Jan. 8, 2026 | Ex-Waymo CEO Krafcik on autonomy; Ford eyes-off driving

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Welcome to Daily Drive for Thursday, January 8th, 2026.

I'm Kellan Walker on the floor of CES in Las Vegas.

Today on the show, Ford announces ill-launch eyes-off hands-free driver assistance in 2028,

starting with a $30,000 EV pickup.

Ford Motor Credit faces a class-action lawsuit from customer service reps alleging unpaid off-the-clock work,

and the IRS sets new rules for auto loan interest deduction with some good news for dealers with demo vehicles.

Plus, former Waymo CEO John Kraftchick says personal vehicles aren't going anywhere,

but they'll benefit from self-driving tech.

I think we together, this big definition of industry, needs to provide a diversity of choice,

compelling options for customers to decide how they want to move around the world.

Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.

Ford will launch an eyes-off hands-free driver assistance system in 2028 on its Universal EV platform.

It will start with a mid-size pickup expected around $30,000.

That's a leap from today's BlueCruise, which requires eyes on the road.

Ford's building the tech in-house, cutting costs by 30%,

while putting advanced features in mass-market vehicles, not just premium models.

Doug Field, Ford's chief EV digital and design officer, says affordability has become central to the company's technology strategy.

It's become a part of how we talk, it's become a part of how we focus our technology efforts.

Ford also announced an AI assistant launching in its apps in the first half of this year.

We'll hear more about this story in a minute with our own Michael Martinez.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor Credit is facing a class action lawsuit from customer service representatives.

They say they weren't paid for mandatory off-the-clock work.

The suit claims reps had to boot up computers and log in 15 to 25 minutes before their scheduled shifts

or face disciplinary action for being late.

The complaint alleges violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and seeks retroactive overtime pay at time and a half.

According to the suit, Ford credit-trained employees to perform these pre-shift activities without clocking in.

The case seeks damages going back three years.

And the IRS just released its rulebook for the new auto loan interest deduction

and there's some good news for dealers with demo vehicles.

Buyers can deduct up to $10,000 in loan interest on new U.S. assembled vehicles through 2028.

Here's the catch.

The vehicle has to be new, but the IRS says that includes dealer demos

as long as you didn't title or register them first.

Every returned vehicle can qualify if the customer brought them back within 30 days.

The IRS is taking public comment through February 2nd, so there's still time to weigh in on the details.

And those are today's headlines.

You can find more details on all those stories at AutoNews.com.

Ford's announcement about eyes-off driving technology put it in direct competition with GM,

which announced similar plans in October for its Cadillac Escalade IQ.

Our own Michael Martinez covers Ford for automotive news.

Mike, welcome back to Daily Drive.

Thanks for having me.

So, Mike, what's significant about Ford's approach here?

They're launching this on a $30,000 truck rather than a premium model like GM is doing with the Escalade IQ.

Yeah, Cal, that's pretty interesting because typically, whether it's autonomous vehicle technology

or any technology on new vehicles, automakers tend to roll it out on the higher-priced models,

on the luxury brands even, because of the price.

And it's a way to absorb some of the price that goes into the software or the hardware involved in that particular feature.

Ford's doing the opposite.

They're going to have it on their $30,000 electric vehicle platform.

It's going to have a underpin and mid-size pickup here first in 2028.

And you could chalk that up to the fact that they're doing everything in-house from the software to the hardware.

Doug Field at Ford said that allows them to reduce costs as much as 30% compared to buying something off the shelf from a supplier.

So, Ford seems to believe it has the costs in check to offer this on its lowest-priced vehicle.

And you could argue it might be a smart move because the volume will be much greater than if we're on a pricey Lincoln or a high-trim F-150 by comparison.

So, they'll be able to get more feedback because more people will be using it and hopefully be able to have a better experience.

Now, how does this fit into Ford's broader strategy under Doug Field,

especially as the company has struggled with its EV transition and spent billions on shifting strategies?

So, you could argue this is another shift in strategy we've seen Ford attempt autonomous or semi-autonomous driving features in the past through Argo AI.

That folded and they sort of walked away from level 3 plus self-driving features for a certain amount of time.

And now they're right back at it, just like you mentioned GM, Tesla and others.

But really, it goes back even before Doug Field joined Ford.

The company was really trying to insource a lot of this work, like I mentioned,

owning that software stack, owning the hardware as well.

And he's been hard at work.

He came from Tesla.

He came from Apple.

So, his expertise isn't just on the vehicle side.

It's on the software side too.

And that's what Ford's trying to use him for.

We've seen advancements and expansions of its BlueCruise self-driving driver assist technology.

Rather, we've seen them expand the use of modems within vehicles that offer over-the-air update capabilities.

So, they've really been trying to build for this for some time now.

Perfect. Mike, thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks, Kel.

You can read all of Mike's reporting on Ford as well as the UAW at AutoNews.com.

Coming up next, former Waymo CEO, John Kraftchick, talks about the future of autonomous driving,

why he says robotaxies won't replace personal car ownership,

and how the technology will make driving safer for everyone.

That's next on Daily Drive.

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Welcome back to Daily Drive.

I'm Kellan Walker.

John Kraftchick led Waymo as CEO from 2015 to 2021,

guiding the company through critical years

as it developed and deployed its autonomous driving technology.

He's now an advisor to Rivian

and remains deeply involved in the autonomous vehicle industry.

Here at CES this week,

Kraftchick pushed back against the narrative

that robotaxis will eliminate personal car ownership,

arguing instead that autonomous technology

will give consumers more choices

about how they move through the world.

Our own Lawrence Ilyff spoke with Kraftchick

about the evolution of autonomous driving,

why it's taking longer than expected,

and whether the industry is ready

for the next wave of automation.

Wanted to bounce off your presentation today a little bit.

And one thing is kind of the hype machine stuff.

We are here in Hype Central, right?

Hype Central right here.

I was thinking about it used to be like EV,

well, AVs were all the hype right 10 years ago

and people thought it was going to happen quickly

and it didn't, right?

Like you said, it's hard, you have to be careful.

And then EVs were all the hype maybe three or four years ago

and now that's kind of died out

but it now looks like AVs are coming back

because of AI and stuff.

So I just wondered your perspective on this,

you know, why do you think we go through the hype cycles?

What do you think the hype is now?

And what do you think are the like the really cool things

that are actually going to happen?

Yeah, it is a great, great set of questions.

So in no particular order, there's no doubt, Lonnie,

we're going to see more great ADAS systems,

assisted driving systems like what Rivian's doing

with Universal Hands Free.

We're going to have that across our lineup soon

as we launch the R2.

That'll be available there.

And of course, we're going to go a step further with R2,

with LiDAR.

So our cars already have the radar and more megapixels

than any other car in the planet, right?

But we're adding LiDAR to that too.

So we're going to have safer, more secure assisted driving

that will take us on the road in the direction of L4.

Like that's the endpoint.

I think one of the things the industry has really learned

is I wouldn't say there is hype right now in AV.

I think it's appropriate.

Okay.

We went through the hype cycle and so many companies

crashed and burned and there are now so few left.

Proudly I can say Waymo is one of them, right?

We knew it was going to be a long road.

We knew this was a marathon and not a sprint.

We took our time and we always focused on safety first.

It's the whole reason you're doing this technology

and the cost in the unit economics,

which Waymo's enjoying now are much, much better.

I mean, the company is appropriately profitable

for a big industrial endeavor of this sort, right?

And I think others have looked at Waymo now

and now they have access to a template.

Like, okay, so if we want to do true L4

and we want to do a robot taxi,

then we should take this approach with sensing,

with our stack, with the compute.

We need this level of AI and transformer architecture

to make that happen.

I think a company like Zooks is doing a great job.

You see Zooks all over Las Vegas.

One of my biggest surprises is how good Aisha

and her team have done at Zooks getting these cars

on the streets of Las Vegas.

I was amazed to see them everywhere

and they must be doing well, right?

So it's going to happen.

We're going to see more competitive entries

in the L4 space on U.S. roadways,

but I think it's going to take time

and who's going to be next after Zooks?

I mean, who knows?

I'm not sure.

I mean, there's Neuro, right?

Which has former Waymo people

and they're partnering with Lucid and Uber,

but they're just starting testing now

and they said they're going to do it

by the end of the year.

I mean, should we take some of that

with a grain of salt about

how we're all going to be riding around in robot taxis,

you know?

Not own a personal car, for example.

I mean, you talked about personal car ownership.

Elon Musk says,

no more personal car ownership.

And RJ the other day,

in a conversation I had with him on a podcast

was saying 90x percent

we're still going to drive our own cars.

Where do you?

Yeah, I'm definitely aligned with RJ

on that point for sure.

We share the same view of the world.

You know, I think,

again, the assisted driving systems

are going to get better

and we just need to make sure

that we have appropriate in-cabin monitoring

is something that I mentioned

in my remarks earlier today.

That is so, so important.

We humans are terrible at watching

and surveilling the automation

that's guiding us through the world.

We've seen that.

We saw that back in 2013

at the Google sub-driving car project

where we shut down that project

because we realized the technology was so good

people were checking out

and not keeping their eyes on the road.

I mean, you've been in the industry for so long

and I covered Hyundai when I was in LA

before the one I have now

and the great people, Jose Munoz.

Jose is amazing.

And do you think

we should have less personal car ownership?

Do you think we should depend more on

robots that are doing a better job

or do you think we can bring

the personal car ownership world

to a much safer space?

I think our job in the industry

and here describing industry really broadly

of the OEMs

and then Waymo

which is the only kind of company

like it's not a car company.

It's literally a driver company.

I think we together

this big definition of the industry

needs to provide

a diversity of choice,

compelling options

for customers to decide

how they want to move around the world, right?

And so what I think Waymo

has provided a new option for

if you're in a city

or a community that Waymo serves

I think people are finding increasingly

they don't need two cars in the garage

or if they have three cars

they don't need three anymore

I think you can buy with two.

I bet two they can just get by with one.

I'm hearing this consistently.

I see it in my own community in Santa Monica

where Waymo's drive by all the time

and it's now a way to get kids to school.

Like that is so cool.

Parents no longer have to do that run.

They can actually just put their child in a Waymo

and have the Waymo drive them to school.

That's transformational, right?

So I think as this technology

becomes more accessible

as Waymo's go to more cities

and I hope

as there is more competition for Waymo

with other L4 providers

working at the same or better safety levels

than Waymo.

I don't want less safe than Waymo vehicles

on the street, frankly.

I think that Waymo has set a very clear recipe

and shown what metrics can be achieved

with this technology

and I think that's what city, states

and federal government should look at

and say, okay, that's the new level.

I think we should have more of those alternatives.

I think that's going to give consumers

and folks like you need the opportunity

to maybe decrease the size of our fleet.

But I mean,

and just a car guy,

what do I know?

I'm always going to love a car

or two or three or seven in my driveway, right?

For the weekend drives

and to go out with my wife somewhere

like we're going to want to do that, right?

I remember covering RJ at a tech crunch event

maybe two or three years ago, probably three

and he said, oh, we're not that interested

in autonomous.

We're interested in our other things.

Obviously they were still building a brand and stuff.

And now they're all in on autonomy

and you hear Lucid

and you hear other people GM with Cruz

is going to like blend that in.

Is it because of AI is because it's easier

or because it's possible

whereas maybe before it was impossible?

Why do you think there's such like so much talk of autonomy

or even L3?

I know you're not crazy about it.

Yeah.

But why now?

Is it AI?

Is it the ability of AI to write software?

I think a big part of it is

Waymo has shown the world what's possible.

Okay.

And again, this transformational feeling

that we humans go through on our first Waymo ride

it's magical.

And you see it all the time on social media

like folks enjoying their first Waymo ride

and they're comparing it to a Disney experience

or a spa experience and they can't believe it

and it's magic and suddenly becomes a part of their life.

And so OEMs around the world, executives

and all these companies have experienced that as well

and they're like, Whoa, this is a transformational moment.

I need to be a part of that.

So I think that doesn't necessarily explain

what happened with Rivian.

I think RJ always had the vision that autonomy

was going to be a part of what we were going to do

with the company, right?

I think he's just saying like not we're not focused

on that right now.

Right.

But for the launch now that focus is there

and through incredible cross-pollination

like at Rivian right now leading the autonomy team

you probably met James Filby.

Yeah, who is one of the key leads at Waymo

taking the fourth generation technology

which was on the Pacifica to the fifth generation

much more generalized scalable technology

that you see on the Jaguar IPaces.

James was a big part of that.

So he knew how to do it

and he's taken a lot of that learning and intuition

and good sense and applied it to Rivian now

for a really sophisticated driver assistance system.

Now I don't want to push you too much on this

if you don't want to talk about it.

But Tesla, I mean you've commented

I see your social media feed etc.

I mean this idea that they're just going to flip a switch

and there's going to be millions of cars.

I mean is it just a high machine?

Is it not grounded in reality

or could there be some incredible AI development

that could make it happen?

There's just a personal thing, right?

I've always believed in don't judge me by what I say

judge me by what I achieve and do

and for Tesla it's been ten years of

they've said these things and these things haven't happened

it's been ten years

that's a decade of broken promises.

There should be some accountability for that I believe

and I think the idea that

you know suddenly next week

or two months from now or three months from now

or six months from now it's going to be solved

we would be naive anyone watching the space

would be naive to think that's true.

What are some of the physics behind that though?

Because there are physics behind it.

So one clear first principle about autonomous driving

is you want as much data as possible.

Everyone in the space agrees on this.

More data is better.

Think about the data as the data

that an individual car collects

as it moves around the world.

A Waymo collects an extraordinary amount of data

from its 29 cameras and it's

all of its lidar and radar

like a suite of sensing that's extraordinary

and that data provides such remarkable opportunities

for training and learning and improvement.

Now compare that to a camera only car

could be a Tesla could be any car

but imagine that you know you've just got

a sensor system where you've got a five megapixel

narrow view camera

like our field of view

that gets close to 2020 vision

five megapixel narrow view camera

Florida facing close to 2020 vision

but it only sees straight ahead

and unlike our eyes

you can't move them left right up down

and it's not attached to a neck

like so when people say

well we drive with two eyes in a car

so like surely we can drive

with seven cameras in a car

without a human driving

it's a false analogy

our eyes are miraculous

and they have this double gimbal mount here

and here

that gives it such extraordinary capability

so our vision is so much more capable

than the vision of a car

equipped with seven five megapixel cameras

only one of which is narrow view

and all the others are wide view

so you're dispersing those five megapixels

in a way is such that

the actual vision is more like 2060-2070

the rest of the cameras

in a car like that

wouldn't pass the DMV vision test

That's Daily Drive for today

I'm Kellan Walker

thanks to automotive news executive producer Jake Neer

as well as our own John Irwin, Michael Martinez, Eric Friedman

and John Hutter for their reporting for today's podcast

you can get the latest news on Ford's autonomous driving plans

the future of personal car ownership

and everything happening in the auto industry

at AutoNews.com

come back tomorrow for an excerpt

from our CES livestream this week

diving into the trends and news

from this week in Las Vegas

I've heard some really skeptical voices

who say like there's this incredible hype machine

that in two years your car will drive you around

and you'll be in the back seat

that robots are going to be building everything

some of the people I've talked to says

you know wait a minute

it's gonna take longer

it's going to be a process

we'd love to hear from you

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Jan. 8, 2026 | Ex-Waymo CEO Krafcik on autonomy; Ford eyes-off driving

About this episode

hands-free driver assistance

EV pickup

Ford Motor Credit

auto loan interest deduction

self-driving tech

driver assistance system

Universal EV platform

BlueCruise

dealer demos

new U.S. assembled vehicles

eyes-off driving technology

Cadillac Escalade

autonomous vehicle technology

electric vehicle platform

in-house

high-trim

Ford F150

EV transition

Argo AI

autonomous driving

Fiat Argo

level 3 plus self-driving

over-the-air updates

Waymo

Rivian

ADAS systems

assisted driving systems

LiDAR

L4

Chrysler Pacifica

Jaguar Ipaces

radar

autonomous vehicles

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