Jason Calacanis on the Robotaxi Endgame

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk are joined by special guest Jason Calacanis, one of the first investors in Uber, to debate his bull case on Uber, who wins the robotaxi endgame and whether local governments will cap the deployment of autonomous vehicles.

Jason earns the first clappy hat of the episode for saying what few in the market will, Tesla is obsessed with safety. The incidents Waymo has absorbed would be showstoppers under Tesla, and Tesla knows it. Jason, who drives FSD daily on Hardware 4, puts the system at 98 percent of the way to Level 4 and wants to buy a Cybercab fleet.

The robotaxi endgame, in Jason’s view, comes down to manufacturing. A shift from 2 percent of global miles on rideshare to 30 percent requires more than 100 million autonomous vehicles and a $5 trillion fleet build-out larger than the AI data center build-out.

Tesla wins the gold because it owns the factory. In Jason’s opinion Waymo will have to buy a car company, likely Rivian or Lucid, after it spins out of Google and IPOs. Uber owns the demand and will take the rest of the market with its 20 partners, several of which Jason predicts will pivot to building only robotaxis. His market share call is 40 percent Tesla, 35 percent Uber and 15 percent Waymo.

Walt pushes back on whether there is enough at the table for Uber’s twelfth partner and questions whether any of them are close to Tesla or Waymo today, with 300 Nuro powered Lucid Gravity vehicles by June being a win. Jason counters that Nuro and Avride will be driver-out within 24 months and that no one else can afford the $100 to $300 per customer required to build another Uber-scale network.

The sharpest debate of the episode is regulatory capture. Jason argues local governments will cap and license autonomous vehicles the way they did Airbnb, that drivers will be the first mass unemployment from AI and that Uber is right to negotiate a soft landing with unions.

Grayson argues federal preemption is coming and that caps will disappear when a national framework arrives. The two settle it with a steak dinner bet on whether local communities or the federal government win the fight in the United States.

Jason closes with his theory on Uber and his dream scenario of Travis Kalanick returning as CEO of Uber.

Episode Chapters

0:00 Jason Calacanis joins Autonomy Markets

02:19 Cybercab Fleets

04:04 Tesla's obsession with Safety

07:27 Everywhere-All-at-Once Fallacy

09:33 Uber Shutting Down ATG Was a Mistake

12:51 The Gap Between Engineers and the Market

16:37 Jason Calacanis on Why Waymo has to Buy a Car Company

18:15 Uber's Surge Pricing Strategy

19:16 Jason Calacanis' 40/35/15 Robotaxi Prediction

25:58 Are Any of Uber's Partners Technically Close to Tesla or Waymo?

30:23 Uber Eats is Half of Uber's business

32:18 100 Unsupervised Robotaxi Benchmark

33:37 Robotaxis in China

35:31 Regulatory Capture Debate begins

41:31 Steak Dinner Bet

49:02 Personally Owned Autonomous Vehicles Impact on Shared Rides

52:27 Waymo and Toyota moment to Watch in Q1 27

55:30 Puke in Uber, Get a Bonus

56:28 Travis Kalanick, CloudKitchens and Atoms

58:08 What Travis Kalanick Would do Differently

59:09 PIF, Lucid, Nuro and a Full-Stack Uber with-in 36 months

1:06:16 Atoms Robotaxi Depot Play

1:12:32 If and When Waymo Goes Public

1:17:36 Why Japan Needs Autonomy

1:20:46 The Next 12 Months

1:22:20 The Next Tesla Robotaxi format

1:27:42 Autonomous Regional Travel

1:29:47 Amazon, Google or Tesla should Buy Uber

1:31:39 Consolidation, First Dominos, Zipline, Wayve and Nuro

1:34:52 Framing the Bet

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