Tesla’s robotaxi reality check, One Nation’s Super proposal & what would you do for $750k?

0:00Today's podcast is brought to you by Betashears. Super is one of the biggest investments most Australians will ever make, but too often it can feel hard to see what you're invested in, what choices you have, and whether it's on track for the retirement you're picturing. Betashears is preparing to launch new Super and pension products and wants to hear what matters to you. For share your thoughts via the link in the show notes and help shape Betashears Super. You'll go in the draw for your chance to win one of four two hundred and fifty dollar prezy gift cards. TZC's apply the form is open until midnight Australian Eastern Daylight time 30th of September 2026. Betashears holding proprietary limited is conducting this competition. Please read the relevant PDS and TMD before deciding whether to invest in a new Betashears Super or Betashears pension products. Everything you're about to hear is for education and entertainment purposes only. Whilst we are licensed we're not aware of your personal financial circumstances. Any advice is general advice. Equity mates operates under Australian Financial Services license 540-697. I think it's going to be one of the most transformational technologies of our life.

1:01It's not about the US anymore, it's now a global race and you flagged it. China actually is home to the leader. It's by some measures but I think fair enough to say that the lead has flipped. Welcome to another episode of Equity mates a show where we explore what's possible in the world of investing. If you've just joined us for the very first time a huge welcome to our show. My name is Bryce. And I'm Ren and today we are looking at the latest update on Robo Taxis. Can I make Bryce care? And we're talking all things super. Both political proposals to change super and our advice on how you can get your investment options right in your Superfund. The Bryce before we get into all of that a big exciting announcement we have less than 200 tickets left for FinFest. Less than 200 tickets Ren it might still sound like a lot are available but that's less than 10% of the total tickets on sale with over what do we now? About eight seven to eight weeks to go. So we will sell out. That is something that we can guarantee right here right now.

2:04Make sure you grab your tickets. They're only $55 and no matter where you are on your investing journey there are sessions for you on the day. So head to equitymates.com slash FinFest. If you're a financial advisor and you want a preview on the Friday before FinFest on the Saturday we are hosting an exclusive session for financial advisors head to equitymates.com slash FinFest dash industry. Bryce always alives when I read out the URL. Maybe just head to the link in the show notes or YouTube description. I will include both links for the main day and for the advisor preview. Become along and check it out. It's going to be an epic day. Cannot wait. FinFest is proudly brought to you by Medias. All right Ren news. We're covering off this morning. The latest on robo taxes. Can't wait for that. And there's a debate going on around superannuation and whether or not we can get access to it but let's start with robo taxes. Well yeah I think we're headlining this. Does Bryce care about the

3:05latest robo taxi update? Because for a long time listeners of the show they will know that I have been incredibly excited by the rollout of robo taxis. I think it's going to be one of the most transformational technologies of our life. And you haven't really. No no no no. I definitely agree that it is a transformational technology and I can't wait to see it rolled out globally but doing the there's now 200,000 in Texas 250,000 in Texas 300,000 in Texas was the update that I didn't quite need. Okay well I've got an update for you. You tell me if you care. Okay. All right so the update is Tesla has launched the cyber cab. A robo taxi with no controls. Dangerous. Okay so he's interested. It's not the first robo taxi with no human controls. That on it goes to Zooks and we'll get back to Zooks later but it's obviously the biggest launch. It's a big step forward in the form factor of the car changing. What do you mean no controls? So it's a two-seater car. It basically

4:05is like a scaled down version of the cyber truck. Yeah so it's a scaled down version of that. Two-seater car, no steering wheel, no pedals, no side mirrors, no conventional drivers seat, and a big old iPad screen for the two. Two-seater sounds like a miss. Why not go for? More boot space. I guess so. So Tesla launched it. It was a bit of a lackluster launch. I must say, Elon Musk didn't rock up. There were two million people waiting on X for the live stream that just never happened and it was like a 15-minute prozo from a few Tesla execs. But the cyber cab has been sort of flagged for a while so it's not new news that it was coming. It's just new news that it has launched the US government immediately opened an investigation into it. Actually I should check in. Interested in the story so far? It's peaked by interest. Yeah. That's good. So Tesla launched it and immediately began offering rides in Austin in Texas. And then the US National Highway

5:11Traffic Safety Administration immediately opened an investigation. Why? Tesla didn't seek approval for this car. It self-certified that the cyber cab complies with federal safety standards. There are rules in the federal safety standards about cars having steering wheels and those being up to certain specs. Tesla just said, I will we don't have a steering wheel so it doesn't apply. Yeah, yeah. All good. Cross that out. The other way to approach regulators was Zooks owned by Amazon, co-founded by an Australian back in the day. They actually went to the regulator and asked for an exemption, like an exemption for the steering wheel rules and they got an exemption capped at 2,500 vehicles a year. They operate mainly in Las Vegas and some other things. Surely in the background the regulators are going, how you guys would probably need to look at this because it's coming. Well, opening an investigation is them saying, how you guys would need to look at this. The issue, the question is does the cyber cab comply with federal safety standards?

6:14Obviously they've been written for vehicles with wheels and accelerators and brakes and side mirrors and ultimately human drivers. The ability for a human to it. How does Waymo and get away with it? Because they have steering wheels, don't they? Yeah, they're just a Jaguar that's retrofitted with Google's self-driving cars. Yeah, and so they have all the bells and whistles that a regular car has. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The car is a existing car that meets safety standards and the only differences are drive itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if it is approved by this investigation or if the rules change, like you wouldn't be surprised if the Trump administration changes some of the regulatory rules. Test the plan to use their cyber cab in their robot taxi service that is currently operating in seven US cities, including Austin, Dallas, Houston and Miami. That was the update that I kind of got sick of, but this one is good. All right, well, you're probably not going to love where I'm going to take this. How many rides globally? Which is, well, I figured if we're talking

7:18robotaxies, we should check in on the rest. Yeah, where were at? Because the race has been an American race, but not anymore China peaking your interest. Yeah. Yeah, so starting in the US, Waymo remains the leader. It's now in 14 cities. I do have the list, but I'm not going to risk your wrath and read them out. So Waymo 14 cities, Tesla in second place, seven cities. Waymo was doing about four million miles each week. Tesla cumulatively has done less than 400,000. So Waymo clear leader. Zooks is in third place. We've mentioned them a couple of times. They're in two cities, Las Vegas and San Francisco with a couple more on the horizon, but they're decent third. It's not about the US anymore. It's now a global race and you flagged it. China actually is home to the leader by some measures, but I think fair enough to say that the lead has flipped by do the company, you know, known as the Chinese version of Google. Yeah, they have an autonomous vehicle arm Apollo go. And I think it's fair to say they are the global

8:23leader. So Waymo is in 14 cities by do 28 cities. Waymo has done 20 million lifetime orders, like 20 million people have used the app to order a ride by do 23 million orders. By do's done 350 million kilometers, autonomously driven 240 million kilometers with no safety driver. So yeah, they're just ahead of Waymo, but they are those 23 cities just in China though. No, that bite is also in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, London, Seoul, Switzerland and Kazakhstan. Well, interesting. Yeah, so I think it's fair to say they are the leader now. There's two other players in China that are worth paying attention to pony AI and we ride that yet by do and Waymo. It's the the leaders in this. Here's an interesting one. Do you think customers, if they had the choice of getting in a Waymo that still has a steering wheel or in a Tesla that has no steering wheel, which one would they be choosing? I actually think the cyber cab the test. Because when you see

9:29videos of the Waymo and the steering wheel and the steering and the pedals pedaling, the pedal being pressed, it is a bit of a workout. Yeah, but this is just like getting in. I think honestly, people will get used to all of it. Yeah. Yeah. The final company did just be mindful of here is Uber. So they obviously don't have their own fleet of cars, but they are partnering with a number of different companies because they've got they've aggregated the riders in London. They've partnered with a British company called Wave who's working on self-driving technology. They've got 15 Ford Mustangs on the road. They've partnered with the Chinese company Pony AI to deploy 2,000 Robo Taxis across five European cities. They've also announced different partnerships with Waymo, Wayride and Motionall, which is another self-driving company. So Uber is either going to be massively disrupted by self-driving cars or a big winner of self-driving cars. It's hard to really figure out which way it's going to go. Well, I think as I've said in most of these updates, that was a good one. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Exciting, exciting advancement. But the question for me is always, when are we

10:34going to see it in Australia? Not anytime soon. There are some, you know, Waymo's been around. Well, they registered Waymo.com.au a decade ago. So they've obviously looked at Australia. They've also got lobbyists in Australia. Oh, really? So they're trying to ease the path. In October 2024, they wrote to Catherine King, the Infrastructure Minister, requesting a confidential briefing about their 2026 plans, where what three quarters of the way through 2026 and there hasn't been much noise. And, you know, the AFR have reported Waymo's looking for office space in Sydney. Yeah. So like they're sniffing around, I think it's fair to say, but we're a bit behind the times. Big time. Well, we're going to be heading to New York to interview Bill Akman, so maybe we'll be out of getting a driverless over there. That's not a sell to get your fingers stick. It's then I don't know what he is. But Bryce, that was just the first story we wanted to cover today. It's super September here at Equity Mates. We love using the month of September to remind people about the power of superannuation. And it seems like politicians are also getting on board super September.

11:36Yeah. Well, one nation led by Pauline Hanson, they're going hard on superannuation with and their latest proposal came out earlier in the week. It's called super pay boost. Okay. Yeah. So this is a way to boost your super. Unfortunately not. It's actually a way to reduce your super and the long-term compounding benefits and leave people worse off in retirement. But it is, I would say, a good marketing spin calling it super pay boost because what they're proposing is to let renters and mortgage holders divert part of their superannuation to their take home pay. So we all know 12% of your super is, that's a compulsory. 12% of your pay goes to your super. Yeah. Is a compulsory contribution by all employers. What one nation is proposing is that 3% of that can be diverted to your take home pay after the 15% tax benefit. So it's also a tax benefit. Not 3% of the 12%, but like 3% of your pay can be taken out. Well, like 9% goes in super,

12:393% goes into your into your pay. Now it is only over a three-year period. It's not for the total lifetime of your super contributions. It's just for a three-year period. But it has sparked a lot of political debate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Renters and mortgage holders, the majority of Australian adults. I think when they looked at the numbers, it was between seven and eight million people at a minimum that would be benefiting from this or eligible, I should say. And it is opt-in as well. It's not like if they come to power, it's going to be a thing. Yeah. Better fitting in the short term, maybe losing out in the long term, but we'll get to that. So you said it's sparked a political debate. Yeah. Well, Charmers, Jim Charmers, the treasurer has come out saying that point wants to end superannuation as we know it. Opposition leader Angus Taylor is dismissing it for lack of detail. But we know that point is using this as a cost of living, going hard, using that as the way to, I guess, attract voters by hitting the headlines. It's pretty divisive. I think touching superannuation has always been politically fraught. Yeah. So the supermembers council did some modeling and they

13:42looked at a typical 30 year old who opted into this. They said over three years they would pocket $6,900. But they would forfeit more than $18,000 in compound interest over the rest of their working life, leaving them $25,000 worse off at retirement. Because obviously they've taken out the initials amount plus the compounded returns. Yeah. Even for a senior, the example they used someone earning $95,000 a year with $150,000 in super at 50 years old, by the time they hit retirement age, they would be $27,000 worse off. So I mean, it just goes to show that even in year later years, people looking to make, you know, take something out of their super, there is going to be an impact. But it's not only impact on those pulling money out, there's obviously inflationary pressure. If you're putting more money in people's pockets, then that does lead to people inevitably spending more, which drives up the cost of inflation. An economic advisor from Judo Bank came out and said there is no example in recorded in history

14:42where we've effectively got the cost of living under control by letting people spend more. And so Pauline's using this as a cost of living initiative, but really the impact is going to be inflationary, which impacts the cost of living. I can say the political appeal of this, you know, you can run the line like it's your money, you should be able to access it. Exactly what she says. Oh, okay. But yeah, like we know the power of super, the whole structure of super is set up to, I guess, take the option away for people to prioritize their short term needs over their long term needs. And you just worry about how it's going to impact people in retirement. Yeah. This is on the smaller end of the scale, three years and you can take a quarter out of your contributions for three years. But still, it's like the thin edge of the wedge that then gets ratcheted more and more. Yeah. I also just think it's like behavioural. Like if this was to go through the behaviour of like a, I guess short term, verse long term, and taking money out of a savings account that

15:45just shouldn't be touched. And it's like if this does go through, what does it open up? Would this just be all of a sudden extend from three years to six years to 10 years? Yeah, yeah. Or it's like mortgage holders and renters to like just general cost of living pressures. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I think if you look at countries around the world where they don't have a pension system like we do where they don't have a retirement system like we do, like we are so lucky that we have this as a compulsory part of our like financial system. And that like we do have some form of safety netting when you get to retirement. I think stuffing with that is so dangerous. Yeah. You could almost argue that the government should maybe look at how much they're spending and how they're contributing to inflationary pressures rather than these like workarounds to try and sort of band-aid solutions. But we are not in politics. We're just two idiots that talk on a podcast. But yeah, we don't think it's a great idea. I think you only need to look back to COVID to remind yourself of how not a great idea it was. Total of 2.6 million people

16:47withdrew more than $38 billion from their super accounts during COVID. Approximately 725,000 accounts were just emptied completely. It's just crazy. The largest applicants are about a third were in their 30s, 22% in their 20s. So 55% were under the age of 40. Like that's just going to have huge impact on those people's retirement. Yeah, those that could benefit the most from super annuation compounding were the ones that took the most out. It's just like and that's going to happen in this situation. This is not going to be some, you know, cashed up boomers taking 3% out. It's going to be people in their 20s and 30s. Yeah. All right. Well, the Super Chat continues. After the break, we are going to do our Super September segment. We are going to look at the myth that the default investment option is good enough. We're going to unpack why you might want to take a closer look. How you super is invested after this. Well, Super September is well and truly underway here at Equity Mates, inspiring Australians to take control of their super and it is brought to you by Beteshears.

17:49And Beteshears would like you to have your say about the super product that they are building. So head to the link in the show notes. Have your say and they'd love to hear from you. Well, let's get into today's myth. It's the third myth we're looking at today. The default investment option is good enough. So we're going to unpack where that thought comes from, how true it is and what you can do to make sure you're in the right investment option. But let's start by unpacking where this myth comes from. So many Australians just take the default investment option and often it's the funds my super option. And for a lot of people, the my super option isn't that bad. It's good enough. Just to talk to how many people are in that default option. As of June 2025, the my super options are held roughly 28% of all super assets, more than $1.2 trillion across more than 15 million member accounts. So it's a huge chunk of Australia's super is just

18:53in the default. And look, the my super option isn't all that bad. It's designed to be simple, diversified, relatively low cost. It's explicitly intended to suit the majority of people. Those that really don't care and what they're money just in a okay option. Yeah. And these days, you'll generally find the default option takes one of two forms. The more traditional way is it would just be in a balanced fund with a, you know, diverse mix of shares, property, bonds and cash, or a life cycle option, which automatically shifts those investments from more growth orientated when you're in your 20, 30s, 40s and slowly adds more defensive options as you get into your 50s and 60s closer to retirement. About 40% of my super default products now use the life cycle strategy, which is good, I think, definitely. Yeah. And we'll unpack why. But whether it's a life cycle strategy or just that, you know, diversified balanced option, there are regulatory guardrails in

19:55place to make sure they're performing your future, your super reforms put this performance test for my super products, appra, assess them in 2026, appra assessed 50 my super products and only one failed. So, you know, they're passing the performance test. 40% of them are optimized for your life stage. Yeah. So that's where people say it's good enough. Why doing this second? Why? Yeah, what else do I need to do? Yeah, let's move on. The default option may be good enough because it stops you making a disastrous decision, but that doesn't mean it's the best decision for your circumstances. And this particularly applies to younger people. Yeah. So we've used Australian super just because it's massive and, you know, it can be an Apple's to Apple's comparison between their default option, which is a balanced fund and the high growth option, which in our opinion, people with multiple decade time horizons should be thinking about. So over the past 10 years, the balanced option has delivered 8.2% per year and the high growth option has delivered 9.35% per year. So a bit more than one

20:59percentage point difference per year over the last 10 years. And so, you know, you can get lost in the world of percentages in terms of how much that actually makes a difference. So let's do a work example using the median Australian weekly wage, which is 1,425 bucks. 12% goes to your super less than 15% contribution tax, meaning $145 a week is contributed to your super. After 20 years, you've contributed $150,800. If you earn 8.2% a year, you're getting just shy of $353,000 in your portfolio at 9.35% a year. You've got a scratch over 400,000. The difference is $48,500, which is meaningful. Another 50 grand in retirement, that would help. That's very. But if you extend the time that you have your, you've got super to compound, the difference really adds up. Let's say over 40

21:59years, the length of a lot of people's working lives, you've contributed $301,600. At 8.2%, you've got $2,059,086. That's compounding. That's good. That is compounding. But at 9.35%, the only difference being you've gone in and changed from the default option to the high growth option when you're young, you have 2.799 million. You've got specifically 739,733 dollars. You're living a different world. You've got three quarters of a million dollars more in retirement. You're living a different life. Living a different life. All from logging in once, and toggling one, in your Swiss. What would you do for $750,000? A lot more than that. Big time. The reason we do super, super September is because too many Australians aren't engaged

23:00in their super. We said the stat earlier, over 40% of my super default products now use lifestyle strategies, which is great because that is set up to move as you get older and your asset allocation adjusts accordingly. However, that means that 60% of Australians aren't in a product like that. 60% of the default products aren't like that. Exactly. Colonial first state also found that fewer than half of Australians have actively chosen how their super fund is invested, and nearly one in three don't know how it's invested at all. Similar finding came out of a mozo survey of more than 2,000 Australians. They found 68% had never changed their super's investment allocation. And probably the single clearest example of what we're talking about here today is to go back to Australian super and compare their balanced and high growth. This is as of the 31st of July, 2026. Their balanced so their default option has $266.3 billion of member money. High growth holds

24:02$52.4 billion. It's clear that the bulk of the money still sits in that default option, even though for the vast majority of Australians who have decades to let their super compound, the optimal investment choice is high growth. Yeah, and I can understand why people don't want to put it into a high growth because they have a fearful that markets are going to crash and that it's riskier than default and default is marketed as safer than high growth. But like as a 20-year-old, you can't touch this. No matter what happens in markets, you can't touch it. Yeah, well, I mean safer, like we say it's safer, but that's because we measure risk as volatility, how much the market moves up and down. But volatility doesn't affect you in your super if you've got decades to go because you can't touch that money. You can ride out the volatility. You have no choice but to ride out the volatility. Too bad. And so I understand risk profiling clients and making sure people are comfortable with the volatility. But I also think it's our job, it's advisors jobs, and it's

25:05super fun's job to actually educate people around why high growth makes sense, why volatility isn't the same as actually the risking losing your money permanently and what you could be leaving on the table if you don't do the simple things of checking how you're invested. Exactly, exactly. So what's an equity mates listener to do today? It's making sure that your investment option is really doing the heavy lifting here. The most important decision is often not which fund you're aware there's out of the big industry funds or some of the smaller ones, but it's just actually how you super fund is invested. What asset it's sitting in and the time frame that you have in front of you? So I think the action will take away from this is don't be like the 46% of Australians that haven't actively chosen how this super is invested. Log in, check how you're invested. If it's in a life cycle product, great. It means that it matches your age. You've got more growth assets. If it's a default balanced option, have a think about how long you've got before you can

26:08access that money and your goals and your time and your risk and your time horizon and choose accordingly. But yeah, engage with it because it can make a huge difference. So back to the myth, the default investment option is good enough. What's the verdicts? I would say partially true. Like it is good enough. It's not going to lead you disastrously wrong if you're just with a big fund and you've got a default option. That's better than conservative. That's a good idea. But hey, in life we're not striving for good enough. Maybe let's delete the enough and just strive for good. And let's get our investment options right. Yeah, partially true. It could be better. All right, we'll leave it there. Plenty more myths related to super as we go through the month of September. But a reminder, grab your tickets to FinFest. They will sell out in the next couple of weeks. 55 bucks. There is no better way to spend a Saturday in October than down at the carriage works, listening to some of the best minds in finance. We'll put a link in the show notes. But ran, we'll leave it there. We'll pick it up next week. Sounds good.

27:15This podcast is intended for education and entertainment purposes only. Any advice is general advice and has not taken into account your personal financial circumstances. Before acting on general advice, you should consider if it is relevant to your needs. If unsure, speak to a financial professional. The host of this podcast and their guests may have positions in the company's mentioned. Equity makes media is part of the Beatershers Group but maintains editorial independence. We operate under Australian Financial Services license 540-697.