Waymo's Co-CEO on Its New Uber Partnership, Safety, and Driverless Trucking — With Tekedra Mawakana

26:38We had a deal with Albertsons, and we did delivery with Safeway stores. And as you can imagine, for us, it's figuring out, like, will people come out of their houses to get the food out of the car? You know, is that extra step compelling or prohibitive? And we learned that it's not prohibitive. It's actually really interesting to people. And I think, you know, people want people who are mindful of sustainability want an EV bringing, you know, their groceries and their food to their home. And they also don't hate the idea of not interacting with a human. Not tipping was one, you know, one of the areas that we've heard.

27:16And so I think there's an opportunity there for us to learn with Uber too. Yeah. So they all get a notification and they kind of walk out, open the door and there's their food sitting in the backseat. Yes. That's interesting. What happened with the Albertsons? Yeah, it was great. It was fantastic. A lot of people in the city really liked, yeah, it was a set timeframe. Oh, so why didn't it renew? Why did it not renew? um it was just the plan to do it and learn yeah it wasn't there was nothing bad happened that was that was the plan of record um and it could you know tbd no i was just saying nothing prohibits us from doing others in the future yeah i saw it was your last linkedin post and you haven't posted since then it's been like two years so i was just like all right maybe this was the key you're just saying well to hell with it i'm not you know no i posted it's my key shirt is what you're talking Oh, it's about your featured post.

28:12Okay, sorry. No, no, I apologize. I regret the error. No, it's okay. All right. Maybe if the LLMs, you know, kind of say, you know, talk to people and they say, hey, I'm here with your package. Anyway, I think it's interesting. All right, let's take a break. We're here with Takidra Mawakana. She's the co-CEO of Waymo talking about autonomous driving, talking about their new partnership with Uber. In the second half, we're going to talk about how this company fits into Google itself, It's scaling operation. And some of the other fun questions you might want to get to, like how they feel about Elon Musk and when they're going to drive on snowy roads back right after this.

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30:03And maybe you are too. I'm Katie Drummond, the Global Editorial Director of Wired. And I'm hosting our new podcast series, The Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative, and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big interview conversations are fun. I want a shark that... That eats the internet. That turns it all off. Unfiltered and unafraid. So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online, to the best of my ability. Every week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context.

30:41True or false, you, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to The Big Interview right now in the same place you find Wired's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

31:09And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Keijer Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo. So I just want to start with a question about how this fits into the Google mix because to me, it's kind of been this thing where people have like wondered, like why Google's gotten into this. And of course it became started with, it's a famous story about how this began with interest from Larry and Sergey about how this is going to be revolutionary, new technology. I agree with them, it really is. But then the question is like, why does it fit with Google? And I think like kind of like the fun answer that I've heard from people around the company has been that what Google really is, is a company that knows your intent and then it's able to make money based off of that.

31:53You drive and search, you type and search, where can I buy a Mazda? And then Google will show you the Mazda dealerships. And those Mazda dealerships will pay a lot of money because they know, hey, you're intending to buy a Mazda. When you put your location in, it's the most well-honed signal of intent, possibly, because you're not thinking about buying that Mazda. You're driving to the Mazda dealer. And that is some extremely valuable data if you're a search company. uh keita can you talk a little bit about that is that super way off or you know what how yeah how we think about that yeah so waymo actually spun out of google um at the end of 2016 um which is around the time that i came and so i think i can't really speak to that sort of but you're under the alphabet umbrella.

32:47Yeah. So within the alphabet umbrella, but I say that because at that point, it was really our opportunity to figure out what this generalizable driver could become and then what the business models are that it could drive. And so I, in all my almost seven years here have really not spent a lot of time in that Google ethos of what made Google the amazing access to information sort of platform and company that it is, nor have we at Waymo spent a lot of time thinking about ourselves that way. So it's fun for me to hear you sort of say this because I think it's more the other part of the founders is what I would say, which is that part of them that set up X and said, okay, we've succeeded at something amazingly.

33:37What are the other things technology could tackle that are actually challenges that humans face. And in this case, it was like unsafe roads, like unnecessarily unsafe roads, distracted drivers, angry drivers, drunk, tired drivers. And so that's really been our focus is how do you build a driver that gets smarter and smarter and smarter over time and that can safely move people from point A to point B? So that to me has been the genius of what the founders thought about. And this kind of moonshot opportunity of being at Waymo and using technology to improve people's lives isn't like something that people talk about a lot, especially now when people talk a lot about big tech, like the big tech for good is, I mean, to me, this is really a great example of that.

34:26So that's what I would say. That's what motivated me to join. Again, I came after the spin out. So maybe I had a slightly different orientation to the company from the beginning. So Google built this exceptional business because it matches that intent with advertisers and allows them to pay to reach people while they're in intent mode and pay when they click. It's extremely high margin business. It's worked out very well for Google. Waymo is a hardware business. I mean, it has software in the core, but there's a hardware cost there. Talk a little bit about the business opportunity long term. Does this have the opportunity to become a business like as big as Google or where do you see it going?

35:12Yeah, so I think, yes. If you look at the map of vehicle miles traveled globally, it's a massive, massive opportunity ahead of us. It's not going to be like, as you said, the same kind of business as a Google business because it is a capital intensive business. but everyone putting cars on the road are accustomed to that, right? Everyone putting cars on the road are already working in hardware or working in not just capital intensive, but much longer lead time businesses. And so we sit at this interesting intersection between software, which is six week or four week release cycles and automotive companies, which have these four year and we're learning so much about how you integrate both of those.

36:00And so I think the sweet spot of the future is this owned and operated kind of ride hailing business, local delivery business, and then personal car ownership. And I should say, we also are still, you know, working on building a redundant trucking platform. You know, we announced that we weren't, we're not focused on trucking right now because we want to focus on ride hailing. But the only way we've gotten to ride hailing is by having a platform, a vehicle platform that has redundant braking, redundant steering, and redundant compute power. What does redundant mean in this example? Without a human there, what's the backup system?

36:44Because normally in a car, you and I are the backup system. And so we have a deal with Daimler Trucks where we're building this redundant platform for trucking. And so that'll come back into focus for us. Really? It's just not what we're focusing on now. So on that platform, there's going to be, it will be totally autonomous or it will be? Yes. Really? Yes. So you said not right now. What's like the timeline on that? Well, we're right now completing the redundant platform. That's just not sort of from a commercialization perspective. We're not as focused on it. Okay. So you put it all together and that is, I mean, it's a massive business.

37:24And I think the potential is unbelievable. So can you talk a little bit about the scale that it's at now? I mean, so let's see, October 2021, I was watching an interview with you at the Code Conference, and you said these cars had driven 20 million miles. What's it at now? We stopped reporting, we stopped sharing the public numbers, mostly because it kind of is like, what's the quality of the driving? How many incidents do we, meaning how much learning is the driver getting, not just how many miles? is the driver going through. Okay. So the last public number you shared is 20 million. Yeah. Yeah.

38:06I wish you would update that one. Okay. I mean, we say we've driven tens of millions. So. Well, I know that. And tens of billions in simulation. We just moved from being very precise to less so. Well, I mean, that again goes back to the transparency thing that I think, I don't know. I mean, you, you're making the decisions on this. But in a moment where so many people are going to be against, I think more information is better than less. One thing you are talking about is the number of cars. As of September, you had 700 cars on the road. Is that the case still today? Yeah, that's about the size of our fleet now still.

38:46And I just want to challenge the point you're making about transparency. I mean, what we say is we're building the world's most experienced driver. Right. And what I can tell you, and I'm sure it was your experience too, is, I mean, every 16-year-old did not spend tens of millions of miles on public roads becoming an experienced driver before they got a driver's license. And so I don't think the number actually changes how people think about it. And that's the reason we're not focused on telling you every precise number. What we want to do is demonstrate the impact of that driving, which is why earlier when you asked me about the impact, having 100 % of bodily injury claims disappear, that's the kind of impact that we want to have in this driving.

39:38But I know what you're saying is, you know, there's a little bit of impatience. It takes a while to get to those outputs. But we are more interested in demonstrating the outputs. And these miles are the inputs for that. Yeah, well, I will challenge you back and make the point that it is a technology problem. But it's also a socialization issue that you are in the middle of, which is like, I shouldn't be lecturing you on it because you know this. So maybe I'm not seeing the complete picture. but I do know that there's going to, and I'm rooting for this technology, but I also know that there's going to be quite a, a large pushback.

40:14You see it in the headlines in San Francisco. You're going to see it in Congress. And I think that the general public, you know, will be more likely to, to be able to evaluate this better if they see the numbers, but, but I do think, okay. Anyway, we could debate this forever, but okay. So 700 cars on the road. how long does it take you? Okay. So let me tell you something that Kyle Vought, the CEO of Cruz said when he was here a few months ago, he said that this is going to 10X every year, the amount of miles driven and the amount of cars. Do you have similar plans as far as growth goes with Waymo?

40:54Yeah, I've learned over the last seven years not to predict. um and it's for two reasons one is i think this is a product of discovery it has been we have thought things that did not actually go in the arc that we thought and in some cases it's moved far faster adoption understanding once people are in the car how many times a rider comes back all of that um so no i wouldn't i wouldn't say what he's saying um and then secondly i think it goes back to the point you were just making, like, we have to be able to bring the public along with us. And, you know, you're in New York, so you're not here.

41:39We're doing a lot to do that in San Francisco, in Phoenix, in Los Angeles. You know, we don't just show up with our cars and hope for the best. We start engaging. We start engaging with public safety officials. We start engaging with policymakers at every level, regulators, community groups, you know, we have an entire sort of way that we enter a market and that we receive feedback to actually make sure that the product is meeting the needs of the community, et cetera. And so I think that approach is a traditional product approach, which is not one that we're taking where I can sit here and tell you how many times we're going to X everywhere without regard to what happens in each of those markets.

42:20No, that definitely. Yeah, that makes sense. And I will say that even though I'm in New York, I was in San Francisco from 2015 to 2021. I watched a lot of this conversation go down and continue to follow it. So I see what you guys are doing. the car cost people estimate that these car cars cost$250 ,000 per car to outfit is that ballpark where where it is and and i mean i i'll tell you like i was taking the rides in san francisco and it was like my rides were less than uber rides$12$15 how is it possible that a car can cost that much and the rides can uh be so cheap unless you're losing money on them So we don't break out the car costs.

43:07So I'm not going to get into those. But I mean, I think that question you're asking, which I fully understand is, is our current pricing strategy, our long term pricing strategy. we do think of our service as a premium service and we are in the early days especially in san francisco of just having people move from our wait list into our service and a lot of them expressed an intent to ride you know months ago because we had a wait list for so long and so over time you will see us have more dynamic pricing depends on the time of the day It depends on the length of the trip and the day of the week.

43:50And so you will see our dynamic pricing evolve. When Waymo first began, it was this like little, it kind of looked like a clown car that would go around the Google parking lot. And then it obviously expanded to a bunch of different cars, including these great Jaguars that are Waymo cars in San Francisco. So there is this freedom that you get when you are able to get these systems right, where you don't have to shoehorn them into traditional vehicles. So is that on the roadmap for you to sort of build a vehicle that lets you rethink what it's like to be in a car? Because you don't need so much of what exists today, like a steering wheel or brake pedals.

44:33Yeah, I think removing the human controls is like a regulatory process. process. And so you'd have to like basically build ground up. Yeah. And so we're not focused on that. We do partner with automotive companies. We think they're really good at building cars. We're really good at building the driver. Um, so we've decided not to do that. The car you're talking about, our little Firefly, we retired. Um, and it's, it's in a few museums around the world, which is fun and in our office. Um, but we don't plan to do that again. speaking of um others that are trying to get into this uh what's your read on apple i mean they've been trying to do it forever why haven't they released anything yeah i have no read on apple and we'll see what what they end up doing i don't know what they're doing over there yeah well i don't know if they do either so okay anyway uh how about driving on the freeway I feel like that's crucial.

45:35Yeah, I think it's really important. And it's also when we were doing our sort of class eight trucking, I mean, that was a lot of our freeway driving has come from that. We had routes between Arizona and Texas, as well as routes within multiple cities in Texas. The reason I bring that up is because it's the same driver. It learns no matter which vehicle platform it is. And so most of our freeway driving was geared towards long haul delivery. Um, now we're obviously doing it for passenger movement too, um, on the I-PACE vehicles. So we view freeways as essential for ride hailing. Obviously people are used to hailing a ride at an airport and jumping on a freeway, getting to the city or whatever, wherever they're staying.

46:18Um, so that's definitely not a roadmap. Okay. And are you testing on the freeway right now? Not with riders. Okay. Okay. But you have, are you testing with, so you have safety drivers in the cars. Are you testing without safety drivers on the freeway? Not in, not on this vehicle platform in San Francisco, but in prior vehicle platforms in Arizona. Yes. Okay. That's cool. Yeah. I'm excited for that. I think that's going to be, I mean, it really, I mean, in the U S in particular, you need freeway. We are a freeway nation. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. How about snow, ice and rain? Where is the driving right now in terms of its ability to handle that?

47:02I'm asking somewhat selfishly because I'm like, you know, having spent a week, just a week riding Waymos in San Francisco, I'd like, you know, it just happened to go inside at the time where my car died. And I was just like, it's okay. It lived a very nice long life. I was like the 10th owner of it anyway. But I kept thinking, okay, maybe, you know, I don't have this, but maybe one day we can get these Waymos in New York City. So obviously much more challenging driving conditions, both because of the weather and the drivers. So what do you think about that? Yeah, so I would separate rain. We've had quite a bit of rain in San Francisco this year.

47:46And we're able to drive in rain. Our service is up in the rain. We drive in the rain. We can see in the rain. It's actually really exciting because that was not the case three years ago. We were talking about rain quite a bit. And now it's these newer software releases of the Waymo Driver just really solved those challenges, which is great. I mean, you know, it's like you have windshield wipers. We have them on the cars because it's a standard car. But having them on the LiDAR and having them on the cameras is what really matters. So that's been great. I think ice and snow we've tested. We haven't actually deployed in a city with those, but that's part of why we go out and do these tests.

48:24We've been in New York doing tests. That's part of it is weather. Same thing. We've been in Detroit and tested in snow. And so we're not it's not early on our roadmap that we will be launching or deploying a service. But you'll see us continue to show up in markets where we're including this data and what the Waymo driver has to learn. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, well, I wish you luck. I hope it works in New York somewhat soon. Um, so can you just give me like an, or give us all an assessment of like what market you're in now? Um, what expansion looks like? I mean, you mentioned already that the driver is generalizable, meaning that, you know, the kind of the biggest hurdle is getting it to work in one place.

49:04And then you can sort of take that technology and apply it elsewhere. So what's the state of Waymo today? Yeah, the state of Waymo today is, you know, we are in downtown Phoenix all the way out to Scottsdale and Tempe, which is really exciting. So we have a lot of ASU students who use the, vehicles. And then we're at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which to us is really exciting because you can fly in, download the app. It's completely open public service, and then go downtown or go wherever it is that your conference or golf tour or whatever that takes you to Phoenix. So that's 225 square miles, the largest, the only 24 by 7 public service.

49:44It's been open since October of 2020. It's a real point of pride for our company and sort of surprising that most of the world still doesn't know that this exists. And it's been up and going for three years. Yeah. And it's also 225 square miles. That's up from 50 square miles, I believe, in October 2021. So talk about scale. I think we finally got a view of how the expansion looks. Okay. So you have Phoenix, you have San Francisco. We have Phoenix. We're starting to test in LA. And we started testing in LA. We're doing our LA tour. And we've also announced that after we are up and going in LA, we will move towards Austin.

50:24Okay. So eyeing for markets. Yes. New York before or after 2025? TBD. Okay. What do you think about Elon Musk? New York is obviously an extremely important market. Good. That's awesome. Yeah. We need that stuff. It's crazy to drive in this city and even worse to be a pedestrian. So, yes, Elon, he OK, I'll ask you some specific questions. I feel like that's probably a better way to go. Full self-driving. I mean, this is something that came up when I spoke with Kyle Vogt about how he believes that full self-driving is a misnomer and it's not full self-driving. It's effectively what he said is it's full self-babysitting of the Tesla as it drives.

51:14Then I had some Tesla super fans come in and talk to me about how Kyle was wrong. And actually, Elon's getting it done. He's collecting a ton of data. When you see these Teslas in full self-driving mode, and full disclosure, I mean, I drove in the full self-driving mode, and it seemed fine. It wasn't anywhere close to a Waymo service. But I'm kind of curious how you think that they stack up and whether Elon's helping or hurting. I think it doesn't help to describe anything inaccurately in these early days. I mean, we're teaching the public. So let's just be explicit. Right. There's SAE has already defined levels of autonomy.

51:57There's, you know, it goes from one to five. That's driver assist technology. It's level two plus. us. I think, you know, the Waymo drivers level four, I think it's just important for us to, do you need to be behind the wheel? And do you need a driver's license? If you need to be behind the wheel, need a driver's license, it's level three, two or one. If you don't, it's four or five. I think if we can just all level set on that, then it kind of doesn't matter. Like how many times did the thing beep? And it's just more, can you afford to take your eyes off the driving task, not unless it's a level four or above.

52:34And that's a decision we made back in 2012. We were running autopilot. But do you think Tesla can evolve into level four from where it is today, given the technology and the data that it's collecting? I don't have enough insight. I think there's been enough statements that that's their plan, that there's no reason for me to think it's not their plan. But I don't know what the technological roadmap will look like. It doesn't seem like it's, it just seems like he's focused on making it happen at some point. Yeah. All right. Let me end with this. We started this conversation with a conversation of safety.

53:11You mentioned 43 ,000 people in the US alone die in traffic accidents where humans are behind the wheel. I really am curious about your recruiting. I mean, who are the people that staff Waymo and how many of them come to you with stories where they're really trying to solve this problem because someone that they know or they love has been impacted and lost their lives or been injured or been behind the wheel in one of these accidents? Yeah, I think we're very fortunate to be able to hire the brightest people, right? The brightest minds, brightest engineers, brightest marketers, brightest, you name it.

53:54People choose to come because they want to do something that they feel connected to and they feel tied to this mission. and when I spend time with people, we have this thing called why, why Waymo? Why do you Waymo? It's usually a deep personal story, the loss of a family member when they were a child or, or frankly, like a parent who's still alive, but not capable, not fully able-bodied because of an accident or crash. And so people come because of the mission. And I, and they also come because they're like really trying to figure this thing out. Like it's exciting, but it's also like very complicated.

54:36And so people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, the mission is exciting, but really I also want purpose-driven hard work. All right. Well, Takidra, let me tell you, I think that I've had, you know, a few holy shit moments in my life using technology or seeing the introduction of new technology I would say the iPhones, one of them, ChatGPT, another. And hopping into a Waymo this summer and seeing what it does is right there with them. So fascinating conversation. Thank you again. Thanks for willing to come on here and be pressed on some of the issues and give us some more insight on the others. And wishing you the best.

55:14This is one of the technology products where I think that if it works, it's no conflict of interest to say that we're rooting for it. I certainly am. And I'm looking forward to following the progress. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, Alex. Really appreciate it. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Nate Guatini, for handling the audio. Thank you, LinkedIn, for having me as part of your podcast network. Thanks to all you listeners. Always great to have you here week after week. We'll see you on Friday for a news recap with Ron John Roy. We're going to talk about a busy week of news.

55:44So we hope to see you then. And we look forward to seeing you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

55:58What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are too. I'm Katie Drummond, the Global Editorial Director of Wired. And I'm hosting our new podcast series, The Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative, and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big interview conversations are fun. I want a shark that... That eats the internet. That turns it all off. Unfiltered and unafraid. So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online, to the best of my ability.

56:40Every week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context. True or false, you, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to The Big Interview right now in the same place you find Wired's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.