Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
00:29:59 · Dara Khosrowshahi
[00:29:59] S2: I don't think it's necessarily an Uber thing. I have a big question for the industry. You've seen how powerful AI is, but at the same time, how unpopular it is with the general public. And folks like you and me in the corporate world, we're just amazed that we're driving utilization. The way that these AI models interact with the average person is, yes, search got a little bit better. But if it's driving up or I think it's going to drive up my electricity costs or if it's going to cost my cousin's job, that doesn't feel that good. And I think the same will be true of AVs, which is it's terrific technology. It is going to be safer than human beings. But how does it interact with emergency service providers? How do we make sure that the technology is available to everybody, not just the wealthy? We've got to have these dialogues with regulators, with real people living in cities, with our drivers whose earnings may get affected. Now, drivers in Austin and Atlanta, where we have two big partnerships with Waymo, drivers on the Uber platform, they're making more money. The number of drivers joining the platform is increasing because it looks like AVs are actually adding incremental demand to the platform. So we have good news early, but we've got to communicate and we've got to go at the pace that society is prepared for us to move. Otherwise, there will be a backlash and you're kind of seeing in some of the public perception out there. I'm sure your answer is something like not on my watch,
00:31:28 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Dara Khosrowshahi
[00:31:28] S0: but if I were to assume that the public out of your control thing is solved, can you imagine what the same primordial answer would be through something that you do control? [00:31:38] S2: I think it's what I said, access to supply. And that's why we have a partnership with basically every AV provider, whether it's in mobility or delivery or even freight. We need access to supply. We're investing time, we're investing capital. And I think we're in a great position to make sure that we are the largest amalgamator of AV supply, just like we are the largest amalgamator of transportation services around the world. [00:32:04] S0: We now assume the success scenario where Uber is the clear demand aggregator winner What of does that unlock, do you think, on the other side of that, whether that's consumer experiences or other things that aren't currently possible?
00:32:04 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Dara Khosrowshahi
[00:32:04] S0: We now assume the success scenario where Uber is the clear demand aggregator winner What of does that unlock, do you think, on the other side of that, whether that's consumer experiences or other things that aren't currently possible? [00:32:17] S2: We think it's another trillion dollar marketplace. We think that over a long period of time, as we see the cost of AV software come down, and usually we see the cost of hardware come down, this is universal, but usually 30% to 40% per generation. We think the Lucid midsize that they are building for us and neuro together, it'll be 60,070 thousand dollars car. At those kinds of prices, you can actually bring the cost of transportation down for the population. What we see is as we bring the cost of our services down, demand goes up. Uber was introduced early on. People were sizing the market based on the taxi market. We're multiple times bigger than the taxi market. And I see the same potential with AV, both in terms of the cost of transportation, reliability, safety, all of which are going to improve. And then think about delivery. If delivery is done with a drone and instead of a twenty five minute to thirty minute delivery, you get habituated, the magic is a ten to fifteen minute delivery. Cheaper, faster, better. It will change how society operates.
00:33:27 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:33:27] S0: Do you think there should be some sort of Foxconn like business for AVs? The stat I heard in San Francisco, someone asked me the quiz question of how many Weymos do you think are driving around? And I overestimated it by some crazy percentage. I was really surprised by that. And so it seems like you can be hyper efficient with these things, which is cool. But the downside of that is maybe you can't hit your amount of production to get this cost down and all this sort of thing. Should there be a Foxconn contract manufacturer type thing for AVs?
00:33:53 · Dara Khosrowshahi
[00:33:53] S2: It's happening as we speak. Any of the OEMs, the traditional OEMs that we're talking to are now seeing that L4 driving is absolutely a reality that is much closer than they think. And in seeing the services and how popular they are with consumers, they are investing in L4 ready systems. So I think you'll see the traditional players get there over the next two to four years. Right now, the cars are being manufactured in the hundreds and the thousands. It'll get to the tens of thousands. It'll get to the hundreds of thousands. Each of these vehicles probably drives three to four times what a human does. The efficiency and efficacy of one AV vehicle is substantially higher than a human based on how much humans drive as well. And then we are seeing newer generation companies coming in, the Foxcons. Now, the Foxcons exist in China. The Chinese players in terms of their capabilities and bill of materials is incredibly, incredibly impressive, and we need that kind of a low cost player in the Western Hemisphere. It's being worked on, but we're not there yet. The Chinese capabilities in terms of manufacturing, both in terms of quality and cost at this point is unrivaled.
00:35:07 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Dara Khosrowshahi
[00:35:07] S0: Can you teach me about drones? I'll never forget that Amazon video from ten years ago where it feels like, oh my god. The future's happening. It's coming. My drone's gonna be my sandwich in five minutes or whatever, and no drone has yet to show up at my house. What's the story with the technology? I've watched ZipLine very closely. I think that's a really interesting company. It seems obvious, and yet it hasn't happened. And I'm curious if you could teach us why [00:35:30] S2: that is. The biggest issue is battery density and the ability of essentially battery to lift itself and then lift the payload and what that payload looks like, and then the requisite range and recharging needs of those drones as well. Jobia is building drones for people. That's happening. And I think drones for food and other grocery are going to start hitting real scale over the next two to five years. It is going to cost more than a human delivery to start with. But the ramp of the technology in terms of payloads being larger, in terms of being able to operate in whatever weather there is and then being able to very, very accurately get you a payload right in front of your house, all of it is moving in the right direction. So is it going to be a big part of our lives two years from now? No, But five to ten years from now, it's going to become more and more normal.