Ed Olson, Founder & CEO of May Mobility joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how autonomous vehicles can eliminate the "rideshare lottery", the inconsistent, variable experience of traditional rideshare by deploying fleet-managed robotaxis that offer a predictable, premium service.

While the industry often focuses on vertical integration, May Mobility is executing an asset-light strategy focused on partnerships with Toyota, Uber, Lyft, and Grab to augment, rather than replace, existing networks.

To help these networks scale efficiently, May Mobility is prioritizing hybrid vehicles to maximize asset utilization, effectively bypassing the downtime and infrastructure costs associated with EV charging.

Episode Chapters

0:00 May Mobility Expands to Asia with Grab

1:54 May Mobility's Partner & Deployment Strategy

4:43 Weather & Culture

12:48 Service Areas & Vehicles

19:12 The Hybrid Decision

22:15 Vehicle Platforms

25:15 On-Board Compute

29:07 Deploying Robotaxis at Scale

32:23 May Mobility Playbook

38:26 Autonomy is Growing

45:22 Next Year

Recorded on Tuesday, November 25, 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 “Thriller in the Big D” as Waymo upstages Uber’s party in Dallas. The day before Uber was set to announce its commercial launch with Avride in Dallas, Waymo stole the spotlight by announcing they went driver-out in the same city. 

During the episode Grayson and Walt analyzed the fallout from this timing, including Uber’s “marketing fail” where a safety driver was spotted in promotional footage, and debate whether Avride’s limited 9-square-mile launch is a legitimate business move or just another “science project”.

Beyond the drama in Texas, they dove into the broader race to scale, questioning if adding a few hundred cars in new markets Houston, Baltimore, and St. Louis truly counts as commercial scaling. As Waymo announces new markets, Sterling Anderson is aggressively hiring at GM and the autonomous trucking market is beginning to heat up.

Episode Chapters

0:00 The Thriller in Big D featuring Waymo, Avride and Uber

5:17 Autonomous Vehicle Messaging 

7:01 Avride / Uber’s Dallas Service Area 

10:14 No New Waymo/Uber Markets, So Far

13:50 Waymo’s Rapid Expansion 

18:56 Waymo’s Six Stages of Autonomy

20:26 No Waymo Commercial Launch for Art Basel 

21:49 Will Tesla Robotaxis Ever Be Available on Uber?

23:06 FSD Updates

25:00 Sterling Anderson’s Growing Role at GM

29:04 Wayve Acquires Quality Match 

29:41 Foreign Autonomy Desk

30:13 Waymo’s Continuing Zeekr Issue 

32:21 Autonomous Trucking

33:50 Next Week

Recorded on Friday, December 5, 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.

Hugh Nguyen, Partner, Automotive Technology & Mobility, KPMG and Lerrel Pinto, Co-Founder, Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI) joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss why the immediate future of humanoid robotics lies in enterprise applications, rather than consumer homes.

Powering the humanoids is the software "brain" and system integration, which are becoming the primary differentiators over commoditized hardware.

As humanoids scale, the timeline for adoption is accelerating; Lerrel predicts the deployment of one million robots by 2030, driven by acute labor shortages and the economic practicality of enterprise use cases compared to the regulatory hurdles of the consumer market.

Episode Chapters

0:00 Humanoid Robot Market

6:44 Humanoid Due Diligence

9:40 Humanoid Value Chain

12:08 Humanoids Size and Hands

16:52 Building Humanoids

18:52 Humanoid Personalities

20:24 Managing Humanoid Risk

22:24 Humanoid Fleets

25:36 Humanoid Use Cases

29:58 China

33:20 Humanoid Policy

38:42 Chips

45:44 Deploying Humanoids in the Workplace

49:28 Future of Humanoids

Recorded on Thursday, November 6, 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 Uber and WeRide's fully autonomous launch in Abu Dhabi, marking Uber's first robotaxi deployment without a safety driver outside the United States.

On WeRide's earnings, the company announced a fleet of 1,600 autonomous vehicles with 750 robotaxis, while Pony.ai announced plans to triple its fleet to 3,000 by end of next year through its Bolt partnership. As Chinese robotaxi companies expand globally, the scaling question emerges: who grows the fastest?

It was another big week for Waymo as the California DMV approved a massive service area expansion that will come with infrastructure challenges and a need for thousands of additional vehicles if Waymo decides to ultimately operate in the approved area.

Later the conversation shifts to Tesla, where Walt shares his firsthand experience with FSD 14.2 in Mad Max mode in New York City. Both Grayson and Walt make predictions on Tesla removing the safety attendant in Austin and expanding to new markets including Arizona, Florida, and potentially Las Vegas by end of next year.

Episode Chapters

0:00 WeRide and Uber Go Fully Autonomous in Abu Dhabi

3:08 WeRide Earnings

6:33 Robotaxi Volumes and Business Models

10:13 Waymo's California DMV Expansion Approval

14:01 Waymo's Santa Monica Depot Noise Issues

20:20 Tesla Robotaxi Scale Plans

24:31 Tesla FSD 14.2 Update

27:52 Do We Want to Drive Anymore?

31:25 Next Week

Recorded on Wednesday, November 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.

Mark Seeger, Founder & Co-CEO, Glydways joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how a mesh network of private, on-demand autonomous pods can solve global urban congestion at a fraction of the cost of traditional transit.

While today’s narrative currently centers around robotaxis, the real breakthrough may come from rethinking the physics and economics of mass transit through disaggregation. Instead of relying on infrastructure-steered legacy rail systems that lose money on every ride, Glydways has developed an autonomous pod system that utilizes lightweight, pedestrian-grade infrastructure at roughly 10% of the cost of light rail. In other words, replacing a $2 billion-per-mile problem with a $20 million-per-mile solution.

Episode Chapters

0:00 Founding Glydways

7:10 Economic Impact of Glydways

12:24 Incumbent Lobbyists 

15:30 Foreign Markets 

18:54 Glydways Infrastructure 

26:43 Trust & Safety 

35:14 Glydways Network

46:09 Glydways Cost Comparison 

49:38 Future of Glydways

Recorded on Tuesday, November 18, 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 accelerated nationwide expansion with new markets, Minneapolis, Tampa, New Orleans, Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando getting ready to come online, while breaking down and coin Waymo’s Six Stages of Autonomy.

As Waymo expands, competition is brewing in Dallas where Avride in partnership with Uber and Lyft in partnership with Mobileye will begin to operate commercial robotaxi services later this year and into next year, as Dallas begins to emerge as a major robotaxi market.

Beyond Waymo, the episode explores broader industry signals, from sidewalk delivery robots that are scaling, to Zoox’s extremely limited San Francisco deployment despite Amazon resources, and the accelerating Chinese robotaxi expansion into Europe.

Episode Chapters

0:00 Waymo’s On-Going Expansion 

2:21 Waymo’s Disney World Opportunity 

8:04 Waymo’s Six Stages of Autonomy 

14:45 Waymo’s Upcoming Dallas Launch 

18:08 Dallas Robotaxi Competition 

20:36 Waymo’s Current Political Issues 

25:09 Scaling Delivery Robots 

28:41 Zoox Has Scale Ambitions 

32:34 Foreign Autonomy Desk 

33:21 Next Week

Recorded on Thursday, November 21, 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.

Hugh Nguyen, Partner, Automotive Technology & Mobility, KPMG joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the emerging wave of autonomous vehicle partnerships, the hidden value in fleet operations, and the coming M&A consolidation that will reshape the industry.

As the autonomous vehicle ecosystem accelerates through a phase of rapid partnership formation, the real value lies “below the line” with fleet operations, depot management, safety protocols, and operational expertise that rarely makes headlines. 

While the market fixates on vehicle counts and technology partnerships, the proprietary knowledge of how to actually deploy and scale robotaxi operations at profitable unit economics represents the true competitive moat. Hugh predicts the next 18-24 months will see continued partnership proliferation across global markets, followed by strategic consolidation driven not by headline M&A deals, but by precision talent acquisition and operational capability roll-ups. 

The winners will be those who control fleet operations, understand regulatory navigation, and can scale profitably. Capabilities that are increasingly attracting investor interest as the industry matures beyond the cult of the founder and towards operational excellence.

Episode Chapters

0:00 KPMG's Thoughts on Autonomous Vehicles

6:04 Autonomous Vehicle Partnerships

15:31 Emerging M&A Activity

23:48 What Happens When a Partnership Doesn't Work?

25:47 Autonomous Vehicle Fleet Management

31:45 Autonomous Vehicle Asset Rollup

40:10 The "Passport" Model

47:17 Cult of The Founder

48:54 M&A Outlook

Recorded on Thursday, November 6, 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 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.