Waymo Expands to the Magic City
This Week in The Autonomy Economy is presented by Koop Insurance, a specialist insurance provider focused on robotics and autonomous vehicles.
This Week in The Autonomy Economy, The Road to Autonomy Index returned 1.24%, Waymo announced an expansion to Miami, WeRide launched robotaxis on the Uber platform in Abu Dhabi and Tesla began to roll out FSD 13.
We have long forecasted Waymo’s expansion to Miami and we are super excited to see it become a reality. As autonomous vehicles scale, Miami will become one of the most important cities in the entire country. Robotaxis will seamlessly integrate into the fabric of the Magic City.
Miami is a magic city, and while autonomy is not magic, it’s special. Since the pandemic, Miami has emerged as a tech and finance hub. The city is no longer over reliant on the tourism and real estate industries, even though they still play a significant role in the city’s economy.
As the stock market rips higher, the undercurrents in Miami’s economy are starting to show signs of weakness, as a bubble is forming in the local real estate market. It’s a bubble that is about to pop according to UBS. The UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index currently ranks Miami #1.
Miami’s real estate bubble will pop at some point, as it always does. It’s a tried and true trend that dates back to the 1920’s. The book, Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression (highly recommended) details this phenomenon in great detail.
When the Miami real estate bubble pops, Miami’s economy will suffer. Unfortunately, the bubble most likely will pop as Waymo ramps up service. The popping of the bubble could be further accelerated if there is a downturn in crypto, as the city is highly exposed to the whims of the crypto market.
This is Miami, nothing is fake and everything is real. Waymo made the bet on Miami with a local economic downturn on the horizon. It was the right bet, but pricing the service and managing local operations through an economic downturn will be challenging.
With Alphabet’s resources, Waymo will weather the storm that is on the horizon. Miami is a boom and bust city that always rebuilds and comes out the other side stronger, this time with autonomous vehicles.
At some point in the future, a majority of major global cities will have autonomous vehicles operating in them. It’s only a matter of time. We are seeing that here in the U.S. in San Fransisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and now Miami. Overseas, we are seeing it in Beijing, Shanghai, Dubai and Abu Dhabi now with WeRide.
Then there is Tesla. One day, they will turn on FSD Unsupervised and robotaxis will be everywhere with a flip of a switch. Tesla is getting closer to FSD Unsupervised, and this week they released FSD 13 to a limited group of users. The feedback from the early users has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s only a matter of time until Tesla cracks full self-driving.
That time is getting closer and closer. Based on the advancements Tesla has made with FSD, we believe FSD 15 will be unsupervised. This could be the version that ultimately powers the early iterations of Cybercab.
Society is ready for personally owned autonomous vehicles. Cybercab will be the first.
Uber and Waymo parent Alphabet are The Road to Autonomy Index component companies
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What’s Moving the Markets
Waymo Expands to The Magic City
Waymo is expanding to the Magic City. Early next year, Waymo will begin testing Jaguar I-PACEs in Miami, followed by a commercial service launch in 2026. The timeline aligns with Waymo’s new platform—Hyundai IONIQ 5. Could Miami be the first city that Waymo launches the IONIQ 5 in? We should know that answer in 2025, if we begin to spot Waymo IONIQ 5’s driving around the city.
With the expansion comes a few interesting things to note: no Uber partnership (either app or fleet management) and a new fleet management partner—Moove. Investors are questioning the move and what it could mean for the future of the Uber/Waymo partnership. The news of the Miami expansion sent Uber’s stock tumbling 10%.
Investors rightly have a lot of questions, as we do as well. Some of the questions we have are as follows:
- What are Waymo’s long-term platform plans? Will they eventually dump Uber and run exclusively on the Waymo One app in all markets?
- What do the contract terms with Uber look like for both Austin and Atlanta? Does Waymo have an opt-out clause after a certain period of time?
- Is Waymo merely testing the market, reviewing the data and determining what the best platform is to run the service from a fleet management perspective long-term?
- Is Moove in a position to become Waymo’s long-term fleet manager?
- Does Waymo even need Uber?
We will get answers to some of these questions when Waymo brings several new markets in online in 2025. If these new markets operate exclusively on Waymo’s ride-hailing platform—Waymo One and Moove is the fleet management partner, we will know that the Uber/Waymo partnership will be sunsetting at some point in the future.
If the Uber/Waymo partnership dissolves, what does this say about Uber’s future in autonomy? Does Uber look to eventually add personally owned autonomous vehicles to the platform in a Turo-like service? Anything is possible.
But if this does happen, Dara Khosrowshahi is going to have to reframe Uber’s autonomy story to Wall Street and shift the narrative focus to autonomous vehicle fleets operated by 3rd party fleet owners, autonomous trucking and building their overseas autonomous vehicle business.
Uber’s future in autonomy has yet to be written, while Waymo’s is just getting started. By next year, Waymo will have announced 10 cities. Depending on how you count cities, three to four more cities will be announced in 2025. We continue to believe that Nashville will be one of those cities. We correctly predicted Miami earlier this year and were proven right.
With Waymo in 10 cities by the end of 2025 (including testing leading up to commercialization), how does any company not named Tesla compete? Tesla has the tech and the balance sheet to compete. Other companies pursuing pure robotaxi services lack the resources needed to scale outside of Cruise and Zoox. But questions remain with both of those businesses.
In 2025, we expect to see pivots as Waymo continues to gain marketshare. By 2030, we are fully expecting to see a vision-only Waymo Driver in commercial service. If Waymo keeps their current pace of 3 new cities a year, that puts them in 25 cities by 2030.
Now the questions become, how many cities and how many vehicles does Waymo need to operate a self-sustaining business. When Waymo becomes a self-sustaining business, what does Alphabet do? No matter what Alphabet does, the expansion to Miami is a major milestone for Waymo.
Our take: Waymo is the clear leader in the development and commercialization of autonomous vehicles. They currently control the market and have the resources to go at it alone. Why partner, when you can build and own?
Cruise parent GM, Uber, Waymo parent Alphabet and Zoox parent Amazon are The Road to Autonomy Index component companies
Waymo is currently ranked #1 with a bullish outlook, Cruise is currently ranked #2 with a positive outlook and Zoox is currently ranked #3 with a neutral outlook on the AUTONOMY LEADERBOARD in the autonomous vehicle category.
Uber is currently ranked #1 with a bullish outlook on the AUTONOMY LEADERBOARD in the software platforms category.
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WeRide and Uber Launch Robotaxi Service in Abu Dhabi
As Waymo seemingly drives away from Uber, Uber continues to execute their autonomous vehicle playbook by leveraging the power of the platform. On December 6th, Uber announced the launch of the WeRide robotaxi service (with safety drivers) in Abu Dhabi.
This is the first time that autonomous vehicles are available on the Uber platform outside of the United States. As we wrote above, if Waymo does indeed ditch the Uber platform, we see a very plausible situation where Uber could prioritize overseas autonomous vehicle deployments.
Some of the indicators of this reprioritization would be an expanded partnership with Wayve that includes an OEM for robotaxis in the UK. Then we would be on the lookout for other potential deals that could further signal Uber’s autonomous vehicle expansion overseas including potential deployments in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Japan down the line, depending on the regulatory/political environment.
In 2025, WeRide will begin to operate fully autonomous robotaxis in the Emirate. If the launch is successful, we expect more robotaxi launches in the UAE over the next 18 months. Could Baidu Apollo Go be next? Perhaps in partnership with Uber?
Our take: 2025 is going to be a big year for autonomy globally and a year of big decisions for Uber.
Wayve is currently ranked #4 with a positive outlook on the AUTONOMY LEADERBOARD in the autonomous vehicle category.
Uber and Waymo parent Alphabet are The Road to Autonomy Index component companies
Piquing Our Interest
Waymo Usage in California Surges. Paid Rides Doubled, May to August In the latest California Public Utilities Commission AV Program quarterly reporting, Waymo reported that rides more than doubled from 143,000 in May to 312,000 in August with a fleet of 400 vehicles—300 in San Francisco and 100 in Los Angeles.
Autonomous Vehicles Could Grow Bolt’s Business by 100x That is what Bolt CEO Markus Villig is predicting. He views autonomous vehicles complimenting ride-hail platforms, not disrupting them. The jury is still out on whether or not autonomous vehicles will be good or bad for ride-hail platforms. Uber and Lyft have been selling off as Tesla launched FSD 13 and Waymo expanded to Miami. Could this be a sign of things to come?
Is the Uber and Lyft Selloff Overdone? Wall Street is divided on the topic of are autonomous vehicles (robotaxis) good or bad for ride-hail platforms. Several analysts on the street are putting out notes in support of both Uber and Lyft. Is this too little too late, or are they right? We will just have to wait and see.
May Mobility launches Toyota e-Palette in Japan May Mobility continues to look to the Land of the Rising Sun as a growth market. This week May Mobility announced that they launched an autonomous service (with a safety driver) at the Toyota Motor Kyushu factory in Fukuoka, Japan.
Bot Auto Launches Hub-to-Hub Demo in 15 Months In an interview with Pete Bigelow of Automotive News, Bot Auto Founder & CEO Xiaodi Hou shares how this was possible and what role AI played in making this milestone a reality.
Tesla’s Cybercab will have 50% Less Parts then the Model 3 50% parts, means 50% less cost in theory. You have to hand it to Tesla, they are really focused on scaling a robotaxi service that is built around economics. Factor in the cost of FSD and you have a much cheaper alternative to Waymo’s multi-sensor approach.
Social Buzz
Mid-City to The Beach: Tesla FSD 13.2 vs Waymo
Whole Mars Blog’s Tesla has been updated to FSD 13.2 and from what he has publicly stated on X, FSD 13 is a major improvement over FSD 12.5.6.3. As Tesla continues to advance autonomous driving, Whole Mars continues to test the software in and around Los Angeles and share his ride videos with the public.
To test how good FSD 13.2 is compared to Waymo in LA, Whole Mars had his Tesla drive him from a Vons parking lot in Mid-City LA to Santa Monica in an effort to compare Tesla’s autonomous driving ability to Waymo’s.
Both the Tesla and the Waymo left the Vons parking lot at the same time. Both arrived with zero interventions in Santa Monica. But the Tesla successfully arrived in 15 minutes, while the Waymo took 40 minutes.
The 30 minute difference? Highways. The Tesla drove down the Santa Monica freeway, while the Waymo drove down surface streets. In order for Waymo to truly scale and unlock value in freeway cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas and Houston, Waymo has to enable freeway driving.
Our take: The next test in our opinion should be to repeat the route when Waymo offers highway driving to the public in LA. We publicly predicted on Autonomy Markets that this should happen in mid-2025.
Waymo parent Alphabet and Tesla are The Road to Autonomy Index component companies
Tesla is Ramping up Cybercab Testing
In a drone video shot by Joe Tegtmeyer, Tesla appears to be ramping up Cybercab testing at the Giga Texas in Austin. Mr. Tegtmeyer has been shooting drone videos of the testing for weeks and this video appears to show the most robust testing to date.
Our take: We are watching to see when Tesla expands Cybercab testing outside of Giga Texas to other parts of Austin. Once we have visual confirmation of Tesla expanding Cybercab testing off-site, we know that the delivery of the Cybercab is getting closer. On this week’s episode of Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte predicted that FSD 15 will be the first iteration of FSD to be unsupervised.
Tesla is a The Road to Autonomy Index component company
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For the week of December 2nd, The Road to Autonomy Index returned 1.24%, the S&P 500 returned 0.96% and the NASDAQ 100 returned 3.31%. The Road to Autonomy Index outperformed the S&P 500 by 0.28% and underperformed the NASDAQ 100 by 2.07%.
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A weekly newsletter featuring insight and commentary on the autonomy economy™ and how the financial markets are viewing its emergence.
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