Speaker 1: are being killed and crashes today without autonomous vehicles, and
Speaker 1: that is making things like driver's license as more difficult.
Speaker 1: And there's a whole host of things and safety features
Speaker 1: that you could you could have that would actually reduce it.
Speaker 1: Would it get you to zero probably not no, but
Speaker 1: it would definitely reduce it. And yet we don't do that.
Speaker 1: And so it's I find it kind of very interesting
Speaker 1: that we're like jumping over some of the like uneasy
Speaker 1: practical things that you know, people won't have the freedom
Speaker 1: to drive and all this stuff, and instead of going
Speaker 1: to the technological answer, instead of just like potentially creating
Speaker 1: more regulations. No one wants that, right, especially not in
Speaker 1: the United States. Well, the utopia is always a lot
Speaker 1: more fun to imagine than than the messy practicalities either
Speaker 1: involved in getting there or and just making things a
Speaker 1: little bit better today. Right, It's easier to imagine a
Speaker 1: new world. And aren't there a lot of questions around
Speaker 1: this that cities have to answer too, because a lot
Speaker 1: of this is are been planning issues right, and what
Speaker 1: cities decide to enable, And so the idea that this
Speaker 1: utopia is just somehow seamlessly going to come into being
Speaker 1: because the technology exists, well, it's a matter of personal
Speaker 1: choice what people choose to do, but it's also a
Speaker 1: matter of what cities choose to enable, right, right, the
Speaker 1: hottest job in Silicon Valley or any place that is
Speaker 1: looking to like launch their evies any where is going
Speaker 1: to be a really good government relations and policy person
Speaker 1: who is able to walk into cities and help them
Speaker 1: understand today exactly what they want and work with them
Speaker 1: proactively to do things like congestion pricing and be okay
Speaker 1: with that and then curb pricing, because what type of
Speaker 1: world do we imagine, Like, where are these avies going
Speaker 1: to go? If there are no parking lots, they will
Speaker 1: eventually have to be maintained and charge and all those things.
Speaker 1: But are they just going to simply circle the block?
Speaker 1: Will they be parked? How long will they park? Will
Speaker 1: they know? There are all those questions that have them
Speaker 1: been answered. Is that an opportunity for cities, for example,
Speaker 1: to make more money by if a car pulls over
Speaker 1: and is iLINK for a bit on a curb in
Speaker 1: a busy area, can they capture some money from that?
Speaker 1: You know, all those questions. So like every av company
Speaker 1: should absolutely like if they don't already, and I think
Speaker 1: they all do, but is to have really good people
Speaker 1: on that government relations and policy and legal side. Let's
Speaker 1: say you jump through all the hoops and you get
Speaker 1: all the technical stuff down, well, then you have to
Speaker 1: operate a business, and how are you going to do that,
Speaker 1: and so how you operate in a city as part
Speaker 1: of that. I don't know if there is going to
Speaker 1: be a need for all this extra special infrastructure, because
Speaker 1: the thing is, it's not like we snap our fingers
Speaker 1: tomorrow and suddenly the world is just a vis It
Speaker 1: will have lots of human driven cars in there as well,
Speaker 1: and so to just suddenly change roads just I just
Speaker 1: don't see that happening right away at all, especially with
Speaker 1: bike pass right. I mean, we haven't even figured out
Speaker 1: like basic infrastructure on how to deal with the humans
Speaker 1: that we have driving cars and on bikes and scooters
Speaker 1: right now. So a few autonomous vehicles is I doubt
Speaker 1: will you up end cities now? Eventually that might change
Speaker 1: and happen, but it's not going to happen overnight. Like
Speaker 1: many revolutions, there will be a series of evolutions before
Speaker 1: we get to the revolution. Right. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being here today. It was really fun. Thank you. So.
Speaker 1: I knew there was a gap, I mean, the utopian
Speaker 1: vision and the reality isn't there always, but I hadn't
Speaker 1: thought of all the ways in which there was a gap.
Speaker 1: I thought it was primarily technological, that last one percent
Speaker 1: about which Kirsten speaks, But there's also a logical gap.
Speaker 1: Just because avs are possible doesn't mean they're going to
Speaker 1: reduce congestion and bring all the other benefits the believers promise.
Speaker 1: There may also be a behavioral gap. Will Americans, who
Speaker 1: after all, love their cars, really adopt avs and mass
Speaker 1: And then there just may be a governmental gap. If
Speaker 1: cities are going to enable or disable avs, it may
Speaker 1: take some advanced planning to make it all work. Given
Speaker 1: my utter lack of driving skills, and less selfishly, the
Speaker 1: potential that avs have to make transportation possible for those
Speaker 1: who are currently deprived. I actually hope in this case
Speaker 1: that the utopians proved to be correct. On a side note,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in further discussion of Elon Musk, I
Speaker 1: recorded a podcast with journalist Lynette Lopez about America's favorite
Speaker 1: visionary that I think you might enjoy listening. To Make
Speaker 1: You a Killing physical production of Pushkin Industries and Chalkin Blade.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Ruth Barnes and Laura Hyde. My executive
Speaker 1: producers are Alison mcclein no relation and Making Casey. The
Speaker 1: executive producer at Pushkin is Mia Lobell. Engineering by Jason Rostkowski.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Jed Flood. Special thanks to Jacob
Speaker 1: Weisberg at Pushkin and everyone on the show. I'm Bethany mcclin.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. Find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Bethany mac twelve and let me know which episodes you've
Speaker 1: most enjoyed.