The Road to Autonomy

David Welch, Detroit Bureau Chief, Bloomberg joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the future of Cruise and how the robo-taxi market will shakeout. What moves will Waymo, Zoox and Motional make now that Cruise has been sidelined for the foreseeable future?The conversation begins with David discussing how GM moves forward with Cruise after an October 2, 2023 incident involving a pedestrian in San Fransisco was allegedly mired in a coverup. The supposed actions led to the grounding of the Cruise fleet, the resignation of Co-Founder & CEO Kyle Vogt and a 24% reduction in the workforce including nine key executives. They are going to start-off in one city, so they are sort of stepping back 18 months. In terms of their roll-out, you know it does raise a big question if they even really push robo-taxi, or does this at some point does this become part of General Motors developing self-driving personally owned autonomous vehicles. – David WelchOn the news of the 24% reduction in the workforce at Cruise, GM’s stock rallied 6.65% to close at $36.08 on December 14, 2023. If Cruise is indeed absorbed by GM, the questions become what division will Cruise become part of, will there be a big pivot away from robo-taxis to personally owned autonomous vehicles and how will GM retain and hire new AI talent?Or could GM shift the Cruise model to that of a licensing model? A model where GM licenses Cruise’s autonomous driving technology to other OEMs? This model could resonate with Wall Street as there would be a clear path to Cruise becoming a self-sustaining business unit of GM with high-margins. I think that could eventually be the real race or battle between Cruise and Waymo, licensing this technology to the car companies. – David WelchLicensing will be one of the core elements of autonomous driving technology in the future. Today autonomous vehicles are a luxury product, not a mass market product. With autonomous vehicles being a luxury product, there is an opportunity to build a commerce layer into the rider experience. Could Alphabet look to possibly integrate YouTube into the Waymo as a monitizable experience?With Cruise currently sidelined, could Waymo look to take advantage of the market conditions and accelerate the roll-out of the Waymo One program? Potentially, but Waymo appears to be sticking to their well managed roll-out that includes ride-hailing tours and an early rider program. Then there is Zoox, an Amazon company. When do they make their move? Zoox has been very quiet as the autonomous vehicle market accelerated and then contracted over the last year. Is now the time that Zoox takes advantage of the market conditions and introduces a paid robo-taxi service that could be added at a later date? Or is Amazon working on a Prime-Mobility tier?Wrapping up the conversation, David shares his insights and thoughts on how he sees the robo-taxi market evolving over the next five years. The thing that is really going to have to change and evolve is what the business model is. – David WelchRecorded on Tuesday, December 19, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ali Javidan, Founder & CEO, Range Energy joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss electrified trailers and the impact that these trailers will have on truck fleets. The conversation begins with Ali sharing what inspired him to create an electrified trailers startup. It all starts with a question he asked himself; What if we electrified the trailer? Taking a survey of the industry, nobody was paying attention to trailers, expect for a few nerds and myself. So I decided to a start a venture trying to help bring some real technology to the trailer and really help hybridize these fleets in a meaningful way without disrupting how the fleets work. – Ali JavidanWhen fleets deploy an electrified trailer they are achieving on average 30% – 40% increase in fuel efficiency on a mixed route that includes city and highway driving. If the truck is exclusively driving in cities with heavy loads such as beverages, fleets are seeing a 40% – 50% increase in fuel efficiency.40% reduction in fuel consumption actually equals somewhere around 70% reduction in harmful emissions output. – Ali JavidanIncreasing fuel efficiency is wonderful, but do professional drivers enjoy driving the trucks equipped with electrified trailers? They very much do so, as the electrified trailers increase the overall operational efficiency of driving the truck. As these trailers scale, there could be potential safety increases as these trailers will have a higher-level of traction that could potently lead to safer driving conditions in adverse weather. As autonomous trucks scale commercial operations, there is an opportunity to attached electrified trailers and automate the slider adjustment, lift gate door or the lift gate. Automating the trailer compliments the autonomous truck, enabling a true autonomous operation. This is possible because the electrified trailer has a controls platform, a power platform and a communications platform. As much as we can be framed as disrupters in this industry, we don’t want to disrupt anything. We just want to give everybody better tools. – Ali JavidanRange Energy is going to commence commercial operations in 2024 with pilot customers, followed by a larger pilot deployment in 2025 leading up to the full commercial launch in 2027/2028. Wrapping up the conversation, Ali shares his thoughts on how he sees the electrified trailer market evolving. Recorded on Friday, December 8, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jana Breitkopf, Managing Director, Mercedes pay USA joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how Mercedes pay is enabling the future of in-car experiences. The conversation begins with Jana discussing how Mercedes is approaching in-car payments. We want to make it as easy and as convenient as possible for our drivers to use services like parking, charging or fueling. – Jana BreitkopfMercedes began creating Mercedes pay over five years ago to meet the expectations of their drivers. As technology advances, in the future drivers and passengers will be able to say “Hey, Mercedes” order golf balls from Amazon. When this moment happens, the era of in-car commerce will be ushered in.This moment will overlap with the commercialization of personally owned autonomous vehicles as Mercedes pay will enable in-car experiences as it will be the payment layer that makes those experiences possible. Autonomous driving will leverage in-car commerce as a revenue channel. – Jana BreitkopfWhen autonomous vehicles are combined with a payment platform, a global commerce platform will be created. The future of in-car experiences will be built around apps and services that will create value for passengers. Unlocking this value creates new profitable revenue opportunities for Mercedes. Mercedes pay is available today in 44 markets around the world. In Germany, Mercedes pay has a partnership with Mastercard where customers can pay for fueling directly from their vehicle. This partnership eliminates the paying for gas friction in Germany, as there is no pay at the pump service. Instead motorists have to go into the store and pay, which can be inconvenient and frustrating at times. Over the coming years, new markets for Mercedes pay will be coming online. As new markets come online, Mercedes pay will adapt to the local markets customs, data compliance/security and regulatory requirements. Ensuring that the system just simply works with the tap of a button or a simple “Hey, Mercedes”. Wrapping up the conversation, Jana shares her vision for the future of Mercedes pay.Recorded on Friday, December 8, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Olivia Hu, Head of Autonomous Trucking, Uber Freight joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how autonomous trucking is going to complement and accelerate the growth of Uber Freight’s $18 billion of freight under management platform. The conversation begins with Olivia discussing the current state of the autonomous trucking industry. The autonomous trucking industry right now is just at this very exciting moment, when its going from purely a technology and R&D pilot or project to let’s look at go to market. What is the long-term strategy? How do we bring different ecosystem players from OEMs, Tier 1s, autonomous trucking developers, maintenance providers, fleets, shippers, networks like ourselves all together to start planing that long-term commercialization strategy? – Olivia HuCollectivity the autonomous trucking industry is preparing for the next phase — commercialization. When commercialization begins in earnest, Uber Freight stands to benefit as they will be the platform that connects the autonomous trucking companies with the freight. The first autonomous trucking lanes to come online will be in the Texas Triangle, from Dallas/Fort Worth to Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth to El Paso. These lanes will be used to learn how autonomous trucks operate in a commercial environment and what the operations will look like when at scale. When autonomous trucks are operating at scale, the industry will have to build and maintain public trust. One of the best ways in our opinion to build public trust is to host an “Autonomous Trucking Grocery Store Day” where everything in the store is 20% off for one-day because it was delivered by an autonomous truck. Autonomous Trucking Grocery Store Daydemonstrates to the public the positive economic that autonomous trucks will have on the cost of living as they suffer under high inflation. As it relates to professional drivers, fleets and shippers, Uber Freight is also working to build trust and educate them about how autonomous trucks could fit into and compliment their existing operations. For me, what’s most important about building trust is being very transparent, honest and giving them the time to ask questions. – Olivia HuWhen Uber Freight brings autonomous trucking partners onto the platform they engage in a KYC process (Know Your Customer) that evaluates the company’s safety framework including the safety culture, technical capabilities, leadership team and the go-to-market strategy. We think having the right go-to-market strategy will be really critical and that includes working with other ecosystem players like OEMs, like ourselves, network providers, shippers and fleets. – Olivia HuUber Freight’s KYC policy was developed and implemented to limit the potential risks that might arise if and when regulation takes hold in the industry. Today, Uber Freight has partnerships with Aurora and Waabi and previously had a partnership with Waymo Via prior to the division being shutdown. In the future, Uber Freight will look to add more partners to the platform, but they will not partner with every autonomous trucking company.We only partner if it makes sense. If we truly believe that they have a safe reliable product with a long-term strategy that is the right commercial application for our customers. – Olivia HuThe right long-term strategy is one that is grounded in economics that enables pricing power. Uber Freight’s Insights AI tool gives their customers to optimize their operations, pricing structure and what lanes make the most sense to deploy autonomous trucks.Wrapping up the conversation, Olivia discusses the role the Uber Freight will play as autonomous trucking scales. Recorded on Thursday, November 30, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lee White, Founder & President, LM White Consulting joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss why autonomous trucking is a big business opportunity and what the economics of that business will look like when autonomous trucks are operating commercially. The conversation begins with Lee discussing the current state of the autonomous trucking industry. We are on track, we are on plan, we are moving forward. – Lee WhiteThe autonomous trucking industry is healthy and the health of the industry is being validated with the continued investments from institutional investors such as T. Rowe Price and Softbank. While economically healthy, the industry is currently under strain from the perceived notion that autonomous trucks and autonomous vehicles are one in the same.The consistently for the AV trucking operations is a very positive advantage over robo-taxis, and I think the trucking group has to begin to separate itself from this clumping everything together. – Lee WhiteTo truly demonstrate the benefits of autonomous trucking, the industry has to take a hold of the narrative and demonstrate to the public, policymakers, investors and the traditional trucking industry the true benefits of autonomy. Autonomous trucks will lead to lower cost goods (helping to reduce inflation), more productivity, and more robust and secure supply chain. Daimler Truck is taking the lead on messaging to investors and Wall Street. During their Capital Market Day 2023, Daimler Truck announced that autonomous trucking would be one of the key pillars of their business. By 2027, autonomous trucking will begin to unlock a new high-margin business. By 2030, Daimler Truck is projecting revenue north of €3 billion with EBIT potential north of €1 billion.To unlock this business Daimler Truck is investing responsibly and managing their capital expenditures. For the first nine months of 2023, Daimler Truck has invested €155 million in “other business activities and corporate items which comprised primarily of operational expenses related to their autonomous driving business”. Up from €139 million for the nine months of 2022, an increase of €16 million year-over-year. This is a responsible investing strategy that is both prudent and sustainable for Daimler Truck long-term. It’s one that more companies developing autonomous trucks should follow. The model for developing and commercializing autonomous trucks varies widely. Volvo is taking a slightly different path to autonomous trucking through their transport-as-a-service model where they will own and operate the autonomous trucks.[Volvo] wants to sell you you transportation as service and that becomes how they sell trucks now. It’s like the airline industry, you don’t buy an airplane engine anymore from GE or Rolls-Royce, you buy time, you get run hours. If that’s the new model, that will be very successful. – Lee WhiteAs we head into the holiday season with a slowing economy and consumers deprioritizing spending on physical goods and prioritizing spending on experiences, the freight industry will have to adapt to the changing consumer spending patterns. The slowdown in the freight market has been ongoing for sometime and YELLOW, a 100 year-old LTL carrier was a casualty of market conditions and union negotiations, as the company filed for voluntary Chapter 11 petitions on August 6th, 2023.97% of all trucking companies have 20 or less trucks. There is going to be a lot of them that are right on the edge. – Lee WhiteWrapping up the conversation, Lee and Grayson discuss the impact that California’s zero-emissions trucks regulation will have on the trucking market. Recorded on Thursday, November 9, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sam Abidi, Chief Commercial Officer, Monarch Tractor joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss Monarch’s autonomous MK-V tractor and how the growing labor shortages are accelerating the adoption of autonomous tractors on farms around the world. The conversation begins with Sam discussing how Monarch Tractor is approaching autonomy. From day one we were thinking about how you could build an autonomy kit that could go on a tractor, that can essentially reach a price point that most farmers can use, and where we landed is that you need to do a bottom up build of the tractor — that tractor is called the MK-V. – Sam AbidiWith the global economy shifting to a labor light economy, due to a growing labor shortage, autonomy applications on farms is rapidly accelerating. If you actually go talk to some of our farmers, many of them are coming to us because it is an alternative to having no one do that job. – Sam AbidiMonarch takes a farmer frugal approach to autonomy as they know every dollar counts on a farm. The farmer frugal approach enables Monarch to charge farmers $800 a month to unlock the autonomous capabilities of the $90,000 MK-V tractor, which is less the equivalent labor cost. In the future as the model evolves, Monarch is exploring the possibility of introducing a tractor-as-a-service model for select regions around the world. If this model comes to fruition, Monarch will not hold the asset (tractor) on their balance sheet. Instead they will look to a partner to hold the assets (tractor) as it is not an effective use of their capital to hold tractors on their balance sheet.Today, Monarch has a financial services agreement with CNH Industrial Capital America to provide financing for the MK-V tractor. The Monarch MK-V is an all-electric tractor with a swappable battery that can run 14-hours. Financing is an important part of farm economics. – Sam AbidiWhen a Monarch tractor is deployed on a farm, farmers control all the applications of the autonomous tractor with their proprietary WingspanAI digital platform. If you automate a tractor and you have a dozen tractors or two dozen tractors running the farm and then you connect those to a digital platform, that essentially tracks everything from when they are dispatched to what they are doing to how well they are doing it, you have essentially digitized the farm. – Sam AbidiThe data that Monarch’s autonomous tractors are gathering will enable the company to create new revenue streams in the future by monetizing the rich amount of data that the tractors gather on a daily basis. To scale, Monarch has a partnership with Foxconn to manufacturer the MK-V at their Ohio facility. The decision to engage Foxconn for manufacturing was made from the lessons that the founders learned from their years in the automotive industry. Wrapping up the conversation, Sam shares his vision for the future of Monarch Tractor.Recorded on Tuesday, November 7, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sterling Anderson, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, Aurora joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the founding of Aurora, the economics of the Aurora business model why the world’s best product is a very profitable product. The conversation begins with Sterling discussing why Chris Urmson, Drew Bagnel and himself came together to form Aurora in 2016. We saw a lot of players in the ecosystem at the time struggling to figure out the right path. A credible independent player in our view could change the game for them and unlock the potential of a powerful ecosystem from OEMs to carriers to private fleets to even Tier 1’s and companies who provide some of the backend service. We felt like a credible autonomy player who played our position and enabled or unlocked the rest of the industry could deliver tremendous value here, and we did not see much of that at the time. – Sterling Anderson Being an independent company is one of the keys to Aurora’s success as it has allowed them to build an industry wide solution that unlocks potential for both cars and trucks. The original product roadmap for the company which is still intact today was to look at trucking, ride-hailing and local goods delivery.Trucking was top of the list in terms of the first product that we wanted to go to market with. – Sterling Anderson In 2018, Aurora began laying the foundation for their autonomous trucking product when they integrated their autonomous driving stack into a Volvo truck and began testing on a track in partnership with Volvo. Trucking is the first product, ride-hailing will follow. – Sterling Anderson The Aurora business model for trucking today is transportation-as-a-service, as the business and technology matures, the model will evolve into a driver-as-a-service model. This is a model where we are licensing the self-driving system, inclusive of the hardware, the software and the data services required to operate it to our customers who are in turn purchasing either the truck from the OEM who provides it or purchasing a set of solutions. – Sterling Anderson Customers who sign up for the driver-as-a-service model will pay a utilization service fee (per mile fee). To keep the trucks up and running at optimal performance, Aurora trucks are designed for reliability and serviceability. This design approach allows Aurora to optimize the economics of their operations. In my view the world’s best product is also a very profitable product. – Sterling Anderson As Aurora prepares for driver-out commercial operations in late 2024 with 20 trucks on the Dallas to Houston lanes, the autonomous trucks will be operated under the transportation-as-a-service model. In 2025/2026, the customers operating under the transportation-as-a-service model will begin to transition to a driver-as-a-service model where they will own and operate the assets. Wrapping up the conversation, Sterling shares his vision for the future of Aurora. Recorded on Friday, October 27, 2023Chapters:0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index0:56 Introduction1:18 Why Chris Urmson, Drew Bagnel and Sterling Anderson founded Aurora3:38 The Vision for Aurora8:07 Going Public with Volvo and PACCAR10:57 Local Goods Delivery and the Middle Mile12:34 Aurora Trucking Business Model24:52 Preparing for Commercial Driver-Out Operations27:48 A Focus on Profitability34:45 Terminal Operations40:43 Autonomous Trucking Grocery Store Day46:00 Aviation History--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dean Foreman, Chief Economist, Texas Oil & Gas Association joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the growing global demand for oil and its economic impact on the global economy. The conversation begins with Dean discussing the current state of the oil markets. It’s a tight market and despite everything that has been going on we really have tightness to watch in terms of supply and demand and where that supply is going to come to meet that demand. – Dean ForemanThe growing demand for oil in the United States is coming from jet fuel, 1.8 million barrels per day and diesel fuel, 3.6 million barrels per day. With an additional 6 million barrels per day being refined for materials. With the growing demand for oil the United States is looking to increase volume by lifting sanctions on Venezuela. The demand for oil is not just limited to the United States, it’s a global phenomenon.China is now the single largest importer of crude oil, over 13 million barrels per day. – Dean ForemanWith China being the single largest importer of crude oil, the country embraced electric vehicles to slow their dependence on foreign oil imports. A big part of the traditional push by China to get into electrification wasn’t just to strategically control the value chain, it was to prevent, as their economy grew an unsustainable growth in their oil imports. – Dean ForemanU.S. Energy Information Administration is projecting demand of 103 million barrels per day in 2024, an increase of roughly 200,000 barrels per day year-over-year. Over the coming years, the United States will be the largest single source of growth of oil supply.We’ve seen record production this year, U.S. crude oil production for the first week of October struck 13.2 million barrels per day, that’s a record high. Our previous high was in March 2020 of 13.1 [million]. – Dean ForemanThe growing demand for oil is good for the Texas economy. Texas, as of September is producing 5.9 million barrels of crude oil per day. For the first eight months of 2023, Texas has driven 43.2% of U.S. oil production, its highest since 1981. For the first seven months of 2023, Texas has exported $125 billion of oil, natural gas and derived products globally. Wrapping up the conversation, Dean shares his outlook on the oil markets for the next quarter. Recorded on Thursday, October 19, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matt Soule, CEO and Co-Founder, Parallel Systems joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how Parallel Systems will act as an economic growth engine for the rail industry. The conversation begins with Matt discussing how Parallel Systems business has evolved since he last joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy roughly year ago. During this time, Parallel has been testing their Gen2 vehicle in the United States and has deployed a Gen1 vehicle overseas. As they gear up to deploy their Gen2 vehicle, the company is preparing up to test railworthiness at the Transportation Technology Center (TTC) in Pueblo, Colorado. We will run our vehicle through a series of tests there, to most importantly validate the models that we have already built up to predict how the vehicle will perform. – Matt SouleWhen Parallel begins to commercialize their business, they are going to compliment the traditional rail business by offering the rail industry a solution to expand their freight operations inside of the traditional 500 mile routes. With Parallel’s smaller scale we can serve freight lanes that do not require massive volumes to have that daily arrival and departure. That’s the core of our strategy. – Matt SouleA pillar of this strategy is replacing trucks on drayage routes. A large opportunity is moving freight on rail from the Ports of Los Angeles, San Pedro and Long Beach to the Inland Empire, one of the largest industrial complexes in the United States with over 4,000 warehouses. Parallel’s autonomous and electric vehicles will have a range of roughly 500 miles between charges. The vehicles will be operating in a platoon of 20 and will charge while they are being unloaded and loaded at the terminal.When we go into a terminal, we will have charging nests kind of like a robotic vacuum cleaner going to it’s charging dock alongside the rail and the vehicles will go to those locations and automatically dock with the chargers, and while they are charging the freight is unloaded and loaded. – Matt SouleThe next version of the vehicle (Gen3) will be the commercial product that drives up reliability and drives down cost. Looking towards the future when Parallel is operating a commercial business, Matt sees autonomous trucks complimenting the business. The economics get better and better and better the more productive that asset is. So I think that is where there can be a real compliment, where a self-driving truck can handle the complex first and last mile if there is a service that does not require us to go directly to that customer. – Matt SouleWith the current economic backdrop of a slowing global economy, Matt is preparing the business to take advantage of the emerging autonomy economy that will arise out of the economic situation partly due to the global labor shortage. Wrapping up the conversation, Matt shares his outlook for the future of Parallel Systems.Recorded on Tuesday, October 17, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Vinay Shet, Co-Founder & CEO Teleo joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss Teleo’s approach to supervised autonomy in a labor light economy.The conversation begins with Vinay discussing how Teleo is approaching supervised autonomy and it’s benefits.By switching between tele-operations and autonomy and switching between machine one, machine two and even machine three, [operators] are able to control multiple machines at the same time. – Vinay ShetTeleo’s approach to autonomy allows trained machine operators to increase their daily production while improving the overall operational efficiency of the job. This approach to autonomy developed to create value for construction companies that are facing a growing labor shortage. Labor is the number one problem that our customers flag to us for themselves. They are simply unable to find enough people to do the work that they have signed up to do. Across the board they have more work to do then they have people available. To the point where our customers tell us that they literary park their machines, because they are unable to find people to operate the machines. – Vinay ShetFacing a growing labor shortage, Tomahawk Construction is deploying Teleo-enabled semi-autonomous trucks to move dirt at a residential community job site in Naples, Florida. This repetitive task is now automated, enabling Tomahawk to develop the residential community with great efficiency. As the community development scales, Teleo-enabled semi-autonomous trucks at the job site will eventually scale up to twelve trucks.To scale the business, Teleo is utilizing a dealer network to sell their retrofit kits and have them installed on large machines. As the labor shortage grows and the Bank of America coined labor-light economy begins to take shape, Teleo is poised to prosper as their technology can help to fill the labor gap. Autonomy augments people. I think it’s really about making people more productive and making their lives more comfortable. – Vinay ShetWrapping up the conversation, Vinay shares his vision for the future of autonomy. Recorded on Friday, October 13, 2023Chapters:0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index0:56 Introduction1:22 Teleo's Approach to Autonomy4:06 Remote Operations7:17 Construction Industry Use Cases11:02 Labor Light Economy13:22 Teleo Business Model18:34 How Teleo's Construction and Mining Compliment Each Other20:40 Multi-Site Deployment24:48 Future of Teleo--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Gabe Sganga, Head of Commercial Growth, RRAI joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss RRAI’s focus on autonomy for military and defense applications and how they have been able to apply the learnings from battle to their civilian business.The conversation begins with Gabe discussing why RRAI is focused on autonomy for military and defense applications.RRAI has always been a defense-first company. Strategically we are focused on delivering defense capabilities to support funded programs right now. – Gabe SgangaRRAI’s autonomous vehicles have been deployed in theater around the world. When deploying autonomous vehicles in theater, the autonomous driving stack is hardened for the harsh environment of war. Through their deployments in theater, RRAI has been able to apply the learnings from battle to their civilian business. Operating in these conditions is not unique to defense, it’s unique to end-users who tackle the hardest jobs that keep the industrial heart of our country and economy running. – Gabe SgangaDefense is a large part of RRAI’s business, but it is not the sole focus of the business. In addition to their defense business, RRAI has a growing commercial business with a keen focus on off-road autonomy applications. The company chose to focus on this commercial market as they viewed it as being underserved. The business model that RRAI operates under is autonomy-as-a-service. For autonomy-as-a-service, we wrap everything into a single license price.– Gabe SgangaThis model allows RRAI to update their fleet when new hardware and technology comes online and deploy it to their customers applications without having to charge them an upgrade fee. The model will only be enhanced when RRAI is able to secure a OEM deal for factory grade trucks built with their hardware and software fully integrated. For on-road applications, RRAI is focused on controlled environments such as distribution center yards, ports and logistics centers because of the regulatory environment. Wrapping up the conversation, Gabe discuses RRAI’s $220 million Series A round led by Softbank in January 2023.Recorded on Friday, October 6, 2023Chapters:0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index0:56 Introduction1:23 Why Autonomy for Defense6:10 Learnings from Autonomy Deployments in Defense Applications13:54 Economics of RRAI's Defense Business21:04 RRAI's Military Background25:00 RRAI's Autonomous as a Service Business Model30:27 RRAI's OEM Approach37:28 RRAI On-Road Autonomy39:00 Yard Trucks43:58 RRAI Investors45:30 Future of RRAI--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Paul McGlone, CEO, Seeing Machines joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss scaling Seeing Machines in-cabin sensing technology. The conversation begins with Paul discussing how Seeing Machines in-cabin sensing technology adapts to meet consumer and regulatory demand.The primary driver of demand is regulatory. – Paul McGloneToday, the in-cabin sensing technology senses the human condition which can be composed of body jesters, head position, eyelid movement and direct gaze (pupil tracking) and soon lip movement. By monitoring the cabin, Seeing Machines can detect distraction, fatigue, passenger occupancy and if someone is holding a phone while driving. As the technology evolves there is the potential to add health monitoring systems into the vehicle that can potentially detect when a driver or passenger is experiencing a heart attack or medical condition. Setting the stage for autonomous vehicles to scale and handle adverse in-vehicle situations. The core target market for our technology is Levels 2 – 4, but certainly as the companies that are managing fully autonomous, say 3rd party vehicle fleets will need someway to detect the well-being of the occupants, particularly if they are paying for the service. – Paul McGloneIn Fiscal Year 2023, Seeing Machines generated $13.6 million in annual recurring revenue, up 27% over Fiscal Year 2022. This revenue was generated from the company’s commercial fleet business (after-market) where the Seeing Machines devices are installed into vehicles. One of the big drivers of the revenue growth was fleet managers looking to reduce driver fatigue and distraction because of rising insurance costs.Fatigue and distraction are the two primary drivers of insurance claims costs in commercial vehicle fleets worldwide. – Paul McGloneFor their automotive business, Seeing Machines has 15 programs with 10 OEMs and over 1 million cars globally have a Seeing Machines system installed. Their automotive business model is a royalty based model where the company is paid a royalty for every car that is manufactured for the life of the model that features their technology. The model has generated $320 million in royalties to date.As we consider our business going forward, we are not only going to see significant growth rates, but we are going to see a mix change in revenue from sort of engineering services, low-margin to primarily royalties which are very very high-margin. – Paul McGloneOutside of automotive, Seeing Machines is expanding into aviation through a partnership with Collins Aerospace. One the areas of focus is a monitoring system for air traffic control to monitor distraction and fatigue.We think that almost every industrial opportunity that has a human-machine interface is an opportunity for accurate eye-tracking to improve either a safety or performance outcome. – Paul McGloneWrapping up the conversation, Paul shares his opinion on the future of in-cabin monitoring. Recorded on Tuesday, October 3, 2023Chapters:0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index0:56 Introduction1:17 The Evolution of Seeing Machines Technology6:01 In-Cabin Sensing System13:16 Seeing Machines Commercial Vehicle Revenue Growth17:57 Seeing Machines Royalty Revenue19:34 Magna Partnership27:37 Collins Aerospace Partnership35:48 Growing Royalty Revenue41:00 Privacy--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

David Welch, Detroit Bureau Chief, Bloomberg joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the UAW strike and the launch of Stack AV. The conversation begins with David sharing the latest on the UAW (United Auto Workers) strikes against the Big 3 (Ford, GM and Stellantis). UAW President Shawn Fain has taken a different approach to the negotiations from his predecessors as a way to build trust and loyalty with his members. Shawn Fain has to show that he is not another management crony, he is a real union guy. Hence no handshake. – David WelchAnother reason why Sean Fain is taking such an aggressive approach towards the negotiations is that he has to build trust with his membership and show union leadership. The tactics that Sean Fain is implementing is right out of the Bernie Sanders playbook. Several members of Senator Sanders presidential campaigns are now advising the UAW on media strategy. [Sean Fain] wants to reignite a labor movement in America. – David WelchOne of the main sticking points in the strike is jobs and worker pay. The longer the strike drags on, the more it benefits Tesla. It has even been reported that no matter what happens, Tesla comes out the winner from the strikes as the Big 3 will be forced to raise prices of their electric vehicles. Tesla forced GM, Ford and Stellantis forced to build electric vehicles after they validated the market and gained signifiant marketshare. Tesla clearly showed that there was a market for electric vehicles. Could Tesla do the same thing with autonomy in the future? If and when Tesla licenses their FSD (Full Self-Driving) technology, will Cruise and Waymo be compelled to license their self-driving technology to appease investors? Waymo, definitely because they are not a car company. – David WelchFor GM, will they make the same mistake they did with OnStar years ago and not license it? Only time will tell. If GM eventually spins out Cruise, the path for licensing the Cruise self-driving technology becomes a lot more visible. On the autonomous trucking side of autonomy, Kodiak is planning to license the Kodiak Driver to fleets. Investors are watching the sector as the technology evolves and the business models are formalized. Softbank recently invested in Stack AV founded by Bryan Salesky, Peter Rander, and Brett Browning (Argo AI founders). Stack AV is going to focus on long-haul autonomous trucks, but are they entering the market too late? I do not think it’s too late, but they have to move if they want to catch up. – David WelchCould Softbank look to potentially export Stack AV to Japan to capture marketshare in an emerging market that is not yet saturated with competition? Wrapping up the conversation, David shares his thoughts on what to watch in autonomy for the end of the year.Chapters:0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index0:56 Introduction1:13 UAW Strikes16:21 Tesla Beneficial Winner of the UAW Strikes?21:20 Licensing Tesla FSD and Autonomous Driving Systems30:00 Softbank and Stack AV41:40 Autonomy Outlook for the End of the YearRecorded on Thursday, September 21, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Katelyn Foley, President, UP.Labs joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss why companies should think differently and think like a software company.The conversation begins with Katelyn sharing her thoughts on the current state of the mobility markets. To me it’s a story about product pivots. There has been incredible movement to EVs and ultimately to autonomous vehicles. – Katelyn FoleyFor traditional OEMs to capture marketshare, they need a relentless focus on developing user-friendly digital interfaces that consumers will want to use on a daily basis. As daunting as this might sound, UP.Labs is ushering in this model with partner, Porsche. Part of what we are doing is to help them think differently. To think like a software company. – Katelyn FoleyPorsche and UP.Labs came together to create six new companies by 2025 that could eventually be acquired by Porsche. Collectively they are looking at opportunities that can enhance the Porsche owner experience through data, efficiency and a robust digital interface. As UP.Labs and Porsche explore opportunities for new businesses, they are respecting the heritage of the brand and embracing it’s status as a luxury brand. This strategy allows Porsche to lean in, embrace innovation and think differently about their business. Being a luxury brand comes with responsibilities. With the shift to electric vehicles, consumers are beginning to ask questions about the provenance of the materials in the battery and the leather on the seats. Consumers want to know that these materials were cultivated in a way that did not have an impact on the environment. Overall, luxury brands should approach electrification by taking the bespoke route and creating a new vehicle that is built from the ground up to be electric. Porsche embraced their heritage of speed and handling by creating the Taycan, which has dazzled consumers. Every brand has to think about what they stand for. What are those few core principles, and the EV really needs to embody those and not just be an EV. – Katelyn FoleyWrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Katelyn discuss network optimization. Recorded on Tuesday, September 19, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Gil West, Chief Operating Officer, Cruise joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how Cruise is scaling operations across the world. The conversation begins with Gil discussing GM’s revenue target for Cruise of $1 billion in revenue by 2025.We are on target. – Gil WestCruise is on target to hit their revenue goal because they are scaling. Currently Cruise has operations in 15 cities in 10 states. As Cruise scales, they are creating a flywheel effect that continuously improves their operations. We are creating a flywheel effect as we go to market and scale. – Gil WestThe Cruise experience from city to city is consistent from a rider perspective. Behind this consistency is an operational playbook that is deployed in each new city that Cruise expands service. One of the key elements of this playbook is partnerships. When Cruise enters a new city, the company is focused on leveraging underutilized assets to ensure the most cost efficient operations. In San Francisco, Cruise is installing chargers at Oracle Park (Home of the San Francisco Giants) that the company will use when a baseball game is not taking place. When a game is taking place, fans will be able to use the chargers. When it comes to potential expansion cities, Cruise looks at the ODD (operation design domain) that fits the technologies capabilities, commercial opportunity in the market, market density, the availability of infrastructure and the regulatory environment. Our goal is to bring driverless tech to as many people as possible in many places as we can. – Gil WestAs we have seen in San Francisco and Phoenix, overtime Cruise will expand their service area in new cities to eventually cover the entire city. As Cruise expands the amount of ride supply in a city, they are conscious about passenger pick-up wait times. Our goal here of course is to provide a consistently better experience and more accessibility at an affordable price point, and have people be able access the vehicles in a very timely manner. – Gil WestThe experience that Cruise provides in the future is only going to be enhanced when the service becomes integrated into stadiums, concert venues and airports. No more waiting in line trying to catch an Uber or finding your driver. With autonomy and integrations, these headaches will become a thing of the past. As part of their vision for autonomy, Cruise designed and built the Cruise Origin in partnership with GM. The Origin is currently testing on public roads in San Francisco and Austin as the company prepares to deploy the vehicle for commercial operations pending NHTSA approval. We will be introducing the Origin commercially soon and then in multiple cities. – Gil WestWrapping up the conversation, Gil shares his opinion on the future of Cruise which includes new vehicle form factors.Chapters:0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index0:55 Introduction1:17 Cruise $1 Billion 2025 Revenue Target Reaffirmed2:45 Scaling Cruise and Maintaining the Experience9:13 Expansion into New Cities22:41 Pick-up Times24:37 Future Cruise Experiences29:54 Cruise Origin35:53 Operating a Profitable Business39:22 Future of CruiseRecorded on Tuesday, September 12, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alan Ohnsman, Senior Editor, Forbes joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss Gatik and the road to profitable autonomy. The conversation begins with Alan and Grayson discussing AB 316 — the future of autonomous trucking in California. The State wants to support the tech and get it out there, and sees the benefits of that. But at the same time you have active opposition from a very powerful labor group that represents a lot of truckers in the State of California. – Alan OhnsmanThe conversation expands from policy to the future of AI and Gatik, a middle-mile autonomous trucking start-up that is on the road to profitable autonomy. Gatik is a company that did not raise billions of dollars, and Gatik did not come out of the gate saying were going to use autonomy for everything. We are going to do robotaxi, we are going to do trucking, we are going to do food deliveries, you name it, we are going to do it. They focused on one thing — middle-mile delivery from a distribution center to a large retail store, that’s it. Nothing else. – Alan OhnsmanCompared to their peers that have raised billions in capital, Gatik has raised a mere modest $120 million. To achieve their goals, the company does not need billions as they are highly disciplined when it comes to operating the business. For every contract that Gatik signs with a customer, each vehicle that goes into service is contractually guaranteed revenue of $200,000 per year. For every 100 vehicles the company puts into service, the company will generate $20 million in yearly revenue. At this time, Gatik currently has 50 vehicles in service, generating $10 million in yearly revenue. Gatik is forecasting that the company could potentially be profitable within as little as two to three years (2025-2026). As the company ramps up towards profitability, they are going to gradually start expanding to highway driving in addition to city streets. Their goal is to overtime, they will move into highway trucking. They will move into Class-8 trucking, they will move into other types of delivery services that they are not doing now, and it’s going to be this gradual evolution of the business. All of it is premised on the fact that it has to a revenue generator. – Alan OhnsmanLooking to the future, Gatik will not explore a potential IPO until the company is profitable on a GAAP basis. Rounding out the conversation, Grayson and Alan discuss the autonomous trucking industry as a whole and the Waymo Via shutdown. Wrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Alan discuss licensing and the future of Zoox.Chapters:0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index0:56 The Road to Autonomy Introduction1:23 AB 316 and Autonomous Trucks in California6:01 AI and the Push Back from Unions10:39 Gatik and The Road to Profitable Autonomy42:58 Licensing the Waymo Driver45:16 Future of Zoox?50:10 Future of AutonomyRecorded on Monday, August 28, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nils Jaeger, President, Volvo Autonomous Solutions, Volvo Group joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss Volvo Autonomous Solutions commercialization strategy. The conversation begins with Nils discussing how the Volvo Group is approaching autonomy. It’s about leveraging autonomous tech for productivity gains, for efficiency gains. – Nils JaegerVolvo Autonomous Solutions is operating in the quarry and mining, ports and logistics and hub-to-hub sectors. These sectors were chosen as they compliment each other and are viewed as long-term growth markets. As a stand-alone business area inside of Volvo Group, Volvo Autonomous Solutions has full development responsibility and are responsible for the commercialization of Volvo Group’s autonomous solutions. Being structured this way, means Volvo Autonomous Solutions has full P&L responsibility. With P&L responsibility, Nils and the team at Volvo Autonomous Solutions are focused on building a business.For us it’s not just the technology, it’s building a business. Building a business is really the core reason why Volvo Autonomous Solutions was created. Having a clear focus on commercialization and having an attractive business model. – Nils JaegerThe commercial business model for Volvo Autonomous Solutions is not a one-size fits all model. It’s a model that is tailored to each one of the sectors where they operate. In the Dallas Fort-Worth region, Volvo Autonomous Solutions will be operating a hub-to-hub autonomous transport solution as a service. Commercializing the hub-to-hub autonomous transport business will require partnerships. As part of the initial roll-out, Volvo Autonomous Solutions has partnered with DHL and Uber Freight. To prepare for autonomous operations, Volvo has begun hauling freight manually in the Texas Triangle. We have actually started this year to pull loads manually for both DHL and Uber Freight. We are putting in place all of the procedures, the processes which are needed to develop this new transportation value chain and to do this of-course in a safe and reliable form. – Nils JaegerFrom a truck asset perspective, Volvo Group is going to own the autonomous trucks on their balance sheet as the service begins commercialization. In these early days there will not be a minimum amount of volume needed to tap into the service, however the volume will have to make economic sense. Wrapping up the conversation, Nils discusses the driver-out fully autonomous operations at the Brönnöy Kalk mine in Velfjord, Norway.Chapters:0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index0:56 The Road to Autonomy Introduction1:23 Volvo Group's Approach to Autonomy7:14 Volvo Autonomous Solutions Commercial Business Model17:33 Volvo Autonomous Solutions Terminal (Hub) Strategy21:16 Autonomous Truck Assets & Virtual Driver Strategy24:22 Economics of Volvo Autonomous Solutions Transport as a Service Model27:57 Volvo Autonomous Solutions Quarry & Mining Business35:20 The Future of AutonomyRecorded on Thursday, August 22, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Vic Shao, President, bp pulse fleet joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss fleet charging as a service. The conversation begins with Vic discussing bp pulse’s electric vehicle fleet charging strategy, the importance of up-time and reliability. To ensure the up-time for partners such as Hertz, bp has developed a software layer that monitors the health of the charging infrastructure to ensure optimal up-time.Software is the enablement tool that makes it efficient and reliable. – Vic Shao The charging stations that bp is installing for Hertz will be open to the public and located at high traffic locations such as city centers and airports. At airport locations, rideshare drivers will be able to access the chargers and charge their vehicles while they wait for passenger pick-ups. By early 2024, 25 locations in several states will be online. As a traditional oil and gas business, bp pulse is complimenting the core business by expanding into new fuel types.bp looks at electrification as just another fuel type. It’s a really attractive fuel type for any number of reasons, but it’s another fuel type. In the future bp is also going to go into hydrogen. – Vic Shao As fleet managers begin the process of transitioning their fleets from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles, economics are driving the decision process. The cost to transition large fleets to electric vehicles is expensive as it requires all-new vehicles along with a complex network of charging equipment. bp has a solution that will enable fleets to convert to electric without the upfront charging infrastructure capital expenditure — charging as a service. One of the big upsides to charging as a service is scalability and upgradability. As NACS (North American Charging Standard) becomes the de facto charging plug standard as the CCS plug is slowly faded out, the charging infrastructure will be upgraded to support the new plug.A large opportunity for charging as a service are ports that have drayage operations that operate on fixed daily routes. A lot of these drayage operations are operated by smaller carriers who might not necessarily have the financial wherewithal to invest in fleet charging. With charging as a service, these fleets will have the ability to transition to electric trucks without the capital expenditure.By 2030, bp is on track to have over 100,000 electric vehicle charging stations online. Wrapping up the conversation, Vic shares his opinion on the future of electric vehicle fleet charging.Chapters:0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index0:57 Introduction1:23 bp pulse feet Electric Vehicle Fleet Charging Strategy6:07 Reliable Electric Vehicle Charging10:09 Scaling Reliable EV Charging Infrastructure17:57 Fleet Managers Approach to Electric Vehicles20:57 Charging as a Service35:11 The Road to 100,000 Charge Points37:12 Future of Electric Vehicle Charging for FleetsRecorded on Thursday, August 24, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Peter Ludwig, Co-Founder & CTO, Applied Intuition and Yaser Khalighi, Product, Applied Intuition joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the acquisition of SceneBox and why everything that moves will be autonomous in the future. The conversation begins with Yaser discussing why he made the decision to sell SceneBox to Applied Intuition in March 2023.The vision of building SceneBox, my vision was enabling customers in their autonomy journey. The reason that we exited to Applied was exactly to double down on that vision. – Yaser KhalighApplied is in the process of integrating SceneBox into their product offering, while retaining the user-friendliness of the SceneBox platform. The ultimate goal is that it’s a completely seamless experience in what we call the ADP (Applied Development Platform). – Peter LudwigThe integrated SceneBox / Applied product offering will help autonomous vehicles and autonomous trucks scale safely and quickly. To further enhance the Applied product, Applied acquired Embark Trucks for $71 million in August 2023. Prior to the acquisition, Embark was a long-time Applied customer. With the acquisition we are discontinuing the autonomy trucking program, we are not entering Level 4 trucking. But we are going to be able to repurpose the tools they had built around the Applied development platform, and in fact bring some of those into our platform were it makes sense. – Peter LudwigThe data that Applied acquired from Embark will help their customers accelerate the development of their autonomous driving stack for Class-8 trucks. When it comes to training a virtual driver, unique data sets are needed to train the driver. Data gathered for Class-8 trucks can not necessarily be translated over to a developing a virtual driver for robotaxi operations.Taking a step out of the virtual world, Applied is has a partnership with NI (National Instruments) for hardware-in-the-loop validation. This partnership will allow their customers to scale quickly and safely and puts Applied ahead if and when certifications for autonomous driving systems become required by regulatory bodies. Wrapping up the conversation, Peter and Yaser share their opinions on the future of autonomy.Chapters:0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index0:56 Introduction1:38 Applied Intuition acquires SceneBox17:27 Peter Ludwig — Why Applied Intuition acquired Embark Trucks21:16 ML (Machine Learning) Models for Autonomous Driving34:02 Applied’s Synthetic Datasets (How they are Developed)43:00 What is the Future of Autonomy?Recorded on Tuesday, August 15, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Brett Suma, CEO, Loadsmith joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the development of the Loadsmith Freight Network and how the network will create economic stimulus in local communities. The conversation begins with Brett discussing the development of the Loadsmith Freight Network. You can look at the LFN and compare it somewhat to a railroad and their ability to capture capacity. – Brett SumaThe Loadsmith Freight Network will consist of both professional drivers and autonomous trucks. Autonomous trucks on the LFN will mostly operate on the 350 to 900 mile runs, while the professional drivers will focus on the shorter first and last mile routes. For the Loadsmith Freight Network to operate at peak performance, the company developed a digital software layer that enables “Precision Trucking”. The cost savings derived from Precision Trucking will be reinvested in first and last mile operations in terms of higher pay for professional drivers and amenities. With higher pay for first and last mile drivers, local communities will begin to experience a form of economic stimulus through higher spending. Spending will help drive economic growth in those communities and help to off-set increased the cost of goods and services due to inflation.The lanes where autonomous trucks are first introduced will be based on freight flow, regulatory environment, technical feasibility and the economics of the lane. Everything we know about current pricing is going to change when autonomous starts hitting the street. – Brett SumaNot all lanes are created equal from an economic standpoint. The Dallas to Houston lane is oversaturated and it will be a race to the bottom in terms of pricing when autonomous trucks are rolling on that lane 24/7. That is not where Loadsmith is going as they focused on unit economics. Through their development partnership with Kodiak, Loadsmith is collectively studying the unit economics of lanes. It’s this economic discipline that is going to enable their partnership to scale. The respect that Brett and the Loadsmith team has for professional drivers comes from the simple fact that they are listening. We’re doing this, because we are listening to workers. – Brett SumaProfessional drivers are telling them that they want to be home every night and have consistency in their paycheck. Wrapping up the conversation, Brett shares his thoughts on the future of trucking.Recorded on Friday, August 4, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Chuck Price, President, AI Kinetics joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the shutdown of Waymo Via and what it means for the development of the universal driver. The conversation begins with Chuck sharing his thoughts on the current state of the autonomous trucking industry.We are going through change. What we’re seeing is the early phase of this development which was largely science doing science, now moving to doing engineering and commercialization. Some of the companies that have been involved in this thought ahead for that and are prepared and others are struggling or have struggled. What we are seeing is a consolidation and some changes in strategy that I think are normal and healthy for an industry as complex as this. – Chuck PriceThe consolidation currently occurring in the autonomous trucking industry is healthy — the market is functioning properly. On Wednesday, July 26th, Alphabet announced Waymo will be shutting down their autonomous trucking division — Waymo Via. While this may have come as a surprise to many, there were rumors in the market and public statements by Alphabet on earnings calls that laid the foundation for this announcement. Waymo did the right thing for a lot of reasons. – Chuck PriceBy shutting down Waymo Via, Waymo is now going to focus exclusively on their robotaxi business — Waymo One. As Mr. Price stated, this is indeed the right thing for Waymo to do as they are in a head-to-head competition with Cruise. Cruise is a formidable opponent with the resources to compete. Not to mention, Cruise is currently expanding at a much more rapid pace than Waymo. Cruise is in the driver’s seat, while Waymo follows behind. From a technical perspective, was this an admission by Waymo that the Universal Driver did not work as they expected? Or is this more inancial discipline coming from Waymo as the division will have a new de facto CEO on September 1st — Ruth Porat, President & Chief Investment Officer of Alphabet. In her new role Ms. Porat will be responsible for investments in Alphabet’s “Other Bets”. To further streamline the business and appease Wall Street, could Ms. Porat look to license the Waymo driver to global OEMs? Or raise additional capital outside by collateralizing Waymo’s IP? Aurora Innovation with 1,450 patents related to autonomy recently raised $820 million in new capital. I am confident that the formal IP developed by Aurora gave them a huge advantage when they went to raise money, and without that they probably would not have been able to raise. – Chuck PriceEven though Aurora recently raised $820 million in new capital, the company has a cash burn rate of $45.3 million a month. It’s expensive to operate, Aurora. With Waymo signaling that the Universal Driver did not work, Aurora continues ahead with developing their version of the Universal Driver. Would Aurora be wise to shut down their passenger car business and focus solely on autonomous trucking? This decision would allow Aurora to streamline their business and lower their cash burn rate — the economics point the way forward. But the question remains, what path will Aurora choose as the company matures and grows?I haven’t seen a Universal Virtual Driver yet, but I have seen focused drivers come to fruition. We’ve seen cars that are now self-driving without safety drivers. We’ve seen trucks that are self-driving without safety drivers. Both have been achieved. The science is done for those specific use cases. – Chuck PriceTo scale an autonomous trucking startup, the startup has to have a production relationship with a truck OEM. To achieve this relationship, the autonomous trucking startup will have to commit $50 to $100 million to the relationship.Wrapping up the conversation, Chuck shares his thoughts on how he sees the autonomous trucking industry evolving over the next five years.Recorded on Tuesday, August 1, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Todd Lewis, Vice President, Prologis Ventures, Prologis joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how Prologis is preparing for the future of logistics with autonomous trucks.The conversation begins with Todd discussing how Prologis is approaching the future of autonomy as autonomous trucks will be operating at their customers facilities. Our role across many of our customers footprints is how can we be an accelerant for adoption, for things that can be transformative to their bottom line, to their top line, to their day-to-day growth. Because we want to have customers that can thrive using our existing footprint today. – Todd LewisTo prepare their facilities for autonomous trucking, Prologis is putting plans in place today to update the infrastructure and add services such as fiber to support autonomous operations. As Prologis plans for autonomy, the company is taking a measured approach to leasing by hedging their capital risk for infrastructure development and capital investment.To limit their capital risk, Prologis develops their infrastructure to be future-proofed. Whether it’s the switch to electric vehicles and laying the conduit needed for energy to designing the yards for autonomous trucks, Prologis is developing for the future. From an underwriting perspective, the company has a robust due diligence process that looks at the long-term viability of the potential company leasing the real estate. Including if they have a corporate parent with superior credit and a healthy balance sheet who could co-sign the lease.We choose partners that have the highest likeliness of success. We try to stay true to picking partners and customers who have operations and new business practices that have, what we would consider staying power. – Todd LewisTo prepare for all the changes currently happening in the market, Prologis created a mobility division to focus on accelerating EV adoption and preparing for autonomy. Focused both on automation outside and inside the facility as by 2027, it is projected that 26% of all warehouses will have some level of automation.I believe that you have to enable automation in order for it to be properly utilized. It’s the nuances that matter. – Todd LewisOutside of the facility, the yard of the future is going to change as there will be autonomous truck launch and landing pads. The changes from an infrastructure standpoint will be minor, but from a human interaction standpoint, major. As both autonomous trucks and human driven trucks will operate at the same facility.The interaction with the human element is something that over time will have to be fleshed out a bit, in order for those systems to work properly. – Todd LewisWrapping up the conversation, shares his thoughts on the future of logistics. Recorded on Monday, July 10, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dean Foreman, Chief Economist, Texas Oil & Gas Association joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the global record demand for oil and the Texas economy.The conversation begins with Dean discussing the current state of the oil markets. In a nutshell they are deceptively tighter than relativity modest prices, of plus or minus $70 a barrel recently would indicate. – Dean ForemanEven though we are currently in a tight oil market, global oil demand is projected to increase to 102.7 million barrels per day in 2024 — a record high. If the economy stays on track and continues to hum along and not fall into a recession, the oil supply pressures could continue to mount. Historically in a rising rate environment, the demand for oil and commodities in general has decreased. This time however, we are seeing the demand for oil continuing to be strong. The increased demand for oil is primarily coming from emerging markets. We’re seeing emerging markets drive the majority of economic growth this year, projected again over the next two years and hand-in-hand with that has come the energy demand to go with it. – Dean ForemanIf the demand for oil continues as projected, The United States can bring more supply online. In the United States, Texas currently produces 5.4 million barrels per day of oil. With global demand for oil increasing, Texas’ economy has led the nation in economic growth for the last two quarters. Texas economy is growing at an average annual pace of 7.6%, more than 2.5 times the U.S. average. From January 2023 to April 2023, Texas generated $73.2 billion of state export revenues. When Texas does well, the U.S. does well. – Dean ForemanWith 43.6% of the oil in the United States being produced in Texas, the industry puts safe guards in place to protect against the potential impacts of hurricanes to ensure that oil can continue to flow. Wrapping up the conversation, Dean shares his outlook for the global oil markets and what he expects to see occur over the next quarter. Recorded on Friday, July 7, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Stefan Heck, Founder & CEO, NAUTO joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how NAUTO’s predictive-AI software is helping to reduce distracted driving. The conversation begins with Stefan discussing what he saw in the market when he founded the company in 2015 and what he learned from collision data. There is nothing as dangerous as distracted driving. – Stefan HeckAccording to NAUTO’s propriety data, on average, a commercial driver is distracted 7 times per driving hour, equating to roughly every 9 minutes. To help mitigate the distracted driving risk and reduce potential crashes, the NAUTO system monitors drivers behaviors and offers audio cues to gain the drivers attention. With-in the first week of using NAUTO, about 80% of all the distractions and nearly 100% of the severe long distractions are eliminated. – Stefan HeckThe system acts as a virtual coach that keeps drivers engaged while driving, giving them feedback in real-time on their driving behavior. The feedback comes in the form of a virtual coach that inspires change. When a driver realizes that their behavior as dangerous, they are more likely to change that behavior. In the data NAUTO has seen 80% to 90% of the drivers drop their risk behavior based on feedback from the virtual coach.This virtual coach, predictive-AI system is able to identify potential dangerous scenarios because it has been trained on 3 billion miles with over 200,000 high-risk driving events. The accuracy of all of these interventions is really important. There’s nothing as upsetting as telling you, hey there is a bicycle here and there is no bicycle. Or you are tailgating and there is nobody in front of you. So, we spent years making sure that all of detectors, all of our interventions are super accurate. – Stefan HeckIf the system is not accurate, drivers will begin to distrust the system and figure out a way to turn it off. This behavior is common amongst individuals who own vehicles with lane-keep assist. They simply turn it off because it’s inaccurate and annoying. A system that is accurate is a system that works and does it job to help avoid dangers driving scenarios. NAUTO’s system caught the attention of Stellantis, as the company invested with a plan to offer the system in their commercial fleet vehicles. At first the system will use the NAUTO hardware and in the future, the software system will run natively on the vehicles by leveraging the on-board sensors without the NAUTO hardware. In addition to Stellantis, NAUTO has a partnership with Brightdrop where fleets can order can order the system pre-installed directly from the factory today. As robo-taxis scale around the world, the NAUTO system could be used for occupant detection and safety routing applications. As autonomy grows, NAUTO’s market grows. Wrapping up the conversation, Stefan shares his opinion on the future of AI as it relates to mobility.Recorded on Wednesday, July 5, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Trevor Crain, Mobility Research and Education Program Manager, Argonne National Laboratory joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss building America’s electric vehicle workforce. The conversation begins with Trevor sharing his thoughts on developing the workforce of the future as society shifts to electrified forms of mobility and how this skill set can transition to other industries. Our team here at Argonne looks at how do we build revolutionary and innovative programs that help all of our workforce program participants be able to address all these different technologies. – Trevor CrainAs the workforce is developed to work on electric vehicles and the infrastructure needed to support EVs, Argonne is working to ensure that students have the skill sets needed to succeed even when the technology or standards change. One of the ways that Argonne is helping students develop the skill set of the future is through the EcoCar Challenge. The EcoCar Challenge is a multi-year program where 15 North American universities teams come together to develop next generation electric vehicle technologies and automation are energy efficient. These teams are getting real-world, hands on experiences.We are taking things out of the research realm and into the actual application realm onboard our real test vehicles. – Trevor CrainBernstein Research is projecting that battery electric vehicles will reach 40% marketshare globally by 2030. If this forecast comes to realization, the workforce development and the skills needed to service these vehicles will has to be accelerated and developed today.One way to potentially accelerate the work force development for EVs is through apprenticeships where students do not take on debt. This is just one of the many options that could be implemented to ensure that the workforce of the future is ready today.Expanding the conversation, Trevor discusses the skill set that students learn as part of the EcoCar Challenge. As part of the challenge, students are encouraged to think from a customer centric approach. Would a consumer want this feature? Would a consumer pay for this feature? Does this feature increase the range of the vehicle?Wrapping up the conversation, Trevor shares his thoughts on electric vehicles.Recorded on Tuesday, June 20, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lee White, Founder & President, LM White Consulting joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss scaling autonomous trucking operations. The conversation begins with Lee explaining why after a 38-year career at UPS he decided to joined the autonomous trucking industry. In 2018, Lee took his first ride in an SAE Level 4 autonomous truck and it changed the way he looked at trucking forever. I remember standing outside that truck and looking back at it and saying; you know I am never going to be able to look at trucking the same way. – Lee WhiteLee’s insight into how large truck fleets operate is absolutely crucial to scaling revenue generating autonomous trucking operations. As the traditional trucking companies operate on extremely slim margins with tight timeframes for deliveries. For example, J.B. Hunt currently operates at a 6.4% margin, while Werner operates at a 4.8% margin. These margins leave little room for error. Enter, autonomous trucks. Autonomous trucks will enable traditional trucking companies to expand margins and utilize them on routes that benefit their operations the most. While professional drivers handle the other routes. Autonomous trucks and professional truck drivers will not compete for jobs. Instead, they will compliment each other, shore up the supply chain and enable trucking companies to optimize their operations.I don’t ever see an environment where you don’t have drivers. – Lee WhiteThe optimization will come from integrating autonomous trucks, intermodal, dedicated and over-the-road operations. Autonomous trucks at first will be deployed on high-density lanes with repeatable routes. In order for autonomous trucks to scale, there has to be infrastructure — truck terminals. These terminals will most likely be shared, yet there are no standards as it relates to how the infrastructure has to be built to accommodate autonomous trucks to launch and land. Furthering the conversation Grayson and Lee discuss how the autonomous vehicle market compares to the autonomous trucking market from a revenue and total addressable market (TAM) standpoint. Wrapping up the conversation, they discuss if Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Daimler become the Waymo and Cruise of autonomous trucking. Recorded on Friday, May 19, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Charles Eagan, Chief Technology Officer, BlackBerry joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss cyber security for autonomous and electric vehicles.The conversation begins with Charles sharing the current state of the cyber security market as it relates to electric and autonomous vehicles.The more software, the more network connectivity, and the more autonomous behaviors you have along with that comes a reciprocal cyber impact. – Charles EaganAs cars get smarter, the cyber security risks increase.What I am hoping is that cars will become much more secure than cell phones, because we will learn from the computer attacks, the cell phone attacks, the networking attacks and then we can take those best practices and make sure we are applying them. – Charles EaganThe risks increase when the vehicle infrastructure becomes connected. For example, when a consumer plugs their vehicle into charge they are mostly unaware of the cyber risks. Plugging a simple charging cable into an electric vehicle could potentially be a cyber security risk with real-world consequences.The vulnerabilities that exist in today’s Government infrastructure or computer infrastructure, those vulnerabilities will also apply to the EV infrastructure. – Charles EaganThe big challenge becomes how do we make software-defined infrastructure and vehicles secure against cyber attacks from Nation-State actors. Attacking the infrastructure and locking electric vehicles to the charger for example could cause severe economic damage.To help mitigate the risks, we have to audit the software supply-chain and ensure that only the software intended for the vehicle is being used. This becomes critically important as society begins to shift towards over-the-air updates and autonomous vehicles.With a software-defined vehicle comes payments. In the future vehicles, will have a payment layer built into them which allow either the driver or passengers to conduct commerce. To ensure a secure transaction, the payments will have to be secured with identity information.The more connected, and the more vehicles, and the more software, the more monitoring that you need to do. – Charles EaganTo monitor vehicles and the enterprise, Blackberry created CylanceGUARD. Monitoring allows Blackberry on behalf of customers to monitor the behavior of the network and determine if the unexpected happened. If the unexpected happens, Blackberry notifies the proper authorities who implement their action plan.Wrapping up the conversation, Charles shares his insights into how Blackberry is approaching cyber security for autonomous vehicles.Recorded on Monday, May 15, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dr. Matt Markel, President, Spartan Radar joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how software is enabling the next generation of radar. The conversation begins with Matt discussing the current state of the radar.I think it’s a really interesting time for radar. – Dr. Matt MarkelWhen deploying radar on commercial vehicles, the radar has to be optimized and designed for the use-cases that the commercial vehicle will be undertaking on a regular basis. Today, commercial vehicles are using radar to increase safety and in the future it will be used to enable autonomy. Increasing efficiency by using autonomy is a force multiplier. – Dr. Matt MarkelAutonomy is not a one-size fits all solution. Autonomy will be achieved in a variety of ways with different tech stacks. One of the hottest debates today is the LiDAR vs radar. Breaking the debate down, Matt shares his thoughts and insights, and explains the environmental limitations to each solution. Can autonomous vehicles operate at SAE Level 4 with only camera and radar?Yes, but the real question is what are those conditions? What are those Operational Design Domains? What are those ODDs that this combination can operate in? – Dr. Matt MarkelA camera, radar system that could operate at SAE Level 4 on highways and SAE Level 3 on suburban roads could help to usher in the personally owned autonomous vehicle market. When it comes to robo-taxis operating in dense urban environments, a full stack including LiDAR, camera and radar is the ideal solution due to the complexity of the ODD.One of the key ingredients in the autonomous driving stack is software. Spartan very similarly to Waymo is using software to enhance the performance of radar. One of the key differences between Waymo and Spartan’s approach to radar is that Spartan is making their software available to everyone. We do believe that there is a lot of performance being left on the table with automotive radar today. We can help Tier 1’s unlock that with our software products. – Dr. Matt MarkelSpartan’s approach is being validated with an investment from Microsoft and a partnership with Tier-1 automotive parts supplier — Valeo. Because we are adding software capabilities to these systems, it provides flexibility for the Tier-1. It makes them relevant to multiple OEMS, multiple applications, multiple RFQs without a change in the hardware. – Dr. Matt MarkelWrapping up the conversation, Matt shares his thoughts on how he sees the radar market evolving over the next decade. Recorded on Tuesday, June 6, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ed Walker, Vice President, Shared Economy & Mobility, Hub International joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how technology and autonomous vehicles are reshaping the insurance industry.The conversation begins with Ed discussing the current state of insurance markets for the gig economy. The current environment is a really broad spectrum of winners and losers. – Ed Walker The current environment is having an impact on the consumer as the average auto insurance liability rate has increased of 10% over the last year. This increase is on top of the industry average of 10% all claims filled in 2022 were fraudulent across all the insurance markets.There are more people on the roads without insurance then there has ever been right now in the United States. Underinsured and uninsured motorist coverage which is not provided in every State has become what used to be a consideration on a renewal to an absolute requirement in my opinion. – Ed Walker While in Ed’s opinion this an absolute requirement, we are starting to see the trend of bring your own insurance for gig economy workers and individuals who subscribe to a vehicle subscription service. In some cases, these individuals are not properly insured which could potentially have negative ramifications on them personally. When you have a bring your own insurance model, what you have is a subscription model where the car is not owned by the customer. However that customer is going to a personal limes agent or a program in order to get the vehicle insured. – Ed Walker The insurance they purchase might not be perfect, but in their minds it’s still insurance and it allows them to drive the vehicle. For those individuals who drive as for a service such as Uber, Lyft, Uber Eats and DoorDash a large portion of their take-home pay goes to insurance premiums. The insurance is costing your operation anywhere between 10 to 40 cents per mile depending on [The] State and the carrier. – Ed Walker With gig economy drivers getting squeezed with rising costs due to inflation and tight insurance markets, the question becomes how long is this model sustainable in it’s current form. The economics of the model today are opening the door to a future where ride-sharing services will be primarily operated with autonomous vehicles. I see autonomous vehicles as our ultimate light at the end of the tunnel if these situations do not improve. – Ed Walker The autonomous vehicle and autonomous truck markets are rapidly evolving as companies scale operations across the United States. As these companies scale their operations, the insurance market underwriting operations will continue to evolve. The more we do it, the better, smarter we get at it. The more carriers can make money at it, the more carriers show up, the more competitive the market gets. – Ed Walker Wrapping up the conversation, Ed shares his thoughts on the future of insurance.Recorded on Thursday, April 27, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thomas von der Ohe, Co-Founder & CEO, Vay joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss why Vay is taking a tele-driving first approach to autonomy.The conversation begins with sharing the current state of autonomy in Europe. Could Europe be the market that first ushers in personally owned autonomous vehicles? With Porsche announcing a deal with Mobileye to offer semi-autonomous features in new models and Mercedes-Benz introducing DRIVE PILOT, European OEMs could usher in this market.But what happens when that vehicle potentially needs assistance when the vehicle exits the highway? This is where Vay comes into the picture as they are developing teledriving technology. Vay’s technology could be offered as a complimenting feature to vehicles with SAE Level 3 driving capabilities. This combination of highway driving in Level 3 or Level 4 fashion and then urban driving through teledriving could be a really really strong combination. – Thomas von de OheVay is taking a tele-driving first approach to autonomy. The big advantage of tele-driving is that we believe that we can get something into the market much much earlier that is able to scale.– Thomas von de OheThe approach that Vay is taking is resonating with regulators in the E.U. In February 2023, Vay became the first company to operate a vehicle without an individual in the vehicle on European public roads. Now that Vay is operating on public roads in the E.U., the use cases for their technology only becomes stronger.Imagine going out to dinner, having a bottle of wine and then instead of driving home, Vay tele-drives your vehicle home for you that evening? It’s possible and that is just one of the many potential use cases for Vay’s tele-driving technology. While this is just one example of what is possible, Vay is currently focused on urban driving and launching a service in the future. Wrapping up the conversation, Thomas discusses how tele-driving can change the way we live in cities. Recorded on Tuesday, May 16, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pete Bigelow, Senior Reporter, Automotive News, joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the changing landscape of mobility markets. The conversation begins with Pete discussing how the automotive industry is preparing for a potential economic recession and the impact that Tesla’s price cuts are having on the market. The other major effect that Tesla is having on the market is the adoption of software-as-a-service in vehicles today.Tesla’s FSD (Full Self-Driving) is highly profitable and it’s success from an economic standpoint is changing global automakers in-vehicle software strategy.The business strategy behind it is very sound and enticing. – Pete BigelowNot all global automakers are feeling the Tesla pinch just yet. Ferrari with €1.38 billion in cash a 23% profit margin and no pension liabilities is currently over subscribed in terms of their order book. But looking to the future, Ferrari like all of the other global automakers will have to adapt to a world with autonomous vehicles. Personally owned autonomous vehicles are coming and Ferrari owners will want one. Will Ferrari listen to their customers and introduce an autonomous Ferrari at some point in the future? Grayson and Pete discuss the possibilities. Or could it be Mercedes-Benz that takes the plunge first introduces a personally owned autonomous vehicle?Over at VW under Oliver Blume, the company has been focused on IPOing their iconic brands starting with Porsche. Could a Lamborghini or Bentley IPO be next? Possibly. But what we do know is that under Mr. Blume’s leadership, VW is unlocking value for shareholders.While Mr. Blume has taken a diligent approach to the VW brand IPOs, the autonomous vehicle industry over the last 24 months rushed into SPACs and IPOs with limited and sometimes no revenue. Now they are struggling as the reality of public markets begins to set in and Mr. Market does his job to paraphrase the famed investor Howard Marks.Everyone saw the EV SPAC succeeding and raising so much money that they did not want to be left out. It was fear of missing out, fear of missing out on that big burst of cash upfront and they thought they were going to make it through to the other side. Now that is very clearly flat not the case in a lot of places or it puts a lot of people in a very precarious position.– Pete BigelowThe autonomous vehicle companies that stayed private such as Cruise and Waymo are now in a position of greater strength as consolidation has begun to sweep the industry and certain competitors have ceased to exist. It’s in this market that Cruise and Waymo along with Motional will be able to gain market share thanks in part to their strategic financial partners. Wrapping up the conversation, Pete shares his thoughts on how he sees mobility changing over the next decade. Recorded on Thursday, April 20, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matt McLelland, VP of Sustainability and Innovation, Covenant joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss why Covenant always has a seat at the table as it relates to new technologies and how they are preparing for autonomous trucks.The conversation begins with Matt discussing how he is currently thinking about autonomous trucks as it relates to over-the-road operations. We figured that we needed to have a seat at the table, because autonomy was going to be a way to potentially augment our business. We have been involved since the very beginning. – Matt McLellandHaving a seat at the table and understanding the business is highly important to Matt as he shares insights from his recent four-day ride-along with a professional over-the-road driver. It gives you more context and experience into that whole kind of analogy of walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes. – Matt McLellandAs part of their having a seat at the table strategy, Covenant has a partnership with Aurora where the two companies are actively exploring the integration of Aurora’s virtual driver (Aurora Horizon) into Covenant’s operations. It’s not just from a technical perspective, it is also from a operations perspective.In order for autonomous trucks to scale, there has to be standardized operations around launching autonomous trucks from different sites. This is because there will be different technicians and employees at each site operating autonomous trucks for a variety of companies as the depots/launch sites will most likely be shared. Once the industry agrees on a shared launch strategy, the next issue that the industry is going to have to agree on is fuel. Diesel and the value proposition of autonomy is asset utilization, making that truck stay on the road to cover the most miles possible as efficiently as possible. – Matt McLellandWith the clear value proposition that diesel has for autonomous trucking, society is shifting to low-carbon solutions, opening the door for renewable diesel. While renewable diesel offers a bridge solution, there is not enough renewable diesel in the market today to support the wide-scale adoption. It’s the perfect bridge to zero emissions, its a solution available today that will get us to a much better place then where we are [today]. – Matt McLellandWhile it’s a solution, it comes at a premium cost to shippers that is being coined the “green premium”. The green premium is opening the door to autonomy as an autonomous truck can operate longer hours with less idling time and more efficiently. Covenant estimates that autonomous trucks can operate 8% to 12% more efficiently per truck. On Covenant’s autonomous journey today, today the company has partnerships with Aurora and Torc Robotics as they actively prepare for a future with autonomy. Wrapping up the conversation, Matt shares his thoughts on sustainability. Recorded on Friday, April 11, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Hayes, Founder & CEO, Ghost Autonomy joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss why advanced technology is invisible and how Ghost plans to scale autonomous driving. The conversation begins with John discussing the founding of Pure Storage and what he say in the market when he founded that company and how that compares to the founding of Ghost Autonomy.Our data storage company was actually founded on the basis of trends and consumer technology. – John HayesSimilar to the way that storage was changing, John saw an opportunity to build a new modern autonomy stack that was not built on the DARPA Urban Challenge stack, but one that was based on consumer technology. Let’s look at what emerging trends are out there in hardware and where can we make smart software and what industry can we go into. – John HayesWhen Ghost first started to develop their autonomy stack, they started with a stereo camera-only approach and in the middle of 2021, they added radar to the stack. The direction we took with radar was to go in a software defined direction. – John HayesOne of the main defining aspects of the Ghost Autonomy stack is that they have engineered the stack to make it as invisible as possible. In addition to being almost invisible, the stack operates on low-power which will allow electric vehicles running their autonomy system to have more range. The hardware running on this low-power compute are four camera pairs and one high-resolution radar pointing forward. From a use-case scenario Ghost has engineered an SAE Level 4 design for highway use and an SAE Level 2 design for non-highway use. It’s a rolling ODD where you increase the competence at slower and slower speeds over time. – John HayesComparing and contrasting the Ghost Autonomy system to a traditional SAE Level 2 system, the system is more intuitive. From the user experience point of view, we focus very much on a concept system called collaborative driving, where there isn’t a button that you push to activate it. You are on the highway, it says you can drive anytime you want by turning and indicator blue and you let go of the steering wheel and it turns green. And you do not set anything, the car just goes and picks a reasonable speed and a reasonable following distance. – John HayesThis is built on John’s fundamental belief that that advanced technology is invisible in a way. The Ghost system does not have button or nobs, the system just works. Today a human has to click the ticker to change lanes, but in the future Ghost is working on a navigation system where the vehicle will simply just change the lane without being promoted to by the driver. I want to make the system extremely scalable so that you wouldn’t have to enter a destination to activate it. You just start driving and if you just want to let go of the wheel for 30 seconds to send a text, that’s a perfectly valid way to interact with the system. – John HayesFrom a business standpoint, Ghost is going to commercialize the product by licensing their software to OEMs.Wrapping up the conversation, John discusses the future of Ghost Autonomy.Recorded on Friday, April 7, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jeff Farrah, Executive Director, Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the economic impact of autonomy and why autonomy is the future.The conversation begins with Jeff discussing how the autonomous vehicle industry will navigate the potential economic downturn that is on the horizon.There is an expression in the venture capital world that some of the very best companies are built in down markets. – Jeff FarrahWhile this is an expression, Founders and Executives in the autonomous vehicle industry are hard at work commercializing, scaling and generating revenue from autonomy. The industry today is entering the next phase as AV companies move away from full-time research and development and into the operations stage of their companies lifecycle. As AV companies mature, the market is taking notice. There is a tremendous amount of excitement kind of up and down the economy to ultimately have a piece of this [market].– Jeff FarrahAs the market takes notice, consumers are starting to take notice as well as autonomy will create high-paying jobs. Along with the new jobs created by autonomy, the technology will have a positive economic impact on the global economy by creating new jobs, shoring up the supply chain and ultimately helping to lower inflation. For AVs to truly scale, we need a National Autonomous Vehicle Framework that enables regulatory certainty. With regulatory certainty, investment into the sector will flourish. We do not want to have a situation where this industry does poorly because there are giant question marks hanging over it that policy makers could have ultimately clarified. – Jeff FarrahToday, there is no National Autonomous Vehicle Framework and the industry is left with a patchwork of laws that makes scaling difficult. In California, legislators are currently considering bill AB316 that would prohibit the operation of autonomous vehicles with a gross vehicle weight of 10,000 pounds on public roads for testing and commercial operations without a driver in the vehicle. This bill in it’s current form will kill jobs and have a negative impact on the economy of the State of California.You have a situation where many of the leading autonomous trucking companies are based in California. Despite that, the State in many circles tends to be taking a posture of no thanks, we are not interested, please go elsewhere. – Jeff FarrahWhen the industry goes elsewhere, jobs will follow. In the communities that embrace AVs, new jobs will be created, new businesses will open and those communities will experience the positive economic impact of AVs. Recently, Governor Reeves of Mississippi signed HB 1003 welcoming autonomous vehicles to Mississippi.With the signing of HB 1003, autonomous trucks can now travel along the I-10 from Arizona to Florida fully autonomous.Wrapping up the conversation, Jeff shares his view on the future of autonomous vehicles and trucks.Recorded on Tuesday, April 4, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Timothy Dooner, Host, What The Truck, joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss all things trucking and the current state of the trucking industry.The conversation begins with Grayson and Dooner discussing the importance of securing DoD (Department of Defense) contracts when developing autonomous trucks as those contracts provide reliable revenue and stability as the autonomous trucking companies ramp up commercial operations. Where do you get money if the carriers won’t give it to you, and you are in an economy right now also where the venture cap is not free and you just want YOLO a SPAC out there to the retail traders? – Timothy DoonerAs the Fed continues to raise interest rates, the days of free money are over for the foreseeable future. With the monetary environment being tight, autonomous trucking companies with little to no revenue will find it very hard to raise capital and at some point will have to shutter. While the monetary environment remains tight, the geo-political circumstance stance remains fraught as China escalates their pressure on Taiwan. With a geo-political scenario that is uncertain and Taiwan controlling the global semi-conductor industry along with China controlling the electric vehicle supply chain, the potential for a global economic disaster that brings a halt to a future with electric trucks is elevated. A future with electric trucks is a complex future as there are the supply chain issues in addition to the charging infrastructure issues that are also plaguing the industry. It has been reported by some carriers that it is taking months to get the electrical backhaul needed to operate heavy-duty charging at certain locations. When the electric heavy-duty chargers are up and running, the next issue to tackle is time. Freight is messy. There is a lot of stuff and a lot of delays and the last thing you want to consider is taking an equation where it used to cost 20 minutes to fuel to now maybe it costs an hour to two. – Timothy DoonerIn the market there are 250,000 carriers with less then six trucks. These operations are small and they do not have the balance sheet to add electric trucks to their operations, but yet in some States they are being forced due to regulation. The change in regulation could lead to further consolidation in the traditional trucking industry while further opening the door to autonomy.I think the future model, the realistic future model does look like autonomy in that middle-mile and delivery in that short mile with electric vehicles. – Timothy DoonerWith the door furthering opening to autonomy in the trucking industry, Grayson and Dooner go onto discuss the current state of autonomous trucking. Wrapping up the conversation, Dooner shares his vision for the future of trucking. Recorded on Friday March 31, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Andy Chatham, Co-Founder, DIMO joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the DIMO open-connected vehicle platform and why there are no good apps for cars today. The conversation begins with Andy discussing why he decided to build DIMO and what he saw in the market when he launched the company.Cars are becoming more intelligent, they are taking over more of the driving task from end-consumers, but were still waiting for that first deployment where millions of people are able to actually take their hands and eyes off the road and give control over to a computer. – Andy ChatmanWith the rapid increase in ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) systems being available in cars today, combined with consumers believing that an SAE Level 2 system is a self-driving car, Grayson brings up the point that consumers will want to own personally owned autonomous vehicles when they are ready. If this does indeed come true, what impact will it have on the robo-taxi market?I think there will be some real markets in which robo-taxis are able to deliver value to consumers and provide a useful service. – Andy ChatmanThen there is Tesla, What happens if and when Tesla can figure out SAE Level 3? What impact will it have on the emerging personally owned autonomous vehicle market? What impact this have on Tesla from a business perspective? One thing that were very sure of, is that it will increase the value of the data coming from the car in some relatively non-obvious ways. – Andy ChatmanThis is where DIMO comes into the picture. We want to give ownership of the data coming from the vehicle to the owner of the vehicle and the occupant of the vehicle, and make sure that they are able to do whatever that want with it. – Andy ChatmanAt some point in the future, consumers are going to want to own and control their own data as it relates to their mobility experiences. Today, consumers can take control of their data with DIMO and take advantage of apps that create value for their driving experience. One of the apps, that developers have built on the platform is battery health monitoring. With electric vehicles having surpassed 10% of global sales for the first time in 2022 and used electric vehicle sales in the United States rising 32% in the first three months of 2023, knowing the health of the EV’s battery becomes extremely important. We can provide you insights into how your battery is performing in the real-world. How quickly are you able to charge it. How quickly it’s discharging. When you are repeatedly charging it from zero to 100%, we can give you insights around, hey this is going to degrade the value of your battery overtime. – Andy ChatmanIn addition to battery health data, DIMO is able to offer insights into real-world EV charging performance and what chargers are charging at what speeds. There are inconsistencies in the public charging network that is leading to charging anxiety for non-tesla EV drivers. The difference is that Tesla built, owns and maintains their own EV charging network. Tesla drivers really experience range anxiety. – Andy ChatmanWith all of the data coming off of connected vehicles, one of the key elements that OEMs will have to maintain is trust. Consumers are going to have to trust that their vehicle is going to always work, always be secure and work when they need to drive somewhere. One of DIMO’s goals is to become a trusted platform for mobility. We look at what we doing as creating the first truly open developer platform for cars. – Andy ChatmanWrapping up the conversation, Andy shares his opinion on the future of mobility.Recorded on Tuesday, March 28, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matteo Del Sorbo, Executive Vice President Magna New Mobility, Magna International joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss why not all mobility solutions work in all markets and Magna’s mobility investments in India. The conversation begins with Matteo discussing how Magna approaches autonomy. Our approach at Magna here is to develop robust and reliable features that fulfill the needs of the market, our customers, the regulations, all the while we still have a careful eye on the future and mega trends that impact mobility and in the end, autonomous driving. – Matteo Del SorboThis approach allows Magna keep their pulse on the future of mobility as the company continues to operate a profitable revenue generating organization. It’s a wise strategy that allows Magna to engage in an autonomous vehicle market that is now consolidating around a handful of winners who are well financed and poised for long-term growth. We are going to play a very important role in autonomy and ADAS. – Matteo Del SorboIt’s not just autonomy and ADAS, Magna is also embracing micromobility and energy while deploying solutions in emerging markets including India. India is a market of 1.4 billion individuals with a GDP that is projected to grow 6.5% this year. I have always said that not all solutions work in all markets. I think micromobility is a perfect example. Certain solutions work in well in one geographic region, but not in another. You need to really understand the market, the needs, the people that drive the right solutions. – Matteo Del SorboTo understand the mobility market in India is to understand the infrastructure challenges in the urban environments and why micromobility works. Battery swapping is allowing companies to operate electric mobility solutions in India to overcome the constraints of limited electricity reliability and the overall infrastructure challenges in the country. With a mandate from the Indian Government to convert roughly 200 million two-wheelers from gas to electric, the opportunity for battery swapping is enormous. This is where Magna thrives as the company knows how to scale and engineer world-class products. Magna is rapidly scaling operations with their customer Yulu Mobility/Yulu Energy, they are also an investor. Currently Yulu Mobility has has 10,000 electric scooters in operation which Magna is helping to scale by the tens of thousands over the next year.We are going to be adding 10,000 units every month for the next 12 months. By the end of year we will have over 100,000 units. – Matteo Del SorboWhile the recipe to scale operations in India is there, Magna is also looking to expand their footprint to other emerging markets where their expertise can provide value and shareholder return. At the end of the day, you have to solve a problem. Just bringing a bunch of kick scooters to a city because they are cool will not solve problems, it will not give you scale, the market, people demand a scaled quality product. – Matteo Del SorboTo achieve success in these new emerging markets Magna has teams focused on new emerging mobility technologies will be that will impact these markets. Wrapping up the conversation, Matteo and Grayson discuss the future of delivery. Recorded on Tuesday, March 7, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dr. Peter Vaughan Schmidt, CEO, Torc Robotics joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how Torc is preparing to scale their autonomous trucking business. The conversation begins with Peter discussing why he joined Torc Robotics. One of the defining factors as to why he decided to join was the company’s culture. The company’s culture is one that is both humble and collaborative. It’s this culture which has allowed Torc to thrive and one that appealed to Peter when he led Daimler Trucks majority investment in 2019. Since the investment, Torc has accelerated the technological development of their autonomy stack as they work towards their operations at scale by 2030 goal. Autonomy will be at scale within this decade by 2030. – Peter Vaughan SchmidtFor autonomous trucking commercial operations to scale, there has to be a redundant autonomous truck platform that will enhance safety and increase uptime efficiency. Through their relationship with Daimler Trucks, Torc will have access to Daimler’s new redundant autonomous truck platform based on Freightliner’s Cascadia with 1,500 new upgrades. Eventually these new trucks will be fitted with Torc’s autonomy stack and tested in various areas around the world including Albuquerque, New Mexico where Torc currently has a base of operations. One of the unique advantages to testing in Albuquerque is the elevation changes on I-40. We thought if you could do Albuquerque you can really do most cities, most interstates. – Peter Vaughan SchmidtIt’s not just testing in Albuquerque that goes into developing the Torc driver. Torc is also learning from experienced professional drivers on know how to “drive” a truck and what the courtesy maneuvers look like when driving on the highway. Daimler Trucks is also providing support from a hardware perspective. As Torc prepares to scale and commercialize the business, the company will embrace a subscription model, however the company is open to other potential models as well based on market demand.We will try to make it as easy for customers as possible to apply this new technology and the way of paying for it. – Peter Vaughan SchmidtWhen the customers take possession of the Torc autonomous trucks, they will be factory built by Daimler Trucks and deployed in a hub-to-hub model. Wrapping up the conversation, Peter shares his thoughts on how he sees autonomous trucks being deployed over the next decade. Recorded on Monday, March 6, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jan Becker, CEO & Co-Founder, Apex AI joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how the autonomous vehicle industry has evolved from the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge to the dawn of the era of commercialization in 2023. The conversation begins with Jan discussing the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge and his role on Stanford's team.People called it the Woodstock of Robotics. – Jan BeckerThe DARPA Challenges showed the world that it was possible to make a car drive itself. It was these challenges sponsored by the U.S. Goverment and led to the founding of the autonomous vehicle industry.One of the outcomes of the DARPA Urban Challenge was that Google started and funded Waymo and Waymo then really showed in my opinion the automotive companies that autonomous driving can be done as a product. – Jan BeckerIt has been 15 years since the DARPA Urban Challenge and the world of autonomy has changed drastically. Autonomy is now maturing, scaling and commercializing. The hype cycle of 2000’s has faded along with the timeline as autonomous vehicles are now becoming a commercial business. One of the trends that is beginning to emerge is the personally owned autonomous vehicle. While this trend is still in it’s early days, it its a trend that will have a significant impact on the future autonomy as consumers will come to expect this feature. Then there are autonomous trucks which will initially roll out as a hub-to-hub model where the trucks will operate fully autonomously on the highway. When they arrive at the hub (depot), the freight will be switched to smaller vehicles some of which will be autonomous. The low hanging fruit in my opinion is really to automate the hub-to-hub transportation. – Jan BeckerWith the industry maturing, Apex AI is developing safety-certified, developer-friendly and scalable software that allows developers to build safe reliable software for mobility platforms. By building on Apex AI, developers can do what they do best – build applications. What we provide are the libraries, the functionality to enable our customers, the developers, the car companies to build software that scales. – Jan BeckerWrapping up the conversation, Jan shares his thoughts on the universal driver and how he sees autonomous vehicles scaling. Recorded on Tuesday, February 28, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Zander Cook, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer, Lease End joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how consumers can capture equity at the end of their car lease. The conversation begins with Zander sharing his insights into what he is currently seeing in the leasing market. Putting this into context, the average price of a new vehicle has risen more than $10,000 since the start of the pandemic to $47,920 in January 2023, creating the opportunity for more leases. To this point it has been a little counterintuitive, actually leasing had its worst year as a percentage of new vehicle sales in decades last year. – Zander CookOne of the factors that drove the decrease in new lease originations was the rising interest rate environment. Even with excess cash from the covid stimulus, new lease originations stumbled while the market for flipping electric vehicles such as at the Tesla Model 3, Model Y and the Ford Mach-E only grew. Now that the covid stimulus has dissipated, the market for new lease originations is beginning to show signs of rebounding. With a shortage of new vehicles due to the semiconductor shortage and historically high used car prices, consumers had equity in their leased vehicles when the leases matured. This scenario is not common and was driven partly by geopolitics and a vulnerable supply chain. Lessees of Honda vehicles historically tend to have the highest average equity as the vehicles hold their equity. Could this change as more electric vehicles come online and consumers choose to lease EVs? If it does change, how will the battery be valued?For those individuals lucky enough to have equity in their vehicle at the end of a lease, their options to tap into the equity are traditionally limited. This is where Lease End comes into the picture. Lease End was built to streamline the buyout process at the end of a lease. Our entire business is streamlining the lease buyout process. – Zander CookBy streamlining the process, Lease End is saving consumers time and money. In as quick as 25 minutes, consumers can be on their way as Lease End handles all of the logistics and financing. Could this become the future of ending a lease? Perhaps, but consumers will have to learn more about their options to end a lease. In my opinion the biggest thing there is going control back to the consumer. Right now most consumers think they do not have any other option besides going into a dealership and dealing with the dealership and doing what the dealership tells them to do. That’s not the case, that’s why Lease End was founded. – Zander CookWrapping up the conversation, Zander shares his vision for the future of leasing. Recorded on Thursday, February 23, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Akshay Jaising, VP of Commercialization, Motional joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss Motional’s commercialization strategy and how Motional is scaling robotaxi operations in multiple cities.The conversation begins with Akshay discussing Motional’s commercialization strategy. We have taken a very partner centric approach. We want to focus on what we do best, which is building the autonomy stack and then partners with players in the ecosystem to make robotaxis a reality. – Akshay JaisingSince 2022, Motional has had a partnership with Uber. Beginning with autonomous Uber Eats deliveries in Santa Monica, CA, the partnership has since evolved into a 10-year multi-market deal where consumers will be able to order a ride in one of Motional’s all-electric IONIQ 5 robotaxis. This will be the largest deployment of autonomous vehicles on a ride-haling platform. Las Vegas will be the launch city followed by Los Angeles. With the expansion into Los Angeles, Motional will be operating in the 2nd largest city in the United States. Los Angeles is a diverse region that has an interest in alternative transportation modes. Anything to reduce the amount of time sitting in stop and go traffic while having to pay attention becomes a win for the millions of individuals who call Los Angeles home. We feel it’s a pretty critical market that has shown customer acceptance for ride-hailing. Our initial pilots and tests in Los Angeles with Uber Eats have been extremely promising and well received. It’s a really strong proving ground to demonstrate how this technology could scale and solve very critical transportation challenges. – Akshay JaisingAs Motional and the autonomous vehicle industry as a whole begins to scale and commercialize, attention is starting to turn from the technology to the economics of the business. Do the unit economics make sense and can the business operate profitability? These are big questions that will have to be answered. In order to answer these questions, AV companies will need long-term patient capital and this exactly what Motional has with Aptiv and Hyundai. In addition to Motional’s access to long-term patient capital, the company through the Aptiv/Hyundai joint-venture is currently having robotaxis built to automotive grade standards on the line. A factory-built autonomous vehicle is scalable. With over 130,000 autonomous vehicle rides completed to date, Motional is preparing to further scale in Las Vegas and fully commercialize the service. One of the main advantages to scaling in Las Vegas is that individuals arrive in Vegas and stay on average for 72 hours. When they are there, they gamble and enjoy all of the experiences that Vegas has to offer. They come flush with cash and open mind to trying to new experiences.Creating the perfect opportunity to scale a profitable autonomous vehicle company as riding in an AV for the first time is an experience. Adding to the experience element, by the end of the year, Motional is planning to operate fully driverless in Las Vegas. Queue up the TikTok and Instagram posts. Another defining moment will be Super Bowl 58 which will be taking place in Las Vegas. With 325,000 visitors expected to attend the Vegas Super Bowl, Motional is actively preparing driverless operations which will be operating during Super Bowl Week.We do expect to have driverless vehicles on the road in February 2024 when Super Bowl 58 will be there, and we are excited about that. – Akshay JaisingAs Motional scales operations in multiple cities including Las Vegas and Los Angeles, Motional will be taking a hybrid approach when it comes to drop-off and pick-up zones. The company will utilize zones when they are available and at times they are not, the robotaxis will integrate into the normal traffic patterns. Wrapping up the conversation, Akshay discusses how Motional will roll-out service in each market from an economic standpoint.Recorded on Tuesday, February 21, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Don Burnette, Founder & CEO, Kodiak Robotics joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss building an autonomous trucking business and why Kodiak did not SPAC.The conversation begins with Don discussing the last 18 months in autonomous trucking and why Kodiak did not SPAC. We had multiple SPAC offers, but at the end of the day we felt like we just didn’t have the metrics, what didn’t have what it took to be a public company. – Don BurnetteDon, and the team at Kodiak understood the difference between being a private company and a public company. Don along with the team and the board, made the decision to stay private as they felt it would put Kodiak in the best position for growth, benefiting investors, employees and the entire company.What you are seeing not just in the AV market, but beyond the AV market. You are are seeing a lot of blowback from companies that do not have any of the metrics that public investors want to see and while I think there was some hype and excitement early on in the SPAC craze cycle if you will call it, that excitement, that hype, that fervor has essentially evaporated and know companies are left with their fundamentals and unfortunately those fundamentals are not really strong. – Don BurnetteToday there are 250 registered autonomous trucks available for deployment, while there are currently 4 million Class 8 trucks in operation. With less than a 1% market share, the time for an autonomous trucking company to go public is not there as the technology currently does not have the marketshare and/or the profitability to succeed as a public company when compared to the traditional trucking industry. Don recognized this fact and resisted the temptation of taking Kodiak public via SPAC.I definitely think that Kodiak’s decision to stay private was the right one in the end. – Don BurnetteIn order to stay a private company in a challenging economic environment, you have to have financial discipline. Along with the financial discipline, you have to have the right team that works hard and does not get distracted. At Kodiak we have been focused on over-the-road long-haul trucking, autonomy and that was our mission statement on day one and that’s still our mission for the company almost five years in. That focus and not allowing ourselves to get distracted has been a big component of our success. – Don BurnetteAs part of this discipline, Kodiak has never done a free run. All of the freight that the company has hauled since day one has been paid. On day one, Don made the decision to run Kodiak as a business, not a science project. This decision has been rewarded in terms of partnerships and the revenue that Kodiak is generating from hauling freight.With all of the pieces in place, Kodiak is beginning to scale their business and preparing for driverless operations. To achieve driverless operations, Kodiak has developed a redundant safety critical system that ensures the safe operation of the truck.Driverless operations will first be rolled out in the southern part of the United States partly due to the weather and the updated infrastructure. In addition to scaling autonomous trucking across the United States, Kodiak is working with the Department of Defense to develop autonomous technology that can save lives. Wrapping up the conversation, Don discusses the future of the autonomous trucking industry. Recorded on Thursday, February 16, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Christian Spano, Director of Innovation, International Council of Mining and Metals joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss decarbonizing mining and how the circular economy can be ushered in through building stocks of materials that can be reused forever.The conversation begins with Christian discussing what is being done to decarbonize mining transportation operations as there are roughly 28,000 large mine hauling trucks in operation collectively emitting 68 million tons of Co2 a year. Health and safety at global mining operations was one of the early factors that started the conversation around the decarbonization of mining. From trucks equipped with ADAS to autonomous trucks, the aspect of how new technologies can improve the health and safety of mining operations is paramount to global mining organizations. From 30 to 50 to 80 percent of the emissions of a mine come from haul trucks. – Christian SpanoICMM members are collectively working together to usher in the future of mining; a future that is sustainable and safe. To usher in this future, the infrastructure will have to be upgraded to accommodate hydrogen and electric vehicles. The contribution of a mine turning net-zero starting with the mobile equipment, it’s a contribution to the country that is trying to decarbonize, but also accelerating the availability of all these solutions at scale for many other industries. – Christian SpanoAs companies begin to decarbonize mining operations, new jobs are being created. It’s not just jobs inside of the mine that will be created, it’s jobs outside of the mine that support the operation. Jobs such as material traceability will be created, but in order for traceability there has to be a global standard. The demand for a global standard and material traceability will end up being driven by the consumer who demands transparency into the battery that powers their vehicle. The demand for EVs is not slowing down as in 2022, global EV sales surpassed 10% for the first time. From a minerals and metals perspective, it is estimated that there could be a 20-fold increase in demand for nickel and cobalt by 2040. To meet this demand, we have to usher in the circular economy. Recycling is not the circular economy. The circular economy is about building stocks that we can reuse forever. It’s about building stocks of materials that are durable. – Christian SpanoThe circular economy is a design opportunity. It’s an opportunity to redesign and rethink how we as a society approach metals and materials. With this approach, we have to keep all options on the table and approach the future of sustainability with an open mind. Autonomous vehicles will play a role in the future of sustainability as autonomous trucks deployed in mines around the world will be cleaner and safer. ICMM members are actively embracing autonomy and deploying at their mine sites around the world. Wrapping up the conversation, Christin discusses the future of decarbonizing mining operations. Recorded on Friday, February 3, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Oliver Cameron, VP, Product, Cruise joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss scaling Cruise, the passenger experience and the role AI plays in the Cruise product. The conversation begins with Oliver reflecting on the last four years in autonomy.The biggest change for me that has happened over the last four years is that in 2019 everyone in the industry was waking up to answer the question can we make a car safer than a human, a self-driving car that is safer than a human. – Oliver CameronNow it’s 2023 and Cruise is scaling a safe autonomous vehicle service in multiple cities with no safety drivers. As Cruise scales, Cruise is listening to passengers and gathering feedback and incorporating their feedback into the product.There is just something about self-driving cars that really sparks a sense of optimism in people. – Oliver CameronIt’s a sense of optimism that brings joy and happiness. The Cruise experience is a consistent experience that only gets better over time. The Cruise virtual driver never becomes distracted, gets upset or emotional. It simply drives you to and from your destination safely each time ride in one of the vehicles, it’s a consistent experience. The human equivalent is not very consistent. You can have the world’s best driver and the world’s worst driver from trip to trip. Our experience is very consistent and it only gets better over time and that is something that is very special and unique to autonomous vehicles that the human driven equivalents will simply just never be able to match because of the inconsistency of humans. – Oliver CameronAs autonomous vehicles scale, they benefit as they gather more data that can be used to improve the product. As an example in less then 90 days, Cruise was able to launch fully driverless operations in two cities, Austin, TX and Phoenix, AZ. Oliver goes onto explain how Cruise was able to achieve this goal.If our technology was not generalizable, well frankly there is no chance of us deploying driverless in Austin in less then 90 days. – Oliver CameronAs Cruise scales, The Origin will play a critical role in operations. The Origin will be an eye-catching vehicle that makes you feel like you are living in The Jetsons when you first see it. When you first enter the vehicle you will realize how spacious it is. From a comfortable experience to one that is controlled by voice, The Origin is ushering in the future of mobility. Through their partnership with Honda, Cruise is currently testing in Japan. When it comes to expanding to new international markets, the team at Cruise is working hard to understand local customs and how individuals in those countries pay for goods and interact with digital devices on a daily basis. This technology can definitely scale a lot faster then people think. – Oliver CameronTo enable the future of autonomy we need AI breakthroughs. Oliver and Grayson go onto discuss the latest breakthroughs in AI and how Cruise is leveraging their machine learning infrastructure to improve their product. Wrapping up the conversation, Oliver shares his outlook for the future of the autonomous vehicle industry.Recorded on Friday, January 27, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jim Mullen, Founder & President, Mullen Consulting joined Grayson Brulte on The Road To Autonomy Podcast to discuss how traditional trucking and autonomous trucking compliment each other and their combined benefits to the U.S. freight network.The conversation begins with Jim discussing what is causing the decline rates in spot truckload rates, which are down 57.3% year-over-year.It is clearly a supply and demand issue right now. – Jim MullenDuring the 2008 financial crisis, the S&P Transportation Select Industry Index feel from a high of $1,998.20 on February 20, 2007 to a low of $626.27 on March 9, 2009, a 68.63% decline. It took the Index four years until February 19, 2013 to regain the losses from the economic crisis. If history is to repeat itself and we enter into a potential recession, you could see further downward pressure on spot truckload rates. With new entrants in the market and deteriorating market economic conditions, the market currently remains strained.With all these new entrants who are really just trying to stay afloat, they are going to take freight they ought not be taking or at least be taking freight at rates they ought not be taking. Until you expunge the marketplace of that lack of discipline with those types of folks that are quote desperate you will continue to see that down kind of pressure. – Jim MullenTaking an holistic approach to the trucking industry as a whole, it is a very vibrant industry. It is a healthy industry that is preparing for a future with autonomous trucks. It is an industry that is working in tandem with their shippers and customers to ensure that it is a win-win when the economic conditions stabilize and return to growth.When economic conditions stabilize and there is a return to growth, autonomous trucks will be scaling in a regulatory environment that is made up of patchwork of State laws as there is currently no national framework for autonomous trucks.Additionally there is no plan for a national framework for autonomous trucks at this time. Is it even necessary? Unsure at the moment, as soon autonomous trucks will be able to operate legally from Arizona to Florida on the 1-10, when Mississippi comes online with their new autonomous trucking regulations.No matter the regulations, the industry is going to have to develop public trust in each and every State that they operate. This is something that the autonomous trucking industry takes seriously and Jim shares his thoughts from his time at FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) where he served as Acting Administrator on the importance of public trust in autonomous trucks.While trust has to be developed with the public, the traditional trucking industry is approaching autonomous trucking in a mixed fashion.There is a mixed bag. Some of the motor carriers are much more aggressive and more involved in looking at how autonomy is going to change their freight networks. But if you look at the blue-chip motor carriers, I say that they are predominantly fully engaged on how autonomy is going to change their business model and freight network. – Jim MullenTo achieve commercial Level 4 autonomy in with the autonomous trucking industry, it ill take partnerships. Torc has a partnership with Daimler and Waymo has a partnership with J.B. Hunt. Then there are the Truck OEMs that are exploring transportation as a service. Could transportation as a service be how autonomous trucks are deployed in the future? Possibly. Then there are the autonomous trucking companies who are unable to secure an OEM deal, could they potentially explore licensing deals? Possibly.The future for how autonomous trucks will roll out has yet to be written. It will be interesting to watch how it all plays out and who emerges victoriously.Wrapping up the conversation, Jim shares his thoughts on the future of the trucking industry.Recorded on Tuesday, January 24, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sergey Litvinenko, Co-Founder & CEO, Koop Insurance joined Grayson Brulte on The Road To Autonomy Podcast to discuss how Koop is reimagining how you underwrite autonomous vehicle insurance. The conversation begins with Sergey describing Koop.We are an insurance technology startup that is focused on everything automated. We focus on fully autonomous vehicles that go on public roads like robotaxis, trucks and shuttles to off-road applications in robotics, in agriculture, construction, mining, warehousing, manufacturing and aerial use cases. – Sergey Litvinenko For Koop to properly insure their clients, they have developed a proprietary underwriting platform focused on autonomy, filling a void in the market. Today the market for autonomous vehicle/truck insurance is limited with little flexibility as traditional insurers do not truly understand the risk. The main bottleneck why the insurance industry is not able to innovate at the moment is because the insurance industry cannot get the data that would allow them to build the insurance product around the autonomous vehicle risk. – Sergey Litvinenko Koop gathers data such as the technical specs of the autonomy system, exposure data and performance data of the vehicles they insure. With the data Koop can properly price the insurance as they understand the risk better then their competitors. As Koop primarily operates as an underwriter they work with traditional insurance brokers. Keeping with their theme of being innovative, Koop recently introduced Broker Universe to streamline the process of quoting an insurance policy. What the brokers and Koop deliver together is a high quality insurance offering.It’s high quality insurance which is going to allow the autonomous vehicle industry to scale. Without high quality insurance, the AV industry will not be able to scale as their risk profile would be to exposed to situations that they can not control, but they can insure against. Furthermore, high quality insurance builds trust with regulators, investors and members of the public. Trust is what is allowing Cruise, Waymo and Motional to scale operations in multiple cities around the United States. While these AV companies are scaling and generating revenue, analysts are divided over their valuations with one analyst evening assigning a zero value to Cruise. In my view, in the next ten years, Cruise itself could be worth more then the rest of GM combined. It’s a great move for GM to have Cruise because it could drive more than 50% of the revenue of the company in the near future. – Sergey Litvinenko In a September 2022 Bloomberg Intelligence report, an analyst mentioned that Waymo may be able to generate about $5 billion in revenue by 2025. To achieve this number, Waymo might have to license their technology. If they do indeed license their technology, what is the impact on insurance? Sergey goes onto explain how it would work and who is responsible when a crash occurs. Wrapping up the conversation, Sergey and Grayson discuss the economics of autonomy. Recorded on Thursday, January 19, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dean Foreman, Chief Economist, American Petroleum Institute (API) joined Grayson Brulte on The Road To Autonomy Podcast to discuss his 2023 Q1 outlook for the oil and gas markets.The conversation begins with Dean sharing his thoughts and insights into the current state of the oil and gas markets. As the economy goes, that is what we are going to look for in oil and gas markets. – Dean ForemanThe demand for oil has been strong. The U.S. Petroleum demand in December 2022 was 20.5 million barrels per day. For 2022, oil demand grew by 2.2%. Going back to 2000, 2022 was the forth highest year for growth. It says that on the heels of the pandemic, $20 trillion dollars worth of economic stimulus has continued to have a pretty positive effect for the economy, despite Fed Funds rate hikes, despite concerns about a recession, despite individual sectors that have been under pressure. – Dean ForemanThe trend of demand outpacing supply has continued for over a year now with inventories that are at historic lows. Oil demand is growing because of the rebound in travel and the increase in cargo shipping by air. During the last six months in 2022, 1.5 million barrels per day (1.5% of the global market) of new oil globally came online from Government reserves. While there was some downward price movement, there was also long-term negative consequences as oil companies were discouraged to start new drilling and new infrastructure projects. This could lead to a global imbalance as there will not be enough infrastructure to meet demand. The official estimates for demand growth this year range between basically 1 million barrels per day or about 1% of the market, up to 1.7 million barrels per day. – Dean ForemanIn order to meet this demand, investment has to be made and drilling has to expand around the world to ensure that new supply can come to the market. Adding more context to this, the U.S. Energy Information Administration is predicting that global oil demand is expected to reach a record-high of 101 million barrels per day in 2023. The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve ended 2022 at the lowest point since 1983. When comparing 2022 to 1983, the U.S.’s oil consumption was more than 33% higher. There is little margin for error with solid oil demand and a dwindling Strategic Petroleum Reserve. When you factor in geo-politics and weather, the situation becomes even more unpredictable.In 2022, the U.S. dollar rose 6.23%. So far this year (2023) the U.S. dollar has begun to weaken. With a weakening U.S. dollar that is projected to weaken by 3% this year according to Bloomberg, oil is beginning to trade on local currencies. For Q1 2023, the trends to watch in the oil and gas markets are the Russia/Ukraine conflict, systemic risks to the global food supply and emerging markets debt.Wrapping up the conversation, Dean discuses the global economics and the impact it has on household budgets. Recorded on Tuesday, January 17, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

David Welch, Detroit Bureau Chief, Bloomberg and Author of Charging Ahead, General Motors, Mary Bara, and the Reinvention of an American Icon joined Grayson Brulte on The Road To Autonomy Podcast to discuss his 2023 outlook on the autonomous vehicle market. The conversation begins with David sharing his outlook for the autonomous vehicle market in 2023. David shares his thoughts on the market and insights into how investors are currently valuing autonomous vehicle companies.As the conversation evolves, Grayson asks David if it is time for Aurora to split the business in two and focus solely on autonomous trucking. I think there is so much of a focus on their trucking side that for all practical purposes it’s one company. I do not know that they need to split it, because I do not know if there is enough activity going on on the other side to make a difference. – David WelchIf Cruise and Waymo build a large enough of a lead in robotaxi deployments, there is the possibility that Aurora becomes a technology company for the trucking industry. If Aurora’s stock continues to decline, while at the sametime their technology continues to improve, a traditional trucking company could make a move and acquire Aurora. With all the moves being made in the autonomous vehicle industry, Microsoft is steadily making strategic investments that will help drive the growth of the company’s Azure cloud platform. Over the last 18 months, Microsoft has invested in Cruise, Gatik and Spartan Radar. Microsoft, this is not a venture cap fund, they have to see something before they put money in it. It’s a good sign for anyone who gets funded by them.– David WelchMicrosoft has an advantage when it comes to other cloud providers as the company does not have an in-house autonomous vehicle program. Amazon has a program with Zoox and Alphabet has a program with Waymo. For awhile, Zoox was at the forefront of every autonomous vehicle conversation, and then slowly overtime the company has quietly disappeared from the AV dialogue. What are Amazon’s plans for Zoox? Grayson and David discuss what Amazon’s plans for Zoox could be. Could Zoox’s autonomous technology be integrated into Amazon’s Rivian delivery vans? It’s a possibility as Amazon is major investor in Rivian. Another major question in the market is what happens to Lyft? Who steps in and buys the company? It’s not a profitable business. It’s way too expensive for what it is right now for anyone to buy it. – David WelchOr could an airline possibly step in and buy Lyft and integrate the company into their passenger operations? If they were to do this, the airline would need an autonomous vehicle strategy. Taking a broader look at the AV industry, David and Grayson discuss Motional and the company’s strategy to scale. Does Motional have enough capital to scale and compete against Cruise and Waymo?Then there is the second tier of autonomous vehicle companies led by May Mobility. May’s strategy to operate in rural suburban areas that lack public transit is winning over politicians, riders and investors as the company scales in these areas. I think it’s a very interesting company. – David WelchTesla is also an interesting company. Looking to the future does Tesla open the Dojo platform and does the company create a true SUV? Grayson and David discuss the possibilities. Wrapping up the conversation, David shares his thoughts on what he sees happening in the autonomous vehicle market over the next 12 months. Recorded on Tuesday, January 10, 2023--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matt Soule, Co-Founder & CEO, Parallel Systems joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss Parallel’s electric, autonomous freight rail system. The conversation begins with Matt discussing the founding of Parallel Systems.The energy efficiency of rail uniquely allows for reduction in energy and therefore reduction in CO2. – Matt SouleParallel Systems is working to re-imagine how freight moves on rail by going smaller and simpler with autonomous battery rail cars. The system is flexible and it works with legacy rail operators, which allows those operators further optimize their capacity.Parallel is developing a system that allows rail to expand their addressable market. – Matt SouleTo help rail become more competitive with trucks, Parallel’s system allows truck unit economics without the massive scale. Our economics do not require amortization over large amounts of freight. – Matt SouleThe system operates autonomously on rail routes that compete with drayage operations a platoon. The autonomous rail platoon will max out around 50 cars as it’s the most efficient means of moving freight on the Parallel system. Unlike traditional trains that can block road roadways for extended periods of time, Parallel’s contact-based platooning system allows for the cars to disconnect and reconnect as to not slow traffic for an extended period of time.When Parallel starts the process of commercializing their technology, the company wants to be a vendor to rail operators. They are not going to act as a service provider and compete with the traditional rail industry. During the dwell time when cars are loaded and unloaded, Parallel’s cars will be able to charge. To charge, the system will require 3 to 10 megawatts of charging capacity. Parallel cars will get around 500 range of mile with a 250 kilowatt battery. One of the major advantages of the Parallel system is the system’s ability to dramatically change the braking force, allowing the train to stop faster. What Parallel is doing is developing a braking system that does close the loop and we are able to dramatically change our braking force depending on the track conditions, the adhesion of the train wheel to the track, as well as how heavily we are loaded. We are trying to stop as fast as physics will allow us. – Matt SouleDynamic braking helps the system operate more safely. The Parallel approach to rail has caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Energy as Parallel was rewarded a $4.4 million grant to fund a 29-month advanced testing program with the goal of quantifying the environmental impact and the overall vehicle stability of their system. Wrapping up the conversation, Matt shares his opinion on the future of freight.Parallel is creating capacity for freight. – Matt SouleRecorded on Friday December 9, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Tully, Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Pilot Flying J joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss how Pilot Flying J is developing the travel centers of the future.The conversation begins with John discussing how Pilot Flying J will continue to prosper as Bloomberg New Energy Finance is projecting that road fuel demand will peak in 2027. Simply stated, our job is to provide the fuel, the amenities, for our customers where they want it. – John TullyWhether its gas, diesel, hydrogen or electric, Pilot Flying J will be providing their customers with the right fuel for their vehicle. For the professional over-the-road drivers, the company provides food, showers, parking and Wi-Fi. Over the next three years, Pilot Flying J will be investing over one billion dollars to upgrade the stores and the amenities offered to drivers and customers. In addition to upgrading the stores and amenities, Pilot Flying J is upgrading the infrastructure to support electric vehicles and electric heavy-duty trucks. The EV infrastructure is being rolled out across 500 locations with 2,000 charging stalls through a partnership with GM and EVGo. We are approaching this to try and help answer as a collective, with Pilot as part of that collective the range anxiety question. We are not just doing this where the highest utilization is, we are doing it where we can connect via the corridor urban areas to urban areas. – John TullyAs part of the rollout of EV charging stations, Pilot Flying J is focused on uptime. They want to ensure that when you show up, the chargers are online, working and convenient.We are putting in 350kw chargers with two hoses with the idea of being able to provide that premium service for our customers. – John TullyFor trucks, Pilot has a partnership with the Volvo Group to build a charging network for medium and heavy-duty electric trucks. While the partnerships with GM, EVGo and Volvo Group might seem exclusive, they are are not. The charging infrastructure being installed will be open to all drivers. What we are trying to do is setup an ecosystem that works for all of our customers. – John TullyIn addition to leaning into the future with fuels, Pilot Flying J is leaning into the future of autonomous trucks through an investment in Kodiak Robotics. As part of the investment in Kodiak, John joined the board. One of the defining factors of the investment was Kodiak’s culture and how it aligns with the Pilot Flying J culture. We think that autonomous trucking is solving a real problem that exists. We think that it is something that lives alongside our existing fleet customers and the drivers. Drivers are super core to us. It’s how can we continue to provide and improve what we are doing for our drivers while also looking ahead and seeing where our customers are heading and make sure that we can provide part of those solutions for the autonomous world as well. – John TullyWrapping up the conversation, John shares his insights into Pilot Flying J’s long-term strategy of fueling life’s journeys. Recorded on Tuesday December 6, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.