Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, I'm Stephen Carroll. I'm in Brussels, where many of Europe's biggest decisions get made.
And I'm Caroline Hepke in London. We're the hosts of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast.
We're up early every weekday, keeping an eye on what's happening across Europe and around the world.
We do it early so the news is fresh, not recycled, and so you know what actually matters as the day gets going.
From Brussels, I'm following the politics, policy and the people shaping the European Union right now.
And from London, I'm looking at what all that means for markets, money and the wider economy.
We've got reporters across Europe and around the globe feeding in as stories break.
So whether it's geopolitics, energy, tech or markets, you're hearing it while it happens.
It's smart, calm and to the point.
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Chapter 2: What is Waymo's recent $16 billion funding round about?
You have to check out Waymo. And so we saw so many downloads and so many happy riders while they were here.
Waymo's reputation is growing globally, and we're going to talk about the literal expansion of your operations. But with this funding round, it's a who's who of investors now on the cap table. It's a big raise at a premium valuation. How much of that is sort of setting the pieces in motion to life eventually as a public company?
Is that something that you and Dimitri and the rest of the leadership plan for or is there merit staying as you are now?
You know, we are just laser focused on execution, you know, building Waymo to be financially responsible, operationally excellent, and then make sure we maintain the safety culture. Like that's what we're really focused on.
Having this vote of confidence, as you said, not only from Alphabet, but from our three co-leads from this round and from all of the new investors who decided to join our cap table and the existing ones who doubled down on their belief that this is the right opportunity to fund. And so we just feel humbled. But also, there's a lot to do.
So we're just really focused on making sure that we can scale, focusing on our two first international launches, London and Tokyo, and scaling across the United States.
Let's talk about the growth. A lot of people just want to understand in some of those cities where people are frustrated because the service doesn't exist. What does it take to launch in a city to go from mapping that city through to a full paid commercial service?
Yeah, if the regulatory climate of a city is welcoming, then we can show up and map and launch in a couple of months like we did in Miami. You know, that's a city where, you know, they were welcoming and they were ready and we were ready. And so we showed up, you know, we have a fleet operating partner and we were able to launch quite quickly after we first arrived.
I think in a lot of cities, especially cities that are meaningful from a transportation perspective, we're helping, we're working, engaging with policymakers. You know, we have the burden to demonstrate our safety impact. And so with 127 million miles and 90% fewer serious injury-causing crashes or worse, we have to educate them on that kind of impact. 82% fewer airbag deployments.
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Chapter 3: How does Waymo plan to expand into over 20 cities this year?
And it's a way to slow down the adoption of this technology, not only in the U.S., but in other markets.
New York City. New York City, not necessarily New York State. A lot of people want to know what's the roadblock there, pardon the expression, and what's the timeline? You work closely with the authorities, but that is a big potential market.
Yeah, that's a market where, you know, we're just going to have to do the work and demonstrate our safety outcomes and earn the trust and chisel away at it over time.
Do they have the rules for you to follow?
They do not have rules that allow the human operator to be removed from the vehicle entirely.
And until that changes...
And until that changes. But, you know, there is an interest in doing this in the state, even outside of the city. And that gives us an opportunity to grow more fans and fans actually are calling for this in cities where our technology can't be deployed. We are seeing organic campaigns spring up saying, I want Waymo in my town, you know, and sometimes it's, you know.
parents of children who will never have driver's license saying like, OK, this is a safer alternative. Right. Let's bring it in and let's give these children independence. And so it's been really exciting for us to see people demanding it. And over time, that's going to grow.
Of those 20 cities that are coming this year, New York City is not one of them factored in.
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Chapter 4: How does Waymo ensure safety in its autonomous vehicles?
They've been extremely forward leaning and interested in seeing how this technology could actually improve safety on their roadways. And that's where I think, you know, we find a sweet spot when people are less sort of complacent about the status quo. And I think there's a lot of complacency about road deaths, 40,000 or 1.2 million globally.
And when there isn't, I think people are actively interested in solutions. And then they want to figure out, of course, what are the things they need to think through and learn from.
Well, pricing, for one, like Londoners take the bus. Yes. Londoners take the tube. Yes. Are Londoners prepared to sort of pay for a robo-taxi service that's equivalent to a human-driven cab, black cab in London or Uber and Lyft?
Yes, I, yes, people are, there's, you know, obviously before we go in, we do a lot of polling. We meet with a lot of residents as well as advocates and people are, people want safe, private spaces. It adds to their day versus becoming time that they lose in the day. And so it's a, you know, the thing that's been most exciting is once we introduce the Waymo service into a cityscape,
People discover things they didn't think they could have like that hour a day in the morning and that by yourself to get something done. People have just sacrificed it.
Yes.
And whether that's on transit or whether that's it doesn't matter. And we're not you know, people want to take transit. That's great because you can also sit there. Just can't sit there maybe until you're calm, quiet. And so this is something that we're hearing from riders all the time. I didn't know that I needed this the way that I needed it.
Asia Pacific is also somewhere that is, it varies by country, but robotaxis are embraced. You are looking very closely at Japan. Yes. What do you see in the Japanese market? Of course, you're very closely aligned with Toyota as a partner, almost a national champion for them in the automotive space. But does your hope of launching there go beyond Toyota? Is it enabled by Toyota?
And again, we have a lot of viewers in that country who just want to know when
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Waymo face in scaling its robo-taxi service?
And so finding partners, like you said, national champions who can help us navigate not only the regulatory climate, but who already have that trust. of riders and who can help us educate riders that this isn't like something they are not welcoming. It's actually something they're quite excited about, seeing Tokyo become a city of the future from a transportation standpoint.
But that is a market where the rules exist for you to, through partners or otherwise, but to charge a fare and have a real business, even if modest at first.
That's exactly right. And of course, it's something we've helped shape.
Right.
You know, there's most places contemplated drivers around the world, right? I mean, that's the way laws, whether it's 50 years ago or 100 years ago, I mean, they were sort of written to regulate automobiles and automobiles were presumed to be driven by people. And so most places we have to think through what needs to change in the laws. And then if people are willing to work with us on that,
then we work with them to change it. And so in Japan, we have a path forward.
Around the world, the sort of robotaxi race is framed in U.S. companies against Chinese technology companies, right? I think this is something that Waymo and some of Waymo's executives have been kind of candid about this past week in testimony. How do you see that playing out? For example, with Toyota, you have a partner who also in common work with Pony AI as an example.
It's something you must be conscious of. In markets where you want to expand outside of America in particular.
Yes. In general, if there are other companies focused on autonomous driving to make roads safer, we think that's positive. That is a positive thing. We should have competition around saving lives. And so that's a good thing. I think what we don't spend a lot of time thinking about is how everyone is thinking about how to pursue partnerships right now. We're just laser focused on our strategy.
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