Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:13:25 · Boris Sofman
[00:13:25] S0: Yeah, it's a good question. So just like we saw with Waymo where the scale can start to be exponential, but every 10x in volume takes time. Like it takes time to ramp up the manufacturing, to qualify the safety systems, to really methodically kind of scale these technologies because if you go too fast, you can kill people. Like it's just, you have to be incredibly thoughtful. Today, it's an interesting ecosystem where Waymo has paused this trucking program, but it completed the vehicle platform with Daimler, who's an incredible, like absolutely incredible, you know, like technology guy. I believe they're the strongest kind of like, of OEM on a technology front. I would expect Waymo to come back in the trucking in the next handful of years, particularly now that the ride hailing side is scaling. They're in the middle of a very, very aggressive ramp, but in the next handful of years, there's no future of Waymo that doesn't include trucking just given how gigantic of an opportunity this is. And the message... The the the thesis of Waymo has always been it's the driver. It's not the Rubber Taxi or the Thomas car. Right? So trucking would be back. And so I would imagine that as you get towards the end of the decade, Waymo's ramping up its trucking program again. I do believe that there's far more that's unique and challenging about just scaling autonomy and dealing with what does it take to ship hundreds of millions or billions of miles than there is that's unique about a car versus a truck. And so I do think that Waymo, I would still put them as a front runner even if they're delayed by a few years. Aurora is also a really, really capable team that's now starting to like do the... In their earliest ramp. And so I would I would look at them as one that would start to maybe retrace some of the early kind of ramp that Waymo was doing a few years back at like, I think they're set to launch this year at some tens to like a 100 units. And so I would imagine that by the early 2030s, you start to get into really meaningful miles. Now that could be hundreds of millions, like where Waymo is today to billions, but that's still pretty early in the ramp. I would imagine that by 2035, you start to really see a sizable percentage of this become driverless because it's such a powerful enabler.
00:15:32 · Boris Sofman, Alexa von Tobel
And truck drivers, like the local routes are some of the most challenging, but also more preferable ones where they don't have to be on the road all the time and away from the families. So you'll start to see re optimization of where the Waymo goes. [00:15:46] S1: Okay. My last question is, obviously, I asked about trucking. How do you think about autonomous vehicles in cities? When do you expect that that... When can I stop worrying that my kid needs to drive a car? [00:16:00] S0: Oh, it's funny. I'm in the same same same boat. I got three three kids from... Between five and 11, so I'm anxiously waiting to. So... Okay. [00:16:08] S1: So we're waiting do on the exact same page. I've got seven seven, eight, and 11, and my question is, like, can I make sure that they don't ever have to drive
00:16:15 · Boris Sofman
[00:16:15] S0: a car? Amazing. Alright. Yes. We got a lot in common here. Okay. So where's Waymo today? Over 200,000,000 driverless miles, 10 times safer than a human. Like, it's superhuman. It's absolutely incredible. It's in 11 cities and various degrees of maturity. Driverless, fully driverless. San Francisco is the most mature where over 40% of ride hailing in the city is Waymo's. It's by far preferred to Uber and Lyft. And it's constrained mainly by the availability of cars where Waymo's like catching up on the like volume of cars. That's a really good signal of where things are going. There's 15 more cities announced including London, New York, Tokyo. So really aggressive ramp. I think they're it's something like 15 cities that are on the like, have been announced publicly for 2026. So you're gonna see this go exponentially where you're gonna get into billions of miles. And so if you fast forward at that rate by three, four years, I believe that every single major metropolitan area in The US will have very deep penetration of robotaxis. And if you fast forward into the 2030s, it's very natural that this goes from robotaxi where you can take advantage of being okay with higher price points because of utilization, some constraints on geography into a world where you're fully unconstrained on geography, the price points are lower and you start to infuse this into personal car ownership where you and I can buy a car that is level four capable. I would see that in the early part of the 2030s being a real thing. And so I literally
00:17:43 · Alexa von Tobel, Boris Sofman
[00:17:43] S1: cannot wait to own a Waymo. I just cannot 100%, [00:17:46] S0: right? And and that's like so worth it, but it just changes completely your entire existence of Your [00:17:50] S1: entire existence. [00:17:51] S0: Five, six years, I think that's like really, really doable. And so, yep, right around the time when ours are about to enter the roads, think it's actually a... Depending on where you live, like, it's a genuine decision on whether you need a car or not. [00:18:05] S1: Last question on this before we shift over to everything you're building at Bedrock. How does that change cities? How does that change things? Because I always say some of the most interesting stuff is the intersection of things. So it's not just that the autonomous vehicles are gonna replace drivers, but what does that actually mean for delivery? Are stores now gonna be on wheels? Like, does the Sephora need a store, or could it be an autonomous vehicle that moves? Like, how does that unlock the next layer of innovation in your mind once we believe that 85% of cars on the road are economists?
00:18:42 · Boris Sofman
[00:18:42] S0: First of all, I think, you know, that it's not just cars and trucks. It's also local delivery and packages and everything else. So first thing is I think you start to really start to see a shift in the layout of urban of urban environments. The amount of parking you need, the percentage of space is taken up by parking in cities is astronomically... Like, surprisingly large. That starts to disappear because, like, I I think I've read a stat now that that like, in city like Manhattan, a shocking percentage of cars on the road are actually driving around waiting for somebody or looking for parking. So it's like, you start to reduce the amount of parking required, the efficiency of the throughput of cities increases because it's just quicker and more efficient. I think the pain of driving reduces because now you can fully check out and have that be a time where you're relaxing, watching something, doing work. Eventually, the vehicles themselves start to shift to become more conducive to like an office style environment or sleeping or whatever the case might be. People become more comfortable with a commute that was 45 used to be really painful or an hour used to be painful, now becomes okay. And then obviously delivery and, you know, transportation becomes easier. And so you start to be able to probably rethink the entire layout of of cities. And I would imagine that you would start to see different form factors where vehicles can be customized for local delivery. They can be customized for long driving. And that... That's where it gets, like, really, really interesting where you start to rethink the form factors of today's cars and trucks into something of the future where you don't need a cabin on a truck in ten years. You don't need a, you know, you can optimize for the layouts of a car that optimize for comfort and work because of the expectations. So that's exciting. And and I think it'll change where people live and how they interact with their commutes and everything.
00:20:37 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:20:37] S1: Okay. So Boris, given that you were doing something incredibly interesting, you obviously left with a number of other amazing, Waymo leaders in 2024, to to found Bedrock. Tell us about Bedrock. Let's start there. First of all, like, what made you make this leap? What was the problem you saw? What was the moment that made you wanna start this?