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  • (upbeat music)

  • - Hello, from San Francisco.

  • This is Patrick McGee from the Financial Times

  • and I'm quite excited about this upcoming interview.

  • We've got 30 minutes with John Krafcik.

  • He is charismatic, he is energetic,

  • and he is the CEO of Waymo,

  • formerly known as the Google self-driving project,

  • which goes back to 2009.

  • They are really in, I mean, I think

  • pretty basically you could say

  • they're the leading self-driving / driverless

  • / autonomous robot taxi service operating.

  • They operate the only real driverless service

  • in Phoenix right now.

  • They, I believe test in 25 cities, including on my streets

  • it's even possible that I'll flip the camera at some stage

  • if a Waymo goes by.

  • They've done more miles autonomously

  • than any other driverless company.

  • And if we really want to get a sense of

  • when this technology might change our lives,

  • I think it was nobody better to speak with

  • than John Krafcik CEO of Waymo.

  • Who is joining me here.

  • So hello, John.

  • - Hey Patrick, it's great to be here.

  • Thanks so much for having us.

  • - You got the Waymo mug very nicely placed just over your-

  • - Yeah, Waymo mug is strategically placed

  • and over my other shoulder,

  • there's the little Firefly prototype.

  • - Oh, wait, I can't see it.

  • I feel like I see a globe.

  • Oh, I see just above that, yes.

  • All right, we'll get to the Firefly in a second

  • 'cause that's really interesting.

  • Yeah, this is your no pedals, no steering wheel vehicle

  • but you've moved beyond that.

  • And actually that's something that I wanna get to

  • in a little bit.

  • I'm hoping you can begin

  • with what I consider to be a pivotal story for Waymo.

  • Which is you developed your first driverless car

  • in I think late 2009, 2010.

  • And by 2012 you were doing these pilot projects,

  • allowing Google employees,

  • So people that had nothing to do

  • with the self-driving project,

  • you're allowing them to commute with their vehicles.

  • Sorry, with your vehicles.

  • Telling them, you know under no circumstances,

  • should you not be overseeing the vehicle.

  • You need to be doing that, but look how cool this is.

  • You know, let's do some tests and you filmed them.

  • And I think the film, when the footage came back to you,

  • it shocked you and it really

  • put Waymo on a different trajectory.

  • So do you wanna tell us that story?

  • - Yeah, yeah and maybe just the tiniest bit of context too.

  • So you're right, Patrick.

  • The project started in 2009 and by 2010,

  • this scrappy little team of 20 to 30 folks

  • had done some pretty extraordinary demonstrations

  • of fully autonomous driving.

  • Famously there were 10, 100-mile challenges

  • that the team was able to compete

  • in the first year and a half or two years.

  • One of them included driving all around your neighborhood

  • in San Francisco and then over to Lombard Street.

  • There was another challenge.

  • They went from Mountain View up El Camino, all the way

  • 222 stoplights or whatever it was to San Francisco.

  • The team drove around Tahoe, the team drive to Santa Cruz.

  • So they made a lot of progress

  • in demonstrating the promise of the technology, right?

  • And so at the time Google's thought was,

  • well, what's the first viable at scale commercial product?

  • The initial hypothesis was ironically

  • something called autopilot, team called it autopilot.

  • And it was meant to command the car very safely

  • to drive the car very safely

  • from entry point to a highway or freeway to exit point.

  • And so in Google fashion at the time,

  • the company asked for volunteers within Google,

  • we call this internally in the Google world, dogfooding.

  • And lots of people were interested in this possibility.

  • You'd get a free car at the time, the team was putting

  • the driving mechanisms and the sensors

  • and the compute onto Lexus RX SUVs.

  • And there was a great demand for folks

  • to actually give this a try.

  • So the bar was set quite high.

  • You had to agree to certain stipulations

  • including an indication that you understood

  • this was beta technology and it might not be perfect.

  • So you needed to stay at vigilant.

  • You could take your hands off the wheel

  • but you had to keep your eyes on the road.

  • You had to stay alert

  • and we'd have cameras in the car to monitor you.

  • And if we saw you misbehaving,

  • we would take away this great privilege, right?

  • So we started the project sometime in February,

  • I think it was 2013.

  • And within a month we shut the project down

  • because we saw so many examples of humans misbehaving.

  • And it's this fundamental conundrum that we face

  • whenever humans are forced to supervise technology, right?

  • It's really hard

  • and as the technology gets better and better

  • and by the way this technology

  • that we had at that time was amazing.

  • Humans tend to check out and just assume that

  • the technology is going to be perfect.

  • So in our videos, which you can find in,

  • Patrick, if you haven't seen them we can send them to you.

  • I think they're somewhere on our website at waymo.com.

  • We saw some first indications of concern with

  • the folks in the driver's seat turning around

  • to fuss with things in the backseat.

  • We saw one woman putting on makeup, using an eyelash curler.

  • And the scariest thing we saw was a Googler

  • who was driving to work early in the morning, predawn,

  • driving down highway 280 at about 62 miles an hour

  • who fell asleep because they had so much confidence

  • in this technology that had been working for them so well

  • over the course of a week or so, right?

  • They had already checked out.

  • So we shut that effort down and it sort of inspired us

  • to move in a different direction to solve for full autonomy,

  • fully autonomous driving.

  • - Okay, so let me pause you there.

  • The reason I'm bringing up this seven-year-old story

  • is I feel like it has added urgency now

  • because Tesla, which I guess to some extent is a rival,

  • has its own technology also called Autopilot.

  • But the latest iteration is called full self-driving.

  • And I feel like it's pretty clear they've come to the same,

  • you know, fork in the road.

  • They've seen the same problems with automation, complacency.

  • And yet they've basically said, you know,

  • "We're not taking liability, the driver is."

  • They have some prompts that they agree to

  • and we're gonna allow the system to run.

  • And they want to expand it, you know eventually to

  • potentially hundreds of thousands of vehicles.

  • So based on Waymo's decision,

  • I wanna know to what extent you think that's reckless.

  • Because I don't know that regulators and consumers

  • really make distinctions between

  • different self-driving systems.

  • And what worries me is that

  • if mistakes get made on Tesla's part

  • and you know, these are cars traveling 60 miles an hour

  • so clearly fatalities could be involved.

  • Does that not pose a risk that you cast upon

  • on the entire self-driving industry?

  • - Yeah, maybe a couple points to make there, Patrick.

  • It is important that we talk about these things.

  • The first is Waymo's mission in the world,

  • isn't to be a car company.

  • Our product is a driver.

  • That's our sole focus.

  • And if you look at the business lines

  • that we are just now starting,

  • for example the ride sharing service that is fully open.

  • Unlimited availability to anyone who's in Southeast Phoenix,

  • you can hail a Waymo.

  • Just download the app and a fully self-driving Waymo

  • will come in and take you from wherever you wanna go,

  • from wherever you are to wherever you wanna go.

  • So the technology is here right now.

  • Our key technology is the driver.

  • That's the most important point.

  • That's what we're here for.

  • We're not a car company, therefore,

  • so we really don't see Tesla as a competitor.

  • Rather we see Tesla and other car companies

  • working primarily in the driver assist area,

  • which is important and good.

  • And good driver assist technology can save lives.

  • There's no question about it.

  • The challenge, I think for the auto industry,

  • the traditional auto industry, is to ensure that

  • consumers understand the limitations, right?

  • And the conundrum that we saw at Google back in 2013 is,

  • as the driver assist systems get better and better

  • and better, humans will tend to have more propensity

  • to check out and not do as good a job as

  • supervising that technology.

  • It's a challenging conundrum.

  • So the good news right now is that the driver assist systems

  • do need human attention and they require

  • constant surveillance and humans are able to stay

  • sufficiently busy for the most part,

  • monitoring those things.

  • As they continue to get better, though that's the challenge.

  • You would think that there would be increased safety

  • but there's also increased risk at the same time

  • that the human licensed driver in the driver's seat

  • might check out at just the wrong moment

  • when the car needs some help.

  • - But do you worry about Tesla being reckless

  • and posing risks that might come back to haunt

  • the likes of Waymo?

  • - I think, you know, it's nothing that we can really control

  • at the Waymo side.

  • We're gonna do our best to speak about our technology

  • and deploy it safely and responsibly.

  • You know, I do think it's important

  • for all the participants, both on the driver assist side

  • and the fully autonomous side

  • to be as precise as possible with language, right?

  • And if a licensed driver is required,

  • it should be referred to as a driver assist system.

  • If a licensed driver in the car isn't required,

  • which is the only technology that Waymo is working on,

  • then I think then you should call that

  • a fully autonomous solution.

  • - Right.

  • Okay, so given that you went over some of the early facts

  • of having a autonomous driver system

  • that could navigate Lombard street,

  • you know, famous tourist, windy hairpin turn street

  • in San Francisco 10 years ago.

  • What in a sense is taking so long

  • for this to sort of conquer cities the way that Uber did?

  • I think a hundred cities within four years.

  • And I guess what I look back to with Waymo is

  • in 2018 you ordered 60,000

  • or up to 60,000 Chrysler Pacificas

  • and up to 20,000 Jaguar, I‑PACEs.

  • But if I look for the latest statistics,

  • the latest I've heard is still around 600 vehicles.

  • I think you probably just haven't updated it

  • and it's more than that,

  • but correct me if I'm wrong, it's not in the thousands.

  • It's not in the tens of thousands.

  • So why the postponement in delaying a driverless solution?

  • - Look, I think the technical challenge

  • that we're talking about is probably the most complex thing

  • that a group of humans have ever tried to do.

  • Moving a large physical mass from any point A to any point B

  • on the ground with all of the chaos and entropy

  • that's associated with traffic

  • is an extraordinary task, right?

  • There's no question.

  • And if you look at our timeline, yeah,

  • it has taken some time.

  • We demonstrated the first fully autonomous ride

  • on public roads back in 2015.

  • In October 2015 in Austin, Texas.

  • We're just past the five-year mark now.

  • And if you look at the chunks of time since then, Patrick,

  • so that was 2015, it took us another couple of years

  • to upgrade that technology to our fourth generation.

  • That Firefly car was our third generation technology.

  • The Pacificas that you see driving around now

  • in San Francisco, they are the backbone

  • of our service in Phoenix,

  • that's our fourth generation technology.

  • It took us a couple of years

  • to have fully driverless capability,

  • fully autonomous capability in Phoenix

  • with the Pacificas and our fourth-generation technology.

  • That jump was important though

  • because we went from low speed driving

  • which was sort of the ODD, the operating design domain

  • for the Firefly was below 25 miles per hour.

  • It turns out that's the only way you can

  • put a car without a steering wheel on the road right now

  • with the federal motor vehicle safety requirements

  • that are out there.

  • We use the neighborhood electric vehicle

  • classification called FMVSS 500.

  • I know I'm getting pretty geeky right now but

  • that's why the Firefly really wouldn't work at scale.

  • Because it was sort of limited to a 25 mile per hour speed.

  • Which makes it pretty undesirable

  • for most city driving and suburban driving.

  • - I actually didn't know that, I wanted to ask.

  • I spoke to Aisha Evans from Xerox yesterday

  • and they've gone in the direction of,

  • you know, moving from Toyota's

  • you know, ordinary Toyotas does they'd outfited.

  • And they're introducing, you know, in a few weeks

  • their fully driverless solution that doesn't have

  • you know, steering wheels or a pedal.

  • Waymo has already done that

  • and then actually moved beyond that back to retrofitting

  • Pacificas and I‑PACEs.

  • So is that the answer that regulatory reasons

  • demands that there is a steering wheel?

  • - Well, right now there's no path right now

  • other than a potential exemption path

  • to have a full speed vehicle,

  • a vehicle that can go over 25 miles per hour,

  • without a steering wheel or brake pedal.

  • So it is one of the reasons we chose to move

  • from a dedicated format

  • but really not the primary one, Patrick.

  • Like if you think about the analogy of a human driver,

  • a really good human driver

  • with a commercial driver's license can drive

  • a class A truck, they can drive a motorcycle,

  • they can drive a car, they can drive a bus.

  • That's the analogy that you should think of

  • when you think about the Waymo driver, right?

  • We aspire to drive anything that moves on public roads.

  • Buses, trucks, cars, whatever.

  • And we don't wanna be tied to a single form factor.

  • We're designing this driver so that it can drive

  • just about anything without too much incremental effort.

  • Truly the hardest thing that we're doing,

  • the thing that is 99.9% of the problem

  • is the development of the driver.

  • Do you know the old adage about teaching a monkey

  • to recite Shakespeare from a pedestal?

  • There are two tasks involved.

  • One is getting the monkey to jump up on the pedestal.

  • The other is getting the monkey to recite Shakespeare.

  • If you're tackling a big problem, like autonomous driving

  • you have to decide what is your focus going to be?

  • Is your focus going to be getting that monkey trained

  • to jump on top of the pedestal?

  • Or is it just start with the tougher thing first?

  • And our approach at Waymo has always been

  • the hard thing is replicating the extraordinary capability

  • of the human driver.

  • That's the super hard thing.

  • So that has been our focus.

  • There are lots of wonderful car companies in the world

  • who are happy to partner with us

  • and they're able to provide us those skills that we need

  • and the opportunity to integrate our Waymo driver

  • with a multitude of vehicle types.

  • - And so where are we at late 2020?

  • I know that you're a real car guy.

  • In fact, I probably should have said at the introduction.

  • I mean, you were formerly the CEO of Hyundai America.

  • I believe you spent almost 15 years at Ford.

  • Been doing this since the early eighties.

  • And you must be a good driver.

  • I think you own a Porsche 911.

  • How does the Waymo compete

  • with your own driving capabilities?

  • - (laughs) So the Waymo driver is for sure

  • the world's most experienced driver.

  • You know we've driven over 20 million miles,

  • but more importantly we driven

  • billions of miles in simulation.

  • That's the primary way that we're refining

  • in improving the capability of the driver.

  • You know, it's an extraordinary thing.

  • Whether or not I'm a better driver than the Waymo driver,

  • I think I would put my bets on Waymo.

  • And the reason for that is...

  • (indistinct chatter)

  • But the thing about human drivers, right?

  • Like we can be great drivers when we're focused.

  • The problem is human drivers are human

  • and we lose our focus.

  • And our driving ability is often

  • tied to things like distractions or lack of sleep

  • or having had a glass of wine, or you know

  • looking at your phone and responding to a text.

  • These are the failure modes of humans

  • which the Waymo driver is immune to.

  • - Is it so that you're testing currently in 25 cities?

  • - Right now I think we're in something like five or six.

  • We had been across 25 different cities in our history.

  • Right now we're driving, we have the service up and running

  • the Waymo One service up and running in Phoenix.

  • We're doing a lot of driving in San Francisco.

  • We spent a bit of time in Los Angeles this year,

  • in the Seattle area in Kirkland.

  • We drive a lot in Detroit and Ann Arbor.

  • We've also been in Miami this year

  • and the Upper Peninsula in Michigan,

  • where we did some winter testing.

  • So we've been all over the place.

  • - Out of curiosity then, if I take these five or six regions

  • and just say, what if Waymo One

  • just launched in all of those cities tomorrow?

  • You know, for some reason you were just mandated to do it.

  • The car sounds like it's capable to handle the challenge

  • but you're not doing that.

  • So, I mean, what would happen in that hypothetical scenario?

  • - Oh, I think in that hypothetical scenario, you know,

  • we would, well, first of all,

  • let me I guess maybe challenge the context of the question.

  • We do very well, where we have spent time

  • learning how to drive and mastering that environment.

  • There are different challenges in different locations

  • that take time for us to assure that

  • we've got confidence to drive well in all those locations.

  • So I wanna go back to what we did in Phoenix

  • which is sort of flipping the conventional model,

  • you know around.

  • What we decided to do in Phoenix to demonstrate

  • that we were capable,

  • was to share with a couple of white papers

  • that we released at the end of October, Patrick.

  • First our methodology for safe driving,

  • but then the results of all of our driving in Phoenix

  • from January, 2019 to September 30th, 2020.

  • We drove 10 million kilometers

  • in Phoenix during that period.

  • And we shared all of the contact points

  • that we had with the world.

  • There was something like 47 of them in total.

  • In each of those 47 cases, there was a human agent

  • who had some level of fault and in most cases

  • almost all of the fault.

  • But in all of those cases, the incidents were low speed

  • and relatively low damage.

  • And the idea was as opposed to sending out

  • a shiny demo video trying to demonstrate

  • that the Waymo driver is capable,

  • we took the exact opposite approach.

  • This is all of our driving.

  • These were all of the things that happened

  • that weren't ideal.

  • And you know what?

  • It turns out that they're not so bad.

  • So we had that level of confidence in Phoenix

  • to make the service fully available

  • to anyone who wants to use it as it is right now,

  • based on that experience.

  • And now as we move to other ODDs, other cities,

  • we wanna have that same level of comfort

  • and experience as well.

  • So we would do that before we just said,

  • okay, let's drive everywhere.

  • - And so if the tech challenge is largely solvable, you know

  • like that sounds like it's in sight

  • and you've done it for one city and presumably

  • it's just a matter of time before you do it in others.

  • At what stage does profitability come into play?

  • 'Cause these vehicles are pretty expensive.

  • A lot of research has gone into this.

  • You know, do you have a sense of what costs per mile

  • is it to operate these vehicles?

  • And are you gonna undercut the likes of Uber, Lyft

  • and taxi services on price?

  • And if so, you know, how does that

  • vary your profitability goals?

  • I mean, there's profitability at all on the horizon

  • for the next decade, or is that something to think about?

  • - Absolutely, the unit cost economics

  • of fully autonomous driving are really attractive.

  • I think it's one of the reasons why, you know

  • so many investors are interested in this space.

  • Ride hailing miles right now

  • have a top line revenue per mile of about $2,

  • $2 plus per mile, depending on the city.

  • And it's very easy to imagine a pathway

  • to really strong margins for businesses like Waymo's,

  • with Waymo One.

  • The technology costs was something of course that

  • we keep tight within within Waymo for competitive reasons.

  • But the cost of the Waymo driver is significantly lower

  • than I think the expectation is.

  • Just to give you a general sense, it's in the range

  • of the cost of the cars that we're driving.

  • So it's not an extraordinarily expensive piece of technology

  • when integrated with an electric vehicle,

  • which is our priority right now to have 100% complete.

  • - One thing I wonder about is, I mean,

  • did you envision a time and maybe just, you know,

  • as little as five years, where in a particular city,

  • you are competing with multiple

  • driverless Uber type services?

  • And if that's the case, is there not a risk of that?

  • There's sort of a race to the bottom?

  • In terms of prices, is there not a risk

  • that the self-driving software that's costs, you know,

  • billions of dollars to develop that it becomes

  • commodified to some degree

  • and that you have to differentiate on something else,

  • maybe that's comfort or timing?

  • - I think if developing self-driving fully autonomous

  • technology is one of the more challenging things

  • humans have ever tried to do.

  • I think the second most challenging thing might be

  • trying to understand where competitors in this space are

  • and where their capabilities really are.

  • It's fairly inscrutable, Patrick.

  • It's hard to understand.

  • So I really don't feel equipped to opine

  • on what anyone else in this space, where they might be

  • or how well they might be doing.

  • There's really no way to define it

  • without more transparency from everyone in the space

  • and understanding what their true capabilities are.

  • I have to say though that just based on our experience,

  • we know the challenge and one of the things we've learned,

  • we've learned to become very humble

  • over these last five years

  • because we understand what we might've thought in 2015,

  • we became so much smarter by 2017 when we got

  • three fully driverless cars up and running at the same time.

  • It took us another year in 2018

  • to get a hundred fully driverless

  • Pacificas up and running at the same time.

  • And it took us another year to have the confidence to

  • routinely put citizens of Southeast Phoenix into our cars.

  • And it took us another year, right?

  • To feel that confidence to leave it open to everyone.

  • So it's a long road, it's an extraordinary grind.

  • It's extremely expensive to do it well.

  • You need a massive compute power.

  • You need a huge team of really talented

  • software engineers to deliver this.

  • I'm proud to say Waymo's got an absolutely amazing team.

  • There are now 2100 Waymonites working to bring vision

  • of fully autonomous driving to the world.

  • And I'm quite confident we've got the most capable team

  • in the world to make this thing happen.

  • - Who's your biggest competitor?

  • - What's that?

  • - Who would you call your biggest competitor?

  • - As I said, it's impossible to define that.

  • I really don't have a good understanding.

  • I'm not sure anyway.

  • - Have you planned in an Argo AI and a Zoox 'cause I mean,

  • to what extent do the executives allow each other

  • to try out their vehicles or is that just journalists?

  • - Let's see.

  • I don't think I've been invited yet into any of those cars

  • but at this point I'd like to extend an invitation

  • to anyone who wants to drive in a Waymo.

  • Just come down to Southeast Phoenix

  • and you could give it a try

  • - Yeah, well I guess that no special permission needed.

  • Okay, like several questions come in

  • and there's some overlap in the questions.

  • So let me just try to sort of give you three at once.

  • Obviously a lot of them are forward looking.

  • One question is just how you're gonna

  • commercialize your products.

  • A few people, want to note on licensing the technology

  • to OEM so I guess offer their own services

  • that would use the Waymo technology

  • but presumably not be called Waymo One.

  • And someone wants to know, are you working on, you know,

  • what might be called Firefly 2.0.

  • So are you gonna return to developing

  • your own vehicle at some stage?

  • And another question, actually, you know what?

  • The second is a little bit different

  • so I'll let you answer those two first.

  • - Okay, so we've got two primary business lines at Waymo.

  • Waymo One moves people in things from point A to point B

  • that's up and running.

  • Waymo Via moves goods.

  • And we have two different vehicle types.

  • We're using the Pacificas right now

  • with companies like UPS and AutoNation also in Phoenix.

  • And then we have our class 8 projects

  • and our wonderful new partner Daimler trucks.

  • You know them through the Freightliner brand in the US.

  • We're applying that Waymo driver to class 8

  • over the road trucking that we'll be starting

  • on interstate 10 and roads like that in the Southwest US.

  • So those are the two primary go to market modes.

  • Folks who are always interested

  • in the personal car ownership model.

  • And we're working on that with our OEM partners right now.

  • It's not priority one for us because of the social benefit

  • takes a little bit more time, right?

  • But the downside of personally owned cars is

  • they're only in use for about 5% of their time, right?

  • And so we can't really get as much social benefit

  • from the technology as we can in a ride sharing model

  • or in the Waymo Via goods movement model.

  • But we'll have that.

  • I think it will be likely a subscription model though

  • where you can subscribe to this car

  • for six months or a year.

  • And then after that period, that car will move

  • into a Waymo One like service, where the rest of the mileage

  • in lifetime of the car can be consumed very efficiently.

  • We imagine getting 300,00 500,000,

  • maybe up to a million miles in total from these cars,

  • which is gonna help drive down those unit costs

  • that we talked about earlier, Patrick.

  • It's gonna be a relatively trivial aspect

  • of the total cost stack.

  • The cost of the car, then the cost of the driver

  • when you look at it over a very high number of miles.

  • - This other audience question was,

  • if you were restarting now what would you do differently?

  • - Restarting going all the way back to the Chauffeur stage.

  • You know I think our journey was a fairly efficient journey

  • although it doesn't seem like it.

  • I definitely would imagine thinking more deeply

  • about the Firefly or not.

  • In the end I think it served a really good purpose.

  • It became an avatar for the space

  • and an emblem that everyone could look at

  • and provided some awareness to the work

  • that we were doing at that time,

  • even as a very small entity.

  • So I don't know, no, maybe no,

  • no significant changes to the approach we've been taking.

  • We've always had the motivation to move people and goods.

  • That's always been part of our mission.

  • And we really haven't changed that

  • even in the midst of COVID.

  • I think it reinforced the need

  • to deploy the Waymo driver flexibly

  • so that it could move both people and goods

  • from the very start.

  • And I think the vision that we've had of

  • flexibly applying the Waymo driver to a lot of

  • different vehicle form factors is a really robust approach.

  • I think it makes sense.

  • - We somehow are already down to just two minutes left.

  • I feel like we've just started.

  • - How can that be?

  • - One thing I wanna know,

  • I mean, obviously the biggest congratulations ever

  • for being sort of first to launch a true service,

  • you know driverless for ordinary passengers in Phoenix.

  • But I would not be sure if people in Arizona

  • that can use this service would consider it

  • you know, sort of transformational to their lives.

  • I mean, I could be wrong there, but like, you know,

  • when we think of a self-driving future,

  • you know, we're often thinking about like

  • entire cities could be reshaped, right?

  • We wouldn't need so many parking spaces

  • and things like that.

  • So I'm just curious as to whether

  • there's a disconnect there between, you know,

  • being able to launch the service in many cities

  • and when we get this sort of revolutionary impact.

  • I mean, is that decades into the future?

  • How do you have to think about that?

  • - It's definitely not decades.

  • One of the cooler things about the launch in Phoenix is,

  • we've got well over a thousand riders

  • they've taken tens of thousands of rides.

  • And for them it does feel just normal.

  • Like it's pretty extraordinary.

  • We didn't focus our launch on tech enthusiasts.

  • We focused our launch on the general population of folks

  • who might need to move from point A to point B

  • and for whatever reason didn't want to drive themselves.

  • So to me, it's sort of cool that it's just become

  • this thing that's part of their daily lives now.

  • I do think the revolutionary aspects

  • that you're talking about, we'll see more frequently

  • as we begin to scale in cities like San Francisco, Patrick,

  • you'll feel that more.

  • I see the time ticking down as well.

  • Patrick, I hope this is okay.

  • But I got to see in the pre-show that you have

  • a new addition to your family

  • and we talked a little bit about, yeah.

  • A little wildcard.

  • (indistinct chatter)

  • Yeah, we wanted to give you this.

  • This is a Waymo onesie.

  • We give this to all of the Waymanites

  • who are making new humans.

  • And what's cool about this set is there's newborn size.

  • This is the six months size.

  • Now you get a sense for, you know,

  • the size that your new child is gonna have.

  • That's the 18 months and beyond size.

  • So we aim to keep your sweet little child in Waymo wear

  • for at least the first couple of years of life,

  • I hope that's okay.

  • - Look, I know we're a minute over,

  • but I feel like people are willing to listen

  • to John Krafcik so maybe that's okay.

  • I just wanna throw in a last question,

  • which was that, you know,

  • I don't know to what extent Chris Urmson

  • was your predecessor or something along those lines.

  • He is the Google self-driving project,

  • but he had said I think in 2016

  • that he had a 13 year old and his goal was that his son

  • would never get his driver's license.

  • You know, it was a Ted Talk,

  • I think he was partly making a joke.

  • But it also speaks to me of where

  • how quickly we thought this was happening.

  • So let me just give you far more latitude.

  • This three week old I have,

  • is she ever going to need a driver's license?

  • You know, how much is really going to change

  • in the next 15 and a half,

  • well, I guess it really is 16 years?

  • - She absolutely will not need a driver's license.

  • I can say that with a hundred percent confidence.

  • They're gonna be so many different modes

  • of transportation available.

  • I mean, if she wants to, she can get one.

  • And Patrick, I'm glad you mentioned that

  • I do love cars and I love driving cars still.

  • We're always gonna have personally owned cars.

  • There's no concern about that.

  • And by the time she's driver license age appropriate,

  • she'll be able to use Waymo's

  • in just about any place that she might be.

  • There may be other companies as well

  • that provide that service, but you'll also have access

  • to cars that have the ability to convert I think,

  • into a true L4 experience.

  • I think we'll have cars like that,

  • the subscription model that I mentioned earlier.

  • So, yeah, that's one less thing for you to worry about

  • and as a parent who got through two kids

  • through the driver's license age,

  • I can tell you that it's nice

  • that you won't have to deal with that burden for sure.

  • - Okay, I promise this is the last question.

  • But I would actually question what you just said

  • which is the idea that we'll always be able to drive.

  • I mean, sure, if we're talking race circuits and so forth

  • I think that'll always be a possibility.

  • But I suspect that if it's 40, 50, 60 years in the future,

  • time when I hope we're both still alive,

  • that once you've determined on a city by city basis

  • that robotic vehicles are truly saving lives

  • and that they're available at scale

  • and that everybody could take them,

  • surely it becomes a logical thing

  • that driving becomes banned.

  • I mean, in the same way that, well, I guess,

  • I was gonna go on the horse analogy we won't go for that.

  • There's no horses on the highway.

  • The last panel I had was already about a dedicated corridor

  • in Michigan that I'm sure you're familiar with

  • that will be sort of exclusive

  • to connected vehicles, autonomous vehicles.

  • And one assumes that that one lane eventually becomes two

  • eventually becomes three,

  • eventually becomes a whole four lane highway.

  • That actually strikes me as sort of obvious

  • granted decades into the future.

  • But you seem to question that.

  • - Yeah, well, I guess I agree with the point that

  • there will be some roads or some parts of cities more likely

  • that exclude certain sorts of transportation

  • perhaps personally owned transportation.

  • We're seeing that in some city centers already, right?

  • The exclusion of cars, which would also, I believe,

  • tend to exclude fully autonomous cars as well.

  • Yeah, I think there will be cases and situations

  • in some areas where perhaps there will be something

  • that says you can't drive a car here,

  • if you want to humanly drive a car.

  • But I think those will be the exception more than the rule,

  • but we'll see, we'll see.

  • - Okay, yeah, no, I mean,

  • we're talking decades in the future.

  • Okay, well, thank you so much, John Krafcik.

  • You know I believe this is the final, you know,

  • this is the wrap up interview for the entire event.

  • All that stuff is what we're all looking forward to

  • which is the audience can ask me, Peter Campbell

  • and Joe Miller, the three journalists running this event

  • any question they want.

  • So I encourage everyone to stay tuned and watch that.

  • And thanks so much again to John

  • and look out for a Waymo in a city near you.

(upbeat music)

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