Big Week for U.S. Autonomous Trucks, While China Shuts Down Autonomy

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Bot Auto’s fully autonomous commercial run from Houston to Dallas, Aurora’s expanded partnership with Hirschbach, and Uber’s CTO publicly criticizing Waymo on X over safety.

With Bot Auto completing a 231 mile commercial paid run with no human in the cab, no safety driver, and no observer, the conversation evolves into a deeper discussion around the imminent Waymo robotaxi moment for autonomous trucking, with Kodiak operating fully autonomous in the Permian Basin and Aurora announcing a non-binding 500 truck MOU with Hirschbach representing roughly 15 percent of the carrier’s fleet.

While in Houston, Grayson conducted field work riding in a Tesla Unsupervised Robotaxi in the Cypress neighborhood, where he counted 24 robotaxis staged for launch at the Tesla service center, while observing that both the Tesla and Waymo vehicles drove aggressively in a similar manner to Houstonians.

More signs emerged this week of the deteriorating relationship between Waymo and Uber as the CTO of Uber made a post on X accusing a Waymo of an aggressive maneuver against a Muni bus in San Francisco, a rare public criticism from a partner in a public forum, reinforcing the deteriorating relationship that appears to be on the verge of a divorce.

On the Foreign Autonomy Desk, Grayson and Walt discuss China suspending new autonomous vehicle permits following the Baidu Apollo Go incident in Wuhan where 200 robotaxis simultaneously froze on March 31st, and WeRide’s partnership with Lenovo to deploy 200,000 robotaxis over the next five years against a current fleet of 1,125 vehicles.

Episode Chapters

00:00 Field Work: Bot Auto Launches Fully Autonomous Commercial Service

05:42 Aurora's Expanded Partnership with Hirschbach

08:53 Congressman Ro Khanna's Anti-Autonomy Stance

11:18 Uber and Hertz Partner for Robotaxi Fleet Servicing

18:40 Avomo, Moove, and Uber's Fragmented Autonomy Strategy

20:07 Uber CTO Publicly Criticizes Waymo on X

24:13 Waymo's Next City: Cincinnati or Kansas City?

27:30 Tesla Unsupervised Robotaxi in Houston

34:37 China Suspends New Autonomous Vehicle Permits

39:14 WeRide and Lenovo to Deploy 200,000 Robotaxis

40:54 Next Week

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