Wayve’s ChatGPT Moment Is On The Horizon
This Week in The Autonomy Economy is presented by Koop, a specialist insurance provider focused on robotics and autonomous vehicles.
This Week in The Autonomy Economy, The Road to Autonomy Index declined 1.79%, we visited with May Mobility in Ann Arbor, MI, Wayve is on the cusp of their ChatGPT moment and Waymo expanded service to Silicon Valley.
Our visit with May Mobility was insightful. As part of our visit we went on a 40-minute fully autonomous (no safety driver) ride around Ann Arbor with Founder Edwin Olson, toured their manufacturing facility, and met with the operations team.
We came away from our meetings and ride impressed. May Mobility’s strategic relationship with Toyota gives them a very clear path to scaling. If everything lines up, May Mobility will become a significant player in the robotaxi market over the coming years.
Later this year, May Mobility will launch service on Lyft in Atlanta, a major milestone for the company. By 2026, we expect May Mobility to expand to additional cities on the Lyft platform.
Lyft, for its part, has a clear path to scale robotaxis without having to own the asset (robotaxis) by leveraging May Mobility’s relationship with Toyota Financial Services. As robotaxis scale, the model of who owns and maintains the asset will become increasingly strategic.
If a private equity firm swoops in and acquires the assets (robotaxi fleets) and maintenance operations, the power dynamic will shift further putting Lyft and Uber at a strategic disadvantage as robotaxis scale.
To avoid being squeezed out of the market, Lyft and Uber have to seed fragmentation in the market. Without fragmentation in the market, both companies have a limited path to succeeding in autonomy over the long-term.
Alternatively, Lyft and Uber could vertically integrate by acquiring an autonomous vehicle company. Uber has the balance sheet, but their current strategy is focused on being a platform rather than an owner/operator.
Lyft’s balance sheet could not support such a move, but Amazon’s could. Could Amazon change the game by acquiring Lyft? It’s possible as Amazon needs a credible autonomy strategy. If Amazon were to acquire Lyft, they could fold it into a mobility division alongside Zoox and perhaps another AV company to salvage Zoox’s potential.
Anything is possible, but one thing is clear. If Amazon wants to be a credible player in the future of autonomy they have to make a move. Andy Jassy, the floor is yours.
Lyft, Uber and Waymo parent Alphabet are The Road to Autonomy Index component companies
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What’s Moving the Markets
Wayve’s ChatGPT Moment Is On The Horizon
In Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book Outliers, Mr. Gladwell famously made the compelling argument that achieving mastery in any field requires approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. That was eight years before researchers at Google published the groundbreaking research paper Attention Is All You Need in 2017, accelerating the development of AI by introducing the Transformer architecture.
Fast forward an additional eight years and all you need is 100 hours. Wayve has successfully scaled its embodied AI autonomous driving stack to new automotive platforms with just 100 hours of vehicle-specific data.
100 hours of new data to adapt to a new platform and 500 hours of localized data to adapt to a new country. This is Wayve and this is impressive. When Wayve first expanded testing to the U.S. in 2024, the company trained the Wayve driver on 500 hours worth of incremental US-specific data collected over 8 weeks.
Over time, the 500 hour number will decline and the performance will increase as we have seen with Wayve’s recent expansion into Germany.
As Wayve’s foundation model continues to progress, it is only a matter of time before they have their ChatGPT moment. When that moment occurs, Masayoshi Son’s bet on Alex Kendall and Wayve will be validated. Exciting times ahead.
Our take: Autonomy is about to scale and what it does, Wayve will have ushered in the next era in autonomy—licensing.
Wayve is currently ranked #1 with a bullish outlook on the AUTONOMY LEADERBOARD in the licensing category.
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Waymo Expands to Silicon Valley
On March 11th, Waymo announced the expansion of its Waymo One service down the peninsula into Silicon Valley. The new 27-square-mile service area includes Mountain View, Palo Alto, Los Altos, and parts of Sunnyvale.
With Waymo’s expansion down the peninsula, it’s only a matter of time before individuals can take a Waymo from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to San Francisco, down to Silicon Valley, and back. To achieve this, Waymo needs to complete its “Great Highway Unlock” and secure permits to operate commercial services at SFO.
As we have seen in Waymo’s 2025 Tourism Impact Report, adding SFO to the service area would have a net positive economic impact of $88.98 million dollars on the Bay Area’s tourism economy.
No matter what certain politicians or regulators may believe, Waymo is an economic growth engine. It’s both a tourist attraction and a meaningful mobility service for the region. It’s a service that will save lives, increase mobility, and deliver economic growth.
As we have seen in multiple tourism reports, and countless Instagram and X posts, individuals travel to San Francisco partly to experience a ride in a Waymo. They seek it out, and they vote with their wallets.
San Francisco was once known for its iconic trolley cars. Today, it’s known for Waymo. Soon business travelers to the Bay Area will be able to ride in a Waymo from the moment they land at SFO until the moment they leave.
Our take: This is what the future of autonomy will look like in cities and towns around the world. Autonomy will become an economic growth engine that will provide value to residents, business travelers and tourists alike.
Waymo parent Alphabet is a The Road to Autonomy Index component company
Waymo is currently ranked #1 with a bullish outlook on the AUTONOMY LEADERBOARD in the autonomous vehicle category.
Piquing Our Interest
Waymo Boosts Tourism Economies in San Francisco and Los Angeles Autonomy is good for the economy. Waymo’s 2025 Tourism Impact Report reveals a $41.45 million dollar economic boost to San Francisco and Los Angeles tourism economies. When the service expands to airports, the economic impact could increase to $99.74 million.
Did Uber Make a Mistake by Selling ATG? That is what Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Believes At the Abundance Summit in LA this week, Mr. Kalanick said that it was a mistake for Uber to sell ATG. In our view, Uber is at a crossroads. Waymo, the clear leader in robotaxis, doesn’t need Uber, it’s Uber that needs Waymo. If Waymo were to leave the Uber platform in the future, it would raise serious questions about Uber’s role (outside of fleet management) in the robotaxi market.
Zoox at a Crossroads Zoox needs to clarify its path forward to the market from both a regulatory and business model stand point. Is it time to abandon the “toaster” and focus on commercializing the Toyota Highlanders until there is regulatory certainty?
Plus is Preparing to Expand into Japan with Tier IV Partnership Japan’s market for autonomous vehicles and trucks is heating up, with Waymo, May Mobility, Applied Intuition are in the market. Now Plus is entering the market through a partnership with Tier IV.
Nissan Begins Testing Autonomous Vehicles in Japan Nissan has started testing autonomous vehicles in Yokohama, Japan with the goal of achieving SAE Level 4 (fully autonomous) by 2029/2030.
📰 Before these stories were featured here, they were available on Autonomy Times. Visit Autonomy Times today to stay up-to-date on the latest news and developments shaping the autonomy economy.
Social Buzz
In what is becoming a common theme, another day, another life saved because of Waymo. We challenge you to watch this video and tell us if you as a human driver would be able to spot the pedestrian, while you were driving at 45 mph. The chances are slim as you were most distracted.
Our take: Waymo is setting the bar extremely high for safety, and we are getting very close to the point where the Waymo Driver is better than the average human driver.
Waymo parent Alphabet is The Road to Autonomy Index component company
China Has Ambitions to Export Autonomy to The World
China has grand global ambitions and those ambitions do not stop at the Belt and Road Initiative. Those ambitions are now expanding to exporting autonomy to the world.
Our take: As China ramps up their support for the autonomous vehicle and truck industries, the world has to pay close attention as it risks making the same mistakes it made when it outsourced electric vehicle componentry to China. This time the stakes are higher and the countries that control autonomy will benefit from the autonomy economy.
The Road to Autonomy Index® / Weekly Performance
The Road to Autonomy Index® is a high-definition lens into the emerging world of autonomous vehicles. It is the world’s first and only pure-play index designed to measure the performance of the autonomous vehicle/truck market.
For the week of March 10, 2025, The Road to Autonomy Index declined 1.79%, the S&P 500 declined 2.27% and the NASDAQ 100 declined 2.46%. The Road to Autonomy Index outperformed the S&P 500 by 0.48% and outperformed the NASDAQ 100 by 0.67%.
Year to Date (YTD), The Road to Autonomy Index has returned -0.14%
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Latest The Road to Autonomy Podcast
Applied Intuition’s Next Frontier: Revolutionizing Defense with All-Domain Autonomy
Peter Ludwig, CTO & Co-Founder and Jason Brown, General Manager-Government, Applied Intuition joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the company’s acquisition of EpiSci and how they are developing all-domain autonomy solutions for defense applications.
Watch on YouTube | Spotify | X
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Latest Autonomy Markets Podcast
California’s Economy Needs Waymo at Airports, Could Apple Surpass Amazon in Autonomy? May Mobility, an Undiscovered Gem
This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s Bay Area expansion and what it means for the great highway and airport unlocks, our visit to May Mobility in Ann Arbor and Amazon’s struggles with Zoox.
Watch on YouTube | Spotify | X
Listen on Apple Podcasts
March 15, 2025
Subscribe to This Week in The Autonomy Economy™
A weekly newsletter featuring insight and commentary on the autonomy economy™ and how the financial markets are viewing its emergence.
All price references and market forecasts are as of the date that this newsletter has been sent. The Road to Autonomy is not providing any financial, economic, legal, accounting, or tax advice or recommendations in this newsletter. The information contained in this newsletter does not constitute investment advice and should not be relied upon to evaluate any potential transaction.
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