Tesla’s Robotaxi Scale Plan, NVIDIA’s Autonomy Ambitions

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Tesla’s Q3 earnings call, NVIDIA’s strategic partnership with Uber, and GM’s surprising return to autonomy under Sterling Anderson’s leadership.The conversation opens with Walt’s firsthand insights from Tesla’s Q3 2025 earnings call, where the company confirmed plans to remove safety attendants across “large parts” of Austin by year-end after accumulating 250,000 robotaxi miles. Tesla also announced 8–10 additional markets coming online by year-end, including Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, following the company’s phased rollout playbook: safety-attended operations first, followed by fully autonomous service. Grayson projects more than 300 Model Y robotaxis operating in Austin by mid-2026, potentially joined by 25–50 Cybercabs pending NHTSA exemptions.The discussion then turns to NVIDIA’s newly announced partnership with Uber, which Grayson sees as signaling something much bigger than data sharing. He suggests NVIDIA could be positioning to acquire a leading autonomous driving developer such as Wayve, mirroring its CUDA strategy where software dominance separated it from competitors. His thesis: NVIDIA will ultimately own and license an autonomy stack across the industry, creating existential risk for startups dependent on its compute. Walt explores the market dynamics and potential conflicts that arise when your chip vendor becomes your competitor, while noting that NVIDIA’s brand power could simultaneously validate the entire autonomy market.The week also brought news from GM, which re-entered the autonomy race by announcing a 2028 “hands-off, eyes-off” system debuting in the Cadillac Escalade IQ. Sterling Anderson confirmed GM’s staged rollout plan: highways first, urban next, then full urban autonomy.Closing out the episode, Grayson and Walt debut the Foreign Autonomy Desk, covering Baidu Apollo’s partnership with Swiss PostBus, WeRide and Uber’s shuttle launch in Saudi Arabia, May Mobility’s strategic investment from Grab.Episode Chapters0:00 Tesla Q3 2025 Earnings 14:58 NVIDIA’s Autonomy Ambitions 20:59 Avride & Uber’s Autonomy Investment Strategy 23:09 GM is Back in Autonomy28:46 Waymo Begins Manually Testing at EWR (Newark Airport)32:14 Foreign Autonomy DeskAutonomy is transforming industries and creating an entirely new economy that we call the autonomy economy™. The Road to Autonomy provides advisory and market intelligence services that helps you better understand the market and stay ahead of what’s coming next. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com. Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/LightShed Partners is a leading independent research firm focused on the convergence of technology, media, and telecommunications. Known for its forward-thinking insights, LightShed Partners provides in-depth analysis on trends, disruptions, and innovations shaping these industries, offering clients data-driven research to inform investment decisions. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sign up for research here.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The LightShed Podcast, released every Friday, delivers cutting-edge insights into the world of technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT), focusing on key trends and disruptions shaping the future of these industries. Each episode explores topics like streaming services, social media, digital transformation, and the future of entertainment technology. Closely followed by key decision-makers in the TMT industries, this podcast provides actionable analysis for investors, industry professionals, and tech enthusiasts. Subscribe to the LightShed Podcast for expert commentary on market trends, investment opportunities, and insights driving the TMT sector forward. For access to this paywalled podcast email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

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