Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana
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Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Chris Licht with a lot more time on my hands to spend with my trainer. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naeem Arraza. Yes, if you haven't read Tim Alberta's scathing Atlantic profile of the now former CNN CEO, Chris Licht,

There was a fantastic scene where he's kind of gritting his teeth, lifting weights, saying, Zucker couldn't do this shit. Famous almost last words because Chris Licht is now out as chairman and CEO of CNN after a string of stumbles and then some really bad press, including that Atlantic profile, which, by the way, came out a day after Chris Licht's boss, Discovery CEO David Zasloff, had installed his very loyal long-term Discovery exec, David Levy, to be COO at CNN, a move that many saw as kind of putting in a Trojan horse as it were. Yeah.

Well, he's a really competent executive. I mean, I don't think that makes sense. If there's trouble like that, you have to bring in your guy like you can't trust Chris. And, you know, Chris had already made a number of missteps after the Trump town hall, you know, trying to stifle Oliver Darcy, being really defensive about what was an obvious disaster was a problem.

And, of course, talking too much. That's insane. And bringing a reporter to his trainer. Yes, bringing a reporter to a trainer and the control room of the Trump town hall. And there was a really another kind of juicy line in the Alberta piece was right before the town hall, Chris Lick says to Trump, have fun. And then Alberta says, and Trump complied. Yeah. Which, you know, really no...

Not a good profile, Chris Licht. Yeah, and there was some really digs at the reporting of the CNN staff around their COVID stuff. Anyway, it didn't really matter. He was toast. He was toast from the minute. He was already on thin ice and this just knocked him through it. You know, people were not surprised that Chris Licht was out. And you were not surprised. In fact, you were tweeting about this last night. I talked to a lot of people.

And it seemed like the next move was to get rid of him. The crisis was increasing. The fallout from the article was bad. It's pretty easy to guess what these guys are going to do. You know, they have their little playbook and they do it every time. And one of the problems was the staff wasn't even hiding their anger, which they do, they tend to do when these things happen.

And it was getting too close to David Zasloff, whose fault it really is in the end. He said that today in his call with the staff, and it really is his fault. Do you think he believes that? You know David Zasloff. Do you think he believes it's his fault? I think he—they never believe it's their fault, but it is. Yeah, it's just a talking point. Yeah, I think he knows it's getting too close to him. And so I think they had to. They have to protect the king, and so they have to get rid of Chris and, you know, some of the staff around him, some of whom didn't deserve that. But—

But that's what happens in these situations every single time. There's never a time, especially in media, they're kind of entirely predictable. And now they're doing this sort of Troika, Amy and Tellus, who I have a lot of respect for. It seems like she's leading up the group, but it's people who've been there, who have been there and are calm. They're calm. They're the calm people. And then I guess he's got to find somebody. I hear they've been dialing the phone up for all the typical, the usual suspects.

Like Noah Oppenheim and others. And so we'll see. And of course, there's the question of Jeff Zucker and if he's going to come back. No, I was just teasing that. It's never going to happen. I was joking. That was obvious. I called it succession CNN edition. Well, I don't think John Malone will allow it.

because that's the real power player who we don't see in the morning meeting or in the news as much. Well, I think David Zasloff is running the company. He doesn't need, he already has the same point of view as John Malone has. So anyway, we'll see. I think David Zasloff, it's bad for David Zasloff, this whole thing. We've had a lot of CNN news over the year. On our last show, we had Jake Tapper on, Don Lemon, Clarissa Ward, amongst others. In September, we opened with Chris Cuomo, who was formerly very close to Jeff Zucker and obviously part of the

Part of the string of downfall that brought down Jeff and Allison. The beginning, really. The beginning of that. Yes. And we had Chris Licht on just after he announced layoffs, which was a moment where he seemed to have kind of gotten some of the staff back on around him. We wanted to have Oliver Darcy on in the wake of the CNN town hall, but we were not allowed.

Yeah, I guess now we will be. He's been unfettered. I would hazard a guess that it was not Oliver Darcy who didn't want to come on because he was actually quite clearly sharing in his newsletter what he thought of that CNN town hall and what others at CNN thought of it. He's the media reporter and he's terrific and he's really stuck to his guns through this whole thing and I really appreciate his work. Yeah, a lot of respect for him. He's really great. I have a lot of respect for him.

In any case, there's too much news about CNN and there should be news about the news, right? Yes, CNN should be breaking news, not making it. It's not just because media likes to talk about itself. This is ridiculous. So it's not good for the brand for this to be going on and it needs to get back to doing their work.

The good news now is that when Chris Licht is texting his friends and other people, he can actually use the word fucking instead of ducking. He won't be like, this is the ducking worst day ever. Yeah. Ducking ducks. Yeah. Yeah. Because in case you missed it, Apple had their Worldwide Developer Conference this week and

That was, to me, was the big news. There was also the Vision Pro was announced, much anticipated AR VR headset. Have you seen it yet? No, I'll see it next week in New York. I'm excited to try it out. I'm always, I've seen all of them since the beginning, all these different iterations of the VR AR headsets for 20 years now. And so it looks like a good one. Everyone who's had it on has said it's really impressive. It's obviously a high price point, but we'll see what Apple does. Yeah, Apple has obviously been at the forefront of VR.

evolving so much and they would do it by input. So like the mouse made the Mac, the dial made the iPod.

Touch made the iPad and iPhone. And Tim Cook talked about how while the Mac had kind of introduced us to personal computing and iPhone to mobile computing, this is now going to be a world of new spatial computing. Yes. You think this is going to be everybody has it in 10 years? Yes, I do. I think it's going to be inexpensive. And I call it a face computer, essentially. It's a heads-up display. And you're not going to be staring at your phone. You're not going to be looking. You've moved away from the desktop to the laptop. You've moved away from the laptop to the phone. You're going to move away from the phone.

And so, yeah, I do. I think a lot of people are easy to dunk on, but they dunked on the AirPods, they dunked on the iPhone. And, you know, Apple is never the pioneer. The watch, other people have tried watches and they won. They won the watch game. And so- Well, they have the integration. They own you as a customer, which also helps, right? They're also good at what they do. They have a lot of taste.

It's expensive, but I'm excited to try it because I'm sure it's fantastic. I would bet it is a pretty amazing experience. I don't know yet, but we'll see. I did an informal survey on Instagram of friends who I think are like target millennial consumers. And a couple hundred responses later, 70% said they wouldn't buy. 7% said they'd buy the first version. And then the other 23% said obviously they'll buy it at some point.

No. I think that's not who they're aiming at. They're aiming at work people. They're aiming at maybe entertainment on some level. Like employers. Employers with meetings. I think it's going to go enterprise before it goes anywhere, this thing. And so we'll see. How long until Apple gets into the next hardware play? The car? I think they'd be in software of cars more than cars themselves. I don't think.

they're ever going to build a car. An Apple car would be very slick. I would drive that. I don't think it's coming anytime soon. It is car week here. Yes, it is car week. Once again, the progression of...

innovation and improvement is massive with a lot of these autonomous cars. And I was so happily surprised about how well Waymo worked when I was using it in San Francisco. This is Google's entry. Earlier this week, we talked about Aurora, but all these things, I'm really impressed by how quickly they're moving forward. Yes. And today you'll be talking to Takita Mawakana, who's the co-CEO of Waymo, which is Google's self-driving car unit. And of course, where Chris

Like Aurora, two big issues, safety and jobs. And before the interview, she actually picked you up in a Waymo One car and you rode together to the studio. Yeah, we rode around San Francisco for a bit. This wasn't your first time being chauffeured around in a Waymo or a Google AV. No. Chris Hermsen had me in one many years ago. And then I've tried all their versions. I've always gone down to Mountain View and tried out all their various versions over the years. And this one was...

Really well done. This newest version is really a very seamless experience so far. Probably the first time you were in one of these with Chris Urmson, it was around cars and now it's taxis, right? And also trucks. Yeah, it's like an Uber. And Waymo is partnering with Uber starting late this year in Arizona, which is...

Because Uber had big plans to be in the autonomous space.

So they need to have these on their cars, either the Waymo driver, whatever, whoever comes up with the technology. There's Cruise. There's a bunch of others. I was in an Uber yesterday telling the driver that this is happening. He had no idea. Shocked, scared. And interestingly enough, in that Uber yesterday, the price was about $85. And his take-home, the driver's take-home of that was, guess how much?

Oh, probably like $5. I don't know. Nothing. $35 or $30. Yeah, something around $35. A small amount. And so, you know, this will save these companies a lot of money. Now, look, everyone's not going to want to pick these. It's going to be a choice. It's first going to start off with a higher level audience, like who have the spendy money. And they're subsidizing it still. And so that, which is what happened with Uber in its early days, was subsidized. And we'll see where it goes. I don't think everyone, people like a driver. I think they'll be able to pick, do you want a driver or driverless? Yeah.

And eventually I think probably people would like driverless, I have to say. I don't know. I've been in one of them before. It scares me. It scares me. Well, I'm sure you would get used to it in seconds. I like the human interaction. Well, you keep churning your butter. That's true. I'm a Luddite. But it does lead to this age-old question of just because something is possible doesn't mean it's good or productive.

And I don't want to be a Luddite. I'm not churning my butter. But I do think there's a Silicon Valley kind of motif that all these things are inevitable as if you don't have a choice. You do, but why would you choose...

You just, it's just not, it's okay. I just don't, it's going to be what it's going to be. And so as these cars get better and they are getting better and a lot of them, oxygen gets sucked up by Tesla, which does not have a robo taxi service actually, even though it was long promised by Elon Musk. I think this is what's going to be, it's good. It's actually safer. There'll be different jobs. I get the jobs issue. I think that's the most pressing of all, but there'll be different jobs. Well, there'll be a different job. That's all. There'll just be a different job.

It's easier said than done. Hard to imagine. And especially when governments are not on top of it. What is the difference? Actually, with cars, regulators are very much on top of these things. They've been regulating cars and transportation. Safety. It's not about having regulation. It's actually about having clear industrial policy to navigate these big moments. That's how government should be thinking about it. And we have, for the first time in several decades with Biden, an actual industrial policy.

Everyone used to have a wagon with horses and then it was shifted. So it's just the way things are. You have to think historically. Historically. Or futurely. Futurally. Anyways, we'll take a quick break and we'll be back not with a wagon and a horse, but with Waymo's co-CEO, Takira Mawakana. Hey.

Hi, Takedra. Thanks for joining us today. So we just rode over to the studio in a Waymo autonomous taxi, Waymo One. Let's explain how it works right now for people. So just like any app on your phone, I have the Waymo app. So I opened it and then I put your address in and I put request ride and then a ride was sent to our destination.

And then my initials are on the top of the ride, so I can confirm that that's in fact my ride. What it is is on top of these cars, for people who don't know, there's these, I don't know what to call them. It's actually the Waymo driver, sort of how we talk about it. Right. It sits up there. It's one of the components. And in it is? Cameras.

Sensors, LIDAR. LIDAR, exactly. And everything else. And it spins around. Does it have to do that? It does. It does. It does. It's seeing things. It's not just for fancy. Exactly. And around the outside of the car, too. Sure. But the ones that, you know, for Waymo, it sits on the top. It looks like it's going to take off. A little helicopter-y kind of thing. That's right. It sits on the top of a car.

And then it didn't see the address. Explain what happened. So it did. It understood the address. But because it can really see almost three football fields, 360 degrees, it pulled over where it knew it had space. Right. So your particular street right in front of your house, there's...

All parking and then two driveways. Right, my driveway. It didn't pull over in front of either. It stopped at the last space available before your house. I see. So it sees that. But it didn't want to pull in my driveway. No. Because we could pick that address but not be coming out of your house. Right. For example. Does that happen a lot? It just will pick the safest place for someone to... It will. It'll pick, you know, pick up and drop offs. We sort of call them pudos. Yeah, okay. It is one of the biggest... Yeah, pick ups and drops. Okay, all right. It is one of the biggest...

Right.

but we can take that walk. Not everyone can. Right, right. And so we went to see the Painted Ladies in San Francisco. So you did that. And it was flawless, actually. It was a flawless... You didn't make it that way, correct? No. No, you can't. No, we just picked an address and took a ride. So it didn't go the way I would have gone.

Yes. Talk about that. Why doesn't it do that? So sometimes our routing is different than how human drivers go. And we don't know if there's a road closure, if there was congestion that the car was trying to go around, if the side of the street we were going to get dropped off on, it knew the best way to get us there. So it wants us on the side of the street. That's exactly right. So routing is an area we got a lot of feedback in the early days. People saying, why did it go that way? Give me more insights.

And over time, people said, you know what? It's safe. I get where I'm trying to go. So you don't care. Stop arguing with the car. I don't care. Because nobody's in the front seat. Exactly. But I think I do argue with Uber drivers and Lyft drivers. Like, no, no, no. What are you doing? What are you doing? Which way are you going? Right.

When we first show up in a city, like our announcement to go to L.A., there are people there mapping the city. We build a three-dimensional map for the Waymo driver because the level of detail and high fidelity of those maps is like down to the millimeter next to the car because the car has to be able to see everything and understand the environment around it. So we can't use Google Maps or any other map for that. Right.

But I think this is a little bit of like losing control, right? People get in the car and they want it to behave exactly like I behave or you behave or... Or be able to yell at someone. Or be able to yell at someone. And it's just a little bit of like, hey, we're going to get you where you're going safely. We want to delight you. And you have the dynamic still of it looks like a regular car, but no driver there. That's right. And the windows are darker, so pedestrians don't freak out, presumably, right? And do things. Right.

Why even have that there? Why even have a steering wheel? The reason we have it is we are taking fully FMVSS certified cars, right, cars that are sold, and we're adding our technology to those cars. So then we can't remove those controls without some sort of regulatory approval. Right. So we just keep all of the controls in place. Which you had originally, the original car I drove didn't have anything. That's exactly right because it was a low-speed car. Right. And so for those very low-speed cars, you don't need to have those controls. You don't have to have the steering wheel.

So one of the things that happened is it braked several times. It brakes more than, sort of like, my mom doesn't drive more, thank God, but my mom driving, like brake, brake kind of thing. How do you think about that? Because it does, there was appropriate braking. Yes. And then there was a bag that came over. Yes. Right. So I think, yeah, debris flying across the street, a human driver says, I can go straight through that. The Waymo driver pauses. It could be that bag. It could be a ball. There could be a

kid coming behind it. So there is a cautiousness around the way in which we think about safety. You know, these early days of these cars learning, people give us some grace. Let's, over time, we need it to behave the same way everyone around it will behave. And that's the trajectory we've seen. You know, in the olden days, people complained about our cars taking too long to cross large intersections. Now, sometimes people come out and they say, gosh, the driver's much more aggressive than it was before.

It's just the process of learning. Of learning. But do you think they want a driver sitting there even if the driver's not driving? No. I think for people who are sort of excluded from the mobility and transit system today, like, you know, there's over 7 million Americans who have no vision. You know, there's 500,000 children with cerebral palsy. Like, there's all these folks who no matter what age, they're not going to be able to get a driver's license and drive. And

What we've learned is people really value independence. And independence of being driven by an Uber driver isn't that much different than being driven by mom or dad or a friend. And so we know that there's a real chance here. And the independence people want and access to mobility is what we're excited about. Without someone to talk to. You don't need to talk to someone. You just want to get from point A to point B safely. And that's the feedback you're getting from people. It's completely the feedback we're getting. What is the worst feedback you're getting from riders? I'm trying to think. That was a close question.

experience, I have to say. I was surprised. Yeah, I think pick-up and drop-offs, you know, that's a challenge, you know, especially if you're, you know, if you put one of your kids in the car, you want to know exactly where they're going to be dropped off, right? You want to know exactly where they're going to be picked up. You know, even if they're 16, if they have, you know, epilepsy, you just want to know. And so that's one of the challenges that we remain really focused on from a product perspective. What other issues? Vandalism? Crime? Um,

Well, I think us as a company, we've certainly had to deal with vandalism and crime. But, I mean, that's not something we hear from our riders. That's people mad at the cars, right? People just having a relationship with what they believe is sort of unmonitored assets.

right, that's driving down the street. And so whether they're throwing rocks or throwing bottles, you know, that happened. You're very diplomatic. They're just like, oh, right, right. One of those Google people. One of those people. Yeah. But we've moved through that, thankfully. There's a little bit of a man versus machine thing that we find too in the early days. You know, a car would pull up to a four-way intersection without anyone in it.

And the human driver has no idea who got there first. The computer knows exactly who got there first. Right. And they will always try to take it if they see there's not a driver. Several times when the car did things that were kinder to the other driver, you know, like on turns and things like that, I was like, what?

The hell? Don't let them do it. Like, you know, so I clearly should have used these all the time. You've got the car taking drives around San Francisco now, but you can't charge people yet. How many people do you have in using it? Yeah, so we have tens of thousands in San Francisco and 80,000 on our waiting list. 80,000. Right. To get to use the app. To have the chance. For these free rides. That's right. Right. And so when do you get to charge for them? So our next step in the process.

Regulatory process is a CPUC hearing. So hopefully by the end of June, we'll have resolution on that. And then what would you charge? So our rates are market-by-market driven, and we view ourselves as a premium service. So it's a little more than... So Uber Black or Lyft? Yeah. So it's...

Uber premium, let's say, or Lyft premium. But you have to stay in the similar ranges, right? We definitely want to stay in a similar range, but we're offering a completely consistent experience. It's not like catch-as-catch-can. You don't have to worry about whether you're going to have conversations. It's safe. It's clean. It's consistent.

And that's what we found. Phoenix was our first major market. We're actually 180 square miles there now, including the airport. And you have plans to expand to L.A. So it does airport rides. Yes. And so you can go to Tempe, Scottsdale. I mean, it's definitely the world's largest fully autonomous 24-7 public service. You know, it was fun during Super Bowl to see people fly in, jump in a car, head to all of the events. Yeah.

except, you know, into the congestion of the Super Bowl, which we steered clear of. But that's the primary largest service and then here in San Francisco. And how many cars are in each city?

We don't break it down, but we have like 700 cars across. Across those. And these are ones you build out, right? That's right. So it's a fully electric fleet of Jaguar I-pieces. Jaguar. And why Jaguar? So back when we were looking for a partner, it was just a great, great power supply for our driver as well as fully electric, which is one of our commitments. Right. And so how...

How do you pick the cities? Is it regulation? Because they're very different. L.A. and San Francisco, more regulation. Presumably Phoenix, less so. So obviously we think about market opportunity, like how big is the TAM first and foremost. Same with TAM as business lady. Oh, yeah. So how big is the market opportunity? How many people actually today pay for ride handling? You know, if you think about L.A., it's $2 billion. It's a pretty compelling market. Right. Regulatory is certainly top of mind all the time. Mm-hmm.

In this case, because we're dealing with a state-level regulatory agency, it's L.A. and San Francisco are sort of similar hurdles that we're making our way through. We have ongoing dialogue with all the regulators. And then Phoenix, like the top fastest growing city, it's a very interesting population of

older people and younger people, sort of college and retirees. But you pick them for what? What is, like, presumably you're going to roll out city after city over time. That's exactly right. So the reason back in the day that we picked Phoenix is because it was fast-growing, the regulatory climate was great. We've decided to continue to go back there and expand, and

The Sky Harbor Airport is the first in the world that's gotten this clearance for AV pickups. And so we've just found them actually super forward-leaning on the technology. And also they have real transportation pain points that they view these cars as able to help them solve. Right, they do. But LA seems the most complex city.

Yeah. Of the cities. You're going to go on highways there. We will go on highways there as well as everywhere eventually. Los Angeles is really important not only because it's a complex transportation city, but also the demand for this is so high. We announced it and we already have 20,000 people waiting to try out the service. We're really thinking about all the cities where transportation is key to help people live and work.

But they're also cities where there's not as much weather. Yeah, starting out. Starting out, right. That's exactly right. You have rain. That's right. So we've tested snow. We've tested rain. We've done a little sort of Miami thunderstorms across 25 cities in the U.S. But yes, those capabilities come later on our road map. So you're not the only game in town in San Francisco. Like literally you walk around San Francisco, there's some cruise or Waymo car everywhere. Yeah.

Cruise is backed by GM. It's also offering rides and charging for them. How do you look at the competition? We think it's great that there are more than one player focused on making roads safer. Like, in our mind, this first and foremost should improve road safety. We need that to be true for all of us, right? We actually need to make sure that the markets in which we operate are actually improving road safety, which is part of why we published our paper around our first million miles. Now we've got...

RO miles. Now we've gotten to our 2 million. This is how many miles these cars have driven and what the problems are. That's exactly right. And you were noting the cars, most of the accidents are people hitting you. That's right. There were 18 minor incidents. 10 of those were humans who ran into us stationary. The others were human, but we were moving. And there was none in intersections, which is important because that's actually where the worst accidents happen and nothing involving pedestrians or cyclists. So you never hit anybody. Yeah. That's

That's the nightmare, because you get enormous attention if one car hits, one of these cars hits versus humans, which do it all the time. Yeah. So with a competition, so you like having others like in the market? Yeah, we sort of think it's important that this technology not be viewed as sort of a project that's happening at one company, but actually a transformation. How would you compare, okay, look, Cruises, they're a car company doing technology, you're a technology company doing cars, right?

Right? Yeah. What's the advantage for you and the disadvantage? I think we're a technology company building the driver. Other people who we partner with are doing cars. We think it's really important to partner with automotive companies that have all of the experience. In their case, they are a car company and they're

acquired a technology company. And so I'm not sure exactly how they think about it. But I think for us, we will have generations of cars. Like right now, we're on our fifth generation driver. And we've been able to deploy multiple generations of our driver across different vehicle platforms. So not only passenger vehicles, all the way up to the one you were in today, the ones you were taking in the past, might have been a Prius, might have been a Lexus, might have been the... It was a Lexus or a

Toyota. Yeah. Or the Firefly, which was the bespoke vehicle that we built. And then we had our Chrysler Pacifica minivans. So we have all of this experience across. And that's because we're building a generalizable driver. You want to sell to the other car companies. Exactly. Right. That's the goal. And what you're also creating is a reservation system. That's critical. The app and people using your services. Right. That's right. Did you ever think about buying an Uber or something like that? They have a reservation system.

We didn't think about that because, you know, we're really... What Lyft? I hear Lyft is for sale. We've not thought about that because what we're focused on is how do you actually manage a fleet of vehicles that do not have drivers? The actual expertise that you have when you're building a ride-hailing network with human drivers is quite different. Right. Right? Because you can surge, you can communicate directly with the drivers. Right. There's all of this. We're learning from an operations perspective what it takes. Mm-hmm.

And that's the reason I bring up the one million in our safety records, because we feel really proud that we've figured it out, because you can't perfect this product in a lab. Right. You can't figure these things out in a lab. And if there's drivers, you just don't want drivers. So getting back to the driving, in January, local officials here in San Francisco wrote to the state of California asking to slow down the rollout of all autonomous taxis because they're

Cars have stopped, creating traffic jams. Cruise issues suddenly stopping around emergency response vehicles. You were saying today, one, the car slowed down getting there. How do you approach a problem like that? You tweak the software? You train the cars differently? So I think that what's happening right now in San Francisco, you know, we have our permit application out there. People have commented on it. We've gotten safety advocates, police.

Public officials have all come and supported us, I think over 20 letters of support. But we just know that we're going to operate under a microscope before this becomes the status quo. And under that microscope, one of the approaches we've taken is to just work directly with policymakers. So we're in constant dialogue with them. Why do they want a slow roll? Do you think it should be slowed? I think it's – I mean –

I think it is not naturally barreling its way down the path. I think in the way that we are approaching it, it is iterative. It is deliberate. As opposed to Uber, which just barreled through. Yeah, we're not. And they were right, as it turned out. You know, they just ignored laws.

in San Francisco. - Yeah, we are not taking that approach. We can't afford, this is safety critical and it's never been done before. So that's the reason we didn't apply to go straight to charging on day one. We said, we're gonna enter the city, we're gonna collect data, we're gonna move and offer a service, we're gonna create a waiting list.

We're going to build up demand. We're going to get feedback from our early trusted testers. And then we'll move into a fully public service. What's the biggest challenge for riders when you're doing that? How much is to trust the car? Immediately, I was comfortable, but I've been in these environments. What is the biggest problem? I think it depends on the rider. I think for skeptics, it's getting in the car the first time. And then actually they're like, what was I like? What was the story that I was holding on to? Somehow I thought it was going to be a roller coaster ride and it wasn't.

I think for people who've not had independence, it's like a tearful moment because they're like, holy crap. But go to your critics. What do you think? What's the feedback that you're like, oh. I think critics are unfamiliar with the technology, not interested in becoming more familiar with the technology, worried that –

a safety-critical sort of mindset or approach may not happen and that they'll get blamed. Right. Well, yeah. So speaking of that, Tesla's struggles making full self-driving mode safe has gotten a lot of attention, just a lot like Elon Musk says. You might have heard of him. He will make sure you do if you do not today. I don't know what he'll be commenting on, but he will be commenting on something that has nothing to do with his expertise. So you don't have to comment on that. Do you think

It makes it harder to get people on board with autonomous vehicles. He's made a lot of promises. He's complained that a lot of it is too high profile, but he really needn't at this point. But does that hurt you all in that regard?

regard? I think that's why we work so hard to make sure people understand this is the Waymo driver. Yeah. And we're the only ones that have the Waymo driver. Right. Okay. And so it's important for people to understand because we're the only ones offering fully autonomous. Yes, he had promised. 24-7. But people mash you all together. People do. There's confusion. There's confusion. You know, we try to remind people that those are personally owned cars. You can go and buy a car and understand what it's capable of. But we're offering a service and

And we think that's why we're doing that. More people can try it out. You don't have to go buy something. You can actually, you know, be in Phoenix or San Francisco and just try it. So there's an element of inspiration in that we can do this. And then yet also, do you think Tesla drags it down by these constant in the press demands?

mistakes that are made in plain sight. I think it goes back to your question about competition. That's the danger of a lot of people in the market moving too fast and not having the same approach. Also, I think the other danger is just consumers not understanding the capability set of the driver, right? Can I completely unplug, take a nap, and let this thing take me where I'm going, which you can do in a Waymo car, or

Or do I need to be alert and ready to take over when it starts beeping at me? Right. And that's sort of level three and the levels of autonomy. Level three, level two. Yeah. These are people that are others levels of autonomy. And I think where are we at? Level two? So we're level four. But Tesla is like driver assist. So that's like level two. And we had autopilot type capabilities back in 2013. Yeah.

And we found that internal Google employees, you know, knowing that this was just a project where they were giving feedback, they just stopped paying attention. And they were going 65 miles an hour down the 101, not doing what we asked them to do. And that's when we decided as a

company, we're going to go for full autonomy. But it's humans being human. So you've got to give us either make us drive or give us the chance to unplug. Not drive. I just spoke to Chris Urmson, the co-founder and CEO of Aurora, which makes autonomous driving trucks, about this. And he said the circus around Elon and Tesla has caused confusion. Do you agree? I think it's caused consumer confusion. I think my bigger worry is that it would cause regulatory confusion, and I haven't seen that yet. We'll be back in a minute.

In February, Waymo published this safety data, as you mentioned. It's available on your website. Making roads safer is the argument, the best argument you have for autonomous vehicles. It's the selling point you're using, doing as well as humans right now. We're at human stage. We'll get better than humans soon enough, probably, correct?

We sort of think of it as building the world's most experienced driver. Like, I turned 16. I mean, I don't know. I went around those cones a couple times. I got a driver's license. Right, yes. My son just got his, yeah. He's a good driver. They're good drivers, actually. I mean, there can be. Yeah.

Right. But I didn't have my own car, so I just like borrowed someone's car, did it? And so there's like this notion of, you know, this driver is going to be more experienced than most drivers who've ever had a driver's license. Right. And the computers learn as they make mistakes. Exactly. And humans don't, presumably. Your biggest anti-selling point is you're going to get rid of drivers. Does that have resonance? Because the Teamsters...

In the trucking area and the car area, I've had a lot of, in San Francisco, two different regulatory issues here. Can you talk about both those? So in San Francisco, I think we had a regulation

We had an action where we are trying to secure more space for our employees to park at work. And unfortunately, I think the Teamsters took that as an opportunity where we were trying to actually do delivery out of that location. And that was going to take jobs.

And it's not the case, but it kind of doesn't matter. I think the bigger issue that it's pointing out is we have to stay in constant dialogue on why this is good for the city, why this is good for everyone with transportation needs. What they were actually focusing on was delivery. All of our deliveries in the city are for local nonprofits and charities. So there was just, I mean, it's what we're doing here. But you have to expect this. This is what happened when Uber with the taxi commission. That's exactly right. We have...

Former commercial truck drivers are actually the people who train our trucks. Right. But speaking of that, the Teamster supported a bill that just passed in the state assembly in California that bans driverless trucks by a pretty big margin, 54 to 3. How big of an issue is this for you? I mean, I think it's a significant issue for industry. You know, our current roadmap is not

as focused on California because we knew that this was going to be a hurdle. It already hasn't been lawful in the state. So it's not changing the law. It's just codifying what has already been. I think, you know, we're going to have to... This is a jobs issue. It's a jobs issue. Right. And it's also...

Sort of a resistance to change issue. And so, you know, we're going to stay in close dialogue with elected officials. We're going to have to figure this out over time. It's not going to happen quickly, though. So at some point, the training jobs you mentioned are going to go away, right? Say I'm an elected official. I'm saying the Teamsters are kicking my ass and I'm going to lose my job. What is your argument besides here's a pile of money from...

Well, what we want them to focus on is whether or not they think that this technology can make roads safer and what is the compromise position that everyone can take around this issue. Because at the end of the day, we were all of COVID and now really concerned about the driver shortage in this country. Yes, that's right. Yeah. And so, I mean, I get it. This is like we're focusing on this at this moment. But I think if we zoom out, forget about us, forget about their particular concern in this state. Yeah.

This is something this country has to figure out, which is how are we going to transport goods? How are we going to give people the best jobs they can have? We want that too. That may be closer to home and may be more of a last mile job, less of a long haul job. Meaning trucking is dangerous. Right. Those are the arguments you're making. Trucking is dangerous. There's not enough drivers. Right. Why are people driving at all? Why are people driving at all? And you have to presumably make the argument we will have more jobs.

We will replace them with other jobs.

they're just going to be people who are really worried. And, you know, I've spent a fair amount of time meeting with different groups that represent truckers. My uncle was a truck driver. My uncle passed away driving his truck. He had a heart attack in his truck. And so I feel like from a very personal perspective, I know how hard that job can be. And I also know how important it was to him, right? It was the best job. It was a romanticized version of truckers, isn't it? That's right. That's exactly right.

you know, in popular culture and Teamsters and, you know, this is the real work and stuff like that. That's right. So it's going to be much more difficult. And I think that, um,

You know, there's no unions for your driverless Waymo, is there? No. It's not asking for a union? No. No? Okay. All right. Just making – well, they will. They'll ask for something. You recently announced that Waymo cars will be available through the Uber app. This is a partnership with Uber in Phoenix at the end of the year, both rides and food delivery. The relationship with Uber has had quite an evolution. Back in 2017, Waymo sued Uber's auto division and accused an employee who had moved to Uber of stealing trade secrets. That suit eventually settled.

So what's changed and why partner with them now? Both companies are really good at what we do. And so I think we're excited to see how we can bring this technology to people who faithfully open the Uber app and want to go from point A to point B or bring their food home.

And we're excited to bring that service to their riders. So it really has been a quite exciting partnership by two companies that like to move fast but move deliberately. Right. And explain the ownership. You're a co-CEO. You have a technical CEO. That's right. Is your partner, Dimitri. What are you within Google? So people work— So we are— Alphabet, I guess. Yeah, it's within Alphabet. So we spun out in 2016 to be an Alphabet entity. So we're a bet. Mm-hmm.

And so we go straight up to Alphabet. So we're a sister company to Google. Sister company. Well, they pay for everything in case you're interested. I don't know if you know that.

I'm assuming you're not making money. We're a sister company to Google, which means that— You're an expensive sister. But Alphabet is actually, yes, our largest investor and shareholder. Yeah, Alphabet is. Right. Okay, so—and then you—but you operate independently. I mean, Sundar is— Yes, and we've taken external funding. We have external investors. And what kind of investors? VC's. VC's. Yeah, yeah. Who want to be in that. It's a separate thing. But do you really have independence from the mothership? No.

from the mothership. Yeah. From Google. Yes. We are very independent. Not the search part. I know, I know. But most people think of Alphabet. Yeah, no, from Alphabet we have deep collaboration, deep collaboration and a lot of support. And some of the stuff at Alphabet, I know Ruth Perad has been cutting some of the stuff. Like some of it's

Crazy. But cool. How do they look at you? Is that, were you to be part of a company that, you know, at some point the jig will be up? Yeah, I think from the beginning we've really looked at this as trying to build a business from the ground up. And so, which is part of why, you know, when you asked me about the cities and I started talking about the TAM, I mean...

And Dimitri and I view it as our job to figure out how to make this company profitable. And so we're really laser focused on doing that and ride hailing. And it's not profitable right now. It's not. Is it very not profitable? We don't right now. Okay. I didn't think you would. I'll try to find out myself. There was a lot of buzz around autonomous vehicles back in mid-210s. It was

That was the center, just like AI is now or crypto was for a while. Alphabet announced Waymo becoming its own company. Uber had the auto division. GM announced acquiring Cruise. VW and Ford invested a billion dollars into Argo AI. But the temperature seems to have cooled. One report found a 60% decline in investment in autonomous vehicles year over year.

Are you worried about raising money or what's happened even if you do have Alphabet's backing? Yeah. I mean, obviously, I spend a lot of time thinking about making sure that the company is properly capitalized, but I'm not worried about...

I'm worried about what it will take for us to get this audacious mission to a state of heightened commercialization. Like that's what I really spend my time thinking about. We have the investors. We have Alphabet. We have our cap table. They're really bullish on us. And they came in understanding this is a long-term value proposition. But you've done some layoffs, obviously, responding to that. One in January, one in March. Do you feel like you have the right headcount now?

I do. You're not going to do a meta, are you? Yeah, no, I do. I feel like that was hard. That was not a fun part of this. But I think we've recognized the cost of capital has changed. And so you have to respond to those. Layoffs came after activist investor TCI Fund Management called out Waymo specifically in a letter to Alphabet about cost-cutting.

They should start with the 500 different kinds of yogurt you have in the cafeteria at Alphabet. But okay, she's laughing, but she's doing it quietly right now. Do you think it's money well spent? On Waymo? Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. I mean, you know, we're trying to change society and culture. And I think...

Alphabet and certainly the bets were built on this notion of if technology could be deployed to actually do something meaningful in the world, let's do it. And I think we're really, really focused on doing just that. You know, 43,000 people, I think, died on the roads in 2022. Yeah.

1.35 million globally. I just think there's this like... Traffic, climate change, it's all... Everyone's like, yep, that person died. And I think this is... Well, it's become an acceptable thing versus any accidents by a Waymo, right? That's right. People don't find that acceptable. That's right. And we've already seen in our first million miles that we improve...

roads around us. It doesn't mean that sometimes there aren't annoying things that happen, but annoying and unsafe are different. You were a CEO at Waymo before becoming co-CEO two years ago. Dimitri Dolgov, your co-CEO, has been a CTO before that.

Co-CEOing can be hard. I always am like, hmm, co-CEOs. And I do want to talk to you because you're the business regulatory person, because I think that's the biggest problem. Technology will eventually take care of itself. I think a lot of people are very far along on those issues. How do you negotiate the differences on making calls? So we really have, like you said, distinct sort of subject matter areas of expertise. So we kind of bring that to bear whenever we talk about something, and we have a lot

And we have a lot of deference in each other's areas of expertise. And we're jointly responsible for like, what is the strategy? Where are we headed? And how are we going to get there? So from an organizational perspective, and I sort of say this because I think we've learned this, is like everyone at the company knows they only need to hear from one of us. And that's been a pretty important pivot because everyone I talk to not at Waymo who works for co-CEOs, and I thank all these people so much, they always come up to me and they're like, I hate you.

having co-CEOs. Yeah, yeah. And that's hopeful because that's not what people say to me. Right, right. And so we just try to So you focus on regulatory business. Basically deploying the driver. How are we going to get to money? Yes. And his stuff that he makes affects you and vice versa. That's right. That's right.

That's right. Yeah. Are the biggest expenses behind these things or is it just it's going to be inexpensive? I said this to someone who was arguing with me about it. I was like, it's just going to cost money. It's just there's just no way not to get there. Yeah, building a fully autonomous driver is an ongoing part of the work. So where are we in that map?

I think we think of it as it's not going to stop, right? You're always going to be building it. It's not going to innovate crazy. That's exactly right. And will the sort of development cycles shorten over time? Is the way that we actually have to resource it going to change? Probably over the next five years. But right now, the way we think about it right now, it's building the driver is going to be an always-on part of our job. Sure. It's a quantumly better experience for mine, too.

eight years ago. It's so good. I really didn't like it. I couldn't wait to get out of the car. I'm going to drive around today. You're going to go do it on your own? Yeah, I'm going to go do it on my own. I love that. Going to the beach. I have two last questions. Waymo has a trucking division, Waymo Via, long-haul trucking, little different technologies, longer. You need to see that longer, stop faster. The speeds are different. Why are you in trucks? We're building the Waymo driver to be fully generalizable. So

Trucking, delivery, ride-hailing, those are the business applications that we're focused on, and eventually personal car ownership as well. And trucks, but trucks, because it's a great business. That's where money is, correct? And also, I mean, like, being able for, you know, if you're a shipper or a carrier and you can have logistics available,

with the Waymo driver in the center and not have to think about the same kind of constraints that, I mean, humans need to rest. We don't want sleepy human drivers on the road. And so thinking about the benefits that we could bring from sustainability and also congestion, logistics,

perspective. Right. It's also a good business, presumably. It's a really good business. It's an easier business, except there's the Teamsters again. I mean, it's interesting. I think there's a perception that it's easier because you don't have to deal with, let's say, downtown San Francisco. It's interesting, though, because what you encounter on a highway is

is as, or in the long tail of options, is as sporadic as any other road. Such as? A mattress. A mattress. A bag of trash. A person walking down the street. Right. So if you sort of don't have the surface road experience that we have, I don't know how your driver ever gets smart.

All it does is highways. And so we think of it as a really good second area, but not an area that should be thought of as easier. Because it has to have all those other capabilities in order to be successful. Seeing things and having the range of sight. It's also slowing down at that great speed. Exactly. It's a very different technology.

One last question I asked Chris, and I'd like to hear your take on. There's a lot of conversation right now of the need to regulate AI as it grows. What regulation do autonomous vehicles need and who should regulate this? So the federal government sort of regulates safety of the vehicle. And then the states think about the safety of the driver, you and me, licensing, titling, registration. I think it's important for that safety regulation to stay at the federal level. And then I think the regulatory regime should really give companies the chance,

and obligation to state their safety case. Like, be transparent. How is it that you're determining that these vehicles and this technology are safe enough to be on the roads without someone behind the wheel? And so we've been pushing for more of like a safety case-based approach because everyone's technology is different. So you can't just say this is the regulatory standard. Right, so it's not Betamax or

VHS or stuff like that because everyone's doing. And then in the states, what do you want from them? To continue focusing on regulating the safety of the driver. So licensing, titling, registration. But there won't be expertise around the entire country on autonomous vehicles. Right. That should really stay concentrated. Which is always the privacy issue is there's too many privacy bills and they're all different. Yes. Which creates a disaster. Lack of harmonization and can you actually, you know...

Yeah, traverse states. It hasn't typically worked well. You know Montana's trying to ban TikTok. Did you laugh at that? As an old, yeah, you're like, what? As a former GC? Are you kidding me? So when you think about that, what would be the one thing that you would want Congress to pass and, say, a state like California to pass? I think it would be helpful if the federal government said publish your safety case. Be transparent. Mm-hmm.

Make the case of why you're safe enough. I think it would be helpful if the state of California prioritized making the roads safer and enabling this technology onto the roads. For cars and trucks. For cars and trucks.

Any other vehicles you're trying to make? Remember Velo's? Oh, yeah. Are you doing those? No, we're not. Those are vertical lifting takeoffs or air taxis. No, we're not doing that. Don't do that. Not doing that. One bad Velo will ruin your entire company. Yeah, we're not doing that. Not doing that. All right. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm fascinated by this topic and you're at the forefront of this, so I really appreciate you coming. Thank you.

Thanks for the ride. Thanks for riding with us. I'm going to take another one by myself today. Awesome. Yeah, they're better not be an accident. Would that be bad for you if Kara switched her gun? I want to hear how it goes. I will let you know. Anyway, thank you so much. Thanks, Kara. It's all right.

We often ask CEOs that last question, who should regulate them? What should the regulations be? Are they the best source to be asking these questions to? I think we should ask them too. You know, the assumption they're trying to cheat us is probably problematic if you're trying to get good regulation. But these companies are a little more hindered because of the antics of Tesla and Elon Musk, right? And it sucks up all the oxygen and, you know, worries about safety and

cutting corners and this and that, that there's a number of stories about Tesla doing that. Well, I mean, the Tesla regulations were very specific to Tesla. I mean, that was a product recall for Tesla, it wasn't... Right, but I'm saying he's hand-wavy in a way that is problematic for regulation of everybody. He's also building the promise and creating inspiration. Well, he didn't make an autonomous car yet. Let's just say he has a car that does do autonomous driving. So I just think there's more players here. It's like judging...

original cars only by Henry Ford, right? Important, critical person, but also we have to think of the whole ecosystem. Yeah. Well, this is Google. It's not like a small shop somewhere. No, but it has to be big companies. Nobody can afford this, right? It has to be the Googles. It's got to be Amazon, which has Zook.

And big fleet. And a number of startups like Aurora. So that's the way it's going to go down. We'll see who wins. What often ends up happening is that these small players get big and then regulation can become a moat to protect them and keep others out. Yes, sure.

But they all opened in Arizona and Texas first. I used to advise Opendorf briefly. I remember they opened in Arizona and Texas. Everybody likes these liberal markets. Yeah, they do. You know, what people forget is California. That was the first place that did all the really great laws around hybrid cars and lanes. It was so fast forward, the state. And of course, since then, everything's gotten a little mucked up. They have the biggest traffic problems in the country, I suspect, ever.

And so they were out front of a lot of things. So I hope that the state understands that they should stay in the front of things versus letting other states win. Was that under Jerry Brown that all of that happened? God, it goes way back. I guess it does. I guess it does. But California's always been on the forefront of things, and then they muck it up by just overthinking it in so many ways. And so we'll see if they understand how important this is. I mean, they were at the forefront of

requiring electric cars by 20, whatever the year they had. But she was very effective at using human examples, the 500,000 people in the country with cerebral palsy, the 7 million Americans with vision disabilities, the 16-year-old with epilepsy. I mean, I'm sure it's part of the mission, but this is a big capitalist enterprise. She can put her best foot forward. It's fine. That's a good foot. It's a perfectly good foot. It's

You know, this is a big swing for Google and not many companies can afford this kind of thing. And so we'll see if it works. They've got to have bigger businesses than just search and advertising. And so this is like, just like phones, this is a big swing. And when my ex-wife worked there, they paid for people's hybrid cars. What year was that?

Oh, 2003. And then of course they bought Waze. They bought Waze. The founders have always been interested in this stuff. And so it was out of passion at the same time. A couple more things. She obfuscated a bit on the jobs question. She kept saying, you know, we need to make sure this is why this is good for everyone. But then-

The price, she said, will be on par with Uber premium. The price is high because you're kind of amortizing the cost of that R&D in the beginning, even though there's no human to pay. But over time, I'm curious if the cost will come down or if it will go up the way Uber prices have gone up. Well...

Uber prices have gone up because it costs so much and it was subsidized by VCs. So that's the problem. I think they're going to start off at the price it should be and then see what happens. They'll do some subsidization, but Uber was like $3 to drive across San Francisco. And everyone was like, Kara, it's amazing. I'm like, it doesn't cost $3 to go across.

Of course, but it doesn't matter because the hazard of that is that you drive out all these businesses that could be competitive because you have deep pockets. You can subsidize a new player. Again, I'm thinking the taxi industry doesn't need saving as far as I'm concerned. The taxi industry? It was a corrupt and price-fixing thing. So, you know, the...

When their business is like that, they're at risk. They don't serve people well. You're surprisingly pro-Uber for someone who wrote so many stories. I'm not pro-Uber. Of course not. I did because of their behavior, but their lack of interest in following any kind of rules. But

I thought that they were attacking a very shitty industry at the same time. Same thing like hotels. And a lot of customer disappointment, particularly in places like San Francisco. I mean, New York is different. It's a kind of outlier in the taxi efficiency market. You know, on all these things, there's a kind of sweeping conversation of what is change going to be like? What's the future going to look like? And there's a bunch of, you know, human stories of people that...

that come in and that's the challenge. But I'm very excited that we're not going to talk about cars next week. Oh, too bad. People like cars. It's a really exciting area and people should be paying attention. It's a big part of the economy and it's actually really important. It's around climate change. It's important around safety. It's important around innovation and how we move around the world. Public transport. That's my jam. Yeah. Want to read us out? Yes. Yes.

Today's show is produced by Naima Raza, Blake Nischick, Christian Castro-Rossell, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Mary Mathis. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, kudos to you. If not, it's only poodles. Pick up and drop offs. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us,

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