This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss WeRide trying to catch up to Waymo globally, Waymo preparing to deploy Chinese-made robotaxis in Texas and the CEO of FedEx Freight's open embracement of autonomous trucking.

As WeRide and Uber continue to expand throughout Europe and the Middle East together, Waymo continues to work towards deploying the Chinese-made Zeekr robotaxis now called the Ojai, with data suggesting they are now in Texas, in a politically risky move.

FedEx Freight CEO John Smith declared autonomous trucks ready for prime time, a signal Grayson reads alongside Amazon entering the freight business and Uber selling down another stake in Aurora. With Amazon running one of the most sophisticated freight networks in the world and FedEx now a standalone public company, the pressure on Uber Freight is building.

Wrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Walt Uber's continued European push by partnering with Autobrains on a Munich robotaxi service pending regulatory approval, and Saudi Arabia's PIF-backed Humain partnered with NVIDIA to deploy robotaxis in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Episode Chapters

00:00 SpaceX IPO

3:53 WeRide and Uber Expand Across Europe

7:39 Waymo Registers 45 Zeekrs in Texas

10:30 Waymo's New Tampa Depot

15:36 Uber Sells Down Its Aurora Stake

16:33 Why Amazon Hasn't Bought an Autonomous Trucking Company?

23:04 Avride Robotaxis in Texas

25:26 Serve Robotics Moves Into Laundry

26:29 Ferrari Rules Out Autonomy

28:56 Foreign Autonomy Desk

30:27 Next Week

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.

Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary applied intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.

Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

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 Signals, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss Uber's OEM-agnostic robotaxi strategy in Europe, FedEx Freight CEO's declaration that autonomous trucks are ready for prime time, and the AUKUS alliance accelerating undersea autonomy.

At GTC Taipei, Uber, Autobrains, and NVIDIA announced a strategic collaboration to launch a robotaxi program in Munich, pending regulatory approval, built on Autobrains' agentic AI and the NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion Level 4 platform. With no German OEM attached and Stellantis the likely production partner, the move extends Uber's asset-light playbook of contributing its demand network while pushing vehicle CapEx off its balance sheet and onto its partners.

On June 1st, FedEx Freight began trading as an independent standalone company, and CEO John Smith stated that its autonomous tractor-trailers can run yard to interstate to facility with 99.9% autonomy. By framing the primary barrier to commercialization as regulatory rather than technical, Mr. Smith flipped the industry narrative from can we build it to will we be allowed to use it.

Then there is AUKUS, where Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom formally initiated a trilateral project to develop unmanned undersea vehicles with an aggressive 2027 delivery target. The UUVs are designed for reconnaissance, strike, anti-submarine warfare, and protection of critical infrastructure like undersea cables, signaling that autonomy is no longer just a commercial endeavor but a core pillar of national security, though trilateral interoperability and contested deep-sea environments pose real execution risk.

Episode Chapters

00:00 Signal 1: Uber's European Robotaxi Strategy

33:19 Signal 2: AUKUS Accelerates Unmanned Undersea Autonomy

56:16 Signal 3: FedEx Freight CEO Flips the Script

01:09:26 AUTNMY AI

Autonomy Signals is presented by KPMG.

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.

Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary market intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.

Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

Subscribe today: 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.

Ryan Joyce, Co-Founder and CEO, GenLogs joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how the intelligence community’s playbook is being applied to trucking, building a ground truth layer for freight.

For nearly two decades, Ryan recruited assets inside terrorist networks as a CIA case officer, validating in the physical world what sources claimed in the digital one. The trucking industry runs on the same data gap. Carriers self-report, telematics that can be modified, and bad actors claim trucks that are not on the road, with no one able to prove otherwise.

GenLogs closes that gap with a nationwide network of privacy-enabled roadside cameras capturing just shy of twenty million images a day. The system uniquely fingerprints every truck in America and tracks it through changed DOT numbers, new decals, and swapped plates, exposing the chameleon carriers that burn down one identity and spin up another.

That ground truth is reshaping how insurers underwrite risk, how brokers vet carriers, and how law enforcement recovers stolen freight. In one case, partial trailer data was enough to track and recover a trafficked minor. The same correlation engine now maps where every autonomous trucking company operates, which lanes they run, and whose trailers they pull.

The future of freight will not be won by the operators who trust the digital record. It will be won by the operators who verify it against the ground truth.

Episode Chapters

00:00 From Tracking Terrorists to Tracking Trucks

04:10 Building the Ground Truth Camera Network

07:32 The Verification Layer for Insurance

11:01 The Scale of Cargo Theft and Fraud

14:16 Anomaly Detection and the Intelligence Playbook

18:34 Combating Human Trafficking

21:41 Fingerprinting Every Truck in America

26:22 90-Day Snapshot of Six Autonomous Trucking Companies

34:48 Protecting High-Value Loads

41:13 The Future of GenLogs in an Autonomous Fleet

45:04 AUTNMY AI

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.

Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary applied intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.

Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

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 widening lead, the Ojai (Chinese-made Zeekr robotaxi) rollout’s political fault lines, and the new Texas autonomous vehicle and truck database.

Waymo is actively preparing to deploy a fleet of Chinese-made Zeekrs across California and Arizona, now renamed Ojai, in blue and purple states, not a red state, at least not yet. Sticking to his original call that the Zeekr is an unforced error, Grayson lays out the emerging split where Jaguars head to red states and Zeekrs head to blue and purple ones.

With Magna now producing roughly 250 vehicles a month, Waymo is on pace for 6,000 cars by year-end, and Walt argues the real unlock comes when the sensor stack gets cheaper and Waymo begins to add more than 1,000 new vehicles a month on the road.

In Texas, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles launched the Automated Motor Vehicle Lookup, where any member of the public can look up the fleet size of any AV operator in the state along with any complaints that might be filed.

Wrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Walt discussed the launch of Wayve Labs, Zoox getting an undeserved pass thanks to Amazon and BYD’s willingness to compensate owners when God’s Eye is engaged during an incident.

Episode Chapters

00:00 Waymo Deploys the Ojai

06:40 Waymo Production Math

08:55 Waymo's Expanding Lead

15:15 Texas Automated Motor Vehicle Lookup

25:00 Wayve Labs

32:10 3,760 Miles Across Canada. No Interventions.

36:15 Zoox Gets a Pass

39:15 Foreign Autonomy Desk

40:20 Next Week

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.

Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary applied intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.

Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

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 Signals presented by KPMG Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss Figure AI’s first commercial humanoid deployment with Catalyst Brands, Stellantis L2++ partnership with Wayve, and Starship Technologies surpassing 10 million autonomous deliveries.

Figure AI recently signed a commercial agreement with Catalyst Brands to deploy humanoid robots at a JCPenney distribution center in Reno, Nevada, integrating Figure’s humanoids into Catalyst’s Joey Pouch sorting system.

As new management at Stellantis looks to turn around the global OEM, the company is pursuing a partnership over build strategy to accelerate their expansion into the L2++ market, with a targeted launch beginning with the Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Then there is Starship Technologies, which recently surpassed 10 million autonomous deliveries with 3,000 robots operating across more than 300 locations in eight countries. The company says autonomous delivery is already $3 to $4 cheaper than rider-based models, with a long-term target of $1 per drop, though sustained profitability will require lowering the teleoperator intervention rate to near zero while navigating city-by-city municipal regulation.

Episode Chapters

00:00 Signal 1: Figure AI Signs Commercial Agreement with Catalyst Brands

18:10 Signal 2: Stellantis Partners with Wayve to Deploy L2++ in U.S.

41:06 Signal 3: Starship Technologies Surpasses 10 Million Autonomous Deliveries

59:13 AUTNMY AI

Autonomy Signals is presented by KPMG.

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.

Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary market intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.

Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

Subscribe today: 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.

Michael Brandt, Co-Founder and CEO, RC Mowers joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss autonomous mowers and how they unlock scale for an industry that is labor constrained.

In the landscape industry, turnover is structural, the work is hard, and skilled employees tend to stay away, making this an ideal industry to deploy autonomy that unlocks scale and frees up human resources to focus on the work robots cannot do yet.

The perception stack on the autonomous mowers is LiDAR-first, enabling the mowers to operate day and night with equal capability. Airport operators were the first to recognize what that unlocks, deploying autonomous mowers at night when runways close, expanding the operational window on land that never stops needing maintenance.

As private equity continues to roll up the landscape industry, the use of autonomous mowers is growing as they solve the labor problem and unlock growth that the old model cannot deliver.

The future of autonomy in landscaping will not be won by the operators waiting for the price to come down. It will be won by the operators who are already three years ahead, deploying autonomous mowers today and building the next generation of the landscape industry.

Episode Chapters

00:00 AUTNMY AI

00:36 Founding of RC Mowers

05:56 Landscape Labor Crisis

09:21 Autonomous Mower Stack

11:54 Deploying Autonomous Mowers

20:46 Autonomous Mowing at Airports

25:47 Autonomous Mowing

32:11 Private Equity Landscape Industry Roll Up

38:12 Autonomy-First Landscape Company

46:48 American Manufacturing in Green Bay

50:54 The Future of RC Mowers

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.

Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary applied intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.

Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

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 undisputed global lead, the growing consumer-driven shift toward supervised ADAS (Level 2++), and autonomous trucking’s inflection point.

After spending the week in Silicon Valley, Walt shared his on the ground observations amidst the backdrop of Waymo’s noisy week where the company paused service in several cities and temporarily shut down highway access. Even though Waymo had a difficult week, the company’s underlying position is unchanged, as they remain the undisputed global leader.

Wayve announced a supervised L2++ point-to-point deal with Stellantis, indicating a potential pivot towards ADAS as a short-term revenue generator. Grayson views the broader growth of ADAS as being consumer-driven, with global OEMs looking to build their own version of Tesla’s FSD.

Wrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Walt discussed London gearing up for robotaxis and the global growth of Chinese robotaxis.

Episode Chapters

00:00 Walt's Silicon Valley Field Report

07:20 Why Tesla Won't Add LiDAR

11:05 Uber's AV Labs and the Data Question

13:13 ADAS Opportunity

18:40 Waymo's Noisy Week

23:45 London Further Opens the Door to Robotaxis

26:23 Build America 250 Act

29:44 Wayve x Stellantis

31:34 Foreign Autonomy Desk

34:44 Next Week

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.

Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary applied intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.

Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

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 Signals, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss the BUILD America 250 Act, XPeng’s mass-produced pure vision robotaxi, and the ESA-China SMILE mission reaching orbit.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves and Ranking Member Rick Larsen released the text of the BUILD America 250 Act, a bipartisan five-year surface transportation reauthorization bill that includes the first-ever federal framework for autonomous trucks.

The bill, if passed and signed into law in its current form, would provide regulatory preemption for autonomous trucking in the United States and authorize nearly $30 million annually through 2031 for workforce development grants.

Over in China, XPeng’s first mass-produced robotaxi rolled off its production line in Guangzhou. The robotaxi is built on the company’s GX platform and features a pure vision system powered by their in-house Turing AI chips.

Then there is the SMILE mission, a landmark collaboration between the European Space Agency and the Chinese Academy of Sciences that launched on May 19 from Kourou, French Guiana, aboard a Vega-C rocket. SMILE carries the world’s first space-borne soft X-ray imager and an ultraviolet aurora imager designed to observe and predict the space weather events that disrupt the global navigation satellite systems that autonomous vehicles, drones, and maritime vessels rely on for centimeter-level positioning.

Episode Chapters

00:00 AUTNMY AI

1:32 Signal 1: BUILD America 250 Act

37:39 Signal 2: XPENG Pure Vision Robotaxi

58:51 Signal 3: ESA/China SMILE Mission Reaches Orbit

Autonomy Signals is presented by KPMG.

--------

About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.

Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary market intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.

Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

Subscribe today: 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 newly announced expansion ahead of the World Cup, the suddenly accelerating deterioration of the Uber/Waymo relationship, and the partnerships that actually matter for Uber’s autonomous future.

As Waymo expanded their U.S. service area by 1,400 square miles across 11 cities, Uber continued to amplify both their direct and indirect attacks against Waymo in the media and in a self-published report about deploying autonomous vehicles.

Even as the deterioration of the relationship spreads into the news, Walt notes that the divorce narrative is already largely priced into Uber’s stock, but the more interesting question is what happens next with Uber’s remaining partners.

Nuro recently opened an engineering and partnerships office in Munich, home to BMW, with Lucid notably absent from the press release and personally-owned autonomous vehicles mentioned directly. On the WeRide earnings call, the company outlined European expansion plans including Slovakia and made the case for a unified Level 2 to Level 4 platform.

Wrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Walt discussed Volvo Autonomous Solutions’ new Dallas-to-Houston lane and what the true definition of autonomous and what defines supervised.

Episode Chapters

00:00 Waymo's World Cup Expansion

03:59 Waymo's Unforced Error

05:08 The Waymo/Uber Divorce Narrative Goes Mainstream

14:51 Nuro Opens Munich Office

20:26 WeRide Eyes a Unified L2-to-L4 Platform

22:47 Volvo Autonomous Solutions Dallas-to-Houston Lane

23:49 What Defines Driverless

31:39 Foreign Autonomy Desk

32:04 Next Week

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.

Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary applied intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.

Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

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 Signals presented by KPMG, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss Uber’s policy play to slow the deployment of robotaxis, BYD’s costly market share gain, and Unitree going sci-fi with a production-ready Mecha robot.

Uber recently released a policy paper titled Unlocking the Promise of Autonomy that emphasized that the transition to autonomy should move slowly through a phased hybrid model where mixed fleets of human drivers and autonomous vehicles share the platform for years.

The report appears to be a regulatory framework designed to penalize the autonomy-only business model currently being deployed by both Waymo and Tesla, positioning Uber’s hybrid approach as the only socially responsible path. In what appears to be a deliberate effort to slow down robotaxi deployments until Uber and their partners catch up.

Over in China, BYD updated their Seagull EV with an optional God’s Eye system, a roof-mounted LiDAR with Level 2+ capabilities running on NVIDIA Drive Orin for a starting retail price of $13,000. This is the first subcompact vehicle in the world equipped with premium autonomous hardware at this price point, putting pressure on Western automakers to compete. But the price point comes at a cost, as BYD’s Q1 2026 net profit dropped 55% and operating cash flow collapsed 67%.

Then there is Unitree, which launched the GD01 Man Transformable Mecha, a 1,100-pound, nine-foot pilotable robot that switches between bipedal and quadruped modes. Priced at approximately $650,000, the GD01 is a calculated engineering showcase flex ahead of Unitree’s anticipated Shanghai Star Market IPO targeting a $7 billion valuation.

The launch of the GD01 Man Transformable Mecha signals China’s ability to rapidly prototype, commercialize, and scale embodied AI hardware at a pace Western competitors are struggling to match.

Episode Chapters

00:00 AUTNMY AI

01:33 Signal 1: Uber's Policy Play to Slowdown Robotaxis

36:57 Signal 2: BYD's Costly Market Share Grab

55:41 Signal 3: Unitree's GD01 Man Transformable Mecha

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About The Road to Autonomy

The Road to Autonomy is the leading applied intelligence platform covering the convergence of automation, autonomy, and the Autonomy Economy.™.

Through our podcasts, newsletter, and proprietary market intelligence, we set the narrative for institutional investors, industry executives, and policymakers navigating the convergence of automation, autonomy, and economic growth.

Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

Subscribe today: 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.