Waymo's Co-CEO on Its New Uber Partnership, Safety, and Driverless Trucking — With Tekedra Mawakana

Tekedra Mawakana is the Co-CEO at Waymo. She joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the company's new partnership with Uber, which is making Waymo's driverless cars available through its app. We also discuss the safety of driverless vehicles, food delivery, Waymo's place within Alphabet, when these cars will drive on icy roads, the potential for driverless trucking, and more. Tune in for a revealing conversion with one of self-driving's top leaders. -- You can subscribe to Big Technology Premium for 25% off at https://bit.ly/bigtechnology Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Waymo's co-CEO joins us to talk more about a new partnership that the company is making with Uber and plenty more right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial to go inside a large scale agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today.

• 0:46Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:14Speaker 01

  LinkedIn presents.

• 1:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana is here with us. We're going to talk about this new partnership that Google-owned ride autonomous company is making with the ride-hailing company Uber and plenty, plenty more. We love to get into this stuff and I have so many questions to ask. So it's great that you're here, Tekedra. Welcome to the show.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Alex. Excited to be here.

• 1:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, great to have you. Okay, let's get into the fact that autonomous driving, if you read the headlines, is a real menace in society. So here's, here's one from October 3rd. The San Francisco Standard tweeted, "Breaking: A woman suffered traumatic injuries after being trapped under a cruise robot taxi in downtown San Francisco Monday night," a fire department spokesperson said. Okay, you click the tweet, you read in the article, you find out the woman suffered those injuries after she was hit by a human driver and then was trapped under the cruise. August 18th, sorry, I'm gonna, you know, we'll talk about cruise to begin with, like, you know, so we won't have to like ask you to explain each incident for Waymo, but a cruise

• 2:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  robot taxi hit a San Francisco fire truck, August 18th, and this is the cruise statement, "One of our cars entered the intersection on a green light and was struck by an emergency vehicle." August 15th, oh, this is actually kind of funny, a cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco. You read the headlines and you'd really think that there's a serious safety problem with these cars, but then you read the stories and you realize, actually, it's just human drivers causing chaos here. So just explaining, you're the co-CEO of Waymo, I would say probably the biggest autonomous driving car company in the world, why is everybody against your new format?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you for that. I think it's really important to start with safety. So, you know, I think part of the answer to your question, and you sort of, it was covered in there, is, you know, we are pretty accepting of the state of the roads today, right? I mean, the fact that 43,000 people were killed on the US roads in 2022 alone, I think there is this, because we accept that, which we don't at Waymo, but because we as society accept that, there's then this hypersensitive reaction to what happens with autonomous vehicles.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  But at our company, we really feel like because safety is urgent, we should only be building the Waymo driver to meaningfully improve safety, as well as accessibility and access to green transportation. So we really hold safety as our highest priority. We need people to be able to get safely from point A to point B.

• 4:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  And we need to improve the roads overall. And it's not surprising, though, that for a new technology in the kind of sort of status quo that we have, to receive this kind of scrutiny, because so few people have actually experienced the Waymo driver. And so I think when you take the state of our roads, our complacency about it, and then you don't focus on a company like Waymo where safety is urgent, and where we have driven, you know, millions of RO miles and we haven't had any of these sort of incidents, I think it makes sense that there's a lot of consumer confusion.

• 4:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. I mean, so you're saying that because people say 43,000 people die because of human drivers a year, they sort of say that's fine. And then, but then, but because, then there's the freak out here. I mean, it just doesn't seem to make any sense. Like, it shouldn't be, you know, I mean, we should in fact have a little higher tolerance for autonomous vehicles killing people if we're so good with humans killing so many.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  I don't, I just don't think it's the way that it works. I think there's a lack of familiarity. And I also think it's our job every day in this space to earn the trust of the public. And so, you know, we published a paper on our first 3.8 million RO miles with Swiss Re, which is the largest, one of the world's largest reinsurers. The reason we did that, you know, they use 600,000 claims as well as 125 billion miles of human driving. We have to bring to bear the evidence that we have to demonstrate that we're safe. What they were able to establish in a statistically significant factor is that we are safer than

• 5:52Speaker 01

  a human driver. That's an important fact for us to be able to be transparent about.

• 5:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  How much safer?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  I think people being unfamiliar with the technology is understandable. I think the question is, how do we bring people along on this journey? And what you started with are some of the worst headlines and the, you know, loudest market and the-

• 6:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is the conversation, though. That's the conversation that's being had.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  And it's because our industry has to work to earn it. And that's what we're doing at Waymo. We're working to earn it. We're being transparent. We're putting the data out there and we're demonstrating that we are safer than a human driver.

• 6:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, how much safer are you than a human driver?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Well, that was based on 3.6 RO miles in that study. We're continuing to accumulate miles, so we'll continue to put out more and more transparency around that. But we obviously want to keep going. I mean, we're not resting on our laurels there. In our first million RO miles, we also published a paper demonstrating that we hadn't caused any injuries. And so I just think there's a, there is a need for us to acknowledge, which is why you hear me doing that. We have to acknowledge. People are worried.

• 7:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  You don't have a magnitude, though, of like, yes, it was a study that you referenced, but is there a magnitude of safe, is there a magnitude that the autonomous cars are safer than human-driven cars? Or is it just like, looking at them side by side, you can say, this study says that they are safer, but you can't really tell us how much?

• 7:27Speaker 01

  We are safer, and the only reason I'm not getting into magnitude is because we're continuing to accumulate miles.

• 7:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And so, obviously, the more miles we have, the more veracity of all the studies that we put forward. The fact that we are statistically significantly safer than a human driver is huge, because two years ago, people said, robots are not going to be safer than human drivers.

• 7:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, having driven in the car, I do believe that they are, but I feel like Waymo and the whole cause would be better served with getting, you know, more data out there. You know, even though it's continuing to accumulate, it would be good to have more data and actually more transparency around what happens when things do go wrong, because it is going to take, you know, you're going to be facing a hostile press, hostile public in some way. I mean, I was just looking at J.D. Power. They said that only 20% of people are actually comfortable having AV technology tested on roads near them. So there's a significant burden there, and to have, you know, better data and more transparency around this stuff, I think, is crucial. I'm just going to point you to one example. Would be great if you could comment on it.

• 8:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's see, so I learned about this after, like, you know, riding in the Waymos and singing the praises, that there was a WeMo robot taxi in San Francisco. It was in autonomous mode, and it killed a small dog in San Francisco, and that's according to an incident report filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

• 8:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it says the incident appears to have been unavoidable based on information provided in the report. Can you shed any more detail about what happened there and how is that actually unavoidable?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  I know. I think that is all of the information about that incident. I think when something is occluded and sort of appears in front of the car at the last second, it is unavoidable. Obviously, we are, we take this very seriously. We've gone back in simulation and in real world and assessed it. I think to your prior point around data, you were specifically asking about the benchmark to human driving. But I think that, you know, this, what the Swiss Re study demonstrated was that 100% of bodily injury claims were avoided. I mean, that's, that's

• 9:51Speaker 01

  not the question you're asking, but I want to, you know, you're sort of making this point of like, we have to be, we have to bring all the data to bear. You know, 76% of property injury, you know, 100% of personal injury. I think that the question is, and I mean, I think the question is, what is the data that gives the public confidence?

• 10:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  And the reason I like this conversation is you started with what people are most worried about are isolated incidences that are happening at a far lower rate than with human drivers. And so what we know is some of it is about the data, but some of it is also how you enter a community. How much you engage with the community, how much you seek feedback from the community. And so that's been a huge part of how we enter the community. And so when this incident happened, obviously, we were able to reach out to community members and partners and have them understand what happened in the case of that.

• 10:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, could you imagine a headline every time a human driven car hit an emergency vehicle or landed in a puddle of cement? I mean, human pedestrians end up in cement more often than these cars do. But it is, it is the case. And I think you've hinted at it, that there is this sort of man versus machine or human versus robot dynamic. It is so interesting. I mean, why do you people? And I kind of did a lot about this when I was at, when I was at BuzzFeed. It was like one of my like mini beats, which wasn't really official, but I ended up just like fighting robots everywhere I could for our YouTube channel. So I was trying to steal from the DoorDash robot. I took on a football, one of those football tackle dummy robots and

• 11:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  I ended up tearing my hamstring, but that wasn't the robot's fault. It's a human problem. And I'll tweak and then it, then it went a few weeks later. But I think that like, we do have this, and it was interesting because like, as you start to see this stuff, make their way onto the streets of San Francisco, people started freaking out. What do you think it is? I mean, is it a jobs thing? Or is it just a natural fear that people have of anything robotic? I mean, you, you're in this every day. Where do you, what do you think the roots of this conflict are?

• 12:07Speaker 01

  I think it's unfamiliarity. And I actually think it's totally natural. I mean, the thing I don't know, it's hard to trust. And then people get into a Waymo car for their, even skeptics, they get in the first time and they have two reactions. One is, the future is here. And two is, what was I so worried about? Like, they, they start to ask themselves, you know, did I think it was going to be a roller coaster ride? Like, what did I think was going to happen in a car that drives, abides by the law and drives on the road? And so I, I don't, I'm not super surprised that there's this, where there's lack of familiarity.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  There's this suspicion, and I think we have to work to earn that trust.

• 12:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, this is one of the things that this JD Power survey about autonomous vehicles in the roadway started to get into, which is that people actually become much more amenable to these things once they ride in them. And that certainly happened to me. I mean, the first few seconds that I hopped in a Waymo, I was just like, is this thing going to hit the brakes? And then you see it hit the brakes more smoothly and with less jerk than a human driver. And next thing you're like, I never want to ride in a different car again. And in fact, it got to the point where I knew the Waymo because of, I guess, the way that your team has programmed them was going to take 10, 15 more minutes to get from point A to point B than an Uber.

• 13:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And to me, that was totally worthwhile. I was like, well, I can sit in this car and it could be on my phone without getting nauseous, and that's fine.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  That's great. That's great. I'm just would love for you to keep going and explain all the ways that you enjoyed the experience. But no, I mean, I really appreciate that. And I think you've hit on something, which is the, you know, we've had such a big conversation around the technology and it becoming capable of driving itself, that we're only starting to have the conversation around consumer delight. Like, what is it really like to ride in a fully autonomous, you know, ride handling service that gets you from point A to point B with like, all your friends in the back screaming at the top of your lungs to your favorite song and not have that other human there that you have to

• 14:25Speaker 01

  interact with or sort of be polite to. And, you know, it's a very different experience. And that's why I say, I think it's exciting to be rolling it out to more customers, more riders, and getting the feedback.

• 14:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is interesting how it's evolved because, or how your experience evolves, because at first you're like, I'm just in a regular taxi. And, you know, you have like, you know, volume at a very manageable level, conversation to a minimum. And then my wife and I, like, the next week, we're riding again. And I wanted to show my friends a video of what was going on. It was like evening in San Francisco. We put on the EDM playlist. We turned the volume up and we had a mini dance party there. And we didn't have anybody else that we were going to annoy, except I guess our friends who got the video from us. And they are like, what's wrong with you?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  No, I mean, you've really hit on something. In our early days of introducing music casting, we actually found, we were doing castings before streaming, and we found that people were so much more likely to take over their music in Oweimo than, um, than in traditional ride sharing, because it's, it's not someone else's car. You know, don't feel like you're getting in and taking over someone else's space. It's your space. It's your ride. It's your car. Um, and that's one of the most exciting. And there will be other, you know, over time, we'll have other features and offerings that I think take, take into account how people feel when they're in their own space.

• 15:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's not fully your space, though, because there are two cameras, at least two cameras, inside the cabin. And I had a moment where I hadn't put my seatbelt on in the allotted time. I guess I was really getting comfortable with the safety at a certain point. And I got a call from Oweimo Support, and the guy's like, can you put your seatbelt on?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 16:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  I was like, sure. I was like, is that a sensor? Can you see me? He's like, oh, I can see you. And I like, held up four fingers and said, well, how many fingers am I holding up? And he goes, you're holding up four fingers, sir. Are we ever gonna get, gonna get to a point where there's not gonna be that type of babysitting in these cars?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Um, I don't know. It's a really interesting question. It's, as you said, it's for safety. I mean, looking in to make sure people have put on their seatbelts, especially when we know that people may be vision impaired, people may be inebriated. I mean, just because you're not driving doesn't mean that, um, there isn't the world around the vehicle. And we want our passengers to be safe. So that kind of post-load check, to make sure that you have your seatbelt on, that still feels really important. And also, it's teaching us something about whether, and I'm not talking about you in particular, because I've actually gotten that reminder a few times myself, with excitement, showing it to a friend, and then they're like, excuse me, can you put your seatbelt on? Is, um, whether or not

• 17:10Speaker 01

  people will behave most safely in a car that they perceive to be very safe, because we still need people doing the safety things within the vehicle, like putting on their seatbelts, like not touching the steering wheel. And so I think for now, we're gonna keep doing it. You know, we're at the risk of, um, You being surprised by it, which we do tell people in the video, if people listen to it when they first join, what to expect. We say there are these cameras and we're not listening to any of your conversations, but if you push the button, we can hear you. I think all of that's really important for people to start to think about. It is their space and we are gonna do what's safe.

• 17:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  When you talk about the delight side of things, I wonder if, are you watching the developments in the large language model space, the fact that computers are now can really converse with us a lot better? And are you thinking about ways to like make this not only a robo taxi, but kind of like a full on robot with personality, where people can sort of speak to it? And I don't know, just a thought.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not something we're spending a huge amount of time thinking about right now, mostly because we're trying, I mean, it's so nice. I actually love, I love what you just did because sometimes in my days, I think, how can we move past this major, you know, challenge that we have, which is to make the driver work in every scenario on the roads and for every rider to feel safe and have a great experience. And then what happens is someone gets in the car and they're like, have you ever thought about? And it's kind of like that challenge is behind us and we're on to the next thing. So of course, we're always thinking about how to make the experience more delightful, how to interact more with our riders, but nothing specific at this moment.

• 19:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you're still trying to figure out how to make this thing be able to navigate an icy road. That makes sense. So you are announcing a new partnership with Uber, which to me is really interesting because having used your app, like it's actually, it's better than an Uber app. You call it, it doesn't decline and it tells you the exact amount of time that this car is going to get to you. And it does take a while for that car to reach you. So to me, it would seem like you're actually in a better spot to replace Uber and, you know, use any available vehicle to make sure the car gets to people more quickly as opposed to say, hey, we're gonna, you know, it's giving Uber such an advantage

• 19:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  to go ahead and work through Uber. So talk a little bit about the partnership and why the decision to partner with Uber versus just bolster what you have now.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, we think it's really exciting to partner with Uber for a few reasons. One, first and foremost is there are people who that's where they're going to start every time. They want ride hailing, right? They're going to open their phone and they're going to go to their Uber app. It's, you know, the way they get around town. And this partnership is specifically in Phoenix. And so it gives us another way to get Waymo One in front of those riders. The riders who haven't expressed a huge interest in autonomous are perfectly fine with ride hailing. So that's an important learning for us. When they're told they'll have the chance to ride in a Waymo, do they take it? Are they excited about it? And do they keep coming back from it? And so that's exciting for us to understand. It's also

• 20:36Speaker 01

  exciting for them to understand, right? I mean, this is not a business that they're directly involved in. They obviously have other companies on their platform. And so that's what's exciting for us. I think secondly, and you alluded to this a bit, is, you know, there's going to be a hybrid world out there for a long time. People are going to have multiple apps on their phones. We've seen it already with Uber and Lyft. You know, we want to learn everything we can about what makes this incrementally more interesting to a rider, especially comparing it to if they come to us directly, and if they come to us through the Uber app. And so they, there are tons that they want to learn, and I'm sure Dara can talk to you about that. There's tons that we want to learn, and it's just

• 21:21Speaker 01

  exciting to be two companies that are leaders in our spaces, that have this willingness to partner and learn in these early days. Definitely shouldn't take it as a signal that we aren't interested in the markets where we haven't partnered, doing it all ourselves. And I agree with you. I mean, we're driving demand. We have satisfied riders in San Francisco. We've, you know, just started rolling out in Los Angeles. So we will definitely find ourselves in both worlds where we will partner, and where we will go to market directly ourselves. And obviously, we're doing that also in Phoenix, going, staying in market directly as Waymo One. So it's kind of a, you know, it's a, it's an evolving time, I'd say, for the space. And, and you're kind of asking me the end

• 22:05Speaker 01

  point question, which is, why not go it alone? I think all of this is going to help us determine what that arc looks like over time.

• 22:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, Dara, if you're listening and you want to come on, you're welcome to. And we can talk about the previous conversations we've had about Uber here. And maybe you have a response to those as well. But to me, it's interesting. It's almost like Uber is giving you a chance to experiment here and sort of, you know, you're at this place where like, maybe we want to replace Uber. Maybe we just want to partner with them. And they're like, yeah, why don't you, you know, we'll help you evaluate that. I mean, I can see this becoming a point where, I mean, obviously this stuff is expanding. And this does seem like it's going to come to a point where it's going to be like, you know, you, you're either gonna hail an Uber like a human, or you're gonna hail an autonomous car. There was no sensitivity there or no hesitance of them being like, well,

• 22:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  how can we be sure you're not going to replace us?

• 23:01Speaker 01

  No, I think, um, I think partnering

• 23:07Speaker 01

  is an important part of this ecosystem. I think whether you're talking about autonomy or electrification, everyone's trying to figure out what that in-state looks like. And we're building a generalizable driver. Like the Waymo driver is certainly going to power our own fleet of vehicles first. But we've always said this driver will be made available to, for other business applications. We've talked about personal car ownership, delivery.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  And so to, to me, it's, it's really smart for a company that's been running a ride hailing service that needs drivers to think about how to learn what it is like to partner with the Waymo driver. What does it require? And what does that evolution look like over time?

• 23:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I was speaking with Harry Campbell, who's the rideshare guy. I'm sure you're familiar with him. What he mentioned was, we shouldn't expect, even if this stuff takes off, we shouldn't expect a mass unemployment of human drivers or even Uber drivers, because you'll have this baseline, right? The thing about the Uber model is it surges. And you'll have this baseline of autonomous vehicles always online. But you're not going to like spin up another like 1,000 cars in a city during rush hour. And that could be the place where the human drivers step in and take those,

• 24:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  you know, high, high-priced fares. Does that, does that sound right to you?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  I I would agree, but for a slightly different reason. I mean, we're just talking about, forget about Uber and Waymo. It's just a fixed fleet versus, you know, a flex fleet, right? And there you're you're surging prices and you're bringing drivers out of their homes or into their gigs. And here, we're actually managing a fleet of vehicles that have the Waymo driver on them. So I think what he says is right. It's the just the economics and the physics of those two business models. I think our goal, though, is to have the right size fleet for a market to be able to meet the demand where it is. There will be peak and off-peak, and we don't have to pay drivers during off-peak to drive around.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  And so it's it's just a very, so I think it's a slight oversimplification of what I think are two very different business models. We won't be paying people when they don't have a fare, there isn't a person in the car, the car can park and not be driving, so the deadhead miles are a lot fewer. And for us, obviously, fleet optimization utilization is key, very different than when you can surge.

• 25:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  You mentioned that you're trying to build for every use case, including personal ownership of these vehicles. And that does boggle my mind a little bit because I couldn't imagine why you'd want to own one of these cars if you get to a state where I open up the Waymo app and I hit hail and it just shows up to me within three minutes. I mean, what would be the possible justification of wanting my own car if I'm able to do these rides with with you?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that, you know, vast majority of vehicles, vehicle miles traveled globally are still with people who own their cars. And so while I agree with you, and I think there's huge benefits, and I also think there's a lot of room here for us to usher in a whole new group of people who haven't thought about not owning cars in the way that you just described. But I still think there's a huge number of people who want to own cars, and that's okay. And for those people, they should have access to the safest driver or the safest technology available. And so we think of that as like our longest, longest, longest lead bet. But also automotive companies are interested in having access to this technology.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  And we have in the past announced partnerships where we would explore this with OEMs. And we think that's, you know, important as they think about their future roadmap, positioning ourselves to be a partner to them.

• 26:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, that'll be interesting. I mean, it'll be, I think, part of the reason why people like to own cars is they like to drive them. So if you don't drive them, I don't know, we'll see. Do you, do you, so you'd also mentioned delivery. This is also, you know, in some ways become Uber's bread and butter. Did you have to make any like, promises to them that you wouldn't get into delivery in Phoenix if they let you do the cars? Or was there any discussion on that front?

• 27:20Speaker 01

  No, actually, our agreement includes delivery. So we're also going to be testing some of the Uber Eats delivery with, on our platform or on their platform with our vehicles. And again, that's, you know, we've done this in San Francisco. I see your expression. We've done this in San Francisco. We had a deal with Albertsons and we did delivery with Safeway stores. And as you can imagine, for us, it's figuring out like, will people come out of their houses to get the food out of the car? You know, is that extra step compelling? Or prohibitive? And we learned that it's not prohibitive. It's actually really interesting to people. And I think,

• 28:02Speaker 01

  you know, people want, people who are mindful of sustainability, want an EV bringing, you know, their groceries and their food to their home. And they also don't hate the idea of not interacting with a human. Not tipping was what, you know, one of the areas that we've heard. And so I think there's a, an opportunity there for us to learn with Uber too.

• 28:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So they all get a notification and they kind of walk out, open the door and there's their food sitting in the backseat.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's interesting. What happened with the Albertsons?

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was great. It was fantastic. A lot of people in the city really liked, yeah, it was a set timeframe.

• 28:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, so why didn't it renew?

• 28:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why, why did it not renew?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Um, it was just the plan to do it and learn. Yeah, it wasn't, there was nothing bad happened. That was, that was the plan of record. And it could, you know, TBD. No, I was just saying, saying nothing prohibits us from doing others in the future.

• 29:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I saw it was your last LinkedIn post and you haven't posted since then. It's been like two years. So I was just like, all right, maybe this was the key. You're just saying, well, to hell with it. I'm not.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  No, I posted. It's my key shirt is what you're talking about.

• 29:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, it's your, about your featured post. Okay, sorry. No, no, I apologize. I regret here.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  No, it's okay.

• 29:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. Maybe if the LLMs, you know, kind of say, you know, talk to people and they say, hey, we're, I'm here with your package. And anyway, I think it's interesting. All right, let's take a break. We're here with Takijer Mawakana. She's the co-CEO of Waymo, talking about autonomous driving, talking about their new partnership with Uber. In the second half, we're going to talk about how this company fits into Google itself, its scaling operation, and some of the other fun questions you might want to get to, like how they feel about Elon Musk and when they're going to drive on snowy roads. Back right after this. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about.

• 30:03Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 30:47Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 31:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  and we're back here on big technology podcast with Kijra Mawakana co CEO of Waymo so I just want to start with a question about how this fits into the Google mix because to me it's kind of been this thing where people have like wondered like why Google's gotten into this and of course it became started with it's a famous story about how this began with interest from Larry and Sergey about how this is you know going to be revolutionary new technology I agree with them really is but then the question is like why does it fit with Google and I think like kind of like the fun answer that I've heard from people around the company has been that Google really is is a company that knows your intent and then it's able to make money based off of

• 32:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  that like you tell certain you know you drive in search you put it drive you you type in search you know where can I buy a Mazda and then Google will show you the Mazda dealerships and those Mazda dealerships will pay a lot of money because they know hey you're intending to buy a Mazda when you put your location in it's the most well honed signal of intent possibly because you're not thinking about buying that Mazda you're driving to the Mazda dealer and that is some extremely valuable data if you're a search company Kijra can you talk a little bit about that is that super way off or you know what yeah how should we think about that

• 33:18Speaker 01

  yeah so Waymo actually spun out of Google at the end of 2016 which is around the time that I came and so I think I can't really speak to that sort of

• 33:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  but you're under the alphabet umbrella

• 33:35Speaker 01

  yeah so within the alphabet umbrella but I say that because at that point it was really our opportunity to figure out

• 33:44Speaker 01

  What this generalizable driver could become and then what the business models are that it could drive. And so I, in all my almost seven years here, have really not spent a lot of time in that Google ethos of what made Google the amazing access to information sort of platform and company that it is. Nor have we at Waymo spent a lot of time thinking about ourselves that way. So it's fun for me to hear you sort of say this because I think it's more the other part of the founders is what I would say, which is that part of them that set up X and said, okay, we've succeeded at something amazingly. What are

• 34:27Speaker 01

  the other things technology could tackle that are actually challenges that humans face? And in this case, it was like unsafe roads, like unnecessarily unsafe roads, distracted drivers, angry drivers, drunk tire drivers. And so that's really been our focus is how do you build a driver that gets smarter and smarter and smarter over time? And that can safely move people from point A to point B. So that to me has been the genius of what the founders thought about. And this kind of moonshot opportunity of being at Waymo and using technology to improve people's lives isn't like something that people talk about a lot, especially now when people talk a lot about big tech, like

• 35:10Speaker 01

  the big tech for good is, I mean, to me, this is really a great example of that. So that's what I would say. That's what motivated me to join. Again, I came after the spin out. So maybe I had a slightly different orientation to the company from the beginning.

• 35:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  So Google built this exceptional business because it matches that intent with advertisers and allows them to pay to reach people while they're in intent mode and pay when they click. It's extremely high margin business. It's worked out very well for Google. Waymo is a hardware business. I mean, it's a, it has software in the core, but there's a hardware cost there. Talk a little bit about the business opportunity long term. Does this have the opportunity to become a business like as big as Google? Or where do you see it going?

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think, yes, if you look at the map of vehicle miles traveled globally, it's a massive, massive opportunity ahead of us. It's not going to be like, as you said, the same kind of business as a Google business, because it is a capital intensive business. But everyone putting cars on the road are accustomed to that, right? Everyone putting cars on the road are already working in hardware, are working in not just capital intensive, but much longer lead time businesses. And so we sit at this interesting intersection between software, which is six week or four week release cycles, and automotive companies, which have these four year,

• 36:46Speaker 01

  and we're learning so much about how you integrate both of those. And so I think the sweet spot of the future is this owned and operated kind of ride hailing business, local delivery business, and then personal car ownership. And, and I should say, we also are still, you know, working on building a redundant trucking platform. You know, we announced that we weren't, we're not focused on trucking right now, because we want to focus on ride hailing. But the only way we've gotten to ride hailing is by having a platform, a vehicle platform, that has redundant braking, redundant steering, and redundant compute power.

• 37:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  What does redundant mean in this example?

• 37:29Speaker 01

  So in the, without a human there, what's the backup system? Because for you, normally in a car, you and I are the backup system.

• 37:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  And so we have a deal with Daimler Trucks, where we're building this redundant platform for trucking. And so that'll come back into focus for us.

• 37:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 37:47Speaker 01

  It's just what we're focusing on now.

• 37:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  So on that platform, there's going to be, it will be totally autonomous? Or it will be, really?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you said not right now. What's like the timeline on that?

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Um, well, we're right now completing the redundant platform. That's just not

• 38:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wow.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Sort of from a commercialization perspective, we're not as focused on it.

• 38:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. So you put it all together and that is, I mean, it's a massive business and I think the potential is unbelievable. So can you talk a little bit about the scale that it's at now? I mean, so let's see, October 2021, I was watching an interview with you at the code conference and you said these cars had driven 20 million miles. What's it at now?

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Um, we stopped reporting the, we stopped sharing the public numbers. Mostly because it kind of is like, what's the quality of the driving? How many incidents do we, meaning how much learning is the driver getting? Not just how many miles is the driver going through?

• 38:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. So the last public number you shared is 20 million?

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 38:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  I wish you would update that one. Okay.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  I mean, we say, we say we've driven tens of millions.

• 39:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Of autonomous trials and tens of billions in simulation. We just moved from being very precise to less so.

• 39:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I mean, that again goes back to the transparency thing that I think, I don't know. I mean, you, you're making the decisions on this. So, but in a moment where so many people are going to be against, I think more information is better than less. One thing you are talking about is the number of cars. As of September, you had 700 cars on the road. Is that the case still today?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's about the size of our fleet now still. And I just want to challenge the point you're making about transparency. I mean, what we say is we're building the world's most experienced driver.

• 39:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  And what I can tell you, and I'm sure it was your experience too, is, I mean, every 16 year old did not spend

• 39:52Speaker 01

  tens of millions of miles on public roads, becoming an experienced driver before they got a driver's license. And so I don't think the number actually changes how people think about it. And that's the, you know, that's the reason we're not focused on telling you every precise number. What we want to do is demonstrate the impact of that driving, which is why earlier, when you asked me about, you know, the, the impact.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Having 100% of bodily injury claims disappear, that's the kind of impact that we want to have in this driving. But it's good. I know what you're saying is, you know, there's a little bit of impatience. It takes a while to get to those outputs. But we are more interested in demonstrating the outputs. And these miles are the inputs for that.

• 40:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, I will challenge you back and make the point that it is a technology problem, but it's also a socialization issue that you are in the middle of, which is like, I shouldn't be lecturing you on it because you know this. So maybe I'm not seeing the complete picture. But I do know that there's going to, and I'm rooting for this technology. But I also know that there's going to be quite a, a large pushback. You see it in the headlines in San Francisco. You're going to see it in Congress. And I think that the general public, you know, will, will be more likely to, to be able to evaluate this better if they see the numbers. But, but I do think, okay, anyway, we could debate this forever. But, okay, so 700 cars on the road.

• 41:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  How, how long does it take you? Okay, so let me tell you something that Kyle Vogt, the CEO of Cruise, said when he was here a few, a few months ago. He said that this is going to 10x every year, the amount of miles driven and the amount of cars. Are you seeing the similar, are you, do you have similar plans and, you know, as far as growth goes with Waymo?

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I've learned over the last seven years not to predict. And it's for two reasons. One is, I think this is a product of discovery. It has been. We have thought things that did not actually go in the arc that we thought. And in some cases, it's moved far faster. Adoption, understanding, once people are in the car, how many times a rider comes back, all of that. So no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say what he's saying. And then secondly, I think it goes back to the point you were just making like, we have to be able to bring the public along with us. And you know, you're in New York, so you're not here.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  We're doing a lot to do that in San Francisco, in Phoenix, in Los Angeles. You know, we don't just show up with our cars and hope for the best. We start engaging, we start engaging with public safety officials. We start engaging with policymakers at every level, regulators, community groups, you know, we have an entire sort of way that we enter our market and that we receive feedback to actually make sure that the product is meeting the needs of the community, et cetera. And so I think that approach is a traditional product approach, which is not one that we're taking where I can sit here and tell you how many times we're going to X everywhere.

• 43:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Without regard to what happens in each of those markets.

• 43:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, that definitely. Yeah, that makes sense. And I will say that even though I'm in New York, I was in San Francisco from 2015 to 2021. I watched a lot of this conversation go down and continue to follow it. So I see what you guys are doing. The car costs, people estimate that these cars cars cost $250,000 per car to outfit. Is that ballpark where where it is? And, and I mean, I'll tell you, like, I was taking the rides in San Francisco and it was like, my rides were less than Uber rides, $12, $15. How is it possible that a car can cost that much? And the rides can be so cheap unless you're losing money on them.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  So we don't break out the car costs. So I'm not going to get into those. But I mean, I think that question you're asking, which I fully understand is, is our current pricing strategy, our long-term pricing strategy. We do think of our service as a premium service. And we are in the early days, especially in San Francisco, of just having people move from our waitlist into our service. And a lot of them expressed an intent to ride, you know, months ago, because we had a waitlist for so long. And so over time, you will see us have more dynamic pricing. It depends on the time of the day.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  It depends on the length of the trip and the day of the week. And so you will see our dynamic pricing.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  evolves.

• 44:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  When Waymo first began, it was this like little, it kind of looked like a clown car that would go around the Google parking lot. And then it obviously expanded to a bunch of different cars, including these great Jaguars that are Waymo cars in San Francisco. There, there is this freedom that you get when you are able to get these systems right, where you don't have to shoehorn them into traditional vehicles. So was that on the roadmap for you to sort of build a, a vehicle that lets you rethink what it's like to be in a car? Because you don't need so much of what, what exists today, like a steering wheel or brake pedals?

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think removing the human controls is like a regulatory process. And so

• 45:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you'd have to like basically build ground up.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so we're not focused on that. We do partner with automotive companies. We think they're really good at building cars. We're really good at building the driver. So we've decided not to do that. The car you're talking about, our little Firefly, we retired. And it's in a few museums around the world, which is fun and in our office. But we don't plan to do that again.

• 45:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Speaking of others that are trying to get into this, what's your read on Apple? I mean, they've been trying to do it forever. Why haven't they released anything?

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have no read on Apple. And we'll see what they end up doing. Don't know what they're doing over there.

• 46:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 46:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I don't know if they do either. So, okay. Anyway.

• 46:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  How about driving on the freeway?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Um, so

• 46:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  I feel like that's crucial.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's really important. And it's also when we were doing our sort of Class 8 trucking. I mean, that was a lot of our freeway driving has come from that. We had routes between Arizona and Texas, as well as routes within multiple cities in Texas. The reason I bring that up is because it's the same driver. It learns no matter which vehicle platform it is. And so most of our freeway driving was geared towards long haul delivery. Now, we're obviously doing it for passenger movement too, on the i-Pace vehicles. So we view freeways as essential for ride hailing. Obviously, people are used to hailing a ride at an airport and jumping on a freeway, getting to the city or whatever, wherever they're staying. So that's definitely not a roadmap.

• 47:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. And are you testing on the freeway right now?

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Not with riders. Not with riders.

• 47:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. But you have, are you testing with, so you have safety drivers in the cars? Are you testing without safety drivers on the freeway?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Um, not in, not on this vehicle platform in San Francisco, but in prior vehicle platforms in Arizona, yes.

• 47:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, that's cool. Yeah, I'm excited for that. I think that's gonna be, I mean, it really, I mean, in the US in particular, you need freeway. We are a freeway nation.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 47:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  How about snow, ice and rain? Where is the driving right now in terms of its ability to handle that? I'm asking somewhat selfishly because I'm like, you know, having, having spent a week, just a week riding Waymos in San Francisco. I'd like, you know, it's, it just happened to coincide at the time where my car died. And I was just like, it's okay. It lived a very nice, long life. I was like the 10th owner of it anyway. But I, I kept thinking, okay, maybe, you know, I don't have this, but maybe one day we can get these Waymos in New York City. So obviously much more challenging driving conditions, both because of the weather and the drivers. So what do you think about that?

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I would separate rain. We've had quite a bit of rain in San Francisco the last, this, this year. And we're able to drive in rain. Our service is up in the rain. We drive in the rain. We can see in the rain. It's actually really exciting because that was not the case three years ago. We would talk about rain quite a bit. And now it's these newer software releases of the Waymo driver. It's just really solved those challenges, which is great. I mean, you know, it's like you have windshield wipers. We have them on the cars because it's a standard car, but having them on the LiDAR and having them on the cameras is what really matters. So that's been great. I think ice and snow, we've tested. We haven't actually deployed in a city with those, but that's part of why we go out and do these tests.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  We've been in New York doing tests. That's part of it is weather. Same thing. We've been in Detroit and tested in snow. And so we're not, it's not early on our roadmap that we will be launching or deploying a service, but you'll see us continue to show up in markets where we're including this data and what the Waymo driver has to learn.

• 49:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Well, I wish you luck. I hope it works in New York somewhat soon.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  So can you just give me like an or give us all an assessment of like what market you're in now? What expansion looks like? I mean, you mentioned already that the driver is generalizable, meaning that, you know, the kind of the biggest hurdle is getting it to work in one place. And then you can sort of take that technology and apply it elsewhere. So what's the state of Waymo today?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, the state of Waymo today is, you know, we are in downtown Phoenix, all the way out to Scottsdale and Tempe, which is really exciting. So we have a lot of ASU students who use the vehicles. And then we're at the San Francisco, we're at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which to us is really exciting because you can fly in, download the app. It's completely open, public service, and then go downtown or go wherever it is that your conference or golf tour, whatever that takes you to San takes you to Phoenix. So that's, that's 225 square miles, the largest, the only 24 by seven public service. It's been open since October of 2020. It's a real point of pride for our company and sort of surprising that most of the world still doesn't know that

• 50:41Speaker 01

  this exists. And it's been up and going for three years.

• 50:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And it's also 225 square miles. That's up from 50 square miles, I believe, in October 2021. So talk about scale. I think we finally got a view of how how the expansion looks. Okay. But so you have Phoenix, you have San Francisco, you're starting to test in LA.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  And we started testing in LA. We're doing our LA tour. And we've also announced that after we are up and going in LA, we will move towards Austin.

• 51:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so eyeing for markets.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  New York before or after 2025?

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Um, TBD.

• 51:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. What do you think about Elon Musk?

• 51:25Speaker 01

  New York is obviously an extremely important market.

• 51:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  So that's awesome.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  We need that stuff. It's crazy to drive in this city and even worse to be a pedestrian. So.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Elon, he, okay, I'll ask you some specific questions. I feel like that's probably a better way to go. Full self-driving. I mean, this is something that came up when I spoke with Kyle Vogt about how he believes that full self-driving is a misnomer and it's not full self-driving. It's effectively what he said is it's full self babysitting of the Tesla as it drives. Then I had some Tesla super fans come in and talk to me about how, you know, Kyle was wrong and actually Elon's getting it done. He's collecting a ton of data. When you see these Teslas in full self-driving mode and full disclosure, I mean, I drove in, you know, the full self-driving mode and it seemed fine.

• 52:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  It wasn't, it wasn't anywhere close to a Waymo service, but I'm kind of curious how you think that they stack up and whether Elon's helping or hurting.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  I think it doesn't help to describe anything inaccurately in these early days. I mean, we're teaching the public, so let's just be explicit, right? There's SAE has already defined levels of autonomy. There's, you know, it goes from one to five. That's driver assist technology. It's level two plus. I think, you know, the Waymo driver is level four. I think it's just important for us to, do you need to be behind the wheel and do you need a driver's license? If you need to be behind the wheel and need a driver's license, it's level three, two or one. If you don't, it's four or five. I think if we can just all level set on that, then it kind of doesn't matter. Like, how many times did the thing beep? And it's just more.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Can you afford to take your eyes off the driving task? Not unless it's a level four or above. And that's a decision we made back in 2012. We were running autopilot.

• 53:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  But do you think, do you think Tesla can evolve into level four from where it is today? Given the technology and the data that it's collecting?

• 53:35Speaker 01

  I don't have enough insight. I think there's been enough statements that that's their plan. But there's no reason for me to think it's not their plan. But I don't know like what the technological roadmap will look like.

• 53:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Um, it doesn't seem like it's, it's, it just seems like he's focused on making it happen at some point.

• 53:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. All right, let me end with this. We started this conversation with a conversation of safety. You mentioned 43,000 people in the U.S. alone die in traffic accidents where humans are behind the wheel. I'm, I really am curious about your recruiting. I mean, who are the people that staff Waymo? And how many of them come to you with stories where they're really trying to solve this problem? Because someone that they know or they love has been impacted and, and lost their lives or been injured or been behind the wheel in one of these accidents?

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think we're very fortunate to be able to hire the brightest people, right? The brightest minds, brightest engineers, brightest marketers, brightest, you name it. People choose to come because they want to do something that they feel connected to and they feel tied to this mission. And when I spend time with people, we have this thing called why, why Waymo? Why do you Waymo? Um, it's usually a deep, personal story. You know, the loss of a family member when they were a child or, or frankly, like a parent who's still alive, but not capable, not fully able-bodied because of an accident or crash. Um, and so people come because of the mission.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  And, and they also come because they're like really trying to figure this thing out. Like it's exciting, but it's also like very complicated. And so people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, the mission is exciting, but really I also want purpose-driven hard work.

• 55:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. Well, Takita, let me tell you, I think that I've had, you know, a few holy shit moments in my life using technology or seeing the introduction of new technology. I'd say the iPhones, one of them, ChatGPT, another, and hopping into a Waymo this summer and seeing what it does is right there with them. So fascinating conversation. Thank you again. Thanks for willing to come on here and be pressed on some of the issues and give us some more insight on the others and wishing you the best. This is one of the technology products where I think that if it works, you know, it's, it's no conflict of interest to say that, that we're rooting for it. I certainly am, and I'm looking forward to following the progress. Thanks for coming on.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Thank you, Alex. Really appreciate it.

• 56:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. Thank you so much. Thanks, everybody for listening. Thank you, Nate Guattini, for handling the audio. Thank you, LinkedIn, for having me as part of your podcast network. Thanks to all you listeners. Always great to have you here, week after week. We'll see you on Friday for a news recap with Ron John Roy. We're going to talk about a busy week of news, so we hope to see you then. And we look forward to seeing you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 56:47Speaker 02

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