The Robot Report Podcast
00:11:21 · Eugene Demetri, Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman
[00:11:21] S3: you [00:11:22] S0: know, Cruise is now defunct. Right? But is it just for, you know, parties like you were just mentioning or could it, you know, let's say you and I get picked up and then somebody else joins along the way. It's not that, right? [00:11:36] S1: Well, yeah, right. I think the original service is... The initial service is going to be, you know, you got the whole taxi to yourself. If you get in as by yourself, one person, it's just you. They could set it up for ride sharing, you know, in the future. That's certainly something that they'll... They could do. As you sit in your seat each individual has access to the sound for their seat, you know, and can control, know, the air conditioning, the heat, whatever for their specific seat. So there's four individual controls, you know, for each of the four seats. So, you know, it's... You could essentially sit there and work, you know, like taking the train. So, you know, once they get to longer experience drive experiences, you could actually probably get some work done in this Robotaxi. Pull out your laptop, you've got you know chance to stretch your legs out unlike maybe the back of a you know Uber or something like that. And so you could turn off all the sound, be perfectly quiet, you could put on some soothing music or whatever the experience is. You know, so I think that's again the future of transportation.
00:12:46 · Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman
[00:12:46] S0: Yeah, it's interesting because Uber... The reason I bring that up, Uber recently came out a few months ago at this point, but they recently came out with their route share program, which is basically what I was just saying, right? So if multiple people are taking the same route, maybe going to the same location or locations on the same route, you can now share, that in Uber via their route share. And a lot of people were kind of making fun of it, like, they just invented buses Yeah. Right? They're revolutionizing how people move around. But I think that, I don't know, it's interesting because one of the benefits of a Waymo, let's say, is the privacy that you get. Right. At least, you know, it's... There's not another person in there with you. Whereas these Zoox vehicles, the Cruise Origin, when that was in development, you know, that opens it up to different parties, you know, being in the same vehicle, which I just wonder, you know, how does that affect the attractiveness of taking a Robotaxi ride around? Maybe it maybe it's just me, you know, but I always thought that that was one of the big benefits of a Robotaxi is just having some peace and quiet, but... [00:13:53] S1: Peace and quiet with a talkative driver? Come on. [00:13:56] S0: Yeah. I guess, you know, privacy is not... You know, there's obviously cameras and stuff within these Robotaxis. Right? So the the... Your privacy is is not completely there. But...
00:13:56 · Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman
[00:13:56] S0: Yeah. I guess, you know, privacy is not... You know, there's obviously cameras and stuff within these Robotaxis. Right? So the the... Your privacy is is not completely there. But... [00:14:06] S1: But I think like everything else, there'll be a marketplace, so there'll be a different cost if you want to share the ride. So again, if you want the privacy, you can pay for the privacy. If you want a cheaper ride, you want to share, maybe, I don't know, you like to talk to people. [00:14:19] S0: Yeah. It's interesting. I know I've shared this story on the podcast before. You know, this was years ago, man. I'm trying to think of what year it was. Geez. It's probably ten years ago. Eugene and I actually took a Robotexi ride around San Francisco, but we went on one of the highways. And then we also drove around the Strip. [00:14:39] S1: San Francisco, you mean Vegas? You said...
00:14:39 · Mike Oitzman, Steve Crowe
[00:14:39] S1: San Francisco, you mean Vegas? You said... [00:14:42] S0: Yeah. Las Vegas. Yeah. Did I say San Francisco? Yeah. I meant... I meant Las Vegas. Yeah. Sorry. And we had a... For most of the ride, it was great. And then when we were getting off the highway, it was a four lane highway, and we went all the way over to the right and we merged, you know, there was a vehicle way ahead of us and there was a vehicle way behind us and we merged in between the two. Again, plenty of space between the two cars and the car in front of us was actually getting off at the same exit that we were getting off. And it slowed down to get off the exit as any driver is supposed to do. And our autonomous vehicle did not see that car whatsoever. And, you know, again, this was ten, at least ten years ago, somewhere in that range. So there were human, engineers. There was, I think, three... Two or three engineers, two people in the front seat. Eugene and I were in the back. There may have been somebody else in the back with us, but the person in the driver's seat had to slam on the brakes because their car did not see the car in front of us, and we would have gotten in a pretty bad car accident. So thank God for that guy's quick reaction time. But it would be interesting. I'm gonna have to take a trip to Vegas now. Yeah. I used to go Vegas all the time for CES, and you've kind of been doing that for the last few years. So I think I'm... We're gonna have to battle over who goes to CES twenty twenty six.
00:14:42 · Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman
[00:14:42] S0: Yeah. Las Vegas. Yeah. Did I say San Francisco? Yeah. I meant... I meant Las Vegas. Yeah. Sorry. And we had a... For most of the ride, it was great. And then when we were getting off the highway, it was a four lane highway, and we went all the way over to the right and we merged, you know, there was a vehicle way ahead of us and there was a vehicle way behind us and we merged in between the two. Again, plenty of space between the two cars and the car in front of us was actually getting off at the same exit that we were getting off. And it slowed down to get off the exit as any driver is supposed to do. And our autonomous vehicle did not see that car whatsoever. And, you know, again, this was ten, at least ten years ago, somewhere in that range. So there were human, engineers. There was, I think, three... Two or three engineers, two people in the front seat. Eugene and I were in the back. There may have been somebody else in the back with us, but the person in the driver's seat had to slam on the brakes because their car did not see the car in front of us, and we would have gotten in a pretty bad car accident. So thank God for that guy's quick reaction time. But it would be interesting. I'm gonna have to take a trip to Vegas now. Yeah. I used to go Vegas all the time for CES, and you've kind of been doing that for the last few years. So I think I'm... We're gonna have to battle over who goes to CES twenty twenty six. [00:15:59] S1: I'm ready to give it up. My my feet are... You can take CES this year. Alright. I'm in. Yeah. You So,
00:15:59 · Mike Oitzman, Steve Crowe, Eugene Demetri
[00:15:59] S1: I'm ready to give it up. My my feet are... You can take CES this year. Alright. I'm in. Yeah. You So, [00:16:06] S0: yeah, Zoox live now in Las Vegas on the strip. [00:16:10] S3: Let's