The Road to Autonomy

David Hanngren, Investment Director, Volvo Group Venture Capital joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss how the Volvo Group is transforming from a hardware business to an as a service business, and the role that the venture capital group is playing in Volvo’s transformation. The conversation begins with David discussing how all of the Volvo Group’s businesses with a $31 billion dollar market cap compliment each other ranging from heavy-duty trucks to construction equipment to buses to heavy-duty engines and marine industrial engines. We are earning a lot of money which we invest in new technologies. – David HanngrenAll of the business are business-to-business (B2B) that operate under a CAST (Common Architecture Share Technology) model. Components and technologies amongst the various businesses are shared which allows the Volvo Group to optimize the business as they shift to electrification. Heavy-Duty trucks account for 60% of Volvo Group’s revenue. As the Volvo Group prepares to move from a 100 year old hardware business to an as a services business, the company sees heavy-duty truck business continuing to grow and gaining market share. We are moving from hardware to services. – David HanngrenWith the shift to services and electrification, Volvo has created two new divisions: Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Volvo Energy. The as a services model will carry over to autonomous trucks.We do not plan to sell an autonomous truck, we will provide a transport service. Both on-road or off-road. – David HanngrenThe autonomous transport service will be offered for the following applications: mining/quarries, ports/logistics and on-the-road hub-to-hub autonomous trucking. This new service model will allow the company to continue to grow their revenue while they continue to invest in new technologies. As Volvo Group develops an autonomous transport solution for North America, the company entered into a partnership with Aurora in 2021 to accelerate the plans.It’s not a traditional situation where an OEM is supplying a truck and Aurora is developing the software, we do this together. We have hundreds of engineers working on the virtual driver and we do it together with Aurora. We want to develop a self-driving transportation service together with them. In the end when it’s ready, Volvo will then offer a transport service to our customers. Together we will make it happen. – David HanngrenWhile Volvo Group is developing an autonomous transport solution with Aurora, it is not an exclusive partnership. More partnerships could be coming as Volvo transforms into services oriented company. The venture capital group will play a key role in this transformation. We want to be one of the ways to transform Volvo from a product centric company to a service oriented company. We see ourselves as an important piece of the puzzle. – David HanngrenVolvo is going to scale their autonomous transport solution by leveraging all of their brands; Volvo, Mack and Renault Trucks in North America, Europe and Asia. Over the last 12 months, 249,000 Class 8 truck orders have been placed and some dealers are sold out for all of 2023. The demand for freight is up, the demand for Class 8 trucks is up. This environment is creating the perfect backdrop for Volvo to launch their autonomous transport solution.Staying true to their new as a service model, Volvo is currently testing selling Class 8 trucks as equipment as a service. As Volvo introduces more electric heavy-duty electric trucks, these trucks will primarily be sold as a equipment as a service.In Europe, Volvo has a 42% market share for electric heavy-duty electric trucks. Volvo expects this market share to grow as Amazon will be taking possession of 20 Volvo heavy-duty electric trucks in Germany by the end of the year. The trucks that Amazon will be using in Germany are projected to drive over 621,000 miles a year. With 36% of Germany’s domestic transport emissions originating from heavy goods vehicles and other commercial vehicles, Volvo’s electric heavy-duty truck business is poised to flourish as the world begins to decarbonize. In 2030, half of all the products that we sell will be zero emissions. So either electric or fuel-cell technology. In 2040, which is less than 20 years away all of the new sales should be zero emissions. Then we hope by 2050 that the entire running fleet will be zero emissions. – David HanngrenWrapping up the conversation, David discusses the strategic advantages of working with Volvo Group Venture Capital. We care a lot about the well being of the start-up. Our focus is not on how Volvo can just profit, our focus is on how can we help the start-up. – David HanngrenRecorded on Tuesday, October 11, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mazen Danaf, Senior Economist, Uber Freight joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss the current state of surface freight transportation market and Uber Freight’s approach to autonomous trucking starting with a hub-to-hub strategy. The conversation begins with Mazen discussing how he sees the $1.06 trillion dollar surface freight transportation market evolving over the coming years. We will continue to have more automation over the coming years. – Mazen DanafWhile more automation will becoming to the market, sustainability and transparency are also coming to the market as well. Over the past 24 months the spot rates for shipping have been extremely volatile and the contracts have become inefficient. We need more tools that can adapt to this level of volatility, and we think that tools like Market Access, which is a class model is one of the best tools out there. Shippers know what the current rates are in the market and then they are paying for that based on a cost-plus model. – Mazen DanafUber Freight which participates in this market generated $2.134 billion in revenue in 2021, and the company is on pace to generate $7.84 billion in 2022. This growth is being driven by technology, expansion into new verticals and market tailwinds. We are using technology to drive costs lower for everyone. For carriers and for shippers. – Mazen DanafWith the trend of reshoring manufacturing back to the United States, Grayson poses the question to Mazen, will there be enough freight capacity to move goods. It’s a cycle. I would say freight capacity is aways chasing demand and the equilibrium level is so elusive that we can’t get to it, so sometimes we undershoot and sometimes we overshoot. – Mazen DanafAt this point, there is enough capacity to handle the trend, but a potential recession in the United States could change the scenario. This is a scenario that Mazen is modeling for to determine what impact on the freight market will be if consumer spending on goods slows down. If a recession happens, we are expecting a single digit reduction in freight volumes. – Mazen DanafIn a recessionary scenario, spending on durable goods will decrease and unemployment will rise. With a truck driver shortage estimated to be 84,000 truck drivers this year and a potential recession, the cost to ship freight could potentially increase due to a lack of capacity. The trend of the driver shortage is forecasted to grow to 160,000 drivers by 2030.A large amount of truck drivers who are currently driving trucks today are starting to prefer to drive local routes instead of long-haul over-the-road routes, which is further putting strain on the freight market. These market conditions are creating the perfect opportunity for autonomous trucking to fill the void and shore up the demand in the market for long-haul trucking.Serving the middle-mile is the perfect opportunity for autonomous trucking. – Mazen DanafThis is the opportunity that Uber Freight is focused on which Mazen and his co-authors highlighted in their The Future of Self-Driving Technology in Trucking, A road map for evolving freight transportation with autonomous trucks paper. The hub-to-hub model will have economic benefits for customers of the Uber Freight platform in terms of cost savings. By leveraging their vast amounts of data, Uber Freight is able to work with their autonomous trucking partners to determine the most ideal locations for the transfer hubs. At first these hubs will be located near major freeways, which will increase the utilization and uptime of the trucks. At the transfer hub, the autonomous trucks will drop the load and the final mile delivery will be done by a professional truck driver, creating efficiencies. With the hub-to-hub model, there is no limit to the amount of freight that can pass through this model, the only restraint is the amount of freight available in the market. The hub-to-hub model is merely just the starting point to how Uber Freight sees the autonomous trucking model evolving.We do not think this is the final model. We think of this as a stepping stone and we believe that one day we will be able to achieve end-to-end operations where autonomous trucks will be able to drive from the source facility to the end facility. – Mazen DanafWrapping up the conversation, Mazen shares his thoughts on the future of Uber Freight. Recorded on Monday, October 10, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Francesca Favarò, Safety Best Practices Lead, Waymo joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss Waymo’s layered approach to safety. The conversation begins with Francesca discussing how Waymo approaches safety for autonomous vehicles. Waymo has an approach that we call a layer approach to safety. – Francesca FavaròWaymo’s layered approach to safety is a combination of the architecture layer (hardware), behavior layer (software) and the operations layer. This approach allows Waymo to take a holistic approach to safety that is both robust and redundant. The Waymo Driver as a technology actually allows consistent learning across an entire fleet. The operations layer is where everything starts coming together and we ensure that going from the Waymo Driver to the Waymo service we are in fact deploying a safe product in a scalable fleet. – Francesca FavaròThe layered safety framework started with the realization that no single metric could define safety. The safety framework is the combination of methodologies that basically allows you to make the determination of safety with regards to architecture, behavior and operations. – Francesca FavaròAs Waymo expands into new cities, the safety framework is applied to each and every ODD (Operational Design Domain) where Waymo operates. The company is looking into historical driving data, vulnerable road users data and distracted driving patterns that lead to crashes. Another issue that Waymo studies and plans for from a safety standpoint is fatigued driving.Fatigue can impair judgments, prevent an appropriate mental state and lead to distracted driving. NHTSA estimates that fatigued driving accounts for 20% of highway driving crashes and Harvard Medical School estimates that 24-hours awake which can occur during a sleepless night is akin to a blood alcohol level of 0.1.With fatigue playing an outside role in safety, Waymo developed the Fatigue Risk Management Framework to address the issue of fatigue and how to prevent it when testing autonomous vehicles with autonomous specialists. Francesca goes onto explain in-depth how Waymo is mitigating fatigue risk while the autonomous vehicles are being tested with autonomous specialists.In the local communities where Waymo is testing autonomous vehicles, the Fatigue Risk Management Framework with law enforcement, local officials and first responders so they can truly understand the role that autonomous specialists play while monitoring the autonomous vehicles.This approach ties directly into Waymo’s culture of safety and transparency.Safety does not happen overnight. You have to be intentional in creating the appropriate safety culture. – Francesca FavaròWaymo is focused on developing an SAE Level 4 system as the continuous monitoring of the automated driving system can be subject to complacency coupled with an altered state of attention that can hinder the safety of the overall operation. Wrapping up the conversation, Francesca shares her insights on how she sees the Waymo Driver evolving over the coming years.Recorded on Friday, October 7, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pat Dillon, Chief Financial Officer, Flock Freight joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss the current economic outlook and Flock’s carpooling for freight model that unlocks value for shippers and carriers. The conversation begins with Pat sharing his insight on how as CFO, he is preparing Flock Freight for a potential recession in the United States which is currently being forecasted at 50% according to the Bloomberg United States Recession Probability Forecast. We are certainly cognizant of the broader macro environment and how that impacts our business. It certainly means that as consumer behavior changes or industrial production, the demand for freight transportation has an impact on that, so that certainly translates into our business. – Pat DillonWhile Flock Freight is still a growth company, the company is taking prudent measures to be prepared for the scenario that the United States economy falls into a recession. One of the company’s economic advantages is that they operate an asset-light shared truckload platform that enables cost savings for their customers. Shared truckload would mean that we can take a 20 ft shipment from Customer A and a 25 ft shipment from Customer B and pool those together into a single truckload, so it never has to go on a hub and go through a warehouse. And you are getting point-to-point transportation. It’s essentially carpooling for freight. – Pat DillonShipping using shared truckloads can reduce carbon emissions up to 40% due to higher utilization through fewer driven miles. As an important metric as this is, truck tonnage in the United States increased 7.4% in August 2022, year-over-year. The growth can be partially attributed to the catch-up effect as the global supply chain has begun to normalize. While the global supply chain has normalized today, the freight market will continue to fluctuate with the driver shortage and a potential slowdown in consumer spending. Creating opportunities for Flock that CNBC has taken notice as the company has climbed from #42 on the CNBC Disruptor 50 list in 2021 to #14 in 2022. With a potential recession on the horizon, Pat discusses what impact consolidation in the truck freight market will have on Flock Freight. Unlike a lot of other markets that might already be pretty consolidated, were further consolidation has signifiant pressure on margins, this is not that type of market. It’s hyper fragmented and we do not see it having much of a day-to-day impact from that perspective on Flock Freight. – Pat DillonFrom a technology perspective, autonomous trucks are preparing to scale and the timing could not be better as there is a growing demand for freight and a growing driver shortage. Like a lot of things, there are big problems throughout the truck freight world and big problems are big opportunities. That’s how you create new capacity when you are constrained on the number of drivers. – Pat DillonAutonomous trucks will compliment Flock Freight as they be able to provide autonomous shared truckload capacity. As new technologies come online such as hydrogen fuel-cell and electric heavy-duty trucks, Flock will look at ways to potential integrate those technologies into their platform.Wrapping up the conversation, Pat shares his thoughts on the future of freight.If you are a player in freight you will need to be able to have a more diversified approach in terms of the offerings you give to your customers. – Pat DillonRecorded on Friday, September 30, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alan Ohnsman, Senior Editor, Forbes joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss the complex supply chains for electric vehicles and the growing shortage of raw materials and refining capacity for those materials. The conversation begins with Alan discussing the shortage of raw materials and the lack of refining capacity to enable an all-electric future. The push to shift to EVs happened faster than any of the major OEMs anticipated. – Alan Ohnsman The major car manufacturers with the exception of Tesla and Chinese OEMs were caught flat footed with the pace of transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. Over the past year, the price of lithium has increased 122% YTD, forcing EV manufacturers to increase the price of EVs by an average of 54.3% due to the increasing costs of raw materials. How did this happen? The major car manufacturers were simply just not prepared for the consumer demand for EVs. What you are seeing with the run-up in prices especially for lithium would be exactly that. There was not a lot of advanced planning and now suddenly whether it’s General Motors or Ford, or VW and everyone else saying we need lots of this stuff, we need it now. Well it’s supply and demand. The price is going to react to that when demand suddenly spikes. – Alan Ohnsman With the average price of a new electric vehicle in the United States being $66k, does this create an opportunity for the used hybrid market to grow? Could this create an opportunity for Toyota to sell new hybrid models as well? Possibly. Alan breaks down what he calls the Tesla Effect and its effect on the market. While Tesla is having an effect on the market and driving the average price of a new EV higher, there is also the supply chain issue that is causing elevated prices. Furthermore there is a reported shortage of over 384 graphite, lithium, nickel and cobalt mines and an undisclosed shortage of refining capacity for raw materials globally according to Benchmark Minerals. If you look at the scale of demand and where it’s going to be throughout the 2020’s and into the 2030’s, we are not ready. We need far more sources of supply. – Alan Ohnsman One new potential source of supply that could be coming online in the near feature is The Salton Sea lithium deposit in California. For an article that Alan authored for Forbes, titled; California’s Lithium Rush For EV Batteries Hinges On Taming Toxic, Volcanic Brine he visited The Salton Sea to learn about the opportunity first-hand. Governor Newson has called The Salton Sea the “Saudi Arabia of Lithium”. Could this indeed be true? Alan shares his first-hand account of what he learned from visiting the region and meeting the lithium producers. This has never really been done before. Getting Lithium from brine is not a new thing. Getting lithium from this particular type of brine is completely new. It has a lot of challenges. It’s going to be fascinating to see. If it works, it’s so beneficial for everyone, because it would be a more environmentally friendly sustainable way to do this since you are just tapping into a stream that already exists. – Alan Ohnsman While this method is still unproven, the State of California has moved forward and proposed a flat-rate lithium tax which would impose a tax of $400 per tonne for the first 20,000 tonnes of lithium produced annually, $600 per tonne for the next 10,000 tonnes, and $800 per tonne with output of 30,000 tonnes or more. Is this a classic case of putting the cart before the horse? Could this create an opportunity for Nevada to step in and offer economic incentive packages for mining companies to relocate to Nevada and explore their lithium deposits? The market will be defined by economics and business viability. Grayson and Alan discuss what the economic impact of the proposed tax will have on the Salton Sea region. If they perfect the technology, the tax is probably not that big of a deal as time goes on. But in those critical early years, it is a problem and it will add to the expense of what is already a fairly complicated thing. – Alan Ohnsman Prior to becoming a destination for lithium extraction, The Salton Sea was the Speedboat Capital of the World in the 1920’s and 30’s. It was a destination for Hollywood to escape the hustle and bustle of LA. The sea became toxic over years due to the runoff from agriculture chemicals and a lack of fresh water from the Colorado River. Today, The Salton Sea is no longer a tourist destination. It’s a toxic area that is causing health problems for the individuals who live in the region. It’s a ghost town. The lithium extraction companies are hoping that they can revive the ghost town and turn into an old fashion mining town that is buzzing with industrial activity. We’ll see whether it takes shape. They got to prove that they can really get this lithium out of there and do it in an affordable way. – Alan Ohnsman While investors can point to the Inflation Reduction Act as a catalyst for demand for lithium from The Salton Sea. The effect of the act might not has large of an impact as they were hoping for as Bloomberg Intelligence reports that the IRA will have a negligible effect on EV sales, accounting for less than 1% of an assumed 15 million US automobiles sold annually through 2028, topping out at 1.3% in 2031.The United States is simply not prepared today for the transition to electric vehicles. The U.S. is highly dependent on China as the country refines 85% of the world’s raw materials. Leading to geopolitical risks and the potential for EV supply chains to suddenly come to a standstill. China championed their domestic battery market from the beginning. With China being the world’s largest automobile market, Alan talks about how the global OEMs missed this trend and failed to put a domestic strategy in place to ensure a stable supply chain for their electric vehicles. Fast forward to today and VW has committed to spend $20.4 billion to build six new gigafactories in Europe for a capacity of 240 GWh/year. Building the gigafactories is the easy part. Souring the raw materials is the hard part. Setting up a new EV plant, building a new battery plant, that’s the easy thing. That is what they know how to do. Sourcing of raw materials, cobalt from the Congo and lithium from Chile and nickel from hopefully Canada, or Indonesia or somewhere else, that is a whole different thing. – Alan Ohnsman This is where Tesla continues to lead. Tesla is continuously one step ahead of its competitors as it relates to securing raw materials and managing it’s EV supply chain. Now the company is looking to further secure its raw material supply chain by developing their own lithium hydroxide refining facility in Texas. Wrapping up the conversation, Alan shares his thoughts on what has to be done to ensure a sustainable electric vehicle supply chain.Recorded on Thursday September 22, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Aaron Nathan, Founder, CEO and CTO, Point One Navigation joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss safety and scaling autonomous vehicles with precise location services. The conversation begins with Grayson and Aaron discussing how we can make cars safer today, due to a rising trend of speeding on roads that is leading to an increase in crashes and fatalities. One potential way to dent this trend is to solve for the issue is for companies to actively embrace and implement active safety solutions that can predict and act before an incident takes place. Ultimately making systems that can detect something that is going to happen and then actually do something to avoid those type of tragic incidents. That is really where I think this industry is going to have a big impact in the near term. – Aaron NathanWith rising crashes across the world, could the general public become more open to trying and eventually embracing autonomous vehicles as part of their daily lives? AVs do not get distracted, text or speed. They simply follow the rules of the road and take you to and from your destination safely. Safety will be one defining factor that ultimately leads to a future with autonomous vehicles. The other factor that will ultimately drive consumers towards autonomous vehicles is convenience. We are starting to see the early phases of this trend with the introduction of Apple‘s Crash Detection that is featured on the iPhone 14, Apple Watch 8 and Ultra. As much as this is a safety feature, it’s a convenience.Feeling that your device is really helping you be safe, that technology that kind of feeling is something that we are going to see, not just from companies like Apple, but also car companies that are building these technologies. – Aaron NathanCould Apple’s introduction of Crash Detection be the first step towards the much speculated Apple Car? Possibly. Grayson and Aaron discuss why an Apple Car would be an another platform for Apple to grow their services businesses through the introduction of augmented reality experiences in-vehicle complimented with a commerce layer. To achieve this vision, Apple has to develop an autonomous vehicle stack.While Point One Navigation is not developing an autonomous vehicle stack, they are however enabling AVs to know where they are all of the time and updating other vehicles in the fleet in real-time on road trends with their precise location. We are the common language that the cars can use to talk to about where they saw something. – Aaron Nathan Real-time data can be used to update an autonomous vehicle on traffic patterns and advise the passenger on the best time to leave the destination when they summon an autonomous vehicle. Point One’s technology can also apply to traditional vehicles as well. This is convenience and this is the future of mobility. Tying the digital and physical worlds together, that is a building block that we are enabling. – Aaron NathanIt’s not just traffic data, it’s the real-time precise location of the vehicle that makes Point One’s technology so important to the future of autonomy. Wrapping up the conversation, Aaron shares his thoughts on the future of precise location services. Location is one of the most important and invisible sensors in all of robotics, not just self-driving vehicles. – Aaron NathanRecorded on Thursday September 15, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Andrew Culhane, Chief Strategy Officer, Torc Robotics joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy Podcast to discuss scaling autonomy profitability along with Torc’s strategic relationship with Daimler.The conversation begins with Andrew reflecting on the last 14 years of Torc, as he first joined the company in 2008 as a Sales Engineer. Up until Daimler acquired a majority stake in 2019, the company never took any outside funding and was profitable each and every year. Torc was bootstrapped from day one. We had no outside capital into Torc until the Daimler deal. – Andrew CulhaneThis is a success story. This is Torc. The can do attitude of running a growing profitable business has proven to be extremely successful for the company. While it’s successful today, it was a journey that was full of hard decisions and moments of uncertainty. It’s these moments of uncertainty that laid the groundwork for Torc pivoting to autonomous trucking as Andrew explains in detail. These decisions led to what the company is today, a company with a Daimler partnership that is solely focused on autonomous trucking.We had learned a lot of lessons over all of those years and really understanding what it was going to take, and made that move to trucking before anybody else. – Andrew CulhaneThe decision to pivot from passenger vehicles, mining and military to focus solely on autonomous trucking was not an an easy decision. While the decision was not an easy one, it allowed the company to focus their entire effort on autonomous trucking. As part of their focus on autonomous trucking, the company is focused on a hub-to-hub model. This model was chosen based on experience and listening to the needs of their customers. It has been three years since Daimler took a majority stake in Torc and there has been a great deal of collaboration during this time. It’s been a really interesting partnership and collaboration. – Andrew CulhaneThis approach follows Torc’s track record of not overhyping and not making promises that they cannot keep. Torc has never publicly set a date to remove the driver and operate driver-out operations as they have always kept true to who they are. With this in mind, Grayson and Andrew discuss the boom and bust hype cycles of autonomy. While Torc is not making timeline promises, the company is clearly laying the groundwork towards commercialization as the company recently appointed Peter Vaughn Schmidt (Head of Daimler Truck Autonomous Technology Group) as CEO. Wrapping up the conversation, Andrew discusses what drove Torc’s financial discipline from day one.Recorded on Tuesday September 13, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Scott Painter, Founder & CEO, Autonomy joined Grayson Brulte on The Road To Autonomy Podcast to discuss Autonomy’s approach to electric vehicle subscriptions. The conversation begins with Scott discussing why he founded Autonomy.I think that great entrepreneurs, great companies have to solve a real problem. – Scott PainterOne of the key hurdles to the adoption of electric vehicles is affordability and that is the problem that Autonomy is solving with their subscription model. For those individuals who are uncertain about electric vehicles and/or concerned about range, Autonomy offers a low commitment way to discover and experience an electric vehicle without a long-term commitment. Because Autonomy owns the fleet and gathers data in real-time about the vehicles, the company is able to offer time based episodic insurance for subscribers. With this model, subscribers only pay for insurance when they are driving the vehicle, leading to a lower operating cost than a traditional lease. Overall, an Autonomy subscription is about 15% less than a traditional lease. When compared to a Tesla lease, an individual needs to have a minimum 720 FICO score in order to qualify for a lease. With an Autonomy subscription, an individual can secure a subscription with a minimum 640 FICO score. What we are really focused on is giving people the ability to get flexible access to mobility without necessarily having to go into debt. – Scott PainterThe other key differences are that an Autonomy subscription is minimum of three months as compared to traditional Tesla lease that is 36 months. A Tesla lease will report as debt on consumers credit reports, while an Autonomy subscription will not report as debt. The fact that a subscription, an Autonomy subscription in particular does not show up on your credit report as debt is a very big deal. Which also allows us to open up another really key value proposition, which is you can pay for it with a credit card. You can not pay a traditional car lease or a car loan with a credit card, because it is illegal to pay debt with debt. – Scott PainterWith rising consumer credit card debt, Grayson and Scott discuss how Autonomy approaches underwriting and how the company is constantly evaluating potential subscribers from a credit risk standpoint. In addition to the consumers’s credit report, Autonomy also looks at potential subscribers insurability.The goal here is to have dramatically better outcomes than a traditional auto lender or auto lessor. We just do not want to have bad debt on the books. We want to see good quality revenue coming in. – Scott PainterTo scale up the business, Autonomy has placed an order for nearly 23,000 electric vehicles from 17 different automakers for a capital expenditure of $1.2 billion order. This order represents 1.2% of the projected U.S. electric vehicle production through the end of 2022. Wrapping up the conversation, Scott discusses how he plans to expand the business in the coming years.Recorded on Thursday, September 8, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Avery Ash, Head of Global Public Policy and Product Strategy, INRIX joined Grayson Brulte on The Road To Autonomy Podcast to discuss how data can help cities and DOTs (Department of Transportations) better understand congestion and how to properly plan for it. The conversation begins with Avery discussing how INRIX gathers anonymous data from 500 million vehicles, mobile devices, mobile apps, parking lot operators, mobile carriers and smart meters all in real-time.Expanding their data gathering capabilities, INRIX recently announced a partnership with GM where data from 15 million vehicles will be used in a collaborative manner to create Safety View. This product leverage the promise of connected vehicles to improve safety planning in local communities. As local communities plan for safe road ways, data will play a vital role in determining the best way to improve safety. In Washington, D.C. for example, 20% of drivers travel at least 10 mph above the speed limit in school zones. Knowing this data, schools will be better prepared to implement safety solutions such solutions as speed bumps, crossing guards, lowering speed limits in surrounding neighborhoods and working with local law enforcement to increase the police presence. You can not expect one silver bullet solution that is going to solve this problem. – Avery AshOnce the new safety measures are put in place, schools can measure the impact of the changes thanks to the data. Data is also having an impact on how cities tackle the issue of congestion. Each year, INRIX publishes their Annual Global Traffic Scorecard and this year the company reported that the average American driver lost 36 hours in 2021 due to congestion. With all of this data being gathered, how can cities effectively use the data to reduce traffic? That is the million dollar question. In London which is the world’s most congested city, where drivers lost 148 hours to congestion in 2021, the city has not figured out how to effectively reduce traffic even as the city has a daily £15 congestion tax. New York City is currently debating on whether to follow London’s lead and introduce a congestion tax. But NYC has a crime problem that three quarters of New Yorkers have called a very serious problem. Crime is driving New Yorkers tourists alike to single occupancy vehicles out of an abundance of caution. When planning for congestion, it’s important to take into account a variety of data points and not just rely on one source of data. It’s really important to enter into these sorts of policy changes with eyes wide open and with a willingness and frankly a plan for how you are going to measure the impact. – Avery AshCould autonomous vehicle drop-off and pick-up zones be a potential solution in the future as AVs scale and are deployed in cities around the world? Grayson and Avery discuss drop-off and pick-up zones as a potential solution for congestion in cities.Wrapping up the conversation, Avery shares his opinion on the best way cities can prepare for the large scale deployment of autonomous vehicles. The first step is to get a really clear understanding of how your roadways are currently being used and what behavior looks like across your road networks, across all road users. – Avery AshRecorded on Tuesday, August 30, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tara Andringa, Executive Director of Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE) joined Grayson Brulte on The Road To Autonomy Podcast to discuss developing and maintaining public trust in autonomous vehicles and trucks.The conversation begins with Tara discussing how PAVE is working on developing public trust of autonomous vehicles. I really like to think of it as a conversation with the public. Every single person is a stakeholder in transportation, and so what we want to do is let everyone have a voice in thinking about what the future of our transportation system looks like. – Tara Andringa One of the biggest hurdles to over come on the road to developing public trust in autonomous vehicles is misleading headlines that erode public trust in the technology. This is one of our biggest challenges right now. – Tara Andringa These headlines are eroding public trust as they are confusing ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) with autonomous vehicles, which is causing confusion with the public. Some individuals are over-trusting that the ADAS system will operate like an autonomous vehicle, meaning that they will not have to pay attention when the vehicle is driving, potentially leading to tragic situations. One reason these headlines are being printed is the amount of traffic that they generate for news outlets. While the traffic leads to higher ad revenue, the headlines could potentially lead to unfortunate events and an overall erosion of public trust in autonomy. It’s much easier for them to write self-driving car then it is to say a car that under limited circumstances with an attentive human behind the wheel can handle some driving tasks. That just does not roll off the tongue. It gets simplified to really dangerous results. – Tara Andringa It is very important to point out that you cannot buy an autonomous vehicle today and that all autonomous vehicles are currently operated as part of a fleet. To try and clear the confusion, PAVE partnered with AAA, J.D. Power, The National Safety Council, SAE International and Consumer Reports on the CLEARING THE CONFUSION: Common Naming for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems document. There are two different naming issues and I really want to distinguish between them. One is that we need clear language for what is available today and the other issue is that we need clear language to distinguish today’s technology from future technology. – Tara Andringa With over 40 different names for Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB), consumers are unsure of what the technology can do, potentially causing confusion. The is why the common naming document is so important. Perhaps the common naming document can be transferred into emojis that everyone around the world no matter what language they speak can understand what it means.There are examples from history that can help pave the road with trust. One example is The Vagabonds, a group composed of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs who made yearly camping trips in Ford vehicles between 1916 and 1924 with the goal of developing trust in the automobile. A more modern example is what Voyage did in The Villages to develop trust of autonomous vehicles with the residents of the community. When you really give people exposure to the technology, they start thinking about it in a much more real way. – Tara Andringa Building upon history, a diverse group of members from leading startups, to established automakers to insurance companies to non-profits, to software providers came together to form PAVE with the goal of developing public trust in autonomous vehicles and trucks.Wrapping up the conversation, Tara shares insights on how communities and Governments are preparing for the large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles. Recorded on Tuesday, August 23, 2022--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy® is a leading source of data, insight and commentary on autonomous vehicles/trucks and the emerging autonomy economy™. The company has two businesses: The Road to Autonomy Indices, with Standard and Poor’s Dow Jones Indices as the custom calculation agent; Media, which includes The Road to Autonomy and Autonomy Economy podcasts as well as This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.