Tesla Launches Robotaxi Service

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Bloomberg Jun 23 22:40 · 36.6k Views

Tesla began offering its driverless taxi service to a handful of riders over the weekend. Regina Clewlow, CEO and co-founder of Populus, a mobility analytics software company, discusses the launch and the growth of the robotaxi sector with Caroline Hyde on “Bloomberg Tech.”

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Transcript

00:00 What did you make of the initial rollout?
00:03 Well, it's very exciting to have another big player in the mix.
00:06 As I'm sure many folks know, Waymo's been active in the market for at least 20 months with commercial service.
00:11 And
00:12 so it's a pretty big development.
00:13 To have Tesla now delivering fully autonomous vehicle service
00:16 might have been a modest rollout.
00:18 It's not a modest stock move.
00:19 We're at more than 10%.
00:20 There's a lot of hopes and prayers based on where this technology takes us.
00:23 In your mind's eye, Regina,
00:25 how will
00:27 we see the rollout in Austin be picked up by other cities?
00:30 What is pressure is it putting on others in terms of their regulatory environment?
00:34 Well, San Francisco
00:36 has been in operation for over 20 months, but way more than very quickly began expanding into Los Angeles, Austin, Phoenix,
00:44 Atlanta with partnerships with Uber
00:46 and they have Miami and Washington
00:48 coming up next year.
00:49 And it is putting extreme pressure on cities to really catch up and build their digital infrastructure so they can communicate with these vehicles and make sure
00:57 that these rollouts occur safely.
00:58 Because in the case of Way MO, they've grown very, very quickly in the San Francisco market.
01:02 And populist is all about that communication, right?
01:04 Just tell us about what are the learnings, what's the experience?
01:07 So the
01:08 the States and the cities that are watching Austin in particular in Texas do this,
01:13 what do you think that they need to learn?
01:14 What is it the way MO and Tesla need to do more efficiently to ensure that streets do remain safe?
01:19 Well, many cities are building digital infrastructure to begin preparing for the future of mobility.
01:25 We work with cities to help them manage shared mobility.
01:27 So micro mobility, shared scooters, services like Lyme and Bird,
01:32 they actually do need to digitally communicate with cities and cities can digitally communicate back.
01:38 They can share parking policies, no ride policies,
01:41 and these same exact policies are really important for services like autonomous vehicles,
01:46 whether or not
01:47 there are major events occurring or protests and cities need to close roads for emergencies
01:53 all the way to, you know, basic planning services like making sure there enough pick up and drop off zones in a city.
01:58 To this point, you talk about mobility data specification MD's.
02:02 This is basically the establishment of open source standard that's already in place.
02:06 How quickly do you think these companies, private companies have been willing to adopt this to be able to share their data and get the data in return?
02:14 Well, we saw with micro mobility, the transition happened very, very quickly.
02:18 Cities were more prepared after having experienced Uber and Lyft
02:22 in cities,
02:23 to put down some regulations that required mobility operators to share data in the case of scooters.
02:28 So it happened within the course of, you know, a few months to a year.
02:31 Almost every city
02:33 in America and now around the world requires data from those operators through that mobility data specification standard
02:39 and standardization makes it easy for those large operators to then turn on data feeds
02:44 in cities from
02:46 Redwood City all the way to to New York City.
02:49 And so we delivered data through our platform using that data standard.
02:52 And
02:53 with larger operators
02:55 like Uber, Lyft Way, MO is having a little bit more resistance.
02:58 But what we've seen is that when cities have put down policies that that require that data sharing,
03:05 they are often able to
03:07 get operators to comply.
03:09 Maybe there are some battles here and there with states
03:13 in terms of who who's in charge, but
03:15 we've seen cities prevail on that front in terms of data sharing in the shared mobility space.
03:19 So it's kind of they're having to deploy the stick attitude here rather than the carrot of saying like, here's the rules and regulations for you to ascribe by, but talk us through the carrot because these companies will glean a lot if they get the data back from the city, right?
03:32 Well, they'll gain a couple of things.
03:34 One, they'll be able to operate more efficiently if cities are able to then carve off the space that they need in order to do really efficient pickups and drop offs.
03:43 We've seen, for example, with a surge of delivery,
03:45 you have UPS and FedEx trucks that really don't have the space that they need for the volume of delivery that we experience in cities.
03:53 And it's very difficult.
03:54 I
03:55 believe, you know, there are a lot of conversations around bureaucracy and how governments can sometimes move slowly.
04:01 It's really important for cities to be able to have data in order to facilitate making change more quickly.
04:06 And we've seen when operators share data with cities, cities are able then to respond much more
04:12 quickly to create the space that they need to run efficient services.
04:15 I mean, mobility is slowly, slowly, then all at once.
04:18 I mean, it's extraordinary to think how we all have access to an electric bike on electric scooter now in most cities in the way in which we sort of expanded the catchment areas.
04:25 How quickly do you think that adoption will be replicated when it comes to actually not having someone in the front of the car and steering the vehicle?
04:34 The growth of Waymo in San Francisco has been pretty incredible.
04:37 They only launched to their widespread commercial service that anyone could sign up for about 18 months ago, and now they have more than 27% of the market.
04:46 So they've already passed Lyft,
04:48 one of the earlier players in the space.
04:50 And so I would anticipate that we'll see similar rapid adoption of other AV services in other cities
04:56 because people enjoy the service,
04:59 some data shows.
05:00 That people are willing to pay over $20.00 an hour for a Waymo versus just over $15.00 for an Uber.
05:06 So I expect we'll see pretty rapid adoption in other major metros as well because we got humorous price point of $4.20 coming from, you know, Musk company.
05:14 How do things differ with Tesla?
05:18 Well, I think that, you know, Tesla is, is catching up
05:21 on that front.
05:22 They do have an, an A brand that's interesting.
05:25 And so there are definitely
05:26 people who really enjoy
05:29 that experience who have been die hard customers for a while.
05:33 And so we'll we'll see how how their rollout is different from way MO's
05:37 and how quickly they're able to grow.