Ken Lucci 0:27

Good afternoon all and welcome to another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. Now, uh, my name is Ken Lucci. I am the Chief Business Analyst of Driving Transactions. I'm normally. Accompanied by my lovely and talented co-host, Mr. James Blaine from Pax. Unfortunately, you're gonna have to put up with me. This will be a monologue today, James is out training, a huge group of chauffeurs, hither, and yawn in an undisclosed location around the country. Uh, James, I hope you're having a fantastic day. I want you to know. I miss you horribly. Um, I'll try not to let it shake in my voice, but this is gonna be an interesting and exciting monologue on one of my favorite subjects. Well, your favorite news subjects. autonomous vehicle news. Duh. Duck. Duck. Don't shut off. This is gonna be really good. Why do I keep bringing this up? My business partner says lovely and talented Cole Weber. Chief. Corporate financial analyst here at Driving Transaction says, I've become obsessed with av number one, we have now, we are now on our third AV financial analysis project for three separate customers. Two of them are, uh, doing financial pro forma, but p and l uh, financial projections on, shuttle, vehicles. and the third is a deployment. Of AV vehicles in a closed community setting. And one of, one of the AV shuttles is for a vehicle manufacturer. The other is for a university system. And the commu closed community setting is actually for a developer, right? So when I see, continue, when I see things that duplicate on our, you know, our radar, they are becoming relevant. And I, I do that with data from operators. Financial data, market data, et et cetera. And in the case of autonomous vehicles, in addition to what we're we're seeing, they're all over the news. Tesla launched in Austin, uh, you know, to mix reviews, but. I focus more on the financial news. So at the end this month, we had two guidance reports on the autonomous vehicle industry. The first came outta Goldman Sachs, which we doing a deep dive on. And the second is Morgan Stanley, that I'm in the middle of the Goldman Sachs report. I also report from Goldman Sachs on the China market for autonomous vehicles, which is voluminous. second use of that word today. And that'll be something separate, but we are behind the curve. On deployments compared to China because they're building them over there. But Goldman Sachs issued a report on autonomous vehicles, in the US and they addressed the market for robo taxis, which is extremely interesting. Now at present, there are 1500 vehicles operating commercially in five cities in the United States. Phoenix being the biggest Austin. La San Francisco, as well as, you know, they're starting in other cities we'll talk about, but Goldman Sachs projects that the market will go from 1500 vehicles to over 35,000 vehicles across the country by 2030. Now, that absolutely dovetails with the news that we brought you last week on the partnership between Uber Lucent. and Nuro where Uber has committed to 20,000 of those vehicles. You know, not all in the United States, but they committed to 20,000. So this is another data point. What's intriguing to me about Goldman Sachs is at that level, AVS would be producing $7 billion in annual revenue and Capturing roughly 8% of the existing US rideshare market. So they're saying that 8% of the US rideshare market is going to shift from a driver on an Uber X or driver on the one of the other platforms to autonomous. Okay, Right now it's less than 1% of the avs are from the TNC platforms. Now, let me quote. Autonomous vehicles have arrived in both ride share and trucking. According to Goldman Sachs research analyst, Mark Delaney. he writes in the report, we believe the key focus for investors. Is now on pace at which AVS will grow and how big the market will become rather than how its technology works. Okay, so Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs. We are big fans here at the Ground Transportation Podcast. Our emails have gone unanswered. We understand that you're busy. But we'd love to have you come on and talk about autonomous vehicles because after this podcast, people are gonna be tired of hearing my little raspy voice. So what's the outlook for autonomous vehicles and robo taxis? Goldman Sachs Research Forecast Robo Taxi Ride Share Market implies a compounded annual growth rate of 93%. Between now and 2030. Now let's put that into perspective. If you read our finance and future of the chauffeur transportation industry or attended the CD NLA Executive Summit by the way, we're gonna have a video of that coming out. You know that the chauffeur industry grows at 2.7% compounded annual growth rate. Keep in mind, we're at the beginning of the autonomous revolution. Well, what does that mean? That means by 2030, the market will be 7.7 billion in revenue, and they're projecting a 40 to 50% gross profit margin on those rides. Roughly two point, excuse me, 3.5 billion by 2030. You know I'm Mr. Gross profit. You know that I'm big on knowing all of the costs to turn the key and do the work. They believe that the gross margins on that will be 40 to 50%. Now, in addition to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley just issued a 52 page report. On autos in the shared mobility sector called from horsepower to brainpower, how AI takes the wheel. As AI accelerates change in the auto industry. Now understand something. The AI and AV space in the auto industries, not just Robo Cab, you know, it's me buying an AV enabled vehicle for myself. And at the end of the day, letting Bentley my Jack Russell Terrier drive home and me sit in in the passenger seat. He's actually on my lap right now, but at the end of the day, the AVS will have private use, but the Robo Taxii piece is a completely separate part of the sector. Morgan Stanley believes that autonomous vehicles will be a $200 billion market in self-driving vehicles around the world by 2030. Understand these are big global financial powerhouses. They look at the whole market. They've identified 60 stakeholder names that you must become. Associated with, or excuse me, you have to have 'em on your radar. The tech people that build the technology, the companies that are doing the robotics, the autonomous vehicles, et cetera. Good news is we're gonna have a report. We're gonna distill all this stuff down and put it in my sixth grader language. And we will have a report for you later on the fall in time for the Chauffeur Driven National Limousine Association Show in October in Dallas, which talk about a little bit later, but shine up. currently has 30,000 robo taxis on the road in 10 major cities around the country, and Goldman Sachs has a completely separate report on that, and we're dissecting that because it's a critically important to look at the rest of the world. We're behind the curve because they're building them over there. The tech is all over there, but we're catching up fast. the interesting thing about that report is with 30,000 robo taxis in 10 major cities in China deployed by, we ride the Uber equivalent in China, we ride pony ai, which builds a vtech and Apollo go, which builds the vehicles as well. All of these companies with their 30,000 vehicles are break even. Either they're starting to turn a profit on their fleets. Either and their infrastructure this year or at the latest by mid 2026. Think about that now, the average vehicle in China earns $31,000 in revenue, a month. Okay, so roughly a thousand bucks a day. A little bit more. So back to the us sec. At the moment in the United States, we have three major players in autonomous vehicles. First Waymo, owned by Google has 1500 vehicles on the road in five cities. and they're mapping another 10 cities, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and if I'm not mistaken, they're launching in Atlanta and DC uh, as we speak. Waymo's owned by Google. So they have an unlimited amount of money to throw At this market for avs, so interesting stats. They've had 10 million paid rides completed. They average 250,000 rides a week, and they currently only have 1500 vehicles now every five months that business doubles. Okay? So they're expanding in 10 more cities in the United States by 2026. They're currently mapping Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Seattle. Now they have committed another 2000 vehicles are coming from Jaguar by the end of 2025 and they've announced a new partnership with both Toyota and Hyundai to utilize their technology. So what is this gonna look like if you buy a Toyota? My forerunner is gonna be replaced with an AV vehicle at some point, uh, they'll pry it outta my cold dead hands 'cause I love it. Waymo has 3,476 patents globally with 1,898 granted here in the United States, 3,199 active, whatever that means. Now, these patents cover a Range of AV tech. Okay, so what are they doing? They're going to Toyota and Hyundai and saying, look, instead of doing what GM did, which was launch cruise and use your own AV technology, we're gonna grant you use of our patents. but here's the thing. We wanna use your vehicles when you build them because we're, you know, kind of getting tired of Jaguar. That's my war. It's not theirs, but. They're making deals with Toyota and Hyundai, so they're not gonna be married specifically and only to their first generation level four autonomous vehicle. Now, level four means, you know, it's, it's working on its own, but the liability issues are still with the manufacturer. Level five is completely autonomous, and you know that will evolve. So Google's Waymo's main. competitive advantage of those patents. Then we have Zoox, the second player in the industry owned by Amazon. Now they only have a handful of vehicles on the, on the road, and they're in Las Vegas now. They're a sleeper. Okay. They, if you, if you've gone to Vegas last year, I saw one and I almost spit out my Dunkin Donuts coffee. 'cause it looks like a boxy vehicle. Literally. It looks like a toaster, but it, it supposedly can fit, I don't know, eight people in it. Here what's going on. they announced that they are in the middle of building a mega factory in California to be able to spit out 10,000 of these vehicles a year. Well known. So their strategy's been a little bit different. Prove it works in one place, then they're gonna massively build these vehicles. Now, I don't think they want to own the vehicles and I don't think they wanna run the business just like they Amazon as the whole network of last mile providers. That's gonna be an opportunity for fleet operators. The third. Player in the United States is Tesla. Tesla, robo taxis went live in Austin last month. They're going live in San Francisco they're mapping out several of the cities in the United States and they're being seen all over California mapping. Now they've been mixed reviews on Tesla autonomous rolled out in in Austin. But you know what? Never underestimate Elon Musk. And, uh, I got a little pissed off the other day because somebody on a podcast, it was from Bloom, the guy was from Bloomberg, said, well, he's the PT Barnum of, AVS and EVs. You know something? Uh, I don't wanna bring up his name. When you've accomplished everything that Elon Musk has and you have his net worth, then you have the right to call him a PT Barnum. Okay? Is the guy a great promoter? Does he promote. You know, big time when his stock, on his stock calls. Yeah, he does. But the guys get one of the most brilliant minds in the history of mankind. but I'm still keeping my Bloomberg terminal. It didn't piss me off that much. Okay, so the biggest news I. Tesla's gonna keep going, and Tesla is going to roll out and ask for forgiveness. Couple things to watch about Tesla. There's a lawsuit coming up, I think it's underway in Miami, in Florida, about the Tesla autopilot. There was a private vehicle and the autopilot killed somebody, or the car crashed and somebody died. Watch what happens with that liability. 'cause that's gonna really be a bellwether to all of these companies. Okay. to see who's liable when these AVS crash. Now the big news to me last week was. We first talked about it on last week's podcast with my lovely and talented co-host, James Blaine is the News from The Evil Empire. No, I'm not speaking about the New York Yankees. Even though I love the New York Yankees, and I love all of those people. I'm speaking about the true evil empire of Uber. They announced a partnership to build 20,000. Premium autonomous vehicles using the lucid, gravity, SUV. The stock unit that they built the prototype on went out at 93,000. obviously they Uber didn't pay that. They probably lent it to them and stock SUV. Was combined with an autonomous technology platform called Neuro Drive from a company called Neuro, NURO. Now, the big news here is Uber with $7 billion in cash on their balance sheet. From what I can. See from the analyst reports is they made a commitment on this project of between 600 million and 1 billion, drop the bucket. They committed to 20,000 vehicles and they're gonna launch in a major city in the United States in 2026. And here's the rumor. You heard it here first. The rumor is New York. Okay, now, so they invested 300 million in Lucid. That's a public company that's on the record. Published reports say they quote, invested several hundred million dollars in neuro. By the way, I am a huge fan of the guys at Neuro. Okay here's why. There's several facets to this story. Number one, the launch of a quote, premium class, SUV, with the lucid gravity that goes anywhere from an MSRP to set from 75,000 to 93,000. That's number one. Number two, the financial commitment of Uber. Okay? Made to buy 20,000 of these premium class AV vehicles. They will. Own and operate themselves. So going away from the asset light model, or they'll likely find a partner like Avis. I mean, Waymo is partnering apparently with Avis. Don't quote me on that one, but they'll find a partner like that for a national fleet operator. But the most intriguing thing to me is this partnership with neuro. Now NRO was started by a couple of former engineers from Google's self-driving Project Waymo. Now Xi June Zu and David Ferguson. Dave Ferguson is in the videos visit. Neuro AI, NUR o.ai. Check out their website. They have a platform called NeuroDRIVE, which is vehicle agnostic. What does that mean? Vehicle agnostic means they can slap this technology on top of any stock vehicle. Okay. And they have this thing that looks, fiberglass color matched unit that sits on top of a stock vehicle to make it av and they integrate it. Now, in the case of the Lucid Gravity, they integrated their tech into a stock vehicle. It went from, by the way, the sticker price on that unit was 93,000 'cause it was premium like through the roof. And they installed the neuro driver technology and they had the prototype finished and working in five weeks. So they take a stock, SUV, they bring their neuro drive. They put it on top of the vehicle, they integrated it into the vehicle systems. In five weeks, they have the prototype running lapse in Las Vegas. Okay? Now, if you are a chauffeur operator, you're gonna wanna look at their website, neuro.ai, watch their videos, and you form your own opinion. Now the game is changing before our eyes, this partnership between Uber Lucid and neuro. By the way, uh, shout out to Dave Ferguson from Nuro Again, you have not answered my emails. I won't hold it against you. You're a busy guy. We would love to have you on the Ground Transportation Podcast to go techno nerd on. Your tech, because I'm extremely impressed with it. But I have a fifth grade education when it comes to this stuff. I cannot learn that tech. I can only study the market financially. Okay? So please, Dave Ferguson, give us a call, email us. We'd love to have you on the website. If you are a chauffer operator and you don't visit that website, you, you're ostrich with the head in the sand. So to me. This is a bellwether. this is a canary in the coal mine for the chauffeur industry to understand that there's going to be an evolution here, and it's going to first disrupt and then create massive opportunities now. Understand what I'm saying here. This is a, vehicle agnostic technology that can be put on top of any vehicle. Imagine instead of that lucid, I'm sure it's a beautiful vehicle, but imagine if it, it was a Cadillac Escalade ev. For the sake of argument, this is the first entry into the premium autonomous vehicle sector. Okay? Hear it now, I, I want to coin a term, an industry term, and I, I mean it, I, I hope someday it'll be on my Wikipedia, it's not gonna be on my gravestone. It should be in Wikipedia that I was the guy that came up with the term autonomous delivery. Okay. Why? Yeah. This robotaxis thing is almost insulting, but autonomous delivery is really what it comes down to. It's autonomous, live autonomous vehicles for commercial and Commerce, use use in commerce. So just imagine if the next premium stock vehicle to integrate with neuro is not that lucid, but it's instead that new Cadillac Escalade ev. And just imagine for a second. That instead of Goldman Sachs executives or their management team, if not their C-suite, their management team used buy, they buy five of these things and they put it in the Goldman Sachs garage in New York and say, you know what? We're gonna use that to and from the airport. Now good news is their executives are still gonna use us. There's gonna be a massive. Growth in the highest level of usage in the shore space. And we can get into that later on, but there will be some leakage. Okay? Now, if you are a fleet operator and you go to one of these banking companies and say, look. I'm gonna buy five of those for you. I'm gonna lease 'em to you. We're gonna maintain 'em, we're gonna clean 'em. They're gonna detail 'em. By the way, when they stall on the parkway or get hit, we'll go out and get 'em. You, you don't have to have a fleet manager. Goldman Sachs, uh, bank of America, uh, JP Morgan, McKinsey. We'll do it for you, but we want all of you global transportation. Okay? Do you see where I'm going with this? Opportunity you turn disruption into opportunity. Okay. It's not gonna happen tomorrow. Don't get all upset. The next interesting developments on autonomous come from of all places, Jacksonville, Florida. I mean, do we really think Jacksonville is the tech mecca of the world? I don't think so. I visited Jacksonville. First thing that has happening in Jacksonville is the Bentler groups. Bentler is a German manufacturer of e shuttles. We may have data on that company and their division is called, hold on. Okay. They are planning to build a factory in Jacksonville to assemble autonomous shuttle vehicles when it's open. It's gonna be in 2026. It will have 500,000 square foot facility. They will be mass producing. Battery powered vehicles that can carry up to 15 passengers. Now visit Bentler now. My dog's name is Ben Lee, but the website is B-E-T-E-L-E-R. Ben, B-E-N-T-E-L-E-R. Visit the website. All you have to do is put in Jacksonville e shuttles and it'll come up. Now the second news outta Jacksonville. Who would've thought two big stories outta Jacksonville on autonomous vehicles. The second is the Jacksonville Transportation Authority is the first public transportation service that is using autonomous vehicles. They the launch of Navy NAVI Navy, and it stands for the Neighborhood Autonomous Vehicle Innovation. they're putting, their first vehicles are already on the road. They've launched a sprinter van with autonomous technology, autonomous driving package. I have not found out who the robotics company is yet, but it's, right now traversing the streets of Jacksonville. By the way, shout out to Tom Holden. favorite DOT guy in the industry the most. No question. The best DOT expert in the industry, he sent me that, that notice, and I, I looked it up. But thank you, Tom, for sending that to me. Now, keeping up with the southern theme, the University of Mississippi has an ev AV shuttle program, electric vehicle. Autonomous vehicle combined shuttle program underway as well. And they're using a shuttle from a company named BEEP. I've not done a tremendous amount of research on it. I am actually studying an electric vehicle shuttle program that just started in. Northern Ireland because they answered my emails and they're providing me with tons of data. But it's same kind of 15 vehicle kind of fleet. there's also been talk about a similar AV program with the University of Michigan. We're gonna have to see how that one goes as far as the winter. So what's next for autonomous? Okay guys, you're in the transportation space. You're in the passenger transportation space. Cannot be in ostriches. We cannot be just simply working in our businesses every day. We have to look up and we have to get information and become educated, much more so than just going to two shows. So what's next for autonomous? We're gonna watch how the mapping and launch of Waymo, Zoox and Tesla is going in the 10 United States, cities that have already been announced. Let's keep an eye on that Uber lucid neuro project. I believe it's not gonna be New York. I think it's gonna be California, but that's just me bets. Anybody take bets? Okay. just so you're aware, just, I'm gonna throw this out there. under no circumstances would I ever do work for Uber. We've been asked. We politely said no. so at the end of the day, all of our work on AB is gonna either be with manufacturers or specific use groups. and the more we get out there, I think it will become bigger. I think we're able to help operators do it, we've got a couple of operators that we're working with now on it, so there are significant issues. Watch how this e shuttle pilot program develops in Jacksonville, right? And so let's just talk this through. If Jacksonville falls on its ass and the public transportation authority cannot, they spent $5.5 million on this project so far. I don't know how many units they have. But anyway, if that doesn't work, that's going to be a step backwards, right? These other cities that Waymo is launching in don't go, well, you know, that's going to be kind of a. headwind for avs. But my personal opinion is when you are talking about technology companies that have an unlimited amount of money, they're gonna find a way to make it work. Okay? So there are significant issues and concerns that are evolving and need to be addressed. So we need to all stay tuned and we. We hope to have many AV stakeholders on the podcast coming months. Now, what are these significant issues and concerns? Number one, it's an uncertainty about safety. Okay. One of the main benefits of supposedly rolling out driverless cars is to increase traffic safety by eliminating driver error, okay? The NTSB has reported in 2018 that more than 90% of serious crashes were due to human error. we get it right, but there is still not converging evidence to support the idea that AI and AV taking over from human drivers can make roads safer. Now, here's the issue at the moment. It's not necessarily an issue. I'm just very cynical. All of the data is coming from the manufacturers and the industry stakeholders. Okay. Now, a cynical person would say to you, this is a repeat or chapter two of what we heard when Uber came into the market saying. Oh, this is a shared thing. It's the shared economy. It's going to, make carbon emissions much, much less. Well, the reality is it's doubled carbon emissions because the damn vehicles are going 45,000 miles a year instead of the average of 18,000 miles. And they're going half the time empty. So don't get me started on the, the sharing economy, but all I'm saying is when the stakeholders that have a financial benefit in an industry are the only ones proffering data. We need to be aware. So I believe you'll see more coming out from the National Highway Safety Administration. You'll have more on the national DOT, but at the moment. You know, it's gotta be a drill down on all the safety. It has to be, and it has to come from multiple places, universities and colleges, as well as industry stakeholders. So, on the other hand, you know, the evidence that adverse weather conditions, road design and mixed traffic, okay. can degrade the performance of these vehicles and anomalies in driving patterns, et cetera. I think that. the self-driving tech the AI algorithms have to be proven much better than human reaction. So uncertainties around safety. Okay. Second of all, regulatory and legislation. Hey, big surprise behind the curve. Legislation and regulation processes are much slower than the market and the tech. Okay? So there's tons of stakeholders involved. We're gonna get into how this germane to operators. Okay. But there are decisions being made at the city level, at the airport level, at the state level, and at the federal level. And manufacturers and industry groups like the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, which by the way is a great association. their safety reports are fantastic. That'll be part of our report is the data, but something about only 30% of the regulators have made decisions. Don't quote me on that, but there it is a big, it's big in flux. Okay? So we have to watch about the regulatory and legislation and shame on you as an operator in the transportation space if you don't know what's happening in your market. Number three, the insurance industry is not ready. Now, we will have in the coming episodes from, in my view, one of the premier. Commercial insurance providers in the country. It's a company called Research Underwriters. Steven Freeberg has become a, a good friend. Uh, by the way, one of the only guys that calls me Kenny. And I like that because, it's a bond. he's allowing us to have his Chief operating officer on Andrew Dons, and we're gonna have this discussion about the insurance industry as a whole. And then we're gonna talk about avs. Now, this is, at the moment there's scarce actuary data and most of the safety and crash data is coming from the manufacturers. So, you know, thi this is combining ambiguities here, right? So the insurance industry has got to really. gotta have their answers. Now, one of the biggest issues you we have with these vehicles is the pricing. So when there's a crash of one of these avs, the insurance companies, a stroke and a check could be six figures, right? Just for the vehicle, forget about personal injury. So the insurance industry is not ready yet, but I, I'm very, very confident that the insurance industry as a whole there's people on this and the actuaries are. Querying for data and if, if anybody loves data, it's the insurance industry. So these include making sense of where the liabilities lie and developing new insurance models and adapting these premiums as these types of claims evolve. Okay. There's also other risk here. That is cybersecurity. These vehicles I'll talk to an infrastructure. Again, 60 years old, don't I'm I struggle with my smartphone, but they tell me that these things are, susceptible to hacking. So that entire piece of the puzzle, so that an AV is not used as a missile, right? That's gotta be addressed. And you know, the insurance industry is gonna. obviously have to get on top of that. And the fourth issue that's a concern is that these are all new business models, okay? At the moment, they're coming from people that have big tech companies that have huge dollars. Okay? GM is the one that started autonomous vehicles at the World Fair in 1939, if I'm not mistaken. They introduced an autonomous vehicle tech, and then in the fifties they talked about it and then Carnegie Mellon was involved in the university and, and believe it or not, the Defense Department was involved 175 years ago. But anyway, their money is nothing compared to Google Money. And Waymo Google money is real money and Amazon money. Just think every single every package that you get is funding Sue X anyway. So the new business models are gonna evolve because I don't know, I just don't, when you look at the Amazon's model, their last. Mile delivery is put a ton of entrepreneurs in business. I believe that when autonomous delivery comes full circle, they're gonna look to the largest and most successful and profitable operators in the region. And they're gonna say, Hey look, we wanna put Zu X, but you know what? We don't wanna build a a facility. I mean the top 20 MSAs, metropolitan statistical areas in the United States are absolutely gonna be the first ones, but. They're certainly gonna need operators, hither and ya everywhere. They're, they're not gonna deal with every university or college. They just don't have the infrastructure, right? So they're going to either work with rental car companies, which we all know, aren't that nimble. or they're gonna truly work with fleet operators and this is gonna be part of your repertoire. Okay? So these companies are eventually gonna shift. Right now, Waymo doesn't sell a vehicle to the public. Neither does Zu X, but at the end of the day, I don't think they're building that plant just to sell the units to themselves. So there's gonna be an evolution of selling cars into mobility as a service, even by car manufacturers. You know, the funny thing is Tesla's get this idea. I love Elon Musk. No, not, not the poli politics side, but the guy is in Einstein. I don't think he sleeps. He's got this idea that if I buy a Tesla AV. I'm gonna pay 90 grand for it. I sit in this office 12 hours a day. I'm going to put that unit, allow that unit to be used for autonomous vehicles, okay. In autonomous service. So at the end of the day, I'm getting into a vehicle that's a, Petri dish. I don't think so. Elon flaw. F. It's okay. You can make a mistake now and again, you're a genius. But I think that, you know what, if there was an ROI would, I buy five units, put 'em in the Salisbury garage across the street and deploy them and then clean 'em once a day. If the business model worked, I would, okay, let's wrap this up in 20 minutes. What should forward thinking operators be doing to prepare? What do I mean by forward thinking? If you are stuck every day working in your business, you're not forward thinking. If you are working on your business and you are thinking of how the business is going to look. A year from now, two years from now, five years from now. 'cause it's gonna have impact on the value of your business then for that's forward thinking. You are working on your business. I'm not saying 60 hours a week of session on, uh, autonomous vehicles, which. Apparently it has been me over the past few weeks. Um, the good news is Cole is busy, so, and I can't sell much more. He told me to take a hiatus on bringing on new customers. So this is good stuff. So I have, I have the time, I have the time to read and I have the time to advise, and several operators have called me and we are in total simpatico. On the fact that eventually these fleet operators will be called upon and avs will be part of your fleet. So what should I be looking for now and how do I prepare? One of my best operators in New Jersey called me and said what does this mean to me? I said, simple. Know the players in the AV space know what decisions they're pondering and get into the discussion. So who are the people at the airports? What are the people in charge of transportation for the sake of argument at Newark Airport or JFK or LGA, or Logan? What are they looking at for their internal transit as well as. Hotel shuttles. What are the airport officials positions? What are the city officials doing? Okay. I, a great operator from my hometown of Boston call me and say, have you ever driven around Boston? Do you really think that they're gonna be autonomous vehicles? Yeah, I do. They're mapping, the three companies are mapping that city. this summer. now that's another subject of them sharing their mapping, but yes, I do. I don't think they're spending millions just to try. Will there be places where they don't go? Of course. Of course. Absolutely. But do I think at some point my family will be coming from Wilmington, Massachusetts to Logan Airport in an av It'll be an option at some point when I don't wanna bet on that. So know the players in a, in the AV space, making decisions, your city planners, your airport planners, your city transit people, your airport transit people, your state Department of transportation people, your state. Planners, okay. Colleges and universities and closed campuses or closed communities get involved in the discussions and know what's happening. Become a resource, okay? I'm not saying to put AVS on your website this second, but get in the mix. Know the nomenclature, and know who all the players are in the industry in the United States. I am, without question, impressed. by several of the tech companies, not necessarily the manufacturers of the vehicles, but the tech companies. And this neuro idea of building and mapping out every community and building an agnostic platform that can go on any vehicle. That's the ticket. Okay. So we have a report coming in addition to knowing the players and getting involved in your local area and what's going on. It could literally even be your local school system. Look at Jacksonville again. The public transportation. Jacksonville, I think is in the, in, in the maybe the lower 30 maybe. 30 MSAI have to, I'd have to open up a report to figure out how big it, but it big it is, but it's not Newark or Jersey City. Jersey City's being mapped right now by Waymo. Alright, so know the players in the AV space, get in the discussion, become a resource. Know who's there, eavesdrop on the conversations, look at all of the documentation, and then know all the players that are in the industry. So we have a report coming out in the fall that is going to be talked about in my state of the industry introduction. I sponsored the state of the industry. Event, uh, after being encouraged by the NLA President Brett Baren Holtz, who says, um, you know, Luci, your data is fantastic and unlike past years and other people talking about data, your stuff is true. I'm like, you think so? Never question the data, is what I say to many of my clients. Anyway, so Brett, Brett sat in on the, the C-D-N-L-A. Um, executive retreat where I went, went through our financial state of the industry report. This is gonna be a separate report that's gonna be available on the website, so we'll talk about it a little bit in the intro, you know, only five or 10 minutes, and then the report will be available. And that show, by the way, let's just give a shout out to that for Chris Weiss is gonna, we're gonna have Chris on before the show, probably get Brett on. Those two together are gonna be fantastic. it's October 25th and through 28th. It is the Gaylord in Texas. It is in Dallas. Uh, go onto the driven website or the NLA website. Let's talk about impact. Yeah. Yeah. The autonomous vehicles will have an impact on the taxi industry, and in my view, it'll relegate taxi operators to cash payers, subsidized programs, and not smartphone, non-smart phone users. We have done, we've done quite a bit of work in the taxi space and at the end of the day. Taxis have gone from the average business person going from the railroad transit to their house in a taxi. Now that's, the TNCs venue. I mean, I actually have a taxi company that does this, and they were that there were a client of ours and people waiting for Uber would sit in their lobby when it was cold. So the taxi business is down about 85%. Since the TNCs, you can look at this in New York. It's incredible. and it's gonna be, this is gonna be the death note. Now, I urge every taxi operator to get in the middle of this and to pray that they can do the autonomous vehicle thing. And it's a simple ROI calculation. Once you know the data, you see how much the vehicle costs, how long it's gonna last, what the repair and maintenance is gonna be, what the fuel is gonna be. If it's an ev, you're already saving money. And guess what? Don't have to deal with taxi, driver. There's still gonna be opportunities, tremendous opportunities in taxi in the non-emergency space. Okay? Autonomous vehicles will soon be an on. All of the TNC apps, and it is gonna displace drivers okay. On the TNC platforms, but it's gonna be an option. Okay? So someone who's a great, I'm a great fan of this person. He is a, he's an operator out in Phoenix, very large operator. And I said to him, this affecting you. And he said, yeah. yes, the Waymo's are affecting the business, I believe, but I'll tell you what, Ken, I'll put my kids inside of Waymo before I'll put 'em inside an Uber any day. This gentleman's quite the family man. so autonomous vehicles will soon be an option on the TNC apps. You are, you're already seeing the investments that Uber is making. Uber has also made a deal to be on the Waymo platform, et cetera, et cetera. In the shore sector. The larger evolved, astute and profitable operators will benefit overall from adding, eventually adding autonomous vehicles to their fleet in specific segments first. So my advice to every serious operator is to prepare by first getting involved in the discussion and learning and listening. An entrepreneur have always been criticized for not being a good listener, but I think entrepreneurs control their own destiny and they, many of 'em, us love the silent of our own voice. We even start podcast, but I think it's. Get involved. If I'm an operator in New York, I am watching what's going on and I'm in the discussion, not as a naysayer. You can't stop this. Stop. It's not gonna, you're not gonna stop it. And as AI evolves, look at this storm. You have unbelievable amounts of tech money. You have the AI revolution. And you have the change in the auto autonom in the automobile industry, from combustion to ev, other alternative fuels. So get involved in the discussion, learning and listening. we will start having some, I believe, public published. data on specific AV vehicles that will be made available to the industry so that you'll know if this vehicle costs me X and I, I'm gonna be leasing it, my return on investment, my breakeven, et cetera, and my profitability. You know, that's what we do. I'm really happy to continue this discussion. I, one of my clients said to me, you're not gonna make too many friends by keeping the post on autonomous vehicles. Contrary to popular belief, while I love having friends, my key role in the industry and my company's role in the industry is to provide data. It is to give you the data and as much unabashedly. sterile data as we can and give you our sentiments and our advice because our sentiments advice are not from the echo chamber of our own little company. It's from talking to every stakeholder that we can find. I've been literally emailing people in Singapore, Korea, the uk. Many of them actually answer my emails. speaking to people at universities, speaking to every single expert I can find on av. When you see us have in the future months, we are hoping to have some of the, the primary stakeholders in the industry on the podcast. All we wanna do is inform. it may get annoying when I post five times a week about av. We will not have this on the podcast every week, but we felt that after last week's development of Lucid and the more data we compiled from the public, News as well as the financial platforms we're on. We, we felt it was worthy of one more episode. So that's all for now. keep tuned in here and visit the driving transactions.com website. Get on our mailing list. It's cost you nothing. Um, we're gonna probably put out a video in the report, presentation, and then we will put out a secondary report with all of the stakeholders in it. again, we look forward to, uh, the chauffeur driven NLA conference in October. That's when we're going to introduce the first parts of the report. The report will be, you'll sign up, be able to sign up for that, and, and, but in the meantime, look around your local market. If you are in the top 20 MSAs, they're coming. Even if you're not in the 20 MSAs. Look at the colleges and universities around you, and at the end of the day, this technology is going to provide great opportunities to the operators who are forward thinking prepared. Profitable because they're gonna take capital. So again, thank you very much for listening. We're at the top of our hour. I miss my co-host James Blaine from PAX Training more than I can express in words. hopefully he'll be back with us next week, and the two of us will be pontificating, sometimes bloviating on the next subjects involving ground transportation. So in the meantime, have a terrific week. And keep on rolling. Talk soon. Thank you and have a great day.

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Thank you for listening to the ground transportation podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX training and to contact James, go to PAX training.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, Go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the ground transportation podcast.