Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Waymo Hits NYC Streets - Beating Tesla

Transcript

Waymo Hits NYC Streets - Beating Tesla · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
• 0:04
  Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
• 0:07
  the critical crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The
• 0:11
  Boring Company and Neurolink. I'm your host, Will Walden.
• 0:16
  Waymo is bringing its driverless cars to New York City.
• 0:20
  The company quietly filed a permit to start mapping the
• 0:23
  streets of Manhattan in August, and it will begin testing its
• 0:26
  autonomous vehicles in the city this fall.
• 0:29
  This marks the first time that Alphabet Self Driving Division
• 0:32
  is set foot in the city with its own fleet.
• 0:36
  Now, Waymo isn't launching a robo taxi service here, at least
• 0:39
  not yet. These initial runs will keep a
• 0:42
  human driver behind the wheel with no autonomous driving mode
• 0:46
  activated. Still, the presence of Waymo's
• 0:48
  white Jaguar eye paces rolling through the most congested and
• 0:52
  chaotic traffic grid in the country.
• 0:53
  Signal said the company is laying down the groundwork for
• 0:56
  something much, much bigger. Wemo confirmed it's sending
• 1:01
  vehicles to collect data throughout Manhattan.
• 1:04
  These runs will include scenarios like driving through
• 1:07
  the tunnels, over bridges and into underground parking
• 1:10
  garages. New York presents a very dense
• 1:14
  technical challenge most other U.S. cities can't even come
• 1:17
  close to. Wemo is betting that mastering
• 1:20
  New York City could help it scale elsewhere with more
• 1:23
  confidence. And the New York City Department
• 1:26
  of Transportation approved Waymo's permit on August 6th of
• 1:29
  this year, and Waymo submitted the request under a state DMV
• 1:33
  pilot program that allows autonomous vehicle testing with
• 1:36
  very strict limitations. Now, this is unlike Phoenix or
• 1:40
  San Francisco that Waymo operates in.
• 1:42
  Now. These cars must stay in manual
• 1:45
  mode at all times and include two trained human safety drivers
• 1:50
  inside the vehicle. So this isn't Waymo's first time
• 1:54
  in New York City, though they went in there for the permit,
• 1:58
  but they were also upstate. It's the first time the company
• 2:02
  will operate its own branded vehicles in the city.
• 2:06
  In a 2021, Waymo quietly ran Lidar mapping tests using rented
• 2:11
  vehicles without Waymo logos. Sneaky now.
• 2:16
  That earlier effort made some initial geographic data
• 2:20
  available, but this new phase brings the project into the
• 2:23
  public Waymo branded cars. Waymo's already logged over
• 2:28
  1,000,000 driverless miles in Phoenix in San Francisco, and
• 2:31
  those cities allowed it to launch full autonomous ride
• 2:33
  handling services with no one behind the wheel.
• 2:36
  In contrast, New York presents a high friction environment filled
• 2:39
  with unpredictable pedestrians. People do whatever they want
• 2:42
  there. Double parked trucks, there's
• 2:44
  deliveries all the time, people on bikes, people weaving in and
• 2:48
  out of traffic in an endless stream of yellow cabs and Ubers
• 2:52
  that are trying to take over the roadways.
• 2:55
  The exact type of environment the current EV systems still
• 2:58
  struggle to handle consistently. But if they can nail this, they
• 3:01
  can defeat Tesla. The city's rules reflect the
• 3:04
  challenge of the actual city. Any autonomous vehicle test in
• 3:08
  the city must remain under manual control and carry 2 train
• 3:12
  safety operators at all times. Because nobody knows what's
• 3:14
  going to happen at any time when you're driving in the city.
• 3:17
  It's wild. And the state DMV requires
• 3:19
  detailed incident reports, driving logs, and real time
• 3:22
  monitoring. These regulations limit what
• 3:25
  Wemo can do in the short term, but they also provide a
• 3:28
  framework for a testing lab the Wemo is doing with more edge
• 3:33
  cases per mile than almost anywhere in the country.
• 3:37
  So it's a condensed set of data that Waymo will be gathering by
• 3:40
  going into the city. A Waymo's entry adds pressure to
• 3:44
  other AV companies like Cruz and Tesla, which have largely stayed
• 3:48
  away from New York due to its dense trafficked and strict
• 3:51
  regulatory setup. And unlike Cruz, which suffered
• 3:54
  a string of high profile incidents in San Francisco, is
• 3:57
  was suspended in California. Waymo has maintained a much
• 4:01
  cleaner record with regulators. The reputation could help ease
• 4:05
  its path into more difficult cities like New York City, or as
• 4:09
  we call it, the city. There's also a political angle
• 4:12
  on this move. Waymo began mapping just days
• 4:15
  before a new congestion pricing plan was supposed to launch in
• 4:18
  the city, which would have charged vehicles up to $15.00
• 4:22
  for entering core business zones.
• 4:24
  The plan has now been indefinitely paused by the
• 4:26
  Governor Hochel. If congestion pricing returns,
• 4:30
  it could reshape how ride hailing and delivery services
• 4:34
  operate, making autonomous fleets more economically
• 4:36
  available. Now we most expansion comes as
• 4:40
  Alphabet looks to justify its long term bets outside of
• 4:44
  advertising. They need to do other things.
• 4:46
  They need to make that trillion dollars now.
• 4:49
  They pour billions into way more already over the past decade,
• 4:52
  and while it has made technical progress, commercial success has
• 4:56
  been kind of slow watching in the city, even in this limited
• 5:00
  form. Let's Alphabet signal progress
• 5:03
  in front of investors without promising an actual service
• 5:05
  route anytime soon. So once they roll this out,
• 5:10
  they're going to see an uptick in the stock because they're
• 5:13
  going to start making money from these Waymo's immediately.
• 5:16
  The MTA, which controls much of the city's transit
• 5:18
  infrastructure, though, is not commented on Waymo's mapping
• 5:21
  plans. To US, your city.
• 5:23
  Department of Transfer Transportation approved the
• 5:28
  mapping permit, said it fits within the state's EV testing
• 5:31
  rules. Right now, local lawmakers have
• 5:33
  not raised major objections yet. Like a change once the vehicles
• 5:37
  become a visible presence on city streets.
• 5:40
  And depending on if they run into a few bikes or, you know,
• 5:44
  sideswipe any cars, you never know what's going to happen in
• 5:47
  the city. So Waymo wants to operate fully
• 5:50
  driverless cars in New York City one day.
• 5:52
  It'll need a separate permit, and a regulatory shift from the
• 5:55
  city has not indicated it's ready to make.
• 5:58
  But getting the data now puts Wemo in position to move faster.
• 6:02
  When that window opens, we MO has to be before Tesla.
• 6:07
  It's not promising a launch date for robotaxis in New York City
• 6:11
  quite yet. It's only confirmed the data
• 6:14
  collection is underway and that their vehicles will appear
• 6:18
  publicly this fall. That alone marks a shift in how
• 6:21
  the company is thinking about its national expansion.
• 6:25
  Think about it like this. Tesla is moving out with their
• 6:29
  automated vehicles. Waymo, the first to get into New
• 6:34
  York City. This is groundbreaking for
• 6:38
  Waymo. They get the millions of people
• 6:40
  in the city to take Waymo's instead of Tesla's.
• 6:43
  I know people that just don't want to be in a Tesla.
• 6:46
  They will, you know, if they have to, but if Waymo's around,
• 6:50
  they'll probably do it. It's very, you know, very, let's
• 6:55
  see, how can I say this? You, you kind of get on a team.
• 6:59
  We're in the city, right? And you, you know, that kind of
• 7:03
  person. So if Waymo gets in there early,
• 7:05
  they do a really good job. They support local businesses,
• 7:08
  They'll support local people. You know, New York will take
• 7:11
  care of itself. They're testing in New York
• 7:14
  because no other city offers the same level of technical
• 7:17
  complexity. There's so many data points.
• 7:20
  Just park in your car on the side of the street.
• 7:22
  There's so many other cars whizzing by.
• 7:24
  There's people on bikes, people on scooters, people on any sort
• 7:28
  of EV. You know, there's people
• 7:31
  whizzing around you at all times.
• 7:33
  So all those things are technical data points.
• 7:36
  You know? If Waymo's system can learn from
• 7:39
  that environment, the company may be able to apply those
• 7:44
  lessons across the entire network.
• 7:47
  So this is kind of like cramming for a test, right?
• 7:49
  You get it in New York City, you're testing next day, and you
• 7:56
  cram, cram, cram until the test comes up.
• 8:00
  That's what they're doing with New York City.
• 8:03
  It's a data gathering mission right now, and nothing more than
• 8:07
  that. But if they gather the right
• 8:09
  data, they'll be able to use their AI to interpret it and
• 8:12
  also use it all across the nation and all across the world
• 8:16
  eventually. Hey, thank you so much for
• 8:19
  listening today. I really do appreciate your
• 8:21
  support. If you could take a second and
• 8:23
  hit this subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast
• 8:26
  platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly
• 8:29
  appreciate it. It helps out the show
• 8:30
  tremendously and you'll never miss an episode.
• 8:33
  And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you
• 8:37
  caught up quickly. And please, if you want to
• 8:39
  support the show even more, go to patreon.com Stage Zero and
• 8:45
  please take care of yourselves and each other, and I'll see you
• 8:48
  tomorrow.