This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s great highway unlock, their Bay Area expansion to 260 square miles and the launch of commercial service at the San Jose Airport.

Despite the expansion, Waymo remains sharply vehicle-constrained. Bloomberg reported this week that the company is operating roughly 1,000 vehicles in the Bay Area, 700 in Los Angeles, 500 in Phoenix, 200 in Austin, and just 100 in Atlanta, for a total fleet of approximately 2,500 vehicles spread across all markets.

In the autonomous trucking market, Kodiak continues to demonstrate that the economics work. With 10 fully driverless trucks generating revenue in the Permian Basin, the company logged 5,200 paid hours last quarter, up 166% from Q2, a meaningful validation of the model.

Wrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Walt examine why technology leadership means nothing without scalable manufacturing partnerships and now how autonomous trucking is pulling ahead of robotaxis on business model execution, and what global expansion in Abu Dhabi and Singapore signals about the global competitive landscape.

Episode Chapters

0:00 Waymo Expands to Highways

3:58 Vehicle Supply

16:56 California Airports

19:28 Tesla FSD Update

21:42 Uber Ski

25:21 Kodiak

29:40 Foreign Autonomy Desk

30:40 Next Week

Recorded on Thursday, November 13, 2025

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.

Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s expansion into three new markets, Uber’s role in autonomy and Lyft’s growing infrastructure ambitions. 

Beneath the headlines, Tesla is aiming to once again reshape the entire autonomous driving industry with their AI5 chip, FSD Unsupervised deployment, and the expansion of their insurance business. As Tesla continues to focus on what’s next, Uber is sending mixed messages to the market while engineers across Silicon Valley begin exploring alternatives to Nvidia’s GPUs. 

Wrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Walt discuss what happens when the world’s largest autonomy players diverge on strategy and long-standing partnerships begin to falter.

Episode Chapters

0:00 Waymo’s Three City Expansion 

2:11 Waymo & Uber’s Relationship 

4:21 Managing Robotaxi Fleets

14:56 Robotaxis at Airports 

16:40 Uber’s Autonomy Messaging Strategy 

23:12 NVIDIA and the Growing Demand for new Chips

25:45 Applied Intuition 

28:19 Tesla

37:14 Foreign Autonomy Desk

40:02 Next Week

Recorded on Friday, November 7, 2025

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.

Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss NVIDIA’s ever expanding autonomy ambitions and the fracturing relationship between Waymo and Uber, which may signal the end of one of the industry’s most-watched partnerships. 

Jensen Huang’s latest GTC announcements further signaled that NVIDIA is moving beyond supplying compute to potentially building their own full autonomy stack and licensing it. Grayson and Walt trace this shift back to the early days NVIDIA’s automotive division and the evolution of its Hyperion platform, which is now positioned not only to power OEMs but also to compete directly with the very companies that rely on its GPUs to enable autonomous driving systems.

While NVIDIA appears poised to compete with its customers, Waymo and Uber’s partnership is showing signs of unraveling after Uber announced plans to deploy Lucid/Nuro autonomous vehicles in San Francisco next year, directly challenging Waymo on in their home market.

Grayson likens the move to “divorce court,” raising questions about how the companies will divide the Austin and Atlanta markets, where Waymo currently operates exclusively on Uber’s platform. The episode closes with updates on Aurora’s strategic pivot and the Foreign Autonomy Desk, covering Baidu’s expansion in Hong Kong, Uber’s European ambitions, and continued progress in Tesla’s FSD rollout.

Episode Chapters

0:00 NVIDIA's Autonomy Ambitions 

7:13 Waymo & Uber's Fracturing Relationship

9:35 Nuro's Upcoming Launch on Uber in San Francisco 

11:51 Gemini is Coming to Waymo

14:05 Boston's Autonomous Vehicle Blunder

15:43 Seattle's Challenging Political Environment 

17:34 Political Coalitions 

19:36 Aurora's Pivot

25:32 Tesla Robotaxi / FSD 14 Updates

30:04 Foreign Autonomy Desk

33:08 Next Week

Recorded on Thursday, October 30, 2025

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.

Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/

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 GM’s return to autonomy and the company’s long-term strategy for personally owned autonomous vehicles.

As GM once again re-enters the autonomous vehicle market, the company is signaling a new chapter, one centered on developing a hands-free, eyes-free driving system under the leadership of Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson, beginning with the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ.

GM’s evolution from Super Cruise to a fully realized personal autonomy platform represents more than a technological shift; it marks a strategic transformation in how the company approaches safety, profitability, and consumer trust. The automaker is rebuilding its autonomy strategy through a sharp focus on profitability, disciplined execution, and a renewed commitment to integrating autonomy into vehicles that consumers can own and enjoy.

Episode Chapters

0:00 The Road to Autonomy Introduction

0:23 GM's Renewed Autonomy Strategy

7:00 Super Cruise

11:35 Hands-Off, Eyes-Off

16:04 Policy

19:14 China

23:10 Hyundai IONIQ 5 Platform

25:30 Contract Manufacturing and Licensing

32:03 GM's New Computing Platform

40:46 GM in 2030

Recorded on Friday, October 24, 2025

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.

Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Tesla’s Q3 earnings call, NVIDIA’s strategic partnership with Uber, and GM’s surprising return to autonomy under Sterling Anderson’s leadership.

The conversation opens with Walt’s firsthand insights from Tesla’s Q3 2025 earnings call, where the company confirmed plans to remove safety attendants across “large parts” of Austin by year-end after accumulating 250,000 robotaxi miles.

Tesla also announced 8–10 additional markets coming online by year-end, including Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, following the company’s phased rollout playbook: safety-attended operations first, followed by fully autonomous service. Grayson projects more than 300 Model Y Robotaxis operating in Austin by mid-2026, potentially joined by 25–50 Cybercabs pending NHTSA exemptions.

The discussion then turns to NVIDIA’s newly announced partnership with Uber, which Grayson sees as signaling something much bigger than data sharing. He suggests NVIDIA could be positioning to acquire a leading autonomous driving developer such as Wayve, mirroring its CUDA strategy where software dominance separated it from competitors.

His thesis: NVIDIA will ultimately own and license an autonomy stack across the industry, creating existential risk for startups dependent on its compute. Walt explores the market dynamics and potential conflicts that arise when your chip vendor becomes your competitor, while noting that NVIDIA’s brand power could simultaneously validate the entire autonomy market.

The week also brought news from GM, which re-entered the autonomy race by announcing a 2028 “hands-off, eyes-off” system debuting in the Cadillac Escalade IQ. Sterling Anderson confirmed GM’s staged rollout plan: highways first, urban next, then full urban autonomy.

Closing out the episode, Grayson and Walt debut the Foreign Autonomy Desk, covering Baidu Apollo’s partnership with Swiss PostBus, WeRide and Uber’s shuttle launch in Saudi Arabia, May Mobility’s strategic investment from Grab for Southeast Asia expansion, and Waymo’s effort to bring UK safety advocates to California for test rides ahead of its potential London launch.

Episode Chapters

0:00 Tesla Q3 2025 Earnings

14:58 NVIDIA’s Autonomy Ambitions

20:59 Avride & Uber’s Autonomy Investment Strategy

23:09 GM is Back in Autonomy

28:46 Waymo Begins Manually Testing at EWR (Newark Airport)

32:14 Foreign Autonomy Desk

Recorded on Friday October 24, 2025

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.

Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Tesla’s continued FSD 14 updates, Waymo’s expansion to London and the growing political and infrastructure challenges shaping the next phase of robotaxi growth.

Walt shares his latest hands-on experience with FSD 14, including testing the new “Mad Max” mode, featuring more assertive lane changes, higher driving speeds, and improved autonomous parking. As Tesla refines FSD 14 in preparation for a wider release, Waymo continues to expand globally.

This week, Waymo announced plans to launch in London in 2026, marking its second international market and the first where it will compete head-to-head with Uber for robotaxi rides. If an expansion to London was not enough, Waymo also announced a partnership with DoorDash for the Phoenix market, signaling continued momentum in delivery automation.

Every robotaxi market presents unique challenges, and New York City is no exception. Political, regulatory, business, and energy constraints could slow Waymo’s path to launching a commercial service in the Big Apple as Grayson and Walt discuss NYC’s lack of energy infrastructure.

Closing out the conversation, they turn their attention to Europe where Stellantis has partnered with Pony.ai to deploy autonomous Peugeot vans in Luxembourg, a potential sign that Stellantis could perhaps be looking to re-enter the autonomous vehicle market.

Episode Chapters

0:00 FSD 14 Update

6:47 Robotaxi Mode

8:56 Rolling Stops

10:12 Waymo’s London Expansion 

13:10 Wayve

18:13 Waymo/DoorDash Partnership

21:50 NYC’s Energy Infrastructure 

27:08 Stellantis/Pony.ai Partnership

30:06 Waymo Driver

32:11 Next Week

Recorded on Friday October 17, 2025

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.

Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

David Doria, Director of Engineering – Automated Driving, Magna joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss Magna’s approach to developing autonomous driving systems.

As the automotive industry transitions toward software-defined vehicles that will eventually become fully autonomous, the core technologies driving this transformation are being built today.

On the road to autonomy, the evolution from Level 2 ADAS to more advanced autonomous systems is redefining not only how cars drive but also how they are designed, validated, and trusted. David underscores that autonomy will not arrive overnight and that it will scale through innovation, safety, and collaboration, beginning with advanced Level 2+ systems that are already on the roads today.

Episode Chapters

0:00 The Road to Autonomy Introduction

0:23 Changing Automotive Market

4:04 Maps

8:47 Sensors

14:13 Compute

17:07 End-To-End

22:02 Partnerships & Licensing Autonomous Driving Software 

25:16 Software

27:26 Automotive Standards 

32:12 Public Trust

36:28 Scaling Autonomy

Recorded on Friday, October 10, 2025

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.

Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Tesla’s FSD 14 release and Waymo’s potential market expansions. 

The episode begins with Walt sharing his firsthand experience testing FSD 14, showcasing its breakthrough ability to autonomously back out of driveways and park at destinations with a single tap. While impressive, he notes challenges remain with driveway precision and occasional cautious, jerky driving behavior that sets this version apart from previous releases.

As Tesla rolls out FSD 14, NHTSA has launched a preliminary investigation into FSD. Meanwhile, Waymo is looking to potentially expand to Minnesota, after the company hired four lobbyists as part of an effort to changes to state laws that still require human drivers in autonomous vehicles.

Across the Atlantic, Sweden has approved Tesla to test FSD on public roads, a clear signal that countries are beginning to embrace autonomy. Yet, in the U.S., significant opportunities remain untapped. From Chicago to Minneapolis, Charlotte to Tampa, major metro markets still await large-scale robotaxi deployments.

Episode Chapters

0:00 FSD 14

7:30 Preliminary NHTSA Tesla Investigation 

12:50 FSD Approval in Sweden 

14:56 Waymo Eyes Minnesota Expansion 

17:07 Potential Waymo Expansion Markets

22:18 Wayve Correction 

22:47 DoorDash

27:05 Lyft / Tensor Auto Partnership 

31:35 Aurora’s Warning Triangle Waiver

36:12 Next Week

Recorded on Friday October 10, 2025

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.

Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Varun Jain, Of Counsel, K&L Gates joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss why the next 15 months will define autonomous vehicle policy in America. 

With new leadership at NHTSA and growing interest in Congress, Varun outlines why the next 15 months will be pivotal for establishing a national autonomous vehicle framework. From updating outdated FMVSS standards to expanding autonomous vehicle testing authority, and with proposed legislation such as the Self-Drive Act, America Drives Act, and Autonomous Vehicle Acceleration Act, a comprehensive federal framework may finally be within reach.

Throughout the conversation, Varun emphasizes that the momentum for autonomy is shifting from concept to mainstream adoption. He and Grayson explore how public acceptance, economic opportunity, and clear messaging can drive the next wave of policy action, comparing the potential trajectory of autonomous vehicles to the rapid regulatory turnaround that benefited crypto. 

The discussion underscores that safety, job creation, and U.S. competitiveness all hinge on one thing; passing a national autonomous vehicle framework that includes trucks over 10,001 pounds.

Episode Chapters

0:00 The Road to Autonomy Introduction

0:23 Autonomous Vehicle Policy Outlook

12:37 Why is Now the Time for a National Autonomous Vehicle Framework?

17:31 Activating Public Engagement 

23:04 Job Creation 

24:45 Learning from the Crypto Industry 

28:51 Messaging 

31:40 What Will it take to get a National Autonomous Vehicle Framework?

35:56 Managing Regulations 

41:25 When go we get a National Autonomous Vehicle Framework?

Recorded on Friday, September 26, 2025

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.

Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss the accelerating global expansion of robotaxis. In London, Wayve is proving its adaptable, AI-powered autonomous system can navigate complex roadways, from double roundabouts to unpredictable pedestrian interactions without reliance on LiDAR.

Wayve’s strategy of working hand-in-hand with OEMs sets it apart from Tesla’s vision-only approach, allowing flexibility depending on manufacturer demands. At the same time, institutional investors are beginning to pay more attention to the autonomous vehicles, particularly focusing not just on the technology, but on broader ecosystem of energy, fleet management, and vehicle depreciation that will define the autonomy economy.

Meanwhile, the Middle East is rapidly positioning itself as an autonomy hub. Dubai has granted Baidu Apollo permits with an eye toward fully driverless operations by 2026, while at the same time Uber introduced an autonomous vehicle tier in Abu Dhabi.

As the U.K., EU, and UAE push ahead on autonomy, the race to define the global robotaxi market is intensifying, reshaping not just mobility, but the economics underpinning the future of global autonomous vehicle fleets.

Episode Chapters

0:00 Live from London

3:02 Wayve in London

10:47 UK & EU Autonomous Vehicle Regulations 

13:20 Moove & the Management of Autonomous Vehicles 

17:44 UK AV Market

18:47 Waymo in New York 

21:29 D.C. Shutdown 

22:48 D.C. Politics of Tesla FSD

26:23 Kodiak

28:21 Mobileye

32:47 EV Sales

34:32 AVs in the UAE

38:11 Next Week

Recorded on Thursday, October 2, 2025

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.

Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.