100,000 Paid Rides a Week and Counting

This Week in The Autonomy Economy, The Road to Autonomy Index returned 1.76%, Waymo announced they are now conducting 100,000 paid rides per week, Cruise partnered with Uber and Baidu is scaling a sub-$30k dollar autonomous vehicle in China. 

While the big news this week was “projected” to be Waymo announcing 100,000 paid rides a week, it turned out the big news was actually Uber’s partnership with Cruise. Barrons, Bloomberg, CNBC, Financial Times, Reuters and many others picked up the story and offered their own take on the news.

It is very clear what is happening. Uber is becoming the platform for autonomy and now individuals and investors are beginning to pay attention. The Schwab Network even did a segment on the partnership. 

When it’s all said and done, Uber could very well end up being one of the largest autonomous vehicle / trucking companies globally in terms of market size and revenue. 

As both autonomous vehicle and trucking industries mature and become a business, the time is coming for a new metric—revenue and profitability. While today, the insights into the financial health of both the autonomous trucking and autonomous vehicle industries are opaque, there is an opportunity to create benchmarks.

It is an opportunity that we are going to explore as we continue to expand The Road to Autonomy platform. Without revenue and profits, there is no autonomous vehicle and trucking industries. 

Today, we have the AUTONOMY LEADERBOARD and perhaps in the future we will be able to offer financial insight into these companies to give you a better understanding of their health as a handful of these companies will emerge to usher in the autonomy economy.

The Future is Bright. The Future is Autonomous. 

Cruise parent GM, Uber and Waymo parent Alphabet are The Road to Autonomy Index component companies

WHAT’S MOVING THE MARKETS | AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

100,000 Paid Rides a Week and Counting

Waymo is now conducting 100,000 paid rides per week, double the number of paid rides that they were conducting in May. At an average fare of $15 per ride, Waymo would be generating $1.5 million a week in revenue. If the growth pattern holds, Waymo should surpass $2 million weekly in revenue by late September / early October. 

At it’s current pace of growth, Waymo is on pace to generate over $100 million in revenue over the next 12 months. While far from profitable, Waymo is clearly proving that autonomous vehicles can be a business.

As Waymo scales operations, their messaging is changing to reflect the current state of the business. When Waymo announced their 6th-generation Waymo Driver on August 19th, the company highlighted the cost benefits of the new system in the announcement:

Waymo has figured out the tech and now they are figuring out how to make their robotaxi operations profitable. By focusing on costs, Waymo is actively preparing for either an eventual spin-out or to operate their own P&L inside of Alphabet. 

With paid rides in Austin coming online soon, perhaps followed by Atlanta, all signs point towards Miami as the next market. Will Miami be the next Waymo market? Only time will tell, but it is surely getting interesting. 

Our take: The only metric that is soon going to matter for Waymo is revenue growth and profitability. 

Waymo is currently ranked #1 with a bullish outlook on the AUTONOMY LEADERBOARD in the autonomous vehicle category. 

Waymo parent Alphabet are The Road to Autonomy Index component companies

WHAT’S MOVING THE MARKETS | AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

Cruise To Deploy Autonomous Vehicles on the Uber Platform

On August 22nd, Cruise announced a multiyear strategic partnership to bring Cruise autonomous vehicles to the Uber platform next year. As we wrote about in the August 11th newsletter, Uber is the platform that is going to enable autonomy to scale. 

With the Uber partnership secure, Cruise will now be able to scale operations without having to build up the software platform to enable a smooth ride-hailing experience. 

The partnership with Uber is just the latest example in a series of strategic decisions that the new Cruise leadership team led by Marc Whitten as they work diligently to rebuild the business. Mr. Whitten and the leadership team are focused on building a long-term sustainable business and they are making all the right moves as they once again prepare for commercial operations.

What Cruise is showing everyone including investors and the autonomous vehicle industry is that the right leadership team makes all the difference. Cruise has the right leadership team in place to scale robotaxi operations and build a long-term profitable business.  

Mr. Whitten could very well be Cruise’s Dara Khosrowshahi. Mr. Khosrowshahi turned around Uber and made the company profitable. Mr. Whitten has a great model to follow. 

Our take: Cruise is one of the most important companies in autonomy today. GM should be proud as they made the hard decisions and now those decisions are about to pay off.

Cruise is currently ranked #2 with a positive outlook on the AUTONOMY LEADERBOARD in the autonomous vehicle category. 

Uber is currently ranked #1 with a bullish outlook on the AUTONOMY LEADERBOARD in the software platforms category.

Cruise parent GM and Uber are The Road to Autonomy Index component companies

WHAT’S MOVING THE MARKETS | AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

Baidu is Scaling a Sub-$30k Autonomous Vehicle

Baidu reported Q2 2024 earnings that fell short of investor expectations on August 23rd when the company reported revenue of $4.67 billion (RMB 33.93 billion) with investors expecting $4.70 billion. Compared year-over-year, revenue growth was flat. 

As part of the earnings release, the company chose to highlight their autonomous driving efforts both in the earnings release and on the earnings call. 

In the earnings release, Robin Li, Co-Founder and CEO of Baidui stated the following:

Baidu’s robotaxi fleet (Apollo Go) now encompasses 400 fully autonomous vehicles in Wuhan, China offering service to 9 million residents 24/7. 

On the earnings call, Mr. Li said the following as part of his opening remarks:

By pricing their RT6 autonomous vehicle below $30,000, Baidu is clearly gearing up to export their autonomous driving technology globally. At this price point, the RT6 could be sold as a personally owned autonomous vehicle in certain markets, putting the company in direct competition with GM and Tesla. 

The exact cost of the vehicle is $27,202 according to the Nikkei. The RT6 is co-developed with Beijing-based BAIC Group. Whether or not the sensors and autonomous driving hardware are included in the price, has to be determined, but the price is aggressive and it will have global repercussions.

With the U.S. Commerce Department preparing rules on Chinese software and hardware in autonomous vehicles, things are about to get interesting. 

Our take: Costs are now entering the autonomous vehicle industry. The days of spending unlimited amounts of money are over as companies shift their focus to costs with an eye on profitability. 

GM and Tesla are The Road to Autonomy Index component companies

PIQUING OUR INTEREST

Tesla’s FSD (Supervised) Is Catching On and Getting Better Barron’s associate editor Al Root has been testing FSD v12.5 on his Model Y. Mr Root reports the “overall experience with the software was surprisingly good” as he has noticed a significant improvement in the vehicle’s autonomous driving ability. 

Off to School They Go Shh.. Don’t tell anyone, but parents in San Francisco are sending their kids to school solo in Waymos. Autonomous vehicles could one day replace the carpool and the school bus. 

Scaling Operations in Phoenix? Waymo appears to be scaling operations in Arizona as a glimpse inside their Queen Creek, AZ facility shows hundreds of Waymos ready to be up-fitted with sensors.

Bespoke Autonomous Vehicles are Coming to Japan TierIV in collaboration with Toray Carbon Magic is developing a bespoke autonomous vehicle for deployment in the Japanese market. 

WeRide Hits The Brakes on U.S. IPO WeRide has hit the brakes on their pending U.S. IPO citing the need for “more time” to complete the documents. 

Dallas is Emerging As The Home of Drone Innovation Walmart and drone delivery partner DroneUp are doubling down on the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex Region in an effort to control costs. Today, it costs $30 to deliver a package by drone. For the drone delivery model to be sustainable, costs are going to have to come down dramatically. 

SOCIAL BUZZ | AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

City of Hamburg to Deploy Autonomous Minivans

Next year the City of Hamburg, Germany plans to launch a fleet of 20 autonomous minibuses in a 20 square mile region pilot project in an effort to reduce traffic and enhance public transportation.

While ambitious, the market has shifted away from pilot projects and shared mobility. If you have spent any time in Paris, you will know first-hand that grand overly ambitious mobility planning only increases traffic. 

Our take: Pilot projects have sunsetted, shared autonomy has sunsetted and the market has shifted to individual rider on-demand point-to-point autonomy.

SOCIAL BUZZ | AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

Waymoing to The Zoo

Saturday, the first 40 guests who rode in a Waymo to the Phoenix Zoo were granted free daytime admission to the zoo for up to four riders per car. 

This is a clever partnership and hopefully there are more experience partnerships in the works for Waymo. Years ago, we encouraged Waymo to partner with hotels and golf resorts to tap into Scottsdale’s golf tourism economy. Perhaps a partnership with TPC Scottsdale or Four Seasons Troon North could be next.

Our take: The future of autonomy is going to be defined by experiences. Partnering with the Phoenix Zoo is just the first step towards what is ultimately possible with autonomy and experiences. 

Waymo parent Alphabet are The Road to Autonomy Index component companies

THE ROAD TO AUTONOMY INDEX WEEKLY PERFORMANCE

The Road to Autonomy Index® is a high-definition lens into the emerging world of autonomous vehicles and trucks. It is the world’s first and only pure-play index designed to measure the performance of the autonomous vehicle/truck market.

For the week of August 19th, The Road to Autonomy Index returned 1.76%, the S&P 500 returned 1.45% and the NASDAQ 100 returned 1.09%. The Road to Autonomy Index outperformed the S&P 500 by 0.31% and outperformed the NASDAQ 100 by 0.67%.

Year to Date (YTD), The Road to Autonomy Index has returned 13.61%

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LATEST PODCAST

• Developing a Versatile Autonomous Driving Business (August 20, 2024), A Conversation with Andreas Wendel, CTO, Kodiak