So I'm curious about your, you know, just sort of the whole San Francisco thing, right? Uh, my, my, my last ride with, with you all was there. Um, and obviously, you know, uh, there's been, it's been sort of the, the theater for, for the AV sector. Um, and with, with different, different results. What I'm curious about, though, is I remember you sort of telling me about how some of the specific technologies, I remember, you know, were sort of particularly tailored towards sort of some of these dense sort of urban settings. And Vegas is just really different. So I'm just curious, like, is the trope about like San Francisco is like the proving ground? And if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Is there a big transition to a place like Vegas? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I'd say some of both. Right. So I think in general, you know, any city you go to is going to have some unique attributes and some things you're going to need to practice. But the more places you've been, the less marginal work you should have to do to go to a new place. Right. So San Francisco is really tough in terms of the agent density right near the vehicle. Las Vegas actually has more agents, but they're not usually as close, right? So for example, you drive down the strip, we're now at the bottom of the strip heading north. You'll see sometimes hundreds, if not, you know, maybe over a thousand cars and people around you. And the, you know, the AI system is having to kind of, you know, track that. And it's a lot of computational work. Um, but there aren't usually quite as many things happening right next to the vehicle in Las Vegas as there are in San Francisco. So we're running the exact same software in, in all three locations, Foster City, San Francisco, Las Vegas. We, we don't have, you know, custom builds or custom configurations. It's all the same models. It's all the same software. Uh, the only difference of course, is the, is the map. Yeah.

So, um, you know, pickup and drop off is also something, you know, uh, I've been writing a lot of Waymos in San Francisco and, and it's, it's, you know, insanely impressive what they're doing. The driving has all been really good. The pickup and drop-offs have been interesting. And I feel like in Vegas...

They haven't been super... Like for me, they haven't... Let's just say they're not batting like a thousand.

Well, that's what I'm saying. I'm sorry. Cut to the chase, man. Too subtle about it. Yeah, no, I mean, like I said, when you have issues, in my experience with the Waymo, it's on pickup and drop-offs and not in the driving. In Las Vegas, it seems like in some ways it may be easier because there are all of it. It's a car town, right? Like there's all these pickup and designated pickup and drop-off zones. Is it easier? Is it harder?

It's different. Yeah. It's just different. So there's a lot of work you have to do to handle the portico shares. This is like the fancy term for the big hotel entrances. um you actually don't see other av companies even attempting to drive them autonomously we're the only ones yeah even with the test vehicles and and now we're doing them we just started doing them with the robo taxis okay which is really cool so on this particular route we're just doing a loop route but we do have the ability to pick up and drop off at the resorts world near the top of this trip and then the luxor at the bottom of this trip and we're continuously adding more destinations as you can imagine so yeah pick up and drop offs can be tough for lots of reasons obviously we test them with the test vehicles first but we are doing them in the robo taxis now. And so far, they're going really well, but yeah, they can definitely be challenging. And I wouldn't say we've nailed everything yet. It's one of the reasons why we're still doing internal testing before opening it up to the public.

Yeah. There's so much, obviously, people immediately think about safety issues when they think about these things. And you think, oh, low speed, it's low stakes. Like low speed can be really hard, right? Because, I mean, the predictions and especially, you know, at those, it's not just a lot of different vehicles, but then you have people unloading their bags and you have all kinds of just like weird stuff going on in those areas. I imagine it's quite hard.

It can be very challenging, yeah. What

have you found so far that in these parking scenarios, because right now you're just testing in the two locations,

right? Well, Foster City and San Francisco. But

I mean, the parking here on the Strip. Oh, sorry. Like the pickup drop-off, I should say, not parking. Pickup drop-off. Yeah. It's just the two locations right now.

Well, and our depot, and then there's a couple other ones that are less prominent. Okay. So there's a handful.

But on the strip, at least right now, so what has been the biggest challenge? Is it the high computational load because there's so much going on within these portico areas? I would say it's mostly

just how they're both structured and unstructured at the same time. There are all these lanes and there's all these rules, but then people don't really follow them. And of course we have to follow the rules, but we have to be prepared for other people not following them. So it's just a little bit messy. But I don't think it's, you know, I don't think it's fundamentally, you know, that difficult of a problem. It's just something you have to get used to in practice.

And are you just using like a normal, because there's a taxi area, do you have your own special zone or special lines? Or are you just using the Bright Hill area or how's that working?

Yeah, great question. So we don't have anything to announce on that yet. We're working on that with the various properties. So stay tuned, I would say. Okay, interesting. Yeah. But

what are you doing now for just the testing purposes? Are you just driving through? Yeah, it's more just like a

drive-through, that kind of thing. Because

you're obviously not picking anyone up yet.

Not officially.

Not officially, yeah.

Maybe unofficially a few times.

So one of the, you know, there's been so much interesting change in the AV space. And I feel like for a long time there was this allergy or thing around, around sort of the novelty factor of AVs, where, you know, it was sort of, I think we selling these as this serious, important technology for the future and like seeing it as a marketing, it as a novelty or something kind of just doesn't fit with that. It seems almost like maybe the pendulum has swung back a little bit um and and there is something about the experience that is just novel and that people are i certainly know everyone i know who goes to san francisco is like oh my god the waymos like i see them everywhere you know and and and i tell people to ride them and they're like wow it's like a tourist thing almost you know um i have, you know, that's not something you guys are shy about being in Las Vegas?

No, not at all. And honestly, you know, we had many made motivations when we started Zoox. But one of the important ones was really creating a much better experience for people getting around cities. And so as exciting as it is for people to, know, go in a robotaxi that's a retrofitted car and, you know, have the steering wheel spinning by itself. And that is cool. Our view is that people would much rather be in something like this, right? The experience we have getting to see each other and, you know, have the lights and just this beautiful experience. We really think people will significantly prefer that even over a retrofitted robo-taxi. And so not only are we not shy about that, we're really excited, you know, to show people how much better that is. We've not been hyping that up too much, you know, previously because we're not ready, right? We don't want to talk about how, you know, oh my God, it's so amazing and great. Can I try it? Oh, sorry. You know, so, you know, we've had our own work to do and we still have a lot of work to do. But we're close enough now to welcoming the public that we're starting to talk about that a little bit more.

Yeah, absolutely. God, it's so funny. We're just, you know, sitting here at a stoplight on the strip and one of the big light up sort of uh trucks just lit up right next to us but it really highlights like i mean the visibility out of this is really it's it's great it's perfect for a place like las vegas yeah

especially driving on the strip it's so scenic and iconic and you have the floor to ceiling you know door windows then you have the moon roof and you really can just get a sense of being in the city that you can't get in a regular car

Well, so back to this sort of on topic, this idea of the robotaxi in Las Vegas feels different right now, business model wise than San Francisco. And because it does feel like there's so many tourists that come to Las Vegas for one. And I don't know how long you're planning on staying on this, just on the strip, you know, if that's a year long thing or how long that duration is, but it really feels like it could be a tourist attraction initially. Um, so how do you see in Vegas, the vehicle expanding and being used, or do you see it like as a on the business model side being something that could really just exist supporting the strip in the hotels as a replacement and not really worrying about going way off strip i

would say somewhere in between right so i don't know that we are gonna you know go 30 miles in all directions anytime soon uh but but to be a compelling commercial service at scale, we absolutely do need to expand well beyond the Strip. And already we drive many routes that aren't on the Strip. This particular route we're taking is going to go all the way up and down the Strip and back to our depot. But we're also driving the adjacent Frank Sinatra Boulevard all the way up and down and some other side roads. And we're quickly expanding much beyond that. So it's important to us that we can take customers to all of their favorite destinations in Las Vegas.

How are you deciding where you will have those pickup and drop off points? I mean, right now you have the two that you're testing, but in a perfect and ideal scenario, someone could hail it and go to any hotel they wanted to on the strip. And there are hundreds of hotels. Yeah, that's

our dream as well. Okay. So we're working.

So how far out is that dream? Not

super, super far, but it's not like, you know, tomorrow. I know I'm being vague. Yeah. But we're working hard on that. We really would like to be able to take our customers anywhere they want to go in the core of the city. But

how are you initially deciding where you should do those first pick up and drop offs, especially once you start having the public in this, in the Robotaxi in Vegas? Is it going to be based on ease of entry, ingress, egress, or the relationship you have with that hotel? Like, how are you

picking the places? Exactly. So we're looking at our ability to drive there safely, the amount that our customers would like to go there, and then the relationships that we're able to build with those properties. All those things factor in to our roadmap.

And so, you know, obviously compared to the retrofitted vehicles, this is a very premium feeling experience. But even compared to, I would say, not, I mean, you know, so the cruise origin doesn't exist anymore, but we sat in both versions of it. And even that was less, it was less premium. And even Waymo's upcoming purpose-built robotaxi seems a little bit less premium. Sorry, just to interject there. Yeah, please. They

don't, as far as I know, have a purpose-built robotaxi. Cruises?

I'm sorry, Waymo. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I mean the Zeker. Oh, yeah. The forthcoming. Just to clarify. Sorry if I'm being pedantic. No,

no. That's not a purpose-built robotaxi. You have earned the right to be. That's a regular minivan that they're modifying to be a Robotex. Correct. That is true. Which is perfectly fine, right? But it's not... The vehicle platform is a car platform.

That is absolutely true. You're right. And you guys did ground up. Yes. No one could take that away. Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... No,

no. It's all good. I'm just, you know, for our listeners, just wanted to be precise.

Well, so I'm curious. And, you know, again, you've got a unique product, right? There's nothing else, as you say, on the market like this or even really coming. Do you see this as a premium? Like, will the pricing be premium, I guess, is what I'm asking.

Ah, yes. Well, so we haven't announced anything about pricing. What we will say is that we expect it to be competitive with what's out there. Okay. And yet we do expect it to be a meaningfully nicer experience. So hopefully that's a compelling value proposition for our customers. Okay. But yeah, we're not aspiring to build some sort of a luxury, ultra expensive. Oh, this is interesting.

There's a police officer here with his motorcycle.

Ooh, I can't

see.