The Road to Autonomy

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG , Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey vetoing a city council ordinance that would have required human safety monitors in robotaxis, California requiring remote operators of autonomous vehicles to be physically located in the United States, and the U.S. Army creating the Futures and Autonomous Systems Command. The Minneap...

Zach Rash , Co-Founder and CEO of Coco Robotics joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss scaling Coco from 50 brands to more than 5,000 globally. Over the past two years, Coco has expanded its merchant network from 50 brands to over 5,000 across QSR, grocery, and retail. Growth has been fueled by a frictionless merchant onboarding workflow, as well as rising consumer tip fa...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Grayson’s San Francisco Field Work where he rode in a Wayve vehicle on the freeway, compared Waymo’s Jaguar I-PACE and Ojai robotaxis back to back, attended DoorDash’s Dash Forward event, and found Travis Kalanick’s Atoms autonomous vehicle on the streets of San Francisco. Grayson’s verdict on Wayve is clear. With zero interv...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss their Texas Field Work where they rode in Cybercab, Waymo, Avride, May Mobility robotaxis, Kodiak and Aurora autonomous trucks, and inspected depots across Austin and Dallas. Grayson’s verdict on Tesla’s Cybercab is simple. Once you go Cybercab, you don’t go back. In Austin, wait times averaged two to five minutes across doze...

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG , Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss May Mobility filing to go public through a SPAC merger with an estimated $93 million annual cash burn, Mercedes-Benz adding Wayve as its third automated driving software partner, and Figure AI’s Helix 2.5 taking on household chores across 30 homes it had never seen before. May Mobility is merging with ACP Holdin...

Lee Redden , Founder of LastFeet joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss solving the last 50 feet of package delivery with a custom-built legged robot designed to ride in the jump seat of a delivery van and carry packages from the curb to the doorstep. After co-founding Blue River Technology and selling it to Deere, Lee returned to building because he believes this is one...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s expansion to Tokyo and Singapore, NHTSA’s ongoing audit of Tesla’s Cybercab in Austin and Bolt’s plan to deploy up to 25,000 Lucid robotaxis in Europe. Today, Tesla has roughly 40 Cybercabs operating in Austin, and Grayson believes Tesla is respectfully holding at its home market while NHTSA completes a fact-finding a...

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG , Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss NHTSA ordering Tesla to answer 21 technical and legal questions under oath by September 30 on Cybercab self-certification, Waymo hitting local political friction in San Diego after CPUC approval, and GMO Air unveiling a robot EMS vehicle in Tokyo built to service humanoids in the field. NHTSA’s Office of Vehicle...

Ben Seidl , Co-Founder and CEO of Autolane joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss building Plaid for the autonomy economy , an independent, OEM-agnostic orchestration platform that connects autonomous vehicles to businesses for tip-free delivery. The inspiration for Autolane was born in August 2024 when Ben turned on FSD in his Tesla for the first time and worked backward...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk are joined by special guest Jason Calacanis , one of the first investors in Uber , to debate his bull case on Uber, who wins the robotaxi endgame and whether local governments will cap the deployment of autonomous vehicles. Jason earns the first clappy hat of the episode for saying what few in the market will, Tesla is obsessed with...

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss NHTSA opening an audit query into Tesla 's Cybercab self-certification hours after commercial launch, Waymo launching in Nashville on both the Waymo and Lyft apps with Flexdrive managing fleet operations, and XPENG commissioning a dedicated humanoid production facility in Guangzhou, China. On September 3rd, NHTSA...

George Kalligeros , Co-Founder and CEO of Aseon Labs joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss building, deploying and scaling autonomous robotaxi infrastructure. After visiting depots across the country, George noticed that the current large-scale depot model needs an update as he estimates that roughly 40% of the cost of a robotaxi depot visit is tied to relocating the veh...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Tesla’s Cybercab commercial launch in Austin, Uber’s continued regulatory capture campaign and Waymo’s first ever debt raise. Tesla officially opened Cybercab to the public in Austin on September 3rd, with paid rides across the full operational design domain (ODD) in a vehicle with no steering wheel and no pedals. Grayson and...

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss Waymo launching commercial robotaxi service in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa on the same day, UBTECH's humanoid revenue surging 1,445% on industrial demand, and Sandvik unveiling SAMI, a cabin-less autonomous surface drill that removes humans from the blast zone. On September 1st, Waymo opened service to the publi...

Frank Reig , CEO of Voltera joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how Voltera is powering the growth of robotaxis and what goes into building a robotaxi depot. As the robotaxi market grows, infrastructure developers are racing to meet the demand for large-scale fleet depots. Following the strategic merger between Voltera and Revel, the newly combined Voltera has doubled...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Grayson’s field work across the Bay Area, Tesla’s September 3rd Cybercab launch and Nevada’s authorization of 8,000 autonomous vehicles in Clark County. Fresh off a week of field work in California, Grayson shares firsthand impressions from his first rides in Waymo’s Zeekr-built Ojai, including a visit to Waymo’s Toland depot...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s California regulatory moat, Cybercab’s pending commercial launch and Uber’s series of supervised launches in Europe and Dubai. In California, Waymo is completing 1.4 million fully autonomous rides per month, a 10X growth rate over two years. Additionally, the CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) granted Waymo...

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss Tesla preparing to launch the steering wheel-free and pedal-free Cybercab in Austin, Waymo unlocking commercial driverless service across 18 California counties, and SoftBank leading a $200 million Series A in Gravis Robotics that values the company at $1 billion. As Tesla prepares for the commercial launch of Cy...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Zoox Las Vegas pricing, Waymo’s post-Uber divorce Phoenix expansion and WeRide saying the quiet part out loud, regulatory permits can create moats. Zoox launched paid rides in Las Vegas with a $12 base fare, $1.50 per mile, and 40 cents per minute, premium pricing paired with 15 to 30 minute wait times and select destinations...

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss Uber fully exiting its equity position in Serve Robotics as the delivery partnership ends, CaoCao launching robotaxi operations in Hangzhou, and Boeing offloading Wisk, SkyGrid and Insitu to Archer Aviation in a deal that trades equity for cash flow. Uber recently liquidated its entire remaining stake in Serve Ro...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Uber’s Waymo hangover, Zoox launching paid rides in Las Vegas, the Teamsters suing California over driverless trucking, and NVIDIA’s Alpamayo 2 open model. Uber is nursing a Waymo hangover. Revenue came in light on take rate, management finally owned the $10 billion autonomy spending number first reported by The Financial Tim...

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss NVIDIA open sourcing its Alpamayo 2 foundation model to capture the entire autonomy stack, WeRide expanding into Denmark through a partnership with GreenMobility, and Aurora sidestepping PACCAR with a Roush retrofit pathway to hit its 200 truck year-end target. NVIDIA released Alpamayo 2 Super, an open source 34...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss the Waymo /Uber divorce going public, Zoox receiving NHTSA approval to charge for rides, Aurora earnings, and Qualcomm's BMW win as ADAS becomes the Trojan horse into autonomy. The Waymo/Uber relationship is unraveling in public, with The Financial Times confirming Waymo will launch its own app in Austin and Atlanta in Januar...

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss the latest Tesla FSD Supervised Cannonball Run record, seniors adopting FSD as a mobility preservation tool, and Baidu beginning robotaxi testing in London on both the Uber and Lyft networks. David Moss, Spencer and Owen Sparks drove a Tesla Model 3 running FSD Supervised 14.3.6 from the Red Ball Garage in New Yo...

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Tesla 's Cybercab validation timeline, Tesla Semi FSD Supervised, Alphabet's quiet quarter on Waymo , and the Mobileye CEO stepping down after 27 years. Tesla disclosed 380,000 unsupervised miles, but those miles were logged on Model Y and do not transfer to Cybercab. The new chassis has to earn its own validation miles befor...