hop in a driverless taxi with the Google-owned self-driving company Waymo opening up its Robo taxis to all users in that city. The technology, of course, is hugely expensive. Alphabet's autonomous vehicle unit Waymo completing another major round of funding. Teedra has served as co-CEO at Waymo since 2021. We are on a mission to build the world's most experienced driver and make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they're going. This is not a move fast and break things; this is a move with great, great iterative pace and focus on [Music] safety. Please, uh, join me in welcoming Teedra from Waymo to the stage. Hi, thank you for thank you. It's a pleasure. Thanks for coming. Thank you so much. Hi, D. Thank you, T. Thanks so much for being here. Yeah, thank you. Uh, Teedra has been co-CEO of Waymo since 2021, where she leads the company's business operations and expansion in autonomous driving. Recently, Waymo has been reported to be completing I don't know.

if we put this out or if it wasn't been used but over 100,000 pay trips per week now is that is that public is that like a true thing it's completely true it's over 100,000 over 100,000 week week per week yeah that's awesome and um we can now see wh Mo's autonomous ride-hailing Services in Phoenix La San Francisco in the Bay Area Austin and I think on X you announced 5 billion an additional committed funding from alphabet I don't know if that was recent to support wh's expansion it was recent congratulations and um so thanks for joining us uh the weo story started a long time ago as a Google X Project when did you join and how did you kind of become coo yeah thank you um so weo started as the Google self-driving car project back in 2009 and uh actually my co-ceo was one of those founding team members Demitri doov and in 2016 at the end of 2016 we

spun out and sort of became wh um. And that's when I joined um. At that point, it had been determined that the technology was on a good enough path to start to think about commercialization and scale um. And so, the funny, the fun thing about joining a moonshot is, you know, I came from a big tech company, so I'm like, Oh, product-market fit, like, it's all there, I'm going to join, and we're going to scale. And the reality is it was an opportunity to learn how much this is a process of discovery um, how much this is a process of figuring out not only the technology roadmap but also the external environment. And at that time, I had been head of policy at a lot of companies, and I joined under the idea that if the technology works, the market opportunity would come from being able to open markets. And so, that was super terrifying to me because if you're at most large tech companies doing policy work, you're actually trying to avoid costs or you're trying to defeat legislation that's harmful. But this was

really the opportunity of like how do you usher in this amazing technology. And so, that's when I joined. And then I was asked by my prior CEO to help launch the first market, which was Phoenix back then. It was Chandler. And we launched that back in 2017. And we've been since 2018. A lot of people don't realize we've had a 24/7 ride-hailing service around the clock. It was in 2020 during COVID, though, that we removed the driver from behind the wheel. So, we have the weo driver that's driving the vehicles at all times, but there's no human behind the wheel. And we've been offering that service now. We're almost at four years, 24/7, not only in Phoenix, which was a 315 square mile territory, but also in San Francisco and now here in LA. So, in that sort of ushering in from market one to this role, I moved through this COO role. And that's when we actually removed the driver. And that's

you know it was the we're the first company that's done that and um so it was daunting and I think that's one thing I love about wh we call our team wonuts is you just have to every time get to this point of determining what's good enough uh what's safe enough yeah and then make that leap and then learn because you can't learn until you get to that next point and so of course we have rigorous safety culture um but it was in that time that I was coo and then in April of 21 I moved into the co-ceo role with Demitri so now now that it's scaling 100,000 paid rides a week maybe we can talk a little bit I mean Jason SP a lot maybe starting with security would be an interest safety rather would be a really good idea um you've done it seems like millions of rides now no fatalities correct that's right um but there have been accidents so when you look at the the accidents that have occurred how

Often does an accident occur, and in what percentage of the time is it just somebody running into the vehicle versus the vehicle running into somebody else? Yeah, so we've done 2 million sort of paid rides. So when we think about, we just released this week our safety Hub. So you're sort of tapping into an issue that's really important. What we've been able to determine as of June of this year with over 22 million what we refer to as Ro miles. Those are miles that are fully autonomous. We've been able to have 83% fewer airbag deployments, which of course is important because those are high impact. And 74 or 73% fewer injury-causing crashes. Now, that's what we're focused over a human, over a traditional human, meaning the counterfactual in that area at that same point in time exactly via insurance claims and other data. We're not, we're comparing in San Francisco, not on highways there. Apple's comparison, we're comparing in San Francisco or in

Phoenix, okay, great, because this is the next piece, which is you're not yet on highways. That's right, we're testing on highways in Phoenix and San Francisco, safe drivers with employees and a human behind the wheel at times. And maybe you could explain to us when, why you're taking that approach, 'cause in my experience driving a Tesla since the beginning with full self-driving and autopilot before that, um, it seems like it's better on the highway than is on local streets where you have people jumping out and weird things that occur on the highway. You very rarely have a run into a weird thing. It's pretty ABC. So, I would think it was the opposite, but is it because speed kills? What, what's the thinking there? So, I think so, just for everyone to orient, um, when you think about the levels of autonomy, we are only focused on level four and above. Level four and above means you do not need a driver's license, nor do you need to sit behind the wheel. So, when you're focused on tackling the

hardest challenge first. It's really important for the driver, the weo driver, to ingest dense urban environments because that is where the driver is going to learn the most. Sitting on the freeway, seeing the same thing every day, can be predictable. It's not entirely predictable, but it's not additive to what the machine learns. That's a great answer. So, we're trying to learn as much as we can learn, and we've always, from the beginning, been focused on freeways. It's just that freeways isn't actually how the machine learns the fastest in the most sophisticated environments. But because you brought up, you know, sort of a level three or two or one system, I think it's also important that for systems where you need someone to sit behind the wheel, you can have a completely different approach to this technology. But we're really, when I don't know how many of you here have had the chance to take a away my ride here in La, it actually includes this campus where we're sitting right now. But we, you don't

you can't sit behind the wheel, so there's no ambiguity. You sit in the passenger seat, or you sit in the back seat. So, let's talk about the LIDAR versus camera bet. Elon's been pretty clear, Hey, you don't need LIDAR. It's a waste of money. The LIDAR on Whos, I believe, is still in the $1 to $220,000 in incremental cost. Am I ballpark correct? I'm not sure. Oh, okay. Um, so with that, as you scale, costs go down. Yeah, of course. So, who's right? I mean, are you using the LIDAR, and is that a critical piece of this, or do you think eventually, Hey, the cameras are seeing 360°. They have higher fidelity than human eyes. So, and if humans do a great job, and you just have to beat the humans at driving, why even have the LIDAR? What do you think? So, obviously, we have conviction that we need LIDAR, radar, and cameras. Uh, we have all three. It's given us the opportunity to scale. At this point, we're the only company that's

doing level four driving on public roads 24 hours a day. It's very different to get to the place of a demo. We learned that ourselves back in 2015 and 16 and 17. We had an autopilot Highway product. We allowed employees at the time, Google employees, to ride in that product. We told them to pay attention. We told them, You have to be alert and be prepared to take over. What did they do? They do. We're human. We want to do other staff when we're in the car. Like, I want to be on the phone. I want to get to that meeting. I need to send that last email. I need to check whether or not my son's doctor's appointment is tomorrow and next Thursday. We're distracted. And so what happens? The thing's beeping at you. It's telling you to re-engage and pay attention. And what we learned is that that's not a way to improve road safety. And so the question is, What's the end goal? Is it to improve Road Safety or not? For us as a company, we are obsessed. Our

our culture is about safety. This mission is about safety, and we want to expand the number of people who have access to mobility options. If you need a driver's license, then it's just like every other mobility platform; you have to be behind the wheel. Can I, sorry, go ahead. I'm curious about when this flips from a technology problem and a go-to-market problem to one of public health. Because that's a staggering fact, and you know we all know people that have lost somebody close to them, whether it's just a road accident or the drunk driving, or to, you know, I don't know if you guys saw anybody follows hockey, but the, you know, Johnny Hockey who was killed with his brother the day before his sister's wedding by a drunk driver. This is like so avoidable. So, what does it take for a politician or a group of politicians, and I don't even know at which level this decision would get made, where they say, Okay, we've seen enough. That should be the only solution. And are

you pushing for that so we are pushing to make sure people who put autonomous vehicles on the road have to demonstrate their safety case. We think the worst thing that could happen is introducing a new technology that doesn't actually improve this problem because it'll kill the whole industry. The State of Affairs: 4,000 Americans, 1.35 globally dying annually from road crashes is avoidable. So, the challenge that we have to tackle with a lot of humility is how prepared is the public. You know, humans can kill other people. How prepared is the public to accept that this isn't going to be a panacea and it's not going to be perfect. You didn't hear me say 100%. 100% right was 70. There'll be a small error. There's going to be a small. And so, that's the work that we're doing, which is we have community partners, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, National Safety Council, a host of organizations who've been trying to

tackle this issue who we partnered with early because it's actually in both of our interests to figure out how to tell the story that if this technology can reduce 60% of the fatalities, then it's worth the exposure to the risk. Are you on any sort of internal shock clock, meaning there must have been a moment where you convened a meeting or you guys had a meeting and you said, All right, we have enough data, let's go, we're going to pull the guy out of the car, or Hey, this is it, we're ready, and then you show it to regulators and they say, Okay, is there a set of these really important milestones that we're going to feel like goes to other cities, like is it only grid cities where this works, like so where do you go from here? Yeah, I hope that what over time you start to experience is one, because we are super focused on safety, you'll see us scaling, and because we're building a driver and not a car, you'll see a scaling in a

number of ways. So, we have partnerships right now. We have a partnership with Uber in Phoenix. Why are we doing that? People are like, Oh my gosh, I got my Uber Eats in AO. Like, why are you all doing that? It's because we're building a driver. And so, we're trying to figure out all of the ways in which this driver could be applied to future use cases. And so, over time, you're certainly going to see us announce new places, but you're also going to see, like in San Francisco, we launched a 24-hour service in a limited territory. And over time, we've expanded that territory. It's a step-functioning complexity to go to cities that are more, how would I call it, more chaotically city-planned. It is definitely an opportunity for the driver to learn more. And so, coming to Los Angeles, for example, was more like being in Phoenix. Going to Austin, exactly. Going to Manhattan, we will certainly benefit from our work in San Francisco. Same thing with DC. Start with

the GD cities and work your way into more complex Series. So can I follow up on that last point? I have a friend who's the third or fourth investor in Uber, and he's very worried that once this product scales, there's not really a need for Uber anymore. Right? Why would you need Uber if you can just summon the robot car directly or the robot driver, whatever you want to call it, right? Driver, car, whatever. I mean, doesn't this logically disrupt Uber at, you know, once it's at scale? I think, well, they're a current part. I said we have a partnership with, right? I mean, I have. We have a partnership. Your friend hasn't sold enough shares. Your friend's doing just fine. We have the partnership with Uber because we think it's important for us to create an AV ecosystem around this technology. Like, this isn't going to be, we've created technology, we're going to figure out everything ourselves. Like, that would be foolish and very expensive and we'd

never find ourselves profitable, but having companies that are experts in integration, having Automotive partners, you know, we're not building the car, having network Partners, having Fleet operating Partners, public officials, like there's a lot that is built around us, and these are the early days, the early Innings. And so, that's part of it, is learning. In the, I'd say, five years ago, people would say to me, you know, Network operators would say, Oh, this is exactly like we know how to do this. Well, this is a constrained Supply, it's not a supply you just sege. This is a driver that you need to understand actually how to operate with. And so, I think we're going through those steps to learn together. And so, what I would say is there's room for a lot of people under this. Is the insurance Lobby in the insurance industry a proponent, or do they, would they try to constrain your progress? So, one of the largest reinsurers in the world, Swisser, has actually been doing our safety. Yeah, they would want to underwrite this. Yeah, but

I'm talking about more like the Geico of the world. Same, I think they're very eager to get the data sets that we're releasing. Like we released set 20 safety papers last year. They're all wanting to understand what the actual impact of this technology can be because, you know, one of the things I think that's hard for us to grasp as humans, or at least I'll say for me, I don't like speaking for everybody. The, you know, we drive in a week more than a human drives in a lifetime. And you can say that as a company that runs fleets, but we're the only company where it's one driver. And that's not like, that's not the way the world is organized right now, right? FedEx has a lot of drivers. All of you who have Teslas have a lot of drivers. Like everyone has a lot of drivers. And all of those drivers have different capabilities. This is one driver learning all the time in unison. And so like, what can we demonstrate that's possible and it

really goes back to your other question of like what do what are policymakers 5 years from now really going to want to know and how will they be able to derive from what we're doing today where were you when you heard the news of Cruz dragging that woman in San Francisco 20 feet and then where were you and what was your reaction internally to when you found out Cruz covered it up um I don't remember where I was uh when I learned but I um you know it's we're here to improve road safety so it was pretty um upsetting I think to me and the whole org I think as we learned about the lack of transparency like our view has just been be transparent it's not perfection like it's technology yeah but you're considered they contemporary and you have a different approach you would never cover it up um they obviously had something dysfunctional did that set the industry back significantly how are regulators talking to you before and after that if differently if at all it definitely led

to more scrutiny in San Francisco because there was already an active and continues to be a fairly active voice against technology in San Francisco. And so we needed to continue to engage, which we were already doing, provide more data, which we're of course willing to do. And I think over time what we'll see is, you know, we have to get to a place where the amount of data that we're providing actually advances the safety concerns. I think at that point it was just providing a lot more engagement. So if the mission is to reduce those debts and to really scale this technology, Uber is doing a quarter billion rides a week. You just raised five billion. It's a big number. That gives you another 50,000 cars, which is a fraction of the rides in one city. It seems like you need a lot of partners in the car space to build this. So wouldn't the best strategy be to license this technology to every car maker and then allow the Ubers, the Lyfts, the DoorDashes, and fleet managers to handle

cleaning the puke in the back of the cars and putting the air in the tires because I don't think anyone wants to be in the back of that car cleaning up the puke and doing the air tire right there. There has to be somebody who manages all that. So, maybe talk a little bit about that possibility of, and even a more beautiful thing would be for you to open source it. So, has there been a discussion internally about open sourcing this technology? So, I'll start at the beginning. I think what you just described is exactly the AV ecosystem that I'm talking about. And yes, out of necessity and because we are the, I mean, whoever was first was going to need to create this. It doesn't exist, right? So, we're doing that. I think the second part of what you're talking, let everyone do what they're good at. Like, we're good at building this driver. There's though a period where we have to become really good at what does it mean to operate at

scale and that's the that's where we are right now. What does it mean to operate at scale? What does it, you know, technology can work and not be delightful, not be reusable, not be repeatable, and that, you know, we don't just want people having tourism rides. We want people actually integrating this into their lives. And we just did a UX study, and we found that a third of people use the service in San Francisco to go to their doctor appointments. We're like, that feels like real life. And 36% uh, we using the vehicles to go to local businesses, which is also real life. And so these are the kinds of signals that we're trying to get as far as like personally owned cars. We've always said as part of our strategy from the beginning that we would start with ride-hailing and local delivery, and that eventually we would make our technology available to um automotive companies so that this, you know, at some point you'll find Waymo cars sitting on showroom floors for sale. Oh wow, so you, you we

could go buy one and then put it into whatever Fleet we want. Yes, what does it cost to make one of these cars today, and where do you see it in 5 years? Yeah, and just I guess on that question, where's the Tipping Point Unit economics? So if you look at on the ride-hailing business based on, I know a lot of people drive during rush hour, and then they don't need rides the rest of the time, so there's a lot of excess inventory sitting around. So if you look at the utilization of a car over its lifetime and the cost of the car over the lifetime, what's the breaking point where the unit economics make sense? Yeah, um, so your question of cost of car, we just don't break it out since we're not um reported separately for Alphabet. We're just bundled. Rumor is a buck 50 right now. It's close. Okay, fck 25. Not commenting on rumors. Not commenting on rumors. Wa wait, if that's just the um, the system for self-drive, the car plus the system.

The Car Plus but what 125 to 150 is the rumored cost for the car today actually is like comment on the rumor well but but that's I mean that's obviously a lot more than a Tesla right so yeah t 40,000 50,000 yeah so do we do we know ballparks here what can we say keep on so fun we're just we're poker players so we're trying to read you and bait you and it's not working we didn't know you were a Jedi so so so sorry let me just ask is it about Reinventing the system or getting the next gen of the system before the unit economics break or is it about volume what's the breaking point of where the unit economics become profitable become positive um yeah not not going to get into that other than to say to you I is the thing I spend all of my time focus on and we are on but there's a path there there's completely a path there well without getting into costs so is

one of the plans here to sell this to, you know, all the car makers so that they can compete with Tesla because most of the car companies do not have the technical capabilities to develop their own self-driving. It's just impossible. So, are you guys going to be like an OEM to all the car makers so that they can provide self-driving? Yeah, we've said sort of publicly, and we've had partnerships where we've made the technology available. Um, it's a question of when, you know, when will a level four sort of product be available and interesting to consumers at scale, you know, that's part of the question. But absolutely, this is part of our strategy. Friend of mine, can I that? Yeah, of course, I'm sorry, friend of mine, um, who couldn't make it here, um, is an angel investor in Uber, and um, he uh, was no uh, if you look at the business outside of the United States, actually, if you look at Uber's business, um, there's a lot of opportunity in other markets, and sometimes in other markets, they will

prove probably more able and open-minded to taking like the public health priority around these things. So why such a heavy reliance on America considering the scale and the impr premature of Google could probably pull you into any number of markets anywhere around the world. Yeah, so we really think about it as this sort of learning journey, but it's also just where we started, right? I mean, part of the conversation we get to have now is what would if the driver was at this level of maturity, where would we have started? Um, that said, we have global aspirations. We are always thinking about the does it just take one geography to prove this point or do do you view it the problem that way? Like it's like we're training, we're training, we're training, and then at some point there'll be some city or yeah county, which point I just want to make sure I understand this idea where like you can prove that it's just so reliable and valuable and that you're saving just I I really care about that idea. Yeah, to who.

who would it prove the point to the people that would make the rules. I guess yeah I think I hope I don't know. I think there's a lot of noise in the system. There's a lot of confusion about full autonomy versus partial autonomy. Um there's not a lot of legislative activity that's informed by experts right. So I don't know right like certainly. It's My Hope and I think one of the things when you think about certain countries around the world. There is more of a nation-state top-down approach to some uh regulations and so that could be easier. Singapore yeah you prove it. It's codified into law. You launch um it had it. That hasn't been the primary way we've thought about Market entry or opportunity but certainly one of the yeah are but as long as some markets adopt. The rest of the markets will see and they'll fall behind and I mean you just have to penetrate some markets. Yeah from Google had amazing success with Android and open source so

back to that open-source question. You must have had this discussion many times internally. Why not open-source the technology and then provide, you know, the premium Android to people who want to pay? And is that something on the roadmap? Because I hear there's a big discussion internally to car OEM just open-sourcing the maps, the software, to make everybody contribute to it, to just get this out quicker. So, where are you at with those internal discussions that way? Oh, give away the whole business? Yeah, exactly. No, well, I mean, Android, it's worked, right? I mean, 20 billion in... It's like, let's just give it away. Well, I mean, but Friedberg, if you look at Android, it's only gotten stronger, right? Completely different. I think that that was defensive on search, but not your answer. No, I like it when you guys answer each other's questions, 'cause I get to learn what you actually want to see your answer. We fight a lot. It's fine. No, it's fun. It's actually fun for me. So, feel free to keep... So, on the question of

open sourcing that isn't something that we're spending a lot of time talking about right now. Let's talk about level six, which I believe is inclimate weather and really heart. Yeah, oh, level five rather, sorry. Um, and I know when I'm in my Tesla, it gives me a little warning, hey, inclimate weather and the FSD might be degraded, you know, extra attention time. Um, how close are you, you know, to feeling comfortable with these things driving in snow, ice, rain, or when that happens, do fleets just pull over and game over, you know, you have, you can't use these, this technology. Yeah, we've been improving weather. We've tested across 25 cities specifically for that. So we had massive storms in San Francisco last year, and we didn't take down the fleet. Like, our fleet was able to handle all of the rain. So rain and flooding, pretty good. Rain, May, good because of like, uh, liar and radar, maybe you said it okay. Fog, snow, ice. Um, so we've tested in, we've tested in snow and ice. We don't

have any deployments there, but that's an area that we're learning fog. We've been able to master that 280, no problem. Same thing with those sandstorms in Phoenix. That was an early, like, those are actually, you know, very challenging. And then there swarms of birds in Phoenix, like really, and heat, right? You have a machine, brutal. It's like, it's like Revelation, like there's a lot, there's a lot. And you know, we're the only company that can pick you up autonomously at the airport, right? And so like this whole thing, what has been the hardest um challenge for you as CEO? I think we've heard, I mean, we've heard all these rumors about like cultural issues at Google or whatnot, but you know, I get the sense that you're much more separated in terms of building a much more technical and specific culture. But what have been the hardest challenges for you? I think one of the hardest challenges was making, we made such a big decision in going fully autonomous, which is sort of the reason

we're here during CO mean getting that person out the person from behind the wheel scaling this and so then bringing the culture back together to now scale. So we just needed like we needed a minute to lock back in. That's one of the things. And the other one I would say is what you just said, which is you know it's a brilliant team and the team works really hard, but like bad things are going to happen in the real world with human drivers around our cars, and the team takes that so seriously. And so that's it's it's like a it's like having worked at. I mean I worked at a I know there too, but like other kinds of tech companies. I know every kind of company is stressful. It's a different kind of stress when people's lives are completely and they personalize work. Yeah. And so that's it's just a different level of stress and accountability responsibility differently because of that pressure or no you do when things happen in Industry. You know we need people to sort of you

know stay buckled in and believing that this is something that is worth it. It's audacious, it's hard, but it's worth it, and it's bigger. Most people come because they have lost someone, like they're very mis... can I be very honest with you? It's an incredible framing you gave, and I totally missed it for so many years, which is when you said we're building one driver. I thought for whatever reason you were building an autonomous driving system, which I interpreted very technologically for a very long time, but you're absolutely right. You have one goal, it's very clarifying actually, the world's greatest driver, one of the world's greatest drivers, the world's most trusted driver, most trusted driver. Teedra, thank you forred. Yeah, I mean incredible. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. It was awesome. Thank you so much.

Tekedra Mawakana | All-In Summit 2024

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Tekedra Mawakana | All-In Summit 2024

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