Waymo's PR Problem and Tesla's Missed Deadlines

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss the fallout from Waymo’s crisis management failure in San Francisco, where a power outage left hundreds of vehicles stranded and blocking intersections throughout the city. 

Waymo’s prolonged silence on the incident and lack of transparency regarding what truly happened could lead to a decline in public trust just as robotaxis begin to scale. Down in Austin, Tesla missed their 2025 driver-out deadline in Austin, prompting Grayson to push his prediction for driver-out/safety attendant out commercial service to late February or early March 2026.

Then there is Uber, a company with an ever-changing narrative around autonomy—shifting from demand-generation to hybrid networks, and now claiming mass adoption is still decades away. What will the next narrative be, and will it change once again post-CES?

Closing out the show, Grayson and Walt discuss how escalating geopolitical tensions in Venezuela and potential political shifts in the UK could force a hard reset for companies relying on Chinese autonomous technology to scale their robotaxi businesses.

Episode Chapters

0:00 Lights Out in San Francisco

2:44 Why Did Waymo’s Freeze When the Power Went Out?

8:34 Remote Drivers

15:00 Robotaxi in Austin

18:33 Scaling Robotaxi 

22:48 Autonomous Vehicle Policy

24:47 Austin Incident Reports 

27:17 Uber’s Ever-Changing Narrative 

30:31 Miami-Dade Sheriff Deploys Autonomous Patrol Vehicles 

32:38 Foreign Autonomy Desk

40:26 CES

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