Autonomous vehicles are vehicles that can drive themselves. Instead of you steering and braking, the car uses sensors and computers to handle driving, and the big question is how that changes everyday life.
“To scale” here means autonomous cars becoming common enough that they affect lots of people’s daily routines. It’s not just a few test cars—it’s about widespread use.
“Horseless carriages” refers to the earliest cars—vehicles that didn’t use horses. The host is comparing that historical shift to what self-driving cars could do today.
Term
access
“Access” here means you can reach what you need when you need it. It’s not just distance—it’s whether the trip fits your schedule and availability.
The instrument cluster is the dashboard with gauges and warning lights. If a car drives itself, some of that traditional dashboard information may be less necessary.
The steering wheel is what you use to turn the car. The speaker is saying that in self-driving cars, traditional controls might not be needed in the same way.
The brake pedal is how a driver slows or stops the car. In self-driving concepts, braking can be handled automatically, though safety systems may still keep a pedal.
The accelerator pedal is what you press to go faster. If the car drives itself, speed can be controlled automatically, so the pedal might not be as central.
Sensors are the car’s “eyes and ears,” and processors are the “brains” that interpret what the sensors see. The speaker’s point is that the money moves from traditional controls to sensors and computing.
The phrase means future cars that are electric, can drive themselves, and can communicate over networks. The speaker thinks that once this becomes real, the cars may end up simpler and cheaper.
Concept
av
“AV” means an autonomous vehicle, basically a car that can drive itself. The speaker is comparing it to a normal car to talk about cost and feasibility.
Term
sixth generation vehicle
“Sixth generation vehicle” refers to a specific iteration of Waymo’s self-driving platform hardware and integration. Each generation typically changes sensor placement, compute hardware, and packaging, which can materially affect cost.
Reverse engineering means taking apart or studying something to figure out how it works and what it might cost to build. The speaker says this was used to estimate Waymo’s vehicle cost.
They’re talking about a Tesla autonomous taxi idea called the cybercab. The point is to see if it can be cheap enough to run—especially by designing it for short trips and keeping the total cost per mile low.
The idea is: build the car around the trips people actually make most often. If it’s mostly for short rides with just two people, you can simplify the car and make it cheaper.
“Level four” refers to SAE autonomy levels, where the car can handle driving tasks in specific conditions without human intervention. In this segment, it’s used to frame the current market reality: autonomous vehicles are already being sold, but at a price that may depend on fleet economics.
“Design life” means how long the car is expected to last before it’s worn out or needs major replacement. The longer it lasts, the cheaper it is per mile because you’re dividing the cost over more driving.
They’re talking about the idea that an EV battery could last for about a million miles. If that happens, the battery replacement worry goes way down, and the car becomes cheaper to run over time.
Electric motors are what actually move an EV. The speaker is saying they tend to last a long time, which helps support the idea of long vehicle life and lower cost per mile.
This is a cost-per-mile number that estimates how much of the car’s value you lose each mile you drive. It helps compare different vehicles on the same basis: miles, not just dollars.
“Class 8” refers to the U.S. heavy-truck weight class used for the largest commercial vehicles, typically including long-haul tractor-trailers. It’s relevant because these trucks are often operated for extremely high mileages, which makes them a natural proving ground for autonomous systems and durability claims.
The point is that what matters most won’t be the sticker price anymore—it’ll be what it costs to use the vehicle every mile. If autonomous driving and electrification cut crashes and upkeep, the “best deal” shifts toward lower operating costs.
They mean a self-driving car. The argument is that if it prevents most crashes, it can lower insurance and other costs, making it more affordable to run.
Here, “ecosystem” means the whole web of businesses involved with cars. It’s not just the automaker—insurance, financing, and repair services are all part of the same system.
Scenario planning means thinking through different “what if” futures. Instead of betting on one outcome, you prepare for several possibilities—like how self-driving cars might change the market.
Life cycle costs mean the total cost of owning something over its whole life. For a car, that includes more than the sticker price—like repairs, insurance, and upkeep.
In autonomous-vehicle discussions, “cameras” typically refers to onboard sensors (often forward-facing and surrounding) that record the driving scene to help interpret what happened during a crash. The segment suggests these recordings will make crash causes less ambiguous.
No-fault insurance means that after a crash, your own insurance helps pay for your side of the costs, even if someone else caused the crash. It’s designed to make claims simpler and reduce fighting in court.
“Dispatch your car” means telling the self-driving car to go somewhere for you. Instead of you driving, the car is sent to pick up or drop off someone based on the plan you set.
“Empty miles” are when a self-driving car drives around without carrying anyone. The point here is that even though it’s “empty,” it helps the system work better because the car can go to the next place it’s needed.
The host is talking about self-driving electric cars that can also “talk” to other systems. That combination can make trips safer and cheaper, and enable new services.
The Cadillac Escalade is a big SUV that’s designed to feel luxurious and comfortable. It’s meant for people who want a spacious vehicle with higher-end features. It may be discussed because some buyers still want this kind of large luxury SUV even when trends change.
Stopping distance is how far a car needs to go to fully stop once it starts braking. The host is saying that if vehicles are lighter and slower, they can stop more easily and avoid crashes sooner.
Radar is a sensor that uses radio waves to detect things around the car. The host is saying better radar can help a self-driving car understand what’s around it more reliably.
Atomatic is the newer name the host mentions for the same sensor company. They’re working on radar sensors to help self-driving cars “see” more clearly.
San Francisco is a city in California. The host is saying it’s close to having similar discussions or rules about how autonomous vehicles should operate.
A robo taxi is a self-driving car that comes to get you and drives you where you want to go. The point here is that if it has to go slower in cities, it may not save as much time as people expect.
A door-to-door system means the self-driving service takes you from where you are to where you want to go, without you having to walk to a stop. They’re saying the time savings come from avoiding things like parking hassles, not just driving speed.
Kinetic energy is the “energy of motion.” If a vehicle is going faster, it has much more kinetic energy, and that matters for safety because crashes involve that energy.
A “safety fenced area” is a controlled zone where autonomous vehicles operate under tighter constraints, such as lower speeds and managed interactions with other traffic. The speaker uses it to explain how an autonomous system might coexist with conventional vehicles.
Ipsilanti is a city near Ann Arbor in Michigan. They use it to explain how self-driving cars might have different speed rules depending on which roads you’re on.
Ann Arbor is the destination city in their example route. They’re saying that once you get into the city area, the self-driving car may have to slow down because of how local roads are managed.
Place
Washtonaw
“Washtonaw” sounds like a specific road they’re using as an example. They’re saying you might be able to go faster on some roads, then slow down later as you approach the city’s managed areas.
Term
door of my building
They’re describing a self-driving service that can pick you up right at your building and drop you off at your lecture hall. The benefit is that you don’t waste time finding parking.
Concept
autonomous future
An “autonomous future” means cars that can drive themselves. The point being made is that self-driving cars still need places and systems to support them—like charging and maintenance—so cities have to plan for that too.
Self-driving taxi services don’t just run on software. They also need real places to charge, clean, and repair the cars—plus space for them to operate—so the whole city has to support the service.
SIMCOG (Council of Governments) is cited as the source of regional trip data used in the robotaxi parking simulation. In this context, it’s part of the data pipeline for estimating how many cars enter and leave an area.
The idea is that if robotaxis can drive themselves to park and then come back when needed, fewer cars need to sit in parking lots. That could free up a lot of space in cities.
Mass transit means shared transportation like buses that follow routes and timetables. The speaker is arguing that buses can end up carrying lots of empty seats compared with on-demand rides.
Utilization is basically “how much of the time the vehicle is actually doing something useful.” The point is that most cars sit parked a huge amount of the day, while a shared autonomous fleet could be used more often.
This means trips that go straight from where you are to where you want to go, booked on demand. The claim is that self-driving fleets can make the wait time short enough to work well.
The speaker’s saying today’s ride-hailing has a weakness: the driver may have to drive around to reach the next passenger. With self-driving cars, the system could position vehicles better so they waste less time getting to the next ride.
Concept
second third car phenomena
“Second third car phenomena” is being used as a shorthand for how many households buy multiple vehicles over time, which affects the size and timing of the addressable market. In an autonomous-future debate, it matters because adoption can be staggered across fleets and owners rather than happening all at once.
Company
Bridstone
This is a sponsor name from a tire commercial. They’re talking about how their tires handle rain better.
Front-wheel drive means the front wheels do the work of both steering and moving the car. It can also affect how the car is built and how it feels to drive.
Term
wheelchairs
Wheelchairs are mobility devices that require special access. The discussion is about how autonomous fleets could plan enough accessible vehicles so passengers can still get where they need to go.
They’re saying one single type of vehicle won’t work well for everyone. Different people and different trips will need different vehicle designs and fleet setups.
A flat floor means the inside of the vehicle has a level floor. That makes it easier for people to get in and out quickly, including passengers using mobility aids.
Term
OHI
OHI sounds like a specific vehicle design concept or acronym. Here it’s being used to describe a car layout meant to help people get in and out quickly, including accessibility needs.
It’s a concept for how transportation could work as a connected system. Different kinds of vehicles (like buses and smaller shuttles) would cover different parts of your trip so you can get where you’re going more easily.
“Peak auto” is the idea that the market for new cars has stopped growing and could start shrinking. It’s like reaching the highest point before sales level off or fall.
The used car market is where people buy and sell cars that have already been owned. If fewer people buy new cars, it can change used-car prices and availability.
Value creation means who ends up making the money and control in a new business. In this case, the question is whether car makers will still be the ones that benefit most from self-driving services.
GM is a big traditional car company that sells lots of cars to customers. The host compares GM’s car business to the value of autonomous robotaxi operations.
Commoditizing means making something so common that it’s hard to tell apart from competitors. If that happens, companies often compete mostly on price instead of unique features.
A “skateboard” platform is an EV design where the heavy battery sits low in the bottom of the car. That makes the car’s body easier to change while keeping the same basic undercarriage.
It means all the computer systems a self-driving car needs to work—like seeing what’s around it, deciding what to do, and then steering/braking to make it happen. It’s not just one app; it’s the whole bundle working together.
Edge cases are the weird, uncommon situations—like unexpected road conditions or confusing behavior from other road users. Self-driving systems have to handle these safely, even if they don’t happen often.
A digital twin is a computer model that acts like a real car (and sometimes the road around it). Engineers use it to test self-driving behavior in lots of situations without risking real vehicles.
Simulation is how engineers test self-driving software in a computer environment. It lets them try lots of tricky situations that would be hard to find quickly on real roads.
A world model is the self-driving car’s “mental picture” of the road around it. It tries to understand what’s out there and what might happen next so it can choose the safest move.
This means the company had newer versions of its self-driving software (like version 5 and version 6). The recall suggests those versions had a problem in certain situations, like flooded roads.
Flooded roads are dangerous for self-driving cars because the water can hide what’s really underneath and affect grip. In this case, the system incorrectly kept going into standing water.
Weimo is the company behind the robotaxis mentioned in this segment. They had to recall them because the self-driving software didn’t handle flooded roads safely.
An automated driving system is the car’s technology that tries to drive for you using sensors and software. “Fifth generation” just means a newer version of that system, which can behave differently—sometimes better, sometimes with new mistakes.
Term
closed construction zones
A “closed construction zone” is a part of the road where lanes are blocked and traffic is supposed to be rerouted. A self-driving system has to notice those signs and barriers so it doesn’t drive into the work area.
Term
active highway construction lanes
“Active construction lanes” are lanes where road work is happening right now. The car has to avoid them safely because there may be workers, equipment, and sudden changes to how the road is laid out.
This means the car’s driving software can be improved later through updates. The hope is that problems get fixed without needing a whole new car, but updates still have to be tested carefully.
Combustion engines are the traditional type of engine that burn fuel to make power. The discussion is basically saying some automakers may be backing away from electric cars and going back toward older engine tech.
Electric vehicles run on electricity stored in a battery, not on burning gasoline or diesel. The host is arguing about whether policy and automaker choices will help or hurt EV progress.
The Chevrolet Silverado is a large truck made for carrying things and towing trailers. People use it for work and also for regular driving. It may be mentioned because it’s a common, big vehicle that people talk about when discussing fuel and everyday practicality.
A recall is when a car company has to fix a problem in certain vehicles because it could be unsafe. For self-driving systems, recalls can happen when the software or sensors don’t behave correctly in some situations.
School zones are places near schools where drivers are supposed to slow down and follow extra rules. The host is saying self-driving cars have trouble with one specific school-zone behavior—like stopping for buses.
They’re saying the biggest reason self-driving cars won’t spread instantly is people. Even if the tech is good, humans decide how quickly they’re willing to use it.
A sudden stop is when a vehicle brakes hard or quickly. The point is that self-driving systems may be able to notice problems earlier so they don’t have to brake abruptly.
Road friction is basically how grippy the road is for your tires. If the road is slick, the car can’t stop or turn as well, so the vehicle needs to account for that.
Smart tires are tires with extra sensing or electronics. They can help the car understand how the tire is interacting with the road so it can drive more safely.
They mean designing the whole “autonomous transportation plan,” not just the car itself. The goal is to use different kinds of autonomous rides for different trips—like normal errands versus longer trips—so it works better for everyday life.
They’re using a real Michigan city as the starting point for a “how would the autonomous car get there?” example. It’s just to make the scenario feel concrete.
A “fleet” just means many autonomous cars working together. Instead of one car for one person, the system can send the right car to the right rider when needed.
“Hierarchy of the network” refers to how road systems are categorized (for example, freeways vs arterials vs local streets) and how autonomous driving behavior changes by road class. The speaker implies the system’s planning and control logic depends on which type of road you’re on.
This is a way to measure how much driving is happening—basically total miles driven by vehicles. They use it to compare ride-hailing activity to all US driving.
Briarwood Mall is the example location used to imagine where self-driving cars could park and wait. The host is using it to show how autonomous cars could make event trips easier.
Term
autonomous street
“Autonomous street” refers to the idea that public roads become part of an autonomous-vehicle operating environment, not just a controlled test area. It implies widespread readiness of infrastructure, regulations, and vehicle behavior for real-world driving.
The idea is that self-driving cars could do more than just carry people. They could also deliver packages, so the vehicles are used more efficiently instead of sitting around.
Self-driving cars are cars that can handle driving tasks by themselves. They use sensors and software to understand what’s around them and decide how to move safely.
Google is mentioned because it worked on self-driving technology. The point is that tech companies—rather than classic car companies—were leading the push toward autonomous driving.
“Manage the transition” here means planning for how society, labor markets, and regulation adapt as autonomous driving becomes more common. It’s framed as avoiding reactive policy changes after disruption starts.
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Speaker 1: Auto Line after Hours is brought to you by Alex Partners.
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Speaker 2: Hello everybody, thanks for joining us on Outline after Hours.
And Gary, are you ready to talk about an autonomous future?
Speaker 3: I think you know we've had a lot of shows that have been important. I have a feeling this show
will be among those very important ones we've done.
Speaker 2: I agree, I agree, And we've got to let everybody know.
We've got Larry Burns with us. Let's see, he's an author,
he's a lecturer, he's a consultant, he's the former head of R and D at General Motors, worked at Waimo.
We're going to get into a whole bunch of av stuff with him. We've also got Joanne Mueller from Axios
who covers all kinds of things going on in the mobility scene.
Speaker 4: So this is my world.
Speaker 2: But Larry, let's get going because I think it might be an argument with you and I paired up against Gary and Joanne on the av future the future of AB.
Speaker 4: But I'll kick this off.
Speaker 2: My premise is and has been for years, that when we get autonomous vehicles to scale, it will have as big or a bigger impact on society than when the first horseless carriages appeared one hundred and twenty six years ago.
Speaker 5: I agree with you on that. You know a lot
of people think about autonomous as a uber without a driver for the car I have today that I don't have to drive, but it's the same car, and I spend my time thinking beyond that this future form factor not just to the vehicle, but how it's going to reshape the way people live and for EXAs, if you have a robo car, I'll use the term robocar to be the personal autonomous vehicle and robotaxi to be the one that's used in riot haling. So if you have
a robocar and it truly is as safe as we think, is going to be a way. Moo's out there saying
they're ninety percent safer than human drivers, and that's just going to get better. Can I dispatch the robocar with
my twelve year old to go to soccer practice, so I don't have to use my time on that trip.
And I studied time and geography and transportation. When you
free me up from that trip, it frees me up to do so many of the things. John, So, I
think this future of autonous vehicles has to be understood in the broader context of how it's going to change the way people live, not just transportation.
Speaker 3: So you're suggesting that people will have more time on their hands as a result of not having to drive their vehicles.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what I'm suggesting is not just the time savings of the trip. It's not having to schedule around that
specific trip. And what I've studied in the whole field
of what's called access. I did my dissertation on access
in nineteen seventy eight. It's the freedom to go where
you want, when you want. And it's not just geography
and where things are located, it's when they're available and you start taking required trips out of your day. It's
enormously enabling. That's why remote work has been so embraced
by so many people because it frees them up telehealth, e commerce. The trip I don't make to the store,
there's no amount of speed increase in transportation that you can give me that can save me as much time as not having to make that trip. So it's not
just a transportation phenomenon. It's how we organize and choreograph
our lives with the people we're with, and all of time's vehicles are going to be a big enabler of that.
And the other thing I find very interesting is just the potential rethink the vehicle itself, the parts that go away.
You know, your instrument cluster, your steering wheel, your brake pedal, your accelerator pedal. But then if you really believe the
physics are going to change, because the crashes aren't happy as often. I'm really convinced that the value of the
stuff you take off the car is going to be on the order of what you have to add for the processors and sensors to drive autonomously. So a lot
of people are around saying they're going to be too expensive.
I think when we really unleash the design talent in the world and they realize electric autonomous, connected is where we are. We've got these advanced materials, advanced manufacturing processes.
Let's see what we can do. I think we're going
to amaze ourselves with how simple these machines become.
Speaker 3: So you a document you made had a mature conventional vehicle costing fifty thousand dollars, a mature av at numbers, So you see taking a Yes, it's out of the cost cycle.
Speaker 5: And the basis of that now not a lot of science I like to do. It's called farmer's math or
back of the envelope calculations. I'm an engineer, and EPIC
was m a kind of an engineer, not a finite element analysis engineer. So where did forty thousand dollars come from? OHI,
which is Weymo's sixth generation vehicle. This is not Waymo's number.
From my understanding, I think Mackenzie calculated doing reverse engineering that it's at one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.
Tesla cybercab Tesla talks about that as being a thirty thousand dollars, two seat vehicle at two point six sense per mile for electricity, super aerodynamic. So I took that
thirty thousand, and then I said, if we keep going through learning cycles and we start to strip more and more parts out of the autonomous vehicle, that we're not going to need and then, very very importantly carer you start tailoring the design of the vehicle to the typical everyday trip, which is typically two people, seven or eight miles.
It's not ninety miles an hour on the freeway with six people. When you start to do that, I absolutely
think we're going to go below that.
Speaker 2: Keep in mind too, that right now today by Duo is selling Level four cars in China for about thirty five thousand dollars. Now, I don't know if they're losing
all kinds of money on them, but if you're a fleet operator, you can buy those cars at thirty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: There's one other key variable in that calculation. That's the
life of the vehicle. Now you can get a debate
with engineers and what is the design life of a conventional car today. Some people say it's one hundred thousand miles,
But a typical car today, I'll go one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand miles. And taxicabs, even hybrid
taxicabs in New York City have a history of three hundred and fifty thousand or four hundred thousands. So if
you maintain them well, you know you can make them last longer. We're seeing people claiming million mile batteries are
in our future. We know electric motors last a long
long time. My house in Franklin, Michigan, we bought twenty
six years ago, and our furnace service people said, Larry, we think you should just leave the fan running to keep the air circulating and you'll get better to heat.
The motors still run, Garritt. So, so it's the life
of the vehicles. Now you take that forty thousand dollars
and it has a four hundred thousand mile life, you're a ten cents of depreciation per mile. And if you
took the fifty thousand dollars at two hundred thousand mile, if you are twenty five cents. But the other thing
in these numbers that are just shocking mature conventional car.
Give you guys a quick Well, you looked at the numbers.
It's not fair. So maybe your viewers can think about it.
Is the gasoline cost per mile higher than the insurance cost per mile, which story seems to be on the news every night. Gasoline insurance costs or of about forty
percent since COVID, and they're at twenty cents a mile.
In the United States, a typical insurance policy for a car in the US is twenty five hundred dollars, and typical people drive twelve five hundred miles a year. That's
more than the gasoline and we're not seeing that. And
if suddenly you have a vehicle system where ninety five percent, ninety ninety five percent of the crash has been taken out of the system, I think the insurance price is going to go down quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Okay, wait, I want to make his numbers even better because Class eight semi tractors are designed to go a million miles a million.
Speaker 3: So we know we can do it.
Speaker 2: And you can buy a Class eight tractor for roughly one hundred and forty thousand dollars depending on how it's equipped.
So that's one hundred and forty thousand dollars at a manufacturing volume that is a fraction of what any of the taxi cabs are being built in. So I think
the numbers could even be better than what you're talking.
I think we can design autonomous vehicles to go a million miles and you'll have you know, velcro seat covers and stuff that you rip out place.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when you think it through. I'll get back to
you in a second. Grey think it through and you
design it that way. I had a good friend at GM,
Don Runkel. He talked about a concept called economic gravity,
that this is about economics. I think we're at an
economic moment when you shift from the price of the car to the cost per mile and you realize in that cost per mile is depreciation, finance, maintenance, energy, insurance, and parking. First of all, the auto industry is only
about twenty five percent of that dollar that it's at today.
And the opportunity of a longer life vehicle that uses less energy, that has less maintenance because it's electric drive, significantly fewer crashes. It's pretty exciting, especially if you can
get a lot of the parts off it are on the car because it was a combustion vehicle and because it was a human driven vehicle. That's the thesis. So
Don's economic gravity that things are going to go to where the value is and the costs reductions. I think
this is looking very plausible now, even at one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. Oh hi, and that's not
way most number. I don't have any insight on that
it's a consultant's number. If you get a four hundred
thousand mile life off of that, you're starting to look pretty darn good. On appreciation, You're starting to look like
you're almost where conventional cars are today right now with the robo car. That was my epiphany when I ran
through those numbers. We're that close on costs. A lot
remains to be done. I recognize that, But you gotta
be sitting in this world saying to yourself, Okay, I can get ready sooner, or I can get ready later.
It's going to happen sooner, or it's going to happen later.
If I opt to get ready laire going to happen sooner, I'm in trouble. The other three ones work out pretty well.
So I think it's time for anyone disrupted in this conventional auto industry ecosystem. The manufacturers, the suppliers, the insurance companies,
the finance companies, the service companies, all of those players are parking industry. They at least have to be sitting
down saying, if Larry's right and this is going to go that way, what might it look like? Where are
the opportunities in the future? Ecosystem. How might I play
I'm not saying you bet the farm. I wouldn't put
all my chips on what I'm saying, but man, you got to be thinking that way, all right, my thought go ahead?
Speaker 3: All right, So scenario planning wonderful people should do that because at some point in the future all this may happen. Okay,
you're talking about life cycle costs right, looking at the whole thing holistically. How many people do that when they
buy a car? Probably this many?
Speaker 5: None?
Speaker 3: Right, yes, so's that's point number one. Number two. Okay.
If a vehicle can last four hundred thousand miles, how many people are going to keep a vehicle? Manywhere?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: Action of that driven U three in number three? Okay.
Insurance costs okay, right now according to a Sureify. Not
according to me, that the most expensive vehicles to ensure our Tesla's why because of all the sensors. Therefore, if
we have a sensor intense vehicle, right and it gets into an accident, that's going to be very expensive to fix.
Now you say, wait a minute, but these automous vehicles won't crash into each other. So I looked there are
currently two hundred and ninety four million vehicles on the road in the.
Speaker 4: United States right now.
Speaker 3: Okay, and these are just pine old vehicles are being driven by us. So we're going to crash into these vehicles,
right the vehicle is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, they're going to crash into the autonous vehicle if you look at the grate on the state. Butc. Garry,
just hold on a second. How many horses were in
the United States when Ford popularized the car? And and
and these the insurance thing. These we're talking about companies
with four trillion dollar valuations that are in this game, Amazon, Alphabet, Tessa's at one point four billion, and then video. Do
you think they're going to turn to all state and Progressive for insurance. They're going to self insurre on this thing.
They're going to believe their own numbers. And in fact,
they're going to have cameras that are going to show exactly what the reason for the crash is. And this
whole thing and no fault insurance that was because lawyers wanted to make a whole lot of money and we had to get that out of the system. It's not
going to be ambiguous with the the cause of the crash is I meant to look up the date, but I can remember. I'm old enough to know early days
of air travel, people would buy flight insurance in case they're plane crashed, and we don't do that anymore because we've had the learning cycles and the planes are so safe that it just doesn't happen. So I respect your point,
but that's certainly not a reason to say this isn't going to happen. I think people are going to gravitate
towards their value. As the other thing that's very, very interesting.
Nineteen eighty three was when one g in the first cell phones came out. I don't think there was anyone
in nineteen eighty three imagining the form factor of the iPhone in two thousand and seven, and that was just twenty four years. And so I'm not saying we're within
two years, three years, five years of everybody having this.
I'm saying there is an inevitability here. And if your
destiny is tied to a century old business, this model called the auto industry, and you think you're going to have a way to preserve that forever, I just don't see it. I think there's so much design opportunity here,
and the other thing I think people didn't see about the iPhone is so much more than the phone, and that's what I think is going to happen to our mobility machines. And so this dollar per mile thing that
people don't buy cars based on that today, I get that, but there's a whole lot of people that can't even afford a car today, this affordability issue. And well, we
were on the show last time, John, you talked about peak auto and a concern about the price of cars going up. Now, one last point on your question. If
I have a robocar and I use it for a couple years, what's its next life going to be a robotaxi.
It's going to have a couple hundred thousand miles maybe three hundred thousand miles left as a robotaxi. And that's
what you see with Uber today. The Uber drivers will
go out and buy a good use car because it's already apreciated a lot, and go from there. So I
think there's ways to get out. The concerns are general concerns.
They need to be addressed, but I don't see them a shoal stoppers help.
Speaker 3: Me out here, join me.
Speaker 6: Well, I love talking to you because you're always living decades ahead of the rest of us, right, So that's fun.
There are a lot of very practical things that I think could provide hurdles for the vision that you're talking about.
So you distinguish between robo cars and robotaxis, I will too.
Speaker 3: So robo cars.
Speaker 6: I still have a very hard time imagining that I am going to dispatch my car out to.
Speaker 3: Go do other tasks while I'm working.
Speaker 6: Specifically to other people, to let other people ride around in my car. About your family, I think I love
my kids enough that I want to go to the game.
I'm with them.
Speaker 5: No, But and Anna or her uncle dispatch your car and see your aunt or uncle need to go somewhere, you can dispatch your car. Or let's say you happen
to have taken a trip and you're going to be somewhere for four hours and your aunt lives a mile away and she needs to run to the doctor quickly, and you would say fine, and go ahead and use my car, Auntie. It's that kind of thing too, Anna.
It's very very interesting to me. I did some modeling
to own two conventional cars versus two people that being in the same house owning one robo car. So I'll
take my wife and myself and she goes to work in her car, and she comes home at night. I
go to the country club seven miles away, and I come home after golf. That's the four trips. Let's say
they're the same distance trips. And instead she goes to
work and our robo car comes back empty. I go
to the golf car. Of course, in the robo car,
it stays with me while I'm there, but it takes my friend home from the golf course and comes back, and then it comes and takes me home, and then it goes empty to get my wife and bring them back.
So you say, oh, those empty miles, what a horrible thing. Well,
it depends on the time of day and the roads that you use. The empty miles are the enabler. The
fact that the car can go empty by itself is the reason it's going to change the way we live.
We're going to think about this device way different than we think about it today. And it can pick up
my dry cleaning and route, it can swing by the store and route. No. I think you're going to see
sort of a cooperative arrangements between people sharing a vehicle because their pattern or trip making can minimize the empty mile.
So I don't know exactly how it's going to play out.
No one does. But I know there's going to be
a lot of creative people who are going to take advantage of autonomous electric and connectivity and come up with new solutions, lower cost safer, better experiences. And part of
the better experience, I think is going to be the ultimate writing machine. I think it's going to be really nice.
One of the more interesting articles I read recently, it was a New York Times piece interviewing a blind man that lived in the San Francisco Bay area who uses Waymo and he was talking about his life and just how enabled he felt when he got off the ferry and he heard a beeping sound that he knew was his unique way Moo, and he went and got in it and his playlist started playing, and he knew he was in that car without anybody else doing that. I mean, honestly,
it almost brought tears to my eyes. I lived a
year of death. I can understand what it's like to
suddenly become an able. They have suddenly become disabled, but
that enabling ability of that, So your points are well taken.
No one's going to tell anybody what they have to do in this future that I see. If someone still
wants to buy an escalade and drive it, that's great.
I would like to think that they're held accountable for the side effects of going too fast, or having too much power, or being too big. But society, it will
sort that out.
Speaker 3: So how much coexistence can there be between escalades and f one fifty's.
Speaker 5: And a wonderful question. I think. I'm fascinated by the
change in physics when you lower the mass of something and you lower the speed of something, and how that plays back to the breaking system and the stopping distance.
I'm fascinated by companies that you guys have interacted with, one called Neuropropulsion Systems now called Atomatic, but they've created sensors based on radar signals that are giving us on the order of ten x better certainty on what you're seeing.
So if we've got a whole new world of sensors, of software software for sensors coming that are going to make sensors a lot better, so you can see further up the road, And what you want to do is change the physics of that moment when things bump into each other, scrub off the speed and do the avoid it.
So I do think they can exist. The blind spots
are not an issue because these vehicles are seeing each other, so I think they can coexist. But I do think
you're going to see some communities say we want twenty five miles an hour all streets. That's a discussion going
on in ann Arbor. I believe San Francisco is close
to having twenty five miles an hour in all streets.
And my study of access again is the difference of thirty miles an hour and twenty five miles an hour in all streets. It doesn't save you that much time,
especially if it's a door to door system like a robo taxi or a robo car. Twenty five square to
six hundred and twenty five thirty square is nine hundred.
The kinetic energy goes up a lot with those five miles.
So I think you're going to see communities wanting to handle this speed issue. So the F one fifty comes
into that safety fenced area and it goes twenty five and if that's managed properly, that coexists with that other vehicle.
Speaker 3: Okay, So geographically speaking, If I'm an Ipsilanti, which is just east of ann Arbor for those who are not familiar with Meme, and I'm in my f one fifty and I need to go to ann Arbor, I can still drive forty five fifty miles an hour on Washtonaw.
But when I get to a certain point in the get.
Speaker 5: To when you get to.
Speaker 3: Twenty three, then the speed goes down.
Speaker 5: It goes down to twenty five. And it turns out
most of the miles of streets in ann Arbor are managed by the city, but there are a couple like washing on their state streets, so that's going to have to be worked out. But if you think about well,
I'll give you a real scenario. I was a professor
at University of Michigan for five years, Professor of Entering Practice.
My office was on North Campus. I would give lectures
on the main campus. I'd set my day up so
that I would leave North Campus in my car because my lecture would in and I would want to drive home to Franklin and I would get to Main campus.
And the time I spent driving up a parking structure wondering if I'm going to get a parking space was longer than the time I spent from North Campus to main campus. Now, if I'm in a robo car or
a robo taxi, it picks me up at the door of my building on North Campus. It draws me off
at the door of my building in my lecture hall.
And if I did that at twenty five instead of thirty, I'm way ahead on time because I didn't have to super larry.
Speaker 6: Where would your car go while you're giving the leg wonderful question?
Speaker 5: Wonderful question. Now the robo taxi would go serve somebody else,
so it would go pick some Franklin if it's if it's my robo car, it quick park to in. But
it would spend it's time finding the parking spot without me in it, So I get value. It's not my
time as being consumed. So it could still go to
that parking structure and go park. It could conceivably creep
around on streets, and you can begin to think about the capacity of the street being parking. Think about parking
in testible amount of time for a little piece of space.
That's like parking. So cars are always parking, they'll just
move along kind of fast. I think there's going to
be solutions to that. But you're right. But for me,
the benefit was being dropped off with the door, let the car drive up the parking structure without me, and then come back down when I'm ready to leave.
Speaker 6: Well, you're putting the problem off on someone else to solve it. Right, your life got easier. But what the
thing I wanted to mention is, just like what your analysis hasn't really talked about, all the infrastructure it has to go into allowing a service like this to exist. Right,
you need real estate, You need places where these cars can get charged, cleaned, maintained. You need service base just
like the daily rental companies do today, and those are the companies that are getting into this.
Speaker 5: I'm so glad you brought this up. I'm so glad
you brought this up because when this is what connected Garry and I for this show. Just completed a piece
of work at University of Michigan where we looked at all seven counties in Southeast Michigan and SIMCOG, which is the Council of Governments. They had data from origins and
destinations from cell phones and other sources on trips. So
we took that data and we simulated days in ann Arbor of the cars coming in, the cars coming out, the cars within ann Arbor, and we said, what if we all had robotaxis, we can reduce parking ninety percent. Now,
hold with me. Land in ann Arbor is five hundred
thousand dollars an acre and there's one hundred and fifty thousand parking spots and our today. If we reduce it
ninety percent, we're going to free up about four hundred million dollars in capital from the land. That's enough to
buy the fleet of robotaxis. So, yes, you need a
place for these vehicles. But maybe those nighttime eleven thousand
cars we said we needed, maybe they go out to the fringe, maybe on the other side of twenty three, and that's where they get their maintenance done during the day.
At nighttime, that's really the only time they need to be parked. See.
Speaker 2: I see a huge opportunity here for car dealers because they're in every single community. I think they are going
to sign up to be those who clean and maintain cars.
And what do they all have big parking it's big parking lots that currently have cars that they're trying to sell.
But in the future that you're describing, I could see them parking robotaxis or robo cars at night.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's talk about this a little bit more, because what actually gets parked isn't just the car, it's the seats.
So typical car has five seats, and a typical commissional car today is parked ninety five percent of the time.
You use the number two ninety four million cars, I'm going to use two undred and seventy five million. My
number is a little bit dated. There's two undred and
seventy five million cars in the United States with five seats park ninety five percent of the time, and when they're used, only two of the seats are being used.
When you do that arithmetic, it's equivalent to thirteen thousand empty University of Michigan stadiums worth of seats at any point in time. It's the seat. So everybody likes to
promote buses as a solution for mass transit, they're moving around so many empty seats every day. I think what
we have to do is we plan transportation systems is really start thinking about the efficient utilization of the seats, and it's in it.
Speaker 6: Aren't people not riding in buses because they prefer to drive their own car.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, because buses has stations and routes and schedules, and you have to be with other people you don't want to be with sounds a leading.
Speaker 3: That's why you're not tolling a bus from the north campus to the main campus, because there is there's lots of credit to a university.
Speaker 5: I mention that the buses, they have the buses, but I travel a lot like you have in your career, and I always pay attention when I see buses to see how many people are on the Invariably they're ten percent full. And so what we're talking about with robo
taxis are point to point spontaneous trips and the waiting time is going to be relatively short if you're at scale.
Let me talk about that a tiny bit. Population densities
and suburbs are fifteen hundred people to three thousand people per square mile. Cities are much higher, but in suburbs.
So let's say you've got two thousand people in a square mile and we're at scale, so a lot of them are using these systems and a person gets dropped up off and you say, how close is the next person needs right, they're very close. The Achilles heel of
Uber is that's not the case today. The Uber driver
tends to have to drive for afar to get his next pickup. And so that's where we're going to get
this utilization thing free up the parking. And you know what,
I would love it if people still have their own personal robocar. I think the system of the future is
going to be a combination of robotaxis and robocars, and the pressure that it's going to put on the auto industry is that those two together are going to say, we don't need a second and third car in our household.
Speaker 6: So what kind of volume of cars do you see?
Speaker 5: I'd say going down because of the second third car phenomena because they're in the last million hours.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is a good topic that we need to get into more detail on, but we also have to take a quick commercial break here, and we're going to give a shutout right now to Alex Partner's a bridstone.
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Speaker 4: All right, we're back and we had just left off for Joe.
Speaker 3: Don't give a quiz here, And that's Germane to this discussion.
June eighteenth, nineteen twenty three was the date that this vehicle was first manufactured.
Speaker 5: What was the.
Speaker 4: Vehicle Germane to today's Oh I'm look, I don't know what it is. I got a nine?
Speaker 5: Was that the multi?
Speaker 2: No no, no, no, wait before that, there's clue? Was germane
to today's discussion. Now it wasn't an autonomous vehicle, barly, but.
Speaker 5: Was it a small vehicle?
Speaker 3: The first Checker cab was built in Kalamazoo, Michigan by who by check the Checker Cab Manufacturing Company, which existed until they had to fill for bankruptcy and close down in twenty eleven. And what was interesting is that they
built their last cab in July of nineteen eighty two, and then the company existed by providing stampings to general motors for pickup trucks and SUVs.
Speaker 2: Interesting, in fact, you guys know Ed Cole who was the president of General Motors when he was tired from GM, went to Checker and was going to come out with a new front wheel drive Checker cab based on the GM X cars at the time. And then when he
was flying two Kalamazoo were back in his own private plane, he crashed and was killed and that was the end of that.
Speaker 4: But I was going to guess Checker cab.
Speaker 5: I think the London cabs too, are so interesting because they're not just purposely designed, but they're easier to get in and out of. And all of that stuff is
to the point we're trying to make here. If this
scale economy sets in pretty quickly with respected the density, that means we can have a variety of fleets. You
can have a fleet for elite limo people who really aspire for that kind of experience. You can have a
fleet for people with disabilities and no longer do you have to have every vehicle capable of handling wheelchairs, but you have enough vehicles in that fleet size so that they have really good access. You could have r V
fleets for nomads who just want to go around and stuff.
So I'm intrigued by that. I don't think it's going
to be a one size fit all. But back to
the economic gravity argument, the two seat and my preference for the design form would be online because it's in their own takes up less road space unlike the cybercab.
Although I'm impressed by the price point that they're claiming to the costpoint of the cybercab and stuff, but I don't understand why they would put that kind of door on it. You really want to get people in and
out of those vehicles fast. That's why the OHI was
designed with the flat floor, big wide doors that open up.
People can get in and out quickly. But this opportunity
now to really get purposely designed vehicles and fleet sizes to serve communities, I think that's exciting. I would love
to be at a design school right now, accepting autonomous, accepting electric and understanding what I think I understand about the future of access and see what that portfolio would look like. In fact, I would advise auto companies to
do advanced design exercises. Maybe they have already. What is
the range of potential mature autonomous vehicles that are electric that could be out there? What value would they provide,
What ecosystem would be behind it, and what slices of the value creation do we want to have for ourselves.
Speaker 3: So when you're talking about these various designs, okay, So our friend Dan Sturgis refers to this now as the mobility mesh, that there are very different types of vehicles, and he's been talking about having different form factors for vehicles, and he includes buses as being part of the thing.
He you know, I mean, the capability for doing those things has existed for a number of years. No auto
manufacturer is doing this.
Speaker 5: Why this is where Dan and I probably disagree a little bit. I don't think people want to try change
modes on their trip. I really don't think they want to.
I think they want to go door to door. I
think that's why why do we pay fifty thousand dollars for a machine and let us sit I donle ninety five percent of the time. You never do that in
a manufacturing plants because I don't want to resolve the transportation problem every time I go somewhere, I don't want to figure out where on that mobility mesh I need to get to to switch into another vehicle. That kind
of a thing. So that's part of the dilemma. So
this world of robotaxis and robo cars, you have your robocar, maybe your robo car. Let's say you live in anneber
An annumber of a super robotaxi system. Most of them
are two seaters. They've got a fleet of six seaters
and stuff. And you have a robo car and you
park it at Plymouth and twenty three not in your garage, and you get to repurpose your garage because your car can be parked out there and you can take this robo taxi out there and get into your vehicle and on you go at the speed that you want to go in I'm not sually everybody's going to want to do that, but it would be really interesting to play the economics of the cost of my garage in the land versus that land on the outskirts and I hop
in the road because it's gonna be twenty five miles an hour anywhere in ann Arbor perhaps, and then you make the switch and you might say, well, I've shifted mos.
I don't know if I get out of the robo taxi and puts me right in my personal robo car and I'm on my way. I don't know that that's
going to be viewed as onerous. Is switching to a bus.
Speaker 3: I would pay money to see John drive for twenty five miles an hour.
Speaker 4: No, I blow my brains out. This is the part
of the discussion. I don't want it all.
Speaker 2: I want to get back to Joanne's question just before we had to break take us out a little bit into the future. I've already hit peak auto. This is
a global phenomena. Car sales stopped growing in most of
the world circa twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. Now you're coming
and saying, hey, I've got a world where you don't need two or three cars in a family household. I've
got you've got a world where we might be sharing cars, we don't need as many. And you know, just a
few weeks ago, in this very studio, we were talking about seven new assembly plants that are being added in the United States, not repurposed plants, new plants. And so
I'm thinking with what you're talking about here, Larry, the auto industry is not thinking a decade out because and that's so two questions, how low do you think new car sales could drop?
Speaker 4: And when do you think it could happen.
Speaker 5: Well, I think the biggest variable in this discussion is how long the vehicle lasts, and I talked about one hundred and fifty two hundred thousand miles for cars today.
That's partly because they're driven twelve thousand, five hundred miles a year, and so it takes ten to fifteen years to use up that So those cars just sort of die because of age as much as miles. So now
you bring in the factor of robotaxis, which are going to be used eighty thousand miles a year, so they're five hundred thousand mile life, two million mile life machines, but they're going to get gobbled up pretty fast. It's
that life of the vehicle that reduces the number that need to be produced, as well as the fact that the used car market is very, very important to the new car market with residuals. And if the first thing
that plays out here are households beginning to realize they don't need a second or third car, that's going to start playing with the used car market in a way that's going to be disrupted to the industry. Now I'm
an advisor to a company in Florida called Kitsing and Partners, and we're doing an allow townel called Babcock Ranch near Fort Myers and we're going really well for fifty thousand people and we're at about twelve thousand hour, targeted to be about forty thousand in the early twenty thirties. We're
marketing one car lifestyle. We're selling houses and throwing in
golf carts for free as an incentive. And our best
sales months are the sales months where we do that because people realize I can say five or six thousand dollars a year, but not having that second car, the insurance costs all of that stuff, and it seems to be working. John, Now, why does it work at Badcock
Ranch Because we've got the stores nearby so they can get to them with their golf cart, and they got really good virtual access, telehealth, e commerce, remote banking, all of those things. So there's a lot of trips are
not making. So now back to your question, it's hard
to predict us exactly. But the challenge the auto companies
have is if people believe it's destined for the how does Wall Street view that? How do they look at
that as a good place to put capital, and what's the cost of capital? Then for these companies trying to
make this argument for this is a good place to put the money for a car that's going to be part ninety five percent of the time and cost fifty thousand dollars. So I think that's where the challenge is
going to be. I can't predict the number, but I
think you're I think it's going to flatten, and it has flattened, and there's some evidence that's going down.
Speaker 6: Do you think some of these car makers are just going to give up on selling cars to consumers and just sell commodity robotaxis? Like?
Speaker 5: Is that going to be a good business or not?
It's not where the value is going to be. I
think somebody make these cars. Well, I agree completely, But
I look at this future ecosystem and I say, where who controls the value creation? Who's really going to win?
Why is it that WAYMO? And their last public event
or wasn't a they didn't do something publicly? Diod evaluation
came into one hundred and twenty six billion dollars. Think
about it. I think GM is making six million cars
a year right now. I think WAYMWEY is twenty five
hundred on the road and they're worth twice what GM is.
So it's that kind of thing. Yes, car companies could
be commoditizing this, but it's going to get commoditized because I think the machine's going to be so simple. Go
back to the car we're talking about. It's a skateboard
for energy storage, four tires, electric motor power, electronics, and then inside of it it's basically going to be seats and lighting and some kind of entertainment. But I think
this company, I think it is called Slate, they're doing this pickup truck. You bring your own speaker in. My
wife and I had a really nice sound system put in our house twenty years ago. All we ever do
today and listen to music is this little tube she brings out and puts out on the and she spotifies to it. So I think, I think these machines are
going to really simple.
Speaker 3: Who's going to make them? I mean, who's going to
I mean if General Motors, well, this weall plan is not going to.
Speaker 5: Live exam I'm a really good friend who lives in Australia and we were talking about this subject of Australia really is about seven cities and out back, and I think each city can make their own because they're simple enough.
The barriers entry are going to come down so low.
The thing that enables that simple vehicle is the autonomous driving system. So it's the tech company and the transportation
service provider. The people who look out there and see
all these trips, they say, if I match Larry and his family's lifestyle, most of lifestyles of people over there, they can share and they are ever going to have an empty mile because they're they're compatible. And I think
it's those that kind of AI that's going to come along.
I was asked a question recently, so what about a University of Michigan football game. If you have all these
robo taxis, you're going to AI that toda. You're going
to know exactly who's going to these football games when they prefer to get there, and you're going to be able to take the robo taxis in the region and stage them appropriately and serve and serve those trips. It's
sort of I sometimes get the impression that a lot of people want to spend their time shooting holes and why this may not happen. So they'll look at Waimo
and swiss Are publishes their result of eighty five percent reduction and property damage crashes, ninety percent reduction and pedestrian and people say they'll start shooting holes in the analysis.
My advice to people who are impacted by what we're talking about today is you better serve accepting that result even if you question it, accept it. Accept it's going
to get better, and ask yourself the question, what does that mean? What can be done in society with that capability?
Cars that drive themselves and crash one twentieth as frequently as human driven cars, and the parts you can get out of them, and the value creation you can do with them, and how it fits into your life. That's
what's going to hit the auto industry. John So, I
don't know that you can predict it just by a forecast of volume, but these are really talented people in these companies. They can find a place to create value.
We're seeing auto companies trying to pivot now to be battery suppliers to data centers and stuff like that. So
you've got talented capability in these companies. They just got
to find where value is going to be in the future and get to it.
Speaker 4: So here's a question. Put your back working at a
car company.
Speaker 2: Now, do you develop your own autonomous vehicle tech stack or do you just go out and buy it from somebody else.
Speaker 5: I really think it's gotten to a point that you're going to have to do the latter.
Speaker 4: Just buy it.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So the darker challenge was two thousand and seven.
Google self driving Cars has created I think in two thousand and nine, and here we are in twenty twenty six.
The major Doe golf on the co CEOs there, who I admire considerably because he is an extraordinary engineer with an extraordinary safety priority, and he has just gone at this and learned and learned and learned. Now some people say, well,
Tesla might leapfrog them because testa things. They can do
it with cameras and AI. I can't imagine ways going
to be caught flat footed on AI when their parent is Alphabet, who has perhaps the best AI in the world.
And so it's that kind of value creation. It's a
really hard problem. The major gave a quote the nature
of this problem is the closer you get to solving it, the harder it gets to be solved. These last edge
cases that they're pounding away at But the other thing he's told us is the tools he has to solve them are so much better, the advanced simulation of the AIS, the world models, the digital twins. So these people, the
people who know how to let a car drive itself an auto company, I don't see how. I don't see
how GAM imported one hundred and fifty billion dollars of combined market cap are going to be able to stay in this game versus Alphabet, Tesla, and Vidia on Amazon with fifteen trillion dollars a combined market cap. I don't
see how it happens, John, So it'd be a pretty big risk. Unfortunately, GM had a chance to be in
the game with Cruz Sterlian Anderson just came out of publicly said that, hey, we've been hiring some of those folks back, and we're going to have the equivalent of full autonomy for a freeway system in twenty twenty eight.
It's two years from now. Where's Wayneo going to be
in twenty twenty eight? Where's Tesla going to be in
twenty twenty eight? You're playing ketchup big time? All right?
Speaker 3: Danster just will never talk to me again for asking you this question, and you may never talk to me again as a result. Okay, you're.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 3: In May, Weimo had a recall of all of its robotaxis because and this was the fifth and sixth generation software systems, because the systems allowed vehicles to proceed into flooded roadways into standing water. Highlighted right, an unoccupied car
being swept into a creek in San Antonio in June this month, then another recall of their fifth generation automated driving system because it inappropriately prioritized other avoiding other hazards or failed to recognize closed construction zones, driving past ramp closure signs into active highway construction lanes.
Speaker 4: Okay, here are.
Speaker 3: Five thousand pound vehicles rolling along, going into places that they should be.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna come back card on this. There's one hundred
people a year a day dying on the roads in the United States. There's sixty five hundred people going to
the hospital. Police reports I think are six seventeen thousand
police reports on accidents a day in the United States.
Humans drive into floods, humans drive into construction sites, humans kill construction workers, humans go over the speed lim in the construction zone. You're supposed to go sixty and I
get passed with people going ninety. So I'm surprised you're
bringing that out. I think I celebrated, Gary. I celebrated
because Waymo was transparent about it. And it's never going
to happen again. What do we have with an autonomous car?
If you learn how to allow to drive better, it's going to drive better in every car you have. If
I learn how to drive safer, I don't know how to teach that to John Well.
Speaker 2: One thing that I would add to both the problems that you've addressed here are easily solvable with over the year updates, and I'm sure they're getting tonight that.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, you've got to convince.
Speaker 5: You've got to convince the population that the course you do.
That's why I'm on this show, That's why I wrote the book. I really believe the only way this is
going to happen is through collective will, everybody saying hey, I want it, And that happens through common understanding. And
your show, John's, your show, you guys show, it's so good at helping people get common understanding on these subjects.
I'm not asking everybody who's listening to the show today to agree with me. I'm just asking them to open
their mind up enough to think about the world of the possible. We can live in a world of nostalgia,
or we can live in a world of opportunity and lean forward towards that. And I am very concerned about
the auto industry seeming to want to go back to combustion engines and guess link cars and buy themselves some time with that when they were so close with our electric vehicles. I think the government made a mistake incentivizing
these cars. You're never going to incentivize to scale. The
market's the best scaling mechanism, but a lot of people like their electric cars. And for me, I thought it
was crazy to put a seventy five hundred dollars incentive on a Silveretto electric pickup truck that added twenty one hundred pounds to it. The twenty one hundred pounds is
the way to the Detroit Lions offensive line. So every
time every time you go to the store to buy milk and you're Silverado thinking you're you're saving the planet, you're carrying the offensive line with you. The government tried
to scale this stuff too fast. You've got to let
the market scale it at an appropriate pace so that the capital of the jobs and the companies can transition.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I come so I'll be nice to weigh out, and I'll point out that in twenty twenty five nits of mandated four hundred and forty seven recalls, which constituted more than twenty eight million vehicles. So it's not just
way mo oy.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: I think what's interesting is, you know, this technology is really good and if you have not ridden in a.
Speaker 4: ROBOTAXI, it'll blow your mind.
Speaker 6: It is phenomenal. And I am a big supporter of them.
I know a lot of people are afraid. I rode
on the highway before the recall. Now it's paused. I
was blown away at how wonderful it was. I wrote
from Sfo to Palo Alto at ten o'clock at night, Wow, at sixty five miles an hour, and I was just dazzled by the whole thing. Truly, it's kind of a
miracle that it can do that. Right, Okay, that said,
I think there's two things. One on these recall issues.
You know, they designed these cars and they try to think of everything possible that they can simulate and they miss things. The one that bothers me the most is
going through school zones bus you know, not stopping for buses.
That should be fixed. Some cities are still having that problem.
I don't know why, right, but this is problematic, but humans do do it. And I agree with you on that.
I think it can be fixed and it will get fixed, and that's good. But if I can just say one
more going the human is always the person that is least considered here, and I think human nature is going to be the gating speed of adoption. And the technology
is brilliant, the humans are the ones that decide how fast they want to use it.
Speaker 4: So that's my thought.
Speaker 5: Your thing on school buses, I'm really sure your concern because I have been an advocate. Don't even go near
to the school. Pick a route right, just avoid the school.
And you say, well, that's add a time, not enough to matter. The typical trip seven or eight miles. Why
would I need to go by the school when the school is letting out of the robo car.
Speaker 6: We can do that astely three to four every day a street.
Speaker 3: That is simple.
Speaker 8: Text.
Speaker 2: But you know, and this comes back to the safety aspect, and that's why I'm such a strong proponent of autonomous vehicles.
Thirty six thousand Americans killed last year. To your point, Larry,
one hundred people getting killed every single day. That's just
the United States. On a global basis, it's a million
getting killed every single year. And in the United States,
I don't know the global numbers. Five million people injured
badly enough to have to go to the hospital, go to the emergency room. Imagine the impact on healthcare costs
in America when you're not sending five million people a year to hospitals. I think it would be phenomenal. So
it's to your point here, Larry, that the impact of an autonomous future is going to.
Speaker 4: Ripple way beyond us.
Speaker 2: Just thinking if we want to whip out our smartphone and order a robotaxi to come pick us up.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean. I had the privilege of working with
Bob Bloods for a few years and he had always say, it's not the speed that skills, it kills, it's a sudden stop. And I thought that was interesting that Bob,
but think about it because he was so into the car experience. But it was an interesting thing to say,
and what we have is a chance to avoid those sudden stops because you can see in all conditions farther up the road, you know the state of the vehicle.
I had the privilege of advising Goodyear for about four years and a retainer, and we're working on smart tires and understanding the friction of the road is really important at any instance in time, and being able to do all this stuff and bring it together into a system.
But for me, the physics is not just the speed.
It's also the mass. And we're carrying around him off
a lot of extra mass because we have accepted that the vehicle we buy us for our occasional extreme trip, and we use that vehicle for typical everyday trip. And
I think the real opportunity here from a system design standpoint is to have us move around on vehicles tailored to our typical everyday trip and make it really easy for us to be able to do our occasional extreme trips when we want to.
Speaker 3: Okay, let me ask you this. So we're in Farmington Hills,
Michigan right now, and let's say we want to go to ann Arbor, Okay, which is east of here by twenty miles maybe.
Speaker 2: West but I'm thinking I was actually pointing the right direction.
Speaker 3: We're still watching I'm pointing the right So we would we would hop on two seventy five freeway, we'd connect to fourteen, another freeway, and then maybe we get on twenty three another freeway. How am I getting there?
Speaker 5: There's going to be a fleet of cars that do that autonomously, and it could be your own car, it could be your robo car.
Speaker 3: So this is a car that will allow me to go to speed limit?
Speaker 5: And this absolutely I think you got to think about the hierarchy of the network. That's why I don't want
to get too heavy into the math. But this notion
that the scale economy sets in pretty quickly allows you to have different fleets. I think the other thing I
think very very fascinating Uber and Live, which seemed to get a lot of attention. They are one to two
percent of the US vehicle miles travel today, and that means the game is the personal car. It still is
the personal car. The price for the autonomous vehicle is
the personal car. Soy, I fully expect that you would
make that trip in a robo car that's fully capable of going on the freeways that you mentioned, but when you get off at Plymouth Road, either you're going to transition into a robot taxi or you're going to drop your speed to twenty five.
Speaker 6: Well, let's say he's going to the Big House for the game, all right, so it takes him to the game.
Speaker 5: Gets off the State Street.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's going twenty five. There's a lot of people,
a lot of people in their robo cars or robo taxis.
Speaker 5: He gets out, what.
Speaker 3: Happens to the car.
Speaker 6: Then everyone's in the stadium or in one place. The
people who live in an arm or state in their houses.
Speaker 3: Because they don't want to be there during the game.
Speaker 5: Parks by park it, or it parks at the parking letter on the stadium. But it's probably going to be
your third is large because a lot of people are going to be dropped off by robotaxis. Enjoyna. You look
at I'm glad you brought up that row. Look at
briar Wood mall right. Now look at their parking lot
when you're driving by it, which dogs it's empty.
Speaker 3: It's a giant jumping mall that was built in the heyday of giant house empty.
Speaker 5: So all that land is out there. So maybe I
would drive my car today.
Speaker 6: If I could drive my car, park in Briarwood and get a robo taxi take me up the road to the game and pick me up after the game.
Speaker 4: And come back to my car and drive home.
Speaker 5: Well, that's exactly exactly what I'm thinking. That's what you're saying.
Speaker 2: I would have my car drop me right at the stadium, go to Briarwood Mall and park itself, and when I'm coming out of the game, I whip out my phone and I call for my car and it picks me.
Speaker 4: I don't even have to do the robotaxi thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So, yeah, we're getting near to the end. I
don't want to maybe put a summary around this. I've
been studying this stuff for a long time, and when I wrote my book in twenty eighteen, it was to try to help get to this common understanding and collective will, to give some people some heads up that hey, there's a change coming and you want to start thinking about it and getting ready for it. And now what I've
seen here in the last year or so, it's just how real autonomous vehicles are. Autonomous street has become, how
inevitable it's going to be at scale, and now it's tigned to really get serious thinking about what can that mean for the way people are going to live their lives and the way businesses are going to operate. I
think there's an enormous opportunity to lay e commerce on top of people movement. Look at the day is twenty
four hours, and have e commerce to a lot of delivery at night. Because most of the stuff I buy
online I don't need to have delivered during rush hour, I really don't. For some reason, they think there's a
reason to get it to me fast and stuff. And
suddenly it's the same vehicle that's moving you as a robotaxi during the day and aneber that's bringing your razor blaze and shaving cream to your house at night and putting it on your porch. You're getting all that extra
utilization out of that, and you overlay some of that goods movement on top of the people movement to minimize those empty miles. These are big opportunities. I don't know
what it's going to happen, but I think the economics are getting close enough that you can't ignore what we're talking about any longer.
Speaker 3: So will the car companies do this, or will the tech companies do this? Ask me again, Grim, sorry, Will
it be the car companies, the traditional legacy auto manufacturers doing this, or will it be the way moos in the Amazons of the world doing this?
Speaker 5: I think it's the latter. I think they just have
such deep pockets, they have so much talent, and I think part of what's going on here there was a very magic moment in two thousand and seven to twenty eleven timeframe. Uber came on the scene, Google self driving
cars was created, and Tesla came on the scene. And
you said, what was common about that? The CEOs were
not out of the auto industry. The CEOs were not
marketing people, are finance people, mechanical engineers. They were really
deeply rooted in digital technology, and they all three had a passion to change experiences that they didn't like about the world, and they went out and did something about it.
I don't see that as the fundamental DNA of the companies in the traditional auto industry and how they're leading it, and so it's just different, but the world works that way.
The other really interesting fact I dug up for today.
You gave us a nice quiz what percent of workers in eighteen hundred were farmers. What percent of the jobs
in the United States were farm jobs in eighteen hundred.
Speaker 8: Eighty nine, nineteen hundred it was probably forty nineteen seventy ten five four four today one point two.
Speaker 5: So okay, you could have a governor. Imagine there was
a governor of a state that said, I am not going to let tractors and combine harvesters into my state because it's going to reduce farm jobs. Let's say that
was a position a governor took, because a governor today has taken a position, I'm not going to let autonous vehicles in my state because it's going to reduce private jobs.
What if the tractor and the combine harvester never came on, people will be starving to death. So, I mean, this
is just how the economy in the world works. And
the one thing we can do is get in front of it, understand it, manage the transition. Don't need jerky
reaction after the fact. And that's why such a privilege
should be on your show to be able to have a chance to talk about this stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been
a terrific conversation. Unfortunately, we're going to have to wrap
it up. But Larry Burns great to have you back.
I'm sure we're going to have you back again at some point. Joann Muller thinks much for joining us. We'll
have you back too. Everybody.
Speaker 4: But every week you're going to get very and me no matter what.
Speaker 3: Larry, even though I had those questions, I think you're right, but otherwise we get that on the show.
Speaker 4: That's otherwise.
Speaker 3: Just imagine how boring it would be all.
Speaker 5: Important questions, because there's the questions other people have on their minds.
Speaker 2: And I have one more thank you, the most important thank you, and that's all of you who have tuned in.
Speaker 1: Out online. After Hours is brought to you by Alex Partners.
For more than forty years, we have helped companies and their stakeholders around the world harness opportunity, overcome challenges, and achieve outsized outcomes. ALEX Partners when it really matters, and
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About this episode
Autoline After Hours frames autonomy as a shift from personal robocars to shared robotaxis, with “empty miles” and door-to-door pickup as key enablers. The hosts walk through economics—cost per mile, depreciation, and how fewer crashes could lower insurance—while debating what legacy automakers must do to compete. They cite recalls and edge cases (construction zones, flooded roads) and argue human trust gates adoption speed. The conversation also covers infrastructure, parking reduction, and how fleets might serve accessibility and even deliveries.
