Waymo and the Rise of the Robotaxis | Test Drive | 3

Summary

Podcast Summary: Business Wars

Episode: Waymo and the Rise of the Robotaxis | Test Drive | 3
Date: January 21, 2026
Host: David Brown

---

Overview

This episode takes listeners on a firsthand ride in a Waymo robo-taxi in Austin, Texas, with David Brown and his daughter, Magnolia. Following the real-world test, Brown interviews Larry Burns—former GM head of R&D and longtime Waymo consultant—on how autonomous vehicles (AVs) are being developed, the challenges faced, their impact on society, and what the future might hold. The episode gives both the street-level feel of AVs and a deep industry perspective.

---

Street-Level Test Drive: Riding in a Waymo (00:07–12:24)

Key Insights

• Austin’s Robo-Taxi Pilot:
  David Brown describes the difficulty of hailing a Waymo, which, at the time, is only available through Uber for short downtown trips as part of a limited rollout.
  "You have to go to the Uber app, opt in to driverless rides in your settings, and then get lucky enough to get assigned one." (03:27)

• First Impressions and Missteps:
  The ride starts with the confusion of getting into the wrong Waymo after failing to check the vehicle’s initials display.
  "We made a big rookie mistake... someone else got a Waymo, and we got into the wrong vehicle." (05:00)

• Passenger Experience:
  Magnolia comments on the comfort, safety, and novelty of the Waymo Jaguar, as well as company messaging around safety.
  Magnolia: "By Uber using it for a self-driving car, they're basically telling you it’s safe." (07:01)

• Surveillance and Safety:
  The car’s systems monitor if seatbelts are buckled and will call support if not.
  Waymo Support: "We just received a seat alert from the Core Garden with your ride... it's because the seatbelt [is] unbuckled." (06:02)

• Autonomous Navigation Feats and Quirks:
  Brown and Magnolia are impressed as the Waymo avoids obstacles, reroutes intelligently, and handles congestion. Some surprise detours and lack of route communication spur suggestions for improvement.
  David: "The Waymo has just figured out that car in front of us was just stopped... that's pretty smart." (08:56)
  Magnolia: "I think maybe something they could do is say like 'rerouting'. Because if you're sitting in a Waymo and you don't know that, you're like, where the heck am I going?" (09:44)

• Safety Perceptions – Robotaxi vs. Human Driver:
  Magnolia, as a teenager, highlights advantages of AVs for vulnerable populations, noting support presence and lack of predatory drivers, but acknowledges understandable public wariness.
  Magnolia: "There's always like a worry of... your own personal safety in an Uber. There's been countless examples… As a teenager, I’ve kind of refused to take Uber because I feel more unsafe. I feel a little bit more safe [with Waymo]." (10:22–10:44)

• Overall Ride Takeaways:
  Brown concludes the ride was impressive—clean, private, well-monitored, and with a sense of “magic,” despite its quirks and learning curve for users.
  "Without a human driver to listen in on your conversation, it felt like a more private experience... it all feels a little magic." (11:15)

---

Expert Interview: Larry Burns on the Autonomous Revolution (12:28–38:34)

Larry’s Background and Vision (13:43–14:58)

• Origin Story:
  Burns’ interest began as GM’s R&D chief, commissioned to reimagine the car for modern needs: "My boss... asked me: If we were inventing the car today, what would you do different?... over 40,000 people per year were dying... maybe driving was the distraction." (13:54)

AV Culture: Love for Driving vs. Safety (15:37–16:44)

• The Emotional Bond with Cars:
  Burns emphasizes that autonomy isn’t about banning driving but offering alternatives, likening it to the shift from horses to cars. "No one’s walking around saying you won’t be able to drive in the future... there's going to be another mode out there, which is the opportunity to just take a ride in what I call the ultimate riding machine." (15:37)

First Rides and the Learning Curve (17:03–19:15)

• Early Prototypes:
  His first AV ride was jarring, but the 2010 Google Self-Driving Prius amazed him by mimicking human responses to traffic. "This Prius nudges over to the left just like I would do... I realized my Prius had already started to back off and create a gap... I’m going, geez, this is 2010. This is going to work." (17:03–18:55)

• Waymo’s Approach:
  "Waymo's safety record is pretty impressive... they're five to ten times safer than human drivers. That's pretty darn profound." (19:23)

• The Tortoise vs. Hare Analogy:
  "The safety leader in autonomous vehicles will be the market leader... I'd rather ride slow on a safe tortoise than ride fast on a risky hare.” (19:23)

Technology and Safety Debates (21:33–24:53)

• Human Decisions, Robotic Precision:
  Burns compares AVs’ senses and choices directly to those of human drivers: "You're constantly making two decisions: How fast should I go and which way should I steer?... An autonomous car is making the same decisions as a human-driven car." (21:57)

• Sensor Strategies:
  Addressing Tesla’s minimalist sensor approach vs. Waymo’s cautious, robust setups: "You can’t cut the safety systems out... every bit of data from every extra sensor... is worth it to really learn safely on the road." (23:28)

Adapting to Complex Cities and Expanding Learning (24:53–26:02)

• Real-World Data is Crucial:
  "You're not going to learn everything you need in a lab or test track... San Francisco has been a focal point... those learnings are carrying over [to other cities]." (25:20)

Vehicle Selection and Design (26:53–29:03)

• Why Jaguar?
  Chosen for ease of electronic integration and practical business considerations, not just prestige. Larry: "We were looking for a vehicle that had an electrical architecture, a software architecture... which would make it easier to integrate sensors and actuators." (26:57)
  David: "You've got to tap into the spinal cord of that car." (27:19)
  Larry: "Perfect way to put that." (27:22)

• Next Generation Vehicles (Ojai/Zeekr):
  Purpose-built for easy access, safety, flexibility (can have a human backup), and efficient fleet management. "It's a vehicle that was developed with G Lean. The way they thought about it... you get in the car, the car goes, oh hi." (28:07)

Infrastructure and Failures (29:03–29:58)

• Handling Edge Cases:
  Power outages can stop AVs, but each incident creates new learning for the system. "The cars go into a safety mode... so let's not keep moving because we don't know what we need to know." (29:31) "If that ever happens again, Waymo's got that learning under their belt." (29:56)

Adoption Analogy and Market Tipping Point (30:25–32:24)

• Public Fear & Air Travel Analogy:
  "The Wright brothers invented the airplane... the safety record of those early aircrafts wasn’t very good... but it got to a point where people started flying." (30:54)

• True Tipping Point:
  "Value exceeds price, price exceeds cost. I haven’t seen anything... that suggests to me that's not going to happen with autonomous vehicles. We'll get to that point." (32:22)

Robo-taxis as Icebreakers, Impact on Ownership, and Cost (32:24–36:40)

• Five-Year Horizon for Robo-Taxi Tipping Point:
  "I think we're within a five year window of these tipping points... what happens if you can deliver that at 30 or 40 cents a mile?" (32:38)

• Effects on Car Ownership:
  Even replacing a family’s second car with robo-taxis yields major savings. "Even if robo-taxis do nothing more than enable a lot of households to get by with one car instead of two, those households are going to put a meaningful amount of money in their pocket." (33:14)

• Profound Downward Pressure on Costs:
  "In Ann Arbor, a fleet of 18,000 AV pods could replace 120,000 personal cars... cost per mile down to about 30 cents." (34:21)

• Seat Utilization Waste:
  "275 million cars with five seats each... those seats are empty 95% of the time... that's the equivalent of 12,000 football stadiums sitting empty at any point in time." (35:01) "I envision the vehicle as something that you wear, not just drive or ride in. Something you could park in your closet, not in your garage." (36:01)

Industry and Geopolitics (36:40–38:21)

• Major Players:
  "Zoox is important. Tesla's important... Gattic [Middle Mile deliveries]... Aurora, Kodiak [trucks]... In China, they've got AVs in 50 cities." (36:57)

• Global Race:
  "I don’t think it's responsible to conclude that the US is ahead here... it's an extremely important strategic technology. The knowhow here also applies to robots, drones, and other things." (37:28)

• Societal Impacts:
  "Gives us a chance to solve... challenges related to sustainability and equity… it’s a huge enabler." (38:14)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Tipping Point for Adoption:
  "Value exceeds price, price exceeds cost. I haven’t seen anything... that suggests to me that's not going to happen with autonomous vehicles. We'll get to that point."
  – Larry Burns, 32:22

• On the Human Element:
  "Prince wrote little red Corvette. He didn't write little red laptop computer."
  – Larry Burns, 15:37

• On the Empty Seats Problem:
  "That's the equivalent of 12,000 University of Michigan football stadiums sitting empty at any point in time."
  – Larry Burns, 35:01

---

Timeline of Major Segments

• 00:07–02:26 – David Brown sets stage, introduces Austin ridealong, safety debate.
• 03:01–12:24 – Detailed blow-by-blow of Austin Waymo ride and afterthoughts.
• 12:28–13:43 – Setting up expert interview, intro to Larry Burns.
• 13:43–21:33 – Burns’ background, personal motivation, GM/Waymo history, what AVs could fix.
• 21:33–26:53 – Technical deep dive: sensors, human vs. machine perception, safety strategies.
• 26:53–29:03 – Vehicle selection, hardware integration, new models.
• 29:03–30:25 – Edge cases: power outages, learnings.
• 30:25–32:24 – Analogy to air travel, public perception, path to mass adoption.
• 32:24–36:40 – Ownership changes, cost per mile, societal impact.
• 36:40–38:21 – Players in the industry, global competition, non-car applications, AV as a strategic technology.

---

Tone and Style

Conversational, at times wry but deeply inquisitive, balancing layman’s awe of the technology (“it all feels a little magic”) with expert skepticism and practical focus on safety, economics, and society.

---

Conclusion

This episode delivers a compelling, multi-angle look at the rise of robo-taxis, contrasting firsthand encounters (“party fouls” and all) with industry insights and the sweeping possibility of an autonomous future. Both Brown’s civilian curiosity and Burns’ sober industry leadership highlight the anxieties, challenges, and transformative promises on the horizon for city streets and the global economy alike.

Transcript

[David Brown]

Hey there. I'm david brown and welcome to business wars. We're starting this episode off a bit differently, and that's because we begin today far from the cozy confines of the studio. We're on the streets of Austin, Texas, where we're trying a little experiment. Having finished the first two episodes in our series on the rise of autonomous vehicles, I couldn't help but wonder what it's really like to be a passenger in a car with no driver.

Hey, hey, hey. I think we may haven't a Waymo says nice. Your pickup is right on time.

[Waymo System Voice]

Hello from Waymo.

[David Brown]

Coming up, you'll get to ride shotgun with my daughter and me. We went downtown to hail one of these robo taxis and document what it's like to take a ride in one of these cars of the future. See, recently there was a story in the New York Times that basically made the case for the inevitability of self driving cars. According to that article, the the data that's already been gathered suggests that from a public safety standpoint alone, it seems undeniable that we're headed toward a driverless revolution. The only remaining question is how close we are to that tipping point. After the ride along, we'll hear from Larry Burns. He's a former automotive executive and author of Autonomy the Quest to Build a Driverless Car and How it Will Reshape Our World. He literally wrote the book on what a driverless future could look like and spent 10 years consulting for Waymo to help turn these sci fi sounding dreams into a reality. Larry talks about how he got involved with Google's self driving cars and how he sees self driving cars reshaping our society for the better. But as a reporter, I tend to be a little suspicious of the hype around things that are called the next revolution in transportation. So before we get into it with Larry, let's hit the streets and see how these robo taxis work, shall we? All that's coming up.

[Larry Burns]

That's another amazing run by Team usa.

[David Brown]

And you too can go for glory.

[Magnolia Brown]

With the Xfinity five year price guarantee.

[Xfinity Announcer]

Now through February 22nd. Get gig Wi Fi for $50 a month for five years guaranteed. Plus get Peacock Premium included for two years. That's a $10.99 value per month. Xfinity. Imagine that. Proud partner of Team usa. Restrictions apply. Requires paperless billing and auto pay with stored bank account taxes and fees. Extra actual speeds vary.

[David Brown]

Welcome back to Business Wars. Right now, my mission here on the streets of Austin is simple. Hail a driverless taxi and Check out what it's like firsthand. This should be easy, but it's not.

Been trying to get from South Congress.

Avenue to Waterloo Records, my favorite vinyl record shop, for several minutes now.

But I keep getting assigned a human driver, and then I have to cancel the request and try again.

Several cities across the US now allow driverless taxis, but here in Austin, it's still considered experimental. You can't just hail a Waymo through the Waymo app. Instead, Waymo is partnered with Uber for a limited rollout of their fully autonomous cabs. You have to go to the Uber app, opt in to driverless rides in your settings, and then get lucky enough to get assigned one. And word on the street is you won't get assigned one unless you're downtown and making a shorter trip of, say, a couple of miles. So we adjusted our pickup point to see if we could get lucky.

Hey, hey, hey. I think we may have an awaymo. Hang on a second. If I can read this right, pick up in one minute.

Lucky for me, I had a co pilot, my daughter, Magnolia.

Oh, you say hello, Magnolia.

Hello.

And she's holding the microphone while I try to figure out exactly where the pickup point is. It says Home Slice Pizza pickup spot one. So let's pick. Aren't we outside of Home Slice?

Once the pickup point was secured, it was time for our next challenge. Figuring out which Waymo was ours.

Looks like it's coming up on us. Oh, there it is.

All right.

Ah, there's the Waymo. Is there anybody behind the wheel?

[Magnolia Brown]

No.

[David Brown]

Nope. Oh, my goodness. Okay, the little spinny light on top says cp and now the doors have opened and let's get in.

But we made a big rookie mistake.

Oh, really?

[Waymo Support (Rose)]

Good afternoon.

[David Brown]

Oh, thank you.

Oh, thank you so much.

[Magnolia Brown]

Appreciate it.

[David Brown]

All right, someone else got a Waymo, and we got into the wrong vehicle.

Turns out the initials on top should match your own.

[Larry Burns]

Oops.

[David Brown]

We quickly spotted another vehicle sporting DB on the top. We opened the doors to find a screen wishing us good afternoon. Soft New age music flowed out of the speakers, creating a spa like atmosphere. A cheerful, soothing voice greeted us.

[Waymo System Voice]

Hello from Waymo. As we get going, just give us one minute to cover a few riding tips. This experience may feel futuristic, but the need to buckle up is the same as always. So keep your seatbelt fastened, please.

[David Brown]

If you're traveling with me, that whisper you're hearing is my daughter. Now, here was my second Robo taxi. Party foul. I took too long to buckle up, which got us in a bit of trouble.

Oh, I Guess I need to buckle up.

[Magnolia Brown]

That's the point. That's what they just said.

[David Brown]

Seconds later, the car had called up Waymo support.

[Waymo Support (Rose)]

Hi, this is Rose with, you know, s for interrupting your trip. We just received a seat alert from the Core Garden with your ride and upon checking here, it's because the seatbelt are unbuckled.

[David Brown]

Okay, it looks like we're buckled up now.

[Unidentified Host/Interviewer]

Once we were all buckled up, it.

[David Brown]

Was time to hit the road. A message on the steering wheel reminds riders to keep their hands off and that the Waymo driver is in control, AKA the computer. A screen sits between the driver and passenger seats.

You can see all the cars. You can see the cyclist who just went by on the side.

[Magnolia Brown]

Actually, it shows you if there's other Waymo cars. All of the other cars are in blue, but any other Waymo is not in blue.

[David Brown]

And then there's us with the Happy.

New Year flag on it.

Very nice.

Now, as a car guy, I couldn't help but notice the car's interior. I asked Magnolia what she thought about the vehicle.

Would you want to have a Jaguar based on sitting in this car?

[Magnolia Brown]

Me personally?

[David Brown]

Yeah.

[Magnolia Brown]

Yes.

[David Brown]

I think this is kind of a decent sales technique for Jags.

[Magnolia Brown]

Yeah. And also because by Uber using it for a self driving car, they're basically telling you it's safe. They're telling you that, you know, in the crazy world maybe where this gets into like an accident, right. You're gonna be safe. Cause we want you to believe, or at least we want you to know that we're using like a top of the line car.

[David Brown]

Yeah.

[Larry Burns]

Yeah.

[Magnolia Brown]

So that way, you know.

[David Brown]

Yeah. There's not rattles in here. It seems like it's really nicely built.

[Magnolia Brown]

Very quick.

[David Brown]

Very quick.

Yep.

Once we arrived at our destination, we stopped for some lunch and then mentally prepared for the second leg of our Waymo journey. Inhaling this next one, I experienced my third Robo taxi party foul of the day. This time I knew to look for the car that said DB on top. But I didn't know where exactly I should meet it.

[Magnolia Brown]

I think this might be it.

[David Brown]

Hello, May. Yeah, let's go over here.

[Magnolia Brown]

Wait for it to get to its spot because it's holding up people.

[Larry Burns]

Okay.

[David Brown]

Two Waymos meet in the parking lot.

[Magnolia Brown]

If you stand in front of its sensors, it will think that you're asking to get into it, but it won't know for sure.

[David Brown]

Oops. With a human driver, I could wave at them from across the street. We could just walk up, they'd unlock the doors and we'd tumble in. But with a robo taxi, the car has to come to you. Okay, noted. Once inside, I buckled up right away so we could hit the road.

[Waymo System Voice]

Happy New Year.

[David Brown]

Well, that was cute. Wishing us a Happy New Year.

This time around, our robot driver pulled off an impressive maneuver in a congested area.

Oh, look. Now it's going to do a three point reverse. Like a U turn. Three point turn to get out of.

[Magnolia Brown]

A parking at it.

[Larry Burns]

Do you see?

[David Brown]

Everyone's just constantly, hey, we're famous.

Yeah.

It's funny because I've seen these all over town, but people still can't help but gawk.

Gotta say, I was even more impressed by this second ride. The things the Waymo could pick up on were akin to what a human driver might do. For example.

But look at this. Now this one, the Waymo has just figured out that car in front of us was just stopped. That it wasn't like a line of traffic. That's pretty smart.

[Magnolia Brown]

Yeah. So it went around.

[David Brown]

So it went around the car in front of us. That's pretty cool.

But there was one moment where the car took a slight detour that had both of us a little spooked.

I was not expecting that.

[Magnolia Brown]

I thought we were just going straight.

[David Brown]

Into traffic there for a second and oh my gosh. So it is recalculated. Calculated a back way, which I've never been on. Very unfamiliar back way.

[Magnolia Brown]

But it really sped up around that.

[David Brown]

It sure did. Where are we going?

[Larry Burns]

Yeah.

[David Brown]

That was a wild detour.

Once our heart rates returned to normal, I asked Magnolia how she felt about taking Waymo versus an Uber. From the perspective of a teen, I still have misgivings.

[Magnolia Brown]

I have ideas about like that detour it just took. It didn't tell us it was rerouting. It didn't tell us it was taking a detour. Right. It just went. And I feel like it would be. I think maybe something that they could do is say like rerouting. Right.

[David Brown]

Or just say we're taking a different route. Route.

[Waymo Support (Rose)]

Okay.

[Magnolia Brown]

Going the fastest route. Because if you're sitting in a Waymo and you don't know that, you're like, where the heck am I going? You don't know that it's still taking you there. Pros for regular Uber.

[David Brown]

Yeah.

[Magnolia Brown]

I guess you don't worry as much about there being like a computing error. Right? You don't worry about like anything like that.

[David Brown]

You're not worried about the computing error in a regular.

[Magnolia Brown]

In a regular.

[David Brown]

Oh, in a regular Uber.

[Waymo Support (Rose)]

Okay.

[Magnolia Brown]

Right. But Also there's always like a worry of like, you know, your own personal safety in an Uber. There's been countless examples of like, you know, Uber drivers taking you place, it's not your home, stuff like that. Right.

[David Brown]

Someone who is a bad Uber driver.

[Magnolia Brown]

Right, right. But as a teenager I've kind of refused to take Uber because I feel more unsafe.

[David Brown]

Sure.

[Magnolia Brown]

I think that seeing how this operates, I feel a little bit more safe as well as the fact that there's support watching. And if you don't even, if you, even if you don't even plug in your seatbelt all the way.

[David Brown]

Right, right.

[Magnolia Brown]

They call, they tune in, they say, hey, just saw that you didn't plug.

[David Brown]

In like so if something freaky happened, you could reach down and touch support and you know that somebody could get out of there.

[Magnolia Brown]

Or if I, if I felt unsafe or I was unsure or I just wanted to double check, I'm like, hey, you know, I'm a minor, you know, I'm in this car alone. I just want to make sure like.

[David Brown]

It takes me where I need to go.

Despite the bumps in the road. I have to say that over overall I was impressed. We went from a very busy shopping district to a more relaxed area. There's a button that says pull over in case you need to stop the ride suddenly. The Waymo was able to identify an easy drop off point. When you're near your destination, the car reminds you to grab your keys, phone and wallet. The cars were clean and it felt like a more private experience without a human driver to listen in on your conversation. Oh, we were still being recorded by Waymo for security purposes, which they do disclose to you. That's a little weird, but it didn't make me feel unsafe. If anything, it all feels a little magic. As we reached our final stop, we bid farewell to our robo taxi pal.

All right, you're here.

[Magnolia Brown]

Please make sure you are here before exiting. Thank you, Waymo.

[David Brown]

Thank you, Waymo.

See you next year.

[Magnolia Brown]

Kind of sounded like it responded to us there.

[David Brown]

Until next time, Reporting live from Austin.

Texas, I'm David Brown.

[Magnolia Brown]

Oh, I, oh, I'm Magnolia Brown. I wasn't ready for that.

[David Brown]

I'm David Brown.

[Magnolia Brown]

I'm Magnolia Brown.

[Unidentified Host/Interviewer]

And we'll talk again later next time perhaps on Business wars coming up.

[Larry Burns]

It's going to be very disruptive to the auto industry and I think much of what I'm Talking about isn't 100 years away. I think it's 20, 30 years away.

[David Brown]

Now that I've had a taste of The Autonomous Vehicle Experience. We're going to talk to the man who literally wrote the book on how these cars will shape our future. Stick around. Welcome back to Business wars as Waymo Robo taxis catch on in cities across the U.S. now that I've had my own Waymo experience, I wanted to speak with an expert on the subject to get to know these cars a little bit better. Larry Burns is an automotive industry executive with nearly 40 years of experience. He served as the VP for General Motors Research and Development Division, and later consulted for Waymo from 2010 to 2022. He's the author of the book Autonomy the Quest to Build the Driverless Car and How It Will Reshape Our World. Larry is optimistic about the future of these vehicles, citing their ability to improve physical and virtual access for so many populations worldwide. And he joins us now to talk about it. Larry Burns, welcome to Business Wars.

[Larry Burns]

Thank you very much.

[David Brown]

David, how did autonomous vehicles become something you're so passionate about? Is there a moment from your own life that sparked your interest in innovating in this space?

[Larry Burns]

Actually, there was. When I became head of research and development at General Motors in 1998, my boss, who was subsequently the CEO of GM, Rick Wagner, he asked me a really profound question. He said, larry, if we were inventing the car Today rather than 100 years ago, what would you do different? That's what I want you to think about as my head of R and D. And one of the things that was very much on my mind at that time was the fact that over 40,000 people per year were dying in car crashes. And driver distraction had become a very hot topic. And I concluded that maybe driving was the distraction. Why would someone possibly go 70 miles an hour on a freeway and send a text or look at their phone? So this opportunity to rethink the car in terms of a different design DNA, an electric vehicle that was autonomous, that was connected virtually to everything that's going on around it. What might that be like as the alternative to the 100-year-old DNA of the car? So that was the moment that really got my attention.

[David Brown]

Larry, let me ask you about something, because that ride in the Waymo is still so fresh with me. And I remember sitting in that car and having that thought, you know, that wow, if everyone were in self driving vehicles, what a much safer world this would be, in a sense. But at the same time, I love driving and I know you gotta be a car guy too, you know, if you're working at gm, is there a tension there between the Fact that so many of us identify with the cars that we drive and love the drive, have a passion for the road, you know, and yet it does really feel like this safety factor is going to win out.

[Larry Burns]

I think it's a great question. I do a lot of public speaking, and I ask my audiences, how many of you like to drive? And like you, David, most hands go up. Then I ask, how many of you like to drive in traffic? A lot of hands go down. Then I ask, how many like to stop to buy gas? How many like to be tethered to their steering wheel? And the simple fact is, when you observe the people's behavior, most driving is pretty boring. Now, when horses were popular, people loved their horses, and they had horse races and they had equestrian, and we still have that today. I don't think anyone's walking around saying, you won't be able to drive in the future. I think what we're saying is there's going to be another mode out there, which is the opportunity to just take a ride in what I call the ultimate riding machine rather than the ultimate driving machine. And that's going to appeal to a lot of people, but certainly no one's out there saying that we shouldn't allow people to have the freedom to drive. You know, Prince wrote little red Corvette. He didn't write little red laptop computer. So people do fall on love with our cars. There's no question about that.

[Unidentified Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[David Brown]

But, you know, I could have easily.

[Unidentified Host/Interviewer]

Fallen in love or fallen asleep in the back of that Waymo, because that was a real, real easy ride.

[David Brown]

Do you remember the first time you actually, you know, sat in an autonomous vehicle? That must have been way before any of us were really thinking about it.

[Larry Burns]

There's two moments I want to share. First was in the development of the vehicle that GM sponsored for the DARPA Urban Challenge, which took place in November 2007 in Victorville, California. We sponsored Carnegie Mellon University, and we created a vehicle with Carnegie Mellon called boss. The founder of GM Research was named Boss Kettering. That's why we named it boss. And since we were sponsoring this university, I had to go out there to see this vehicle. And I kept insisting to Red Whitaker and Chris Urmson, the two key people on the Carnegie Mellon team, I want to ride in it. They said, I don't think you do. I said, no, I want to ride in it. So they let me ride in it on the test facility. But, David, it wasn't engineered for riding. It was herky and jerky. And I was getting car sick and they were laughing and everything. So that was not a good experience, but it was my first time. The more profound experience is when after this race took place, Google created Google Self Driving cars. And one of the key people on that team was a guy named Chris Urmson. And I'd gotten to know Chris very well through the Carnegie Mellon sponsorship. And Chris called me up and said, larry, we're doing this development work. It's been pretty quiet so far, but New York Times is going to break an article on this. Would you talk to them? Because it would help with our credibility. And I said, sure, but I want to ride in your car. And he invited me out, this was late 2010, and let me ride in their Prius ON101 in the San Francisco Bay area. And it was remarkable. I'm in the lane, I'm riding autonomous, and this Prius, and this great big truck comes up on my right, and my Prius nudges over to the left just like I would do if I was driving. A little later on, David, a Volkswagen came and cut in front of me, and I realized my Prius had already started to back off and create a gap.

[Unidentified Host/Interviewer]

Oh, wow.

[Larry Burns]

To that car. And I'm going, geez, you know, this is 2010. This is going to work. I mean, we had a lot of work to do going forward from that point in time. And then Waymo brought me on, and as an advisor, sort of the gray beard advisor, they needed someone who understood the auto industry to come in and help them as they took their journey. And it was just a fantastic experience.

[David Brown]

When you started working at Waymo, what was your approach to the work, and did it line up with Waymo's sort of slow and steady strategy?

[Larry Burns]

It did line up. I think this is a tortoise and a hare kind of a comparison. And I wrote a paper in a magazine called Autonomous vehicle engineering in 2019, and I made the case in that paper that the safety leader in autonomous vehicles will be the market leader, and vice versa. The market leader will be the safety leader. I think you've seen that play out. Waymo's safety record is pretty impressive. You know, they've been pretty transparent with their data. And you can pick different ways of measuring safety, whether it's for pedestrians and bicyclists versus people in the car, but it looks like they're five to ten times safer than human drivers. That's pretty darn profound. Then you look at what happened to Cruise when they had a very sad incident in San Francisco Cruise was General Motors project.

[David Brown]

Yeah.

[Larry Burns]

Cruise was General Motors. Yeah. And basically Cruise was eliminated because of that. So the safety leader has to be the leader in this industry. Autonomous vehicles is about safety. So the tortoise and the hare analogy, to be honest, I'd rather ride slow on a safe tortoise than ride fast on a risky hare. At some point, this will all get all validated through all the different use cases. And I think Waymo has an admirable safety record. Has this taken longer than most of us hoped or hyped? Absolutely. We really felt in 2010 we were going to be out there much sooner with robo taxis and personal autonomous cars. So the problem proved to be harder than any of us really anticipated. But at the same time, the tools we had to get this done became better and better. Advanced simulation, better sensors, AI, even right now, the sensors. I'm advising a company called Atomathic and they've created a new platform for radar sensors that make them really reliable and sets up a whole new safety layer and the whole perception aspects of autonomous cars. So these enablers of autonomous driving have gotten better and better because people see the value once we get there, and you have to focus on safety as the overriding priority. So going slower is the right thing to do to ensure safety.

[David Brown]

I think, though, there's a certain scare factor that a lot of people feel, especially because of those early incidents you mentioned, the cruise incident with gm, some of those early incidents that got so much press. A lot of confusion about how this even works in layman's terms. Larry, how would you explain how a modern robo taxi is able to operate in a busy city environment?

[Larry Burns]

Just like you as a human driving a car. When you're driving your car, David, you're constantly making two decisions. How fast should I go and which way should I steer? That's it, over and over and over again. Which way should I steer? How fast should I go? And what you have in an autonomous car is technologies that help you perceive the road ahead. Those are things called lidar, radar cameras, digital maps. And the real pioneers in this field have said we're going to really load up with those sensors and those maps because safety is the overriding priority. And we're going to really, really, really be safe in that perception of how fast I can go right now and which way should I steer. So an autonomous car is making the same decisions a human driven car is. An autonomous car is perceiving just like you are as a person. And then the autonomous car is processing what they perceive and they're making decisions just like you do as a person.

[David Brown]

But at the same time, though, Larry, isn't it true that there has been something of a debate over how many sensors you need and what kind of sensors? Because I know that at one point, at least in the popular conversation, it seemed like Tesla was way ahead. And then Elon Musk said, well, he wants to rely mostly on radar. Lidar is a much more sophisticated system, as I understand it, but it's also more expensive and it's bulkier. And there are other downsides.

[Larry Burns]

I guess you have it absolutely right. But you can't cut the safety systems out of these development vehicles. We're still early on this development, David. I mean, it's very exciting. I think it is inevitable. I think we're approaching a tipping point on this where actually market forces will begin to take over and drive the scaling of the technology. But the journey from the DARPA urban challenges in 2007 to where we are today in 2026 had to be guided by safety. And the progress has been astonishing. And I think every little bit of data from every extra sensor you might put on your development cars, I think Waymo has 2,500 or 3,000 cars. So there's not that many cars out there. That's not that many extra sensors to really learn safely on the road. And if they didn't have that, but real commitment to safety being the priority. And they had two or three incidences over the last 10 years, like what happened to Cruise. We may not be where we are, so not to overplay this, but Tesla has had some incidences that involve people not in their cars, people standing along the road who were killed by a Tesla and resulted in a huge lawsuit. So you can't just factor in, I'm in the vehicle and I want to be safe. You've got to factor in all the other people on the roads. Using the roads as part of this equation on safety.

[David Brown]

What can be done to help these robo taxis navigate some of the more complex older cities? You think of Boston, for example, you know, I mean, those were roads that were made by, you know, cow paths.

[Unidentified Host/Interviewer]

And you got a lot of young people in that town, too, you know.

[David Brown]

And it's pretty dense population there, or even, you know, highly trafficked cities like. Like New York City. What else needs to happen before we start to see robo taxis everywhere in those places?

[Larry Burns]

Yeah, this is all about learning. Local, state and federal regulators have enabled companies like Waymo, Zoox and others to learn on public roads. You're not going to learn everything you need to learn in a laboratory at approving ground stimulation. You've got to get out there, and there is a degree of risk associated with that. San Francisco has been a focal point for several of the companies because it is a really challenging driving environment, and those learnings are carrying over. And I think that's shown at the speed at which Waymo is now moving to more and more cities, that they're being able to take what they've learned in San Francisco and apply that quickly to these other communities.

[David Brown]

Larry Burns is a longtime automotive industry executive and former consultant for Waymo. And coming up, we're going to be taking a look at the cars themselves and hear what a fully autonomous society might actually look like. There's a whole lot more business wars ahead. Stick around. Welcome back to Business Wars. Our guest is author, professor and automotive industry innovator Larry Burns. Let's talk about the cars themselves. I'm excited about these cars. When we got into that Jaguar, I'd never been in that particular model of Jag before, and I was really impressed. Really, really impressed. So was my daughter, who said she.

[Unidentified Host/Interviewer]

Would really like to have a Jaguar someday.

[David Brown]

You have any idea why they chose Jaguars for this vehicle?

[Larry Burns]

Well, what I can tell you is a whole bunch of things get factored in. We were looking for a vehicle that had an electrical architecture, a software architecture, controls architecture, which would make it easier to integrate these sensors and actuators. So that when I say actuator, that's the actuation of the speed and the brakes and everything else.

[David Brown]

You've got to tap into the spinal cord of that car.

[Larry Burns]

David? Perfect. That's a perfect way to put that. Absolutely. And so tapping into that spinal cord made a lot of sense at that point in time. You factor in how easy it is to work with the other party when you do these kinds of things. And then there's going to be a business side. How much of the car is going to cost? Who's responsible for liabilities? You're cutting into that spinal cord. What does all that mean? So you look at a whole bunch of different options and you explore them. You have a whole bunch of different objectives. You have a timing that you want a certain number of cars in. And lo and behold, it converges on that. In the last week or so, Waymo announced the branding that they're putting on their next vehicle. And that branding is Ojai for Ojai, California. And it's a vehicle that was developed with G Lean.

[David Brown]

Zeekr is This a purpose built autonomous vehicle or.

[Larry Burns]

No, absolutely. That was a lot of purposeful thinking that went into that because we wanted it easy for someone to get in and out of the car. We wanted the doors to open wide so you could easily get in and bend your body and get into the seat and slide across. We wanted obviously to be safe and spacious. We wanted to have the flexibility for that vehicle to be able to have a driver in it if you need it. And, you know, there's some practical things when you're managing a fleet of autonomous vehicles like this that maybe it's just easier to have someone jump in the seat and reposition the car and the fleet management lot and those kinds of things. So all kinds of factors that went into that that lead to the vehicle being the size that it is and being packaged the way that it is. I think the way they thought about it, at least from what I've read, is you get in the car, the car goes, oh, hi. Which is kind of nice and pleasant.

[David Brown]

That's cute.

[Larry Burns]

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But it has a van, SUV kind of look to it with the doors.

[David Brown]

That open up widely, making it really easy to get in and out. Yeah, yeah. Now let's talk about when something goes wrong. Maybe not with the car itself, but with the infrastructure. I mean, wasn't there like a power outage in San Francisco last December where the Waymo vehicles didn't know how to handle it? Do you know what I'm talking about?

[Larry Burns]

From my understanding is there was a significant power outage in San Francisco. And as a result, the ability of the Waymo cars to communicate the way they need with the virtual connectivity and other things was compromised. So the cars go into a safety mode, which is, let's not keep moving because we don't know what we need to know to do that.

[David Brown]

So they just sort of sit there.

Parked wherever they are.

[Larry Burns]

Yeah. But when I hear about something like that, I say, hey, here's a chance to learn. So I pretty much can guarantee if that ever happens again, Waymo's got that learning under their belt and they've got a solution for it that's gonna handle it. Keep in mind also, David, when those kinds of things happen, traffic lights don't work. So that's gonna add to the congestion. And I don't know the exact solution, but I suspect Dmitry Dolgov and his team at Waymo will find all kinds of ways to deal with it.

[David Brown]

You know, I was trying to think of a metaphor or some kind of analogy that I could use when I was thinking of explaining my own Waymo experience and trying to convey what you've said about the safety of the car. And it seems like that's going to be one of the big impediments, certainly the willingness to adopt, accept the future of autonomous vehicles. Does any sort of analogy come to mind for you, a way of sort of convincing people, hey, this is the future?

[Larry Burns]

Well, I think one would be air travel. The Wright brothers invented the airplane and it wasn't too long after that where military and then commercial applications come along and the safety record of those early aircrafts weren't very good. But it got to a point where people started flying and they accepted the level of risk given the value that they received from having the opportunity to fly. So that might be one that you can look at, but I think the most compelling thing is for people to have an opportunity to ride it like you and your daughter. And I think that changed your perception of issues. And not everybody gets that chance because there's not that many of these vehicles out there yet. So with that said, there's a whole lot of people and I think it's human nature to fear things we don't understand. And there's a lot of people weighing in on this debate who've never experienced an autonomous car, they haven't ridden in it. And what I focus on is very simple. Is the value going to be profound? I believe for a whole lot of people there's going to be great value in moving around in their everyday life in an autonomous vehicle. Can I get that value at a price that makes sense for it? I believe that that pricing is going to work just fine. And can companies deliver it at a cost and make money? That's the market tipping point. Value exceeds price, price exceeds cost. And I haven't seen anything, David, that suggests to me that's not going to happen with autonomous vehicles. We'll get to that point.

[David Brown]

Even though I've only had a robo taxi experience, the next level is going to be when the first autonomous vehicles are available to consumers. How far off do you think looking at? And in a way, aren't robo taxis kind of icebreakers for this moment?

[Larry Burns]

Oh, robo taxis are. I think we're within a five year window of these tipping points. The interesting thing to me is the personal car. I was in the car business with GM for a long time and well over 90% of households have a car. Many households have two or three and that's at $1.50amile. What happens if you can deliver that at 30 or 40 cents a mile, even more people are gonna want to have personal rides.

[David Brown]

But we don't.

[Unidentified Host/Interviewer]

But you know, you know, Larry, we don't think in terms of cost per mile over the length of a vehicle's lifetime. We're always thinking about what we're going to be paying down at the dealership.

[Larry Burns]

Right, I get you, David, but given our concerns about affordability in general, even if robo taxis do nothing more than enable a lot of households to get by with one car instead of two, those households are going to put a meaningful amount of money in their pocket. Interesting, because second car ownership comes with car insurance and maintenance and your payments on the car and all of that. In my book Autonomy, I talk about the potential of a two person electric pod that's autonomous. We concluded we could satisfy all the trips in Ann Arbor with a fleet of 18,000 autonomous vehicle pods replacing 120,000 personal cars. And then that would take the cost per mile down on the order of about 30 cents. So that would be 15 cents per seat mile. So it excites me because this is one of these opportunities where you can have much better experiences at lower cost, safer, and bring these solutions forward to a lot more people. The people who can't drive because they're physically disabled or they can't afford to own a car.

[David Brown]

So there'll be a trade off at some point in which we are paying what looks like maybe a small pod. If you were to, you know, put side by side next to a fancier truck or something like that, you're going to say, I'm paying that much for this. On the other hand, you have all of these costs. On the flip side, the insurance costs that go down, the energy costs that go down, all those prices that go down. We've just got to. If we're going to embrace the autonomous future as you see it, we're going to have to embrace that larger price per mile and not just the price per or unit of transportation vehicle. However, we see that today that's gonna have to change.

[Larry Burns]

Yeah, I think the cost per mile will be lower in the autonomous electric vehicles versus your human driven combustion vehicles. Today I think it'll be lower if the vehicle is tailored to the typical kinds of trips that we make. And Most trips are one and two people. 80% of the trips have just one or two people on the car, but most of the cars have five seats. I did this calculation, David. It's intriguing. I said, you have 275 million cars in the United with five seats each, that's 1.4 trillion seats. And those cars are parked 95% of the time. So those seats are empty 95% of the time. And when they're used, they're used at 1.8 people per trip. That is the equivalent of 12,000 University of Michigan football stadiums sitting empty at any point in time. In terms of empty seats, I see.

[David Brown]

Where you're going with this. So the future is not going to be the personal car and two pods in every.

[Larry Burns]

It doesn't have to be. In fact, I envision the vehicle as something that you wear, not just drive or ride in. Something you could park in your closet, not in your garage. We just can't keep making our everyday trips and vehicles that are designed for much more extreme applications than what we need on an everyday basis. I think we're going to get the crash out of this, which is going to be phenomenal. I think the cost per mile is going to be 1 10th what it is today, and it's going to be very disruptive to the auto industry. And I think much of what I'm talking about isn't 100 years away. I think it's 20, 30 years away.

[David Brown]

Wow. Closer. Sooner than that. I understand that revenue from autonomous vehicles is supposed to reach like what, one and a half, 1.6 trillion by 2030. Who are the big players in the autonomous game in addition to Waymo?

[Larry Burns]

Certainly Zoox is important. Tesla's important. There's a Middle Mile company. When I made Middle Mile, it's like the travel between warehouses and stores. A company called Gattic, which is really important because they're finding a use case. Right now you've got Aurora with over the road trucks, along with Kodiak in China, they've got autonomous vehicles being used in 50 different cities for learning purposes. And they're moving very aggressively on this.

[David Brown]

More aggressively than the U.S. you think.

[Larry Burns]

In terms of more players? I think yes. I think they do want to make it safe. They're trying to calibrate the rollout with safety as well, but they enable learning in a different way. So I don't think it's responsible to conclude that the US is ahead here and that we've got a corner on the brains as it comes to autonomous vehicles. I think other nations are going to pursue this and I think it's an extremely important strategic technology. The know how that we're talking about here for autonomous cars also applies to robots, it applies to drones and other things. I think autonomous vehicles are inevitable once they take the assumption that these machines can be autonomous, how will it redefine the way we live? And I think it gives us a chance to solve some very, very important challenges related to sustainability and equity and those kinds of things. So it's a huge enabler.

[David Brown]

Larry Burns is a former consultant for Waymo and the author of Autonomy the Quest to Build that Driverless Car and How It Will Reshape Our World. Larry, it's been a real treat to get to talk with you on Business Wars. Thanks so much for joining us.

[Larry Burns]

Yeah. Thank you for inviting me, David. I really enjoyed it.

[David Brown]

Coming up, what happens when all our systems depend on the same software and that software fails? That's next time on Business Wars.

[Larry Burns]

Wars.

[David Brown]

From Wondery, this is episode three of Waymo and the Rise of the Robo Taxis. For Business Wars, I'm your host, David Brown. Kelly. Kyle produced this episode. Our lead sound designer is Kyle Randall. Our producer is Tristan Donovan. Our audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Our managing producer is Desi Blalock, our senior producer. Our producers are Jenny Bloom and Emily Frost. Karen Lowe is our producer emeritus. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer, Beckman and Marshall Louie. For Wondery.