3min chapter

Equity cover image

It's always earnings season if you look hard enough

Equity

CHAPTER

Waymo's Move to Ride Hauling

The company has decided to, I'm not going to say shutter itself driving trucks program because there is minor activity still going to be happening. But essentially what they're doing is shifting all their capital resources and talent, including from departments focused on self driving trucks into right hailing. And this is interesting for a number of reasons. It wasn't that long ago, maybe right in the middle of COVID when many AV developers suddenly pivoted to logistics and delivery because that was the business model.

00:00
Speaker 3
I mean, the CEO of angeles told me that as startups mature, the scope of capital providers they can tap into expands into private equity. And so they feel like, you know, this way angeles can serve startups throughout their journey. But I agree with you, Alex, I feel like, you know, there may have been some pressure to keep growing revenue, hence this deal, the startup seems to be, you know, fast growing and obviously private equity. They manage a lot of assets.
Speaker 1
A lot of assets. Speaking about a lot of money, though, I hear Kirsten that if you put all your bets onto one basket, it's a poor choice. And yet we know Waymo's taking all of its capital and putting it towards
Speaker 2
one part of the autonomous vehicle game. What's going on? It's putting all of its AV eggs into one basket. This is really interesting. The company has decided to, I'm not going to say shutter itself driving trucks program because there is minor activity still going to be happening. But essentially what they're doing is shifting all their capital resources and talent, including from departments focused on self driving trucks and putting it all into right hailing. And this is interesting for a number of reasons. One, it wasn't that long ago, two years ago, maybe right in the middle of COVID when many AV developers suddenly pivoted to logistics and delivery because that was the business model. The issue with autonomous vehicle technology is the technical part. And then the business model. How are we going to make money off of this? And while ride hailing or robo taxis was the dream, many pivoted to delivery logistics because it seemed like a clearer, faster way to make money. And now Waymo is sort of shifting back, it's focused ride hailing. And I think in part because it has accelerated its ride hailing program expanded quite a bit, doubled in size in the Phoenix area is expanding in San Francisco, but still cannot charge there because they're waiting for a final permit. But this is big news and really kind of leaves only one player or a couple of players, one publicly traded player in the AV trucking space. And that's Aurora.
Speaker 1
Okay, I'll talk about Aurora in a second, but you mentioned there's two kinds of things that you have to do to get autonomous vehicles correct, the technical side and then the financial side. Certainly on the trucking side of things, it's easier to kind of draw a line between work and revenue because we know trucking is a massive business, humans are a major cost center. So sure, that makes sense. But isn't also the technical challenge of doing autonomous freight a little bit easier than autonomous robo taxis inside of cities where there's more chaos? Sure.
Speaker 2
I mean, there are other problems, higher speeds, for instance, incredibly heavy vehicles, trucks, classic trucks, traveling at fast speeds and the ability to stop those all matter. But yes, highways are considered a easier geo fence or environment. And there is a couple of little challenges, which is do you want the truck to go hub to hub, which some companies are doing, or do you want them to be able to get off the exit and weave their way through maybe a couple city streets to get to their destination? And so there is that little technical problem. But yes, widely considered robo taxis to be a more difficult problem because the urban streets, pedestrians, bikes, all the things.

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