San Francisco is the epicenter of robo taxis in the United States because Silicon Valley is on one end of San Francisco. Now currently Waymo operates fully autonomous robo taxis 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in a 260 square mile area this service includes some freeway driving, recently gained approval for direct curbside all day service to and from San Francisco International Airport and San Jose Airport. But here's their Achilles heel, and here's the reality. Well, good afternoon ground Transportation Podcast audience. My name is Ken Lucci from Driving Transactions. I'm usually here with my lovely and talented podcast partner. James Blaine from PAX training, but this is gonna be a solo episode, so don't, don't, don't tune out. I think it'll be interesting. Um, we've opted to do a solo episode, and I encourage you to go on YouTube and look at this because we're going to be talking about and showing you a presentation on the state of autonomous vehicles, and this is specifically for. Chauffeur operators and even taxi operators on what to expect and how to navigate the road ahead. This will be a first shot at, what we know now for data. Uh, the first podcast and presentation, and it's going to be lead to our first full report on autonomous vehicles. That's gonna be due out in June. So recently in Las Vegas, we gave a presentation on AV. And with the constraints of a session, we have to go pretty fast and, uh, we wanted to get to q and a pretty pretty fast. So I wanted to, kind of revamp the content and talk about this, um, on the podcast so that you guys can go back and refer to it anytime you want. So let's first talk about some important definitions. Autonomous vehicle. is the first definition and it's a vehicle that can sense its own environment and operate with little to no human input. Let's put a pin in little to no human input. It uses a combination of software in the vehicle and sensors as well as computer systems to drive itself. And there are six levels. Uh, we'll go into those. Autonomous taxis or robo taxis, and I frankly hate that term. I hate it, but it is what it is. It's a fully autonomous vehicle operating at an SAE level four or SAE level five. That is part of what's known as a TNC technology platform or, or a specific taxi. Platform. So you can't just throw one of these vehicles on the road and somebody gonna order it up without having an app and without having a full infrastructure. So the autonomous vehicles used to provide paid passenger rides just like a regular human taxi, but with no, eventually with no driver behind the wheel. And then autonomous delivery is a term that's been baned about and coined. Frankly, I think we are the first ones to really continue to use it. It's a fully autonomous vehicle that is deployed in, um, commercial operation with or without monitors to carry passengers. Primarily at this point on predefined routes and schedules and other use cases. Now, these vehicles can be programmed. And configured for individual assignments, or they can be used part as a part of a bigger autonomous platform. So let's get into this a little bit further. So six levels of autonomous vehicles, the engineering group, society of Automotive Engineers, SAE International, created these six levels of autonomous driving, which were adopted, had been adopted by the US Department of Transportation. Now, SAE is the, IS only one stakeholder group in the development of av. There was a big push back in the day around the 20 14, 20. Even before that, the automobile manufacturers were taking the, in the driver's seat, oh my gosh. In the driver's seat of autonomous vehicles. But now you're going to see the technology companies have really taken the lead on that, and we'll talk about that a little bit further. But level zero is no automation. Level two is like driver assist, right? Helps you with steering and acceleration. But when we talk about autonomy, we're talking about. Level three, four, or five. Now, level three is kind of assisting you. The vehicle can operate independently from a steering function and braking, but the driver must be prepared to intervene. Right now we are in the space of a continuum between three, four, and five. Four is the driver can pro, the vehicle, can perform. All driving functions under very specific circumstances, but the driver has to be in the driver's seat as an option to control it at any given time. Now, when we ultimately get to level five, level five, the vehicle is completely automated. And performing all driver tasks. You know, eventually you're gonna see these vehicles with absolutely no steering wheel. and the Tesla Robo Taxi is a, is a good example of that. So this is the anatomy, if you will, of a level five autonomous vehicle. And for those not watching the podcast, the, we've got a picture of a vehicle here with. a base vehicle, uh, for you finance guys, it makes up the base vehicle, makes up 61% of the total autonomous vehicle cost the sensors on the vehicle like lidar, cameras and radar. And, you know, I miss my geek, my resident geek James Blaine, who would like go right down the rabbit hole on Lidar. Cameras and radar, but for you and I we're just gonna say, those are the sensors that are on the vehicle, and then you have inside the vehicle the third element. Okay. The base vehicle is element one. The sensors on the vehicle are element two, and then the in vehicle brain known as the A DK that's in the vehicle. And those suckers cost about 18% of the total. At the moment of the total of a, of an autonomous vehicle, now that a DK. The way these work is, it has to speak to a remote operations center, a data center, if you will, that is staffed by, it's an industry term, an AV industry term called tellies, right? So they're sitting there at the data center. Every single vehicle is constantly communicating to the remote operating center. It's never alone. It's always communicating, and it's sending through satellite, through cell. However, it's doing it. Every bit of data, how fast it's going and all of the sensors and what the computer is seeing around it. Now, if it gets into trouble, the tele takes over. Okay, so currently those are human operators. And this is a little bit of an issue I have and I think the NTSP has as well, which is Waymo is not saying how many human operators it takes to manage X number of vehicles, like. Are you managing 10 vehicles in New York or a hundred? And if I'm sitting there, just picture a guy, a kid, instead of playing a a A game, on his computer, he's sitting there managing X number of these avs. Now eventually, AI and satellite remote operations will do all of this. The convergence of ai. With AV technology is what is accelerating this now. That's what some people miss and I think we missed it in the Las Vegas session, is why is AV becoming such a, a big term and a big push now to roll out in the United States and globally? Actually, when it's been kicking around for a while, the manufacturers tried to do it. The secret is the convergence of ai. And AV together. That's the secret. That's why they're moving so fast. So the vehicle's cost of AV is decreasing rapidly. each vehicle that comes out, each generation is a massive reduction in cost. So let's give you an example of that. So the original Waymo's that, um, were based on the Jaguar, Jaguar, uh, av. Came off the assembly line at 180,000 roughly a piece. You know, it's a very closely guarded secret, but that's what people have reported in, in various media sources. and Waymo actually, in Forbes talked about 180,000, but the, that who have been around for a few years, their latest model, Waymo AV, is based on a Zeer, Z-E-E-K-R. Autonomous vehicles more like a minivan, SUV, and it's rolling off the assembly line with all the av about$85,000. Okay, so what's going down? Vehicle prices drastically going down. They're leveling off. They went down a lot between 24 and 25, but they're still going down a few percentage points each year. But what's going down more is the lidar, the domain controller that, that a DK, and the cameras, all the tech is, is going down. So the epicenter of autonomous vehicles is China. China has the most robo taxis deployed. Right now they have 30,000 taxis in 10 cities, and primarily those taxis are, uh, deployed by four companies, pony ai. We ride Bedu, Apollo, and Didi Now, interesting that I'd like you all to know. Is pony ai. We ride Bedu. Apollo have testing permits in California, and they're not doing that for their health. They are doing that because eventually these vehicles hope to be on the roads here in the United States. Now, as a point of reference, the latest, pony AI unit that is being manufactured, the latest generation, I think it's the sixth or the seventh, as well as the Bedu Apollo. They are coming off the assembly line for between somewhere between 50 and 60,000 and eventually they're, they're really looking at being able to build AVS for less than between 30 and$35,000. Okay. Now let's talk about the state of robotaxis and autonomous delivery vehicles globally. We are in an age of currently a lot of testing, a lot of partnerships and deployments, active deployments, and we driving transactions is tracking. About data on about a hundred international AV projects and more being added weekly. So, um, Waymo, and let's just talk about the, the Waymo's, of the world and the We Rides. Waymo is launching in London. They've announced in 26 they're gonna be launching in London. Lyft and Uber are partnering all over the place. Lyft is partnering with Bedu. all over Europe, a lot of work is being done, uh, by Lyft in Germany and Europe, and they're partnering with the vehicle manufacturers. And then Uber is partnering with Wer in Dubai, and you can see it all over social media. In addition to that, we are seeing larger vehicles that fit the autonomous delivery category. And autonomous livery being, you know, 10 people in a vehicle. We're seeing those autonomous livery projects all over the globe. Autonomous shuttles are in Ireland, believe it or not, at the Belfast Harbor. famous for where, the Titanic was built, and there's lots of museums in that area. So it's a tourist attraction as well as a working harbor. And there's something called the Har Shuttle Project. Look it up. that is, being built by multiple companies collaborating together. We ride and Renault had AV shuttles, parking lot shuttles, uh, remote parking lot shuttles for the French open. You're gonna see more and more of that. We're gonna get to that in a little bit in what's going on here in the us. And the first autonomous full-size bus is operating on public roads. In Germany, and it's being built by a company called Caran, K-A-R-S-A-N. It's an autonomous, E-A-T-A-K eTech, very proud of it. It's, filling the role of public transit instead of having a CDL uh, driver, a bus driver, you know, is eventually gonna have no driver in it at all. I think there's a monitor in it now. So, back to the United States, please. So back in the US we have a combination of, we have about 10 cities where there's autonomous vehicle deployments, and then we have another 10 to 12. Seems like they're always popping up. Now, I'll give you example. I'm right now showing a map of all of the in the dark circles. Those are deployments all the way in Martinez, California, San Francisco, California, la. Phoenix, Arizona. Oh, by the way, Waymo's available at, to and from the Phoenix Airport. Waymo was available to and from San Francisco Airport and San Jose Airport. Waymo is also available in Dallas, Texas. Austin, Texas, San Antonio, and Houston. Not at the airport yet. Waymo is on the Uber, uh, I'm sorry. I think it's, I think it's Uber and Lyft, but it's listed here as on the Lyft platform in Atlanta. Uh, Nashville, Waymo and Lyft have partnered together, and they're gonna be opening in Nashville. Um, so the United States is got about 10 to 12 locations where avs are already out, and then there's another 10 or 12 where they're doing testing. Perfect example. Shout out to Sean Glasgow from Peak Limousine who called me and said, Hey. Waymo are testing in Charlotte, so that's not even on our map. That's not even on the public maps. By the way, we got this from smart cities dive.com, which is a website on urban mobility for those of you who wanna keep up with this stuff. So here are the US based autonomous taxi platforms to watch, right? Waymo, which is owned by Google, 2,500 avs on the road and counting. Service in 10 cities, another 10 or 12 cities testing. Right now, they're doing 450,000 rides a week, and they will be doing 1 million rides a week by year end 2026 this year. Then you have Zoox Zoox. They have about a hundred avs on the road. Oh my God. It seemed like they had a thousand on the road, but they have only have a hundred on the road and they're in Las Vegas. So at the C-D-N-L-A show. We saw them all over the place. Now the key there is they own a manufacturing plant in, California. They, this is owned by Amazon, by the way, and this is a purpose-built vehicle. It looks like a toaster. It's really futuristic, and they already built the plant to manufacture and their goal is to manufacture 10,000 of these units a year and they're currently testing. All over the place. And eventually their goal is to use a map as a multi-purpose vehicle to do not only robot taxi in one configuration, but also delivery Amazon delivery with robots, uh, in another, which is really futuristic. But then again, and by the way, Amazon is using robots right now to pick and pack in their warehouses. Then the third, which is the one to watch by the way, is Tesla. Tesla Robo taxis right now. Depending upon which day Elon speaks, it's somewhere between 250 to 500 avs on the road. And they are active in Austin and they are testing in San Francisco with A FSD with a person in the vehicle right now. But they are in Austin, completely autonomous, and their ride total is not disclosed. You know, that's the beauty of Elon and their strategy is interesting. It's different than the other two. Robo Tesla. Robo Taxii is scheduled to come out. A dedicated Robo Taxii vehicle is scheduled to come out. It's a two seater and it would be between 30 and$35,000. So Robo Taxii enabled Tesla between 30 and 35,000 that you and I could buy and that we could enroll onto the Tesla Robo Taxii platform. So let's think about this. We're gonna have a Tesla Robo Taxii app. If I am sitting working here in front of this computer doing the podcast, my Tesla can be called up instead of it sitting for 10 hours in the parking lot, it can be called up and used as a Robax, extremely interesting business model. Verdict is still out on its viability, but. Uh, that's the one to watch. Okay. Uber is developing an autonomous vehicle partnerships literally all over the United States and around the globe. Ultimately, Uber would like to have operate a transportation marketplace with multiple AV providers on their platform in all major markets. So they're making deals with everybody. They're trying to with, uh, everybody, Tesla, Waymo, Zoox, who knows what they're doing with Elon, but around the world. They already have partnerships with Waymo. We ride pony ai. This is, this slide that you're seeing is right from the Uber website and the, the quote is, we are still only beginning to unlock our. Platform's fully full potential. They have 200 million users Uber does, and now they have 20 autonomous partners around the world. That's according to their CEO. I can never pronounce his last name. I just say Dara. So here is the first thing that concerns me, and we're gonna get into the impact on chauffer in a bit. But the first thing that concerns me is we reported on this in Chauffeur Driven magazine a while ago. We did an article on it. It's the partnership between. Uber, a company called Neuro and Lucid. Lucid is the electric vehicle manufacturer that builds a gorgeous SUV called a gravity. And the gravity SUV goes out the door anywhere from 80 to 90,000 sticker and it's got a premium leather interior and, and this particular vehicle has a neuro. Autonomous vehicle system built right into it. So this is really interesting to me. Neuro that's run by a guy named, I think his name is Dave Ferguson. He's an originally a Waymo engineer and another gentleman, they left Waymo, if my memory serves, and they started Neuro. And Neuro is a platform that sits on top of a vehicle and it's built into virtually any vehicle and they pick the gravity. And they bought six of them and they built them out in Las Vegas. And they went from a factory vehicle to a working prototype. In six weeks they had it on the track in Las Vegas. Now it's already, being tested. It was at the Consumer Electronic Show, uh, recently in January, and now it's being tested on the streets of San Francisco. Used to be a. A TV show way back in the day, and Uber has committed to purchase 20,000 gravities over the next six years and deploy the first 1000 in a US city by the end of 2026. And again, it's a partnership. The Lucid vehicle, the neuro, is the complete AV/EV platform. Uber has 200 million users that are gonna use these vehicles now. Uber invested$300 million in Lucid, and they also, uh, neuro just raised$200 million. And, uh, Nvidia and Uber were investors. What bothers me or worries me a little bit about whether or not this premium autonomous vehicle is going to be a threat to the chauffeur space is because, you know, Uber is, they're investing a lot in. It's a leather interior vehicle, curated inside vehicle expense. And they, I could see them almost doing a membership type model. Okay. But we're gonna get to where I think this is going and the impact on the chauffeur industry. So this slide is about the growth forecast of the US autonomous taxi market. This is a, for those of you who are watching, this is a graph from a Goldman Sachs research report. It was not a, a social media post. It was a. Like 80 page report by the chief analyst at Goldman Sachs, chief Economist, and they are projecting that in North America, the AV market is going to grow from 2025, where it's maybe a hundred, a hundred million dollars. To all the way up to over six and a half,$7 billion by 2030. Let me repeat that. So right now, 2025, the player is Waymo. They're doing about$450,000 a week, and they're gonna be at a million dollars a week by the end of 2026. But. The entire autonomous vehicle market by 2030. Goldman Sachs is saying, is going to be about a six and a half to$7 billion market. Now, currently, chauffeur sedan and SUV market is 6.6 billion by 2030, we are growing at about 2.6% compounded annual growth rate a year. We are set to be only at 7.54 billion. So. The first thing to watch out for is Goldman Sachs is predicting that the autonomous robo taxii market will be of similar size to the chauffeur sedan and SUV market now, primarily, where is that? 7 billion, six and a half,$7 billion gonna come from. Okay. Well, Goldman Sachs believes that about. 8%, seven and a half, 8% of all Uber rides will be done by an av. I think the conservative, okay, but the bottom line is Goldman Sachs research is predicting a compounded annual growth rate of about 90% every year. For the next five Goldman analysts estimate that the gross margin. For a vertically integrated AV operator, right, which is someone who goes out and they buy a hundred of these things or 50 or whatever, and they put'em on a platform. They believe that the gross margins can be 40 to 50%. They will get to that level over the next three to five years. So after all operating costs, you're gonna. Out of every a hundred bucks, you're gonna have 40 or 50 bucks left over. That's a better margin than we are currently operating with human drivers, which, you know, should push the gross profit to about 3.5 billion For the robo taxii or, or the autonomous taxi market? I think they're a little bit. I think they'll be a little bit robust in the size of market, but I think they're very conservative as it relates to what amount of Uber rides will eventually be av. I think Uber Riders are chomping at the bit not to deal with the driver. Okay. So San Francisco is the epicenter of robo taxis in the United States because Silicon Valley is on one end of San Francisco. Now currently Waymo operates fully autonomous robo taxis 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in a 260 square mile area of the Bay Area. This service includes some freeway driving, recently gained approval for direct curbside all day service to and from San Francisco International Airport and San Jose Airport. Key details here is their coverage area includes nearly all of the city of San Francisco, and then they extend south down to Daily City. and they connect down to San Jose, those of you who are watching this on YouTube, you can see the blue area. That is their operating area. And it's on the Waymo website, right? And you have the San Jose airport on one end, and you have the San Francisco area on the other and the freeway driving. You know, they're currently on the 1 0 1 and the two 80, which connects San Francisco, the peninsula together. Okay? But here's their Achilles heel, and here's the reality. The reality in every market, but let's talk about San Francisco, is the, the operating area of these robo taxis has to be extraordinarily concentrated. These things cost a lot of money, and they have to constantly be going. Dropping and picking, dropping and picking, dropping and picking. Okay, so the San Francisco region is a nine county region, approximately 6,966 square miles. When you combine it with Oakland, it's actually 11,000 square miles, and the population is 7.58 million people. Now here's the bottom line, approximately 5.42 million of those people. Live well outside the 260 square mile Waymo area. Okay, so what does that mean? That means anybody operating a chauffeur business, has complete all of Alameda County, all of Con Costa County. It has most of San Mateo County, most of Santa Clara County, all of Sonoma, all of cel, all of Marin, and all of Napa. Now the bottom line is simple. You have to know where to market your services and it, we are, we are gonna be slightly affected. We are gonna be affected by the airport trips in the Waymo corridor, but I think you'll agree that the market size of 5.42 million people out of a total population of 7.5, I think we can do. business there, and it's gonna be the same in every market. They have to keep these things moving. Okay, so this is a recent ride comparison between Uber AV and AV taxis. Now this was a study done and it looked at 94,000 rides, comparing UberX with a human driver, Waymo av, and then the Tesla AV with the supervised driver in the vehicle. Now this is very telling. The Waymo, the average price of a of an Uber was$17 and 47 cents, about seven bucks,$7 47 cents per mile. Waymo was$19 and 69 cents, and$9 and 21 cents a mile. Tesla.$8 and 17 cents average price, which it was$3 and 20 cents a mile. Now what is this? Poor tend big word pour tend for the coming robo taxii market. It's gonna be a clash of the tech titans, baby and I for one. I'm gonna watch it. I'm gonna have fun. Because Uber, Waymo, and Tesla are gonna get into a dual, and then you are gonna have Zoox walk in. And Zoox is, you know, with those toasters, and they're gonna really, really drive themselves crazy. But here's the problem here to four. Uber has been a technology company and has not owned hard assets. They haven't been a fleet operator. They don't know what we go through, okay? But they're hoping that other, other fleet operators are gonna come on to their Uber platform. Waymo has all the Google money in the world. Listen, Google money is better than Rockefeller money. It's like crazy money. But eventually, Waymo, they're gonna want to make a profit, and I don't think Waymo's gonna want to keep opening up these regional centers everywhere you turn around to clean these things. And, uh, charge him back up. And then you have Tesla, aha. Tesla. The prediction there is you are gonna buy a Tesla and you're gonna put it on his platform. I will tell you right now, we are working with private equity companies and we are working on financial modeling for them that says, Hmm, we, if I take a$35,000 Tesla times a hundred. And I put it on the, on the, the Robo Taxi platform. How much does that thing have to do in Miles Ev and trips and dollars every day for it to be a, a good investment? Now they come to us because we know the mileage cost on the human vehicle or the vehicles driven by humans. We know the repair and maintenance costs. We know. The detailing costs, which by the way is about one and a half percent of total income. We know all of those ratios, so they come to us and we're actually working with some colleges and universities. We'll get into that later, but I'm telling you, mark, my words, I don't know when this is gonna publish, but mark my words, the upcoming Robo Taxii Wars are going to be just very entertaining to watch. Okay. The biggest issue we have is the chauffeur industry, as far as I'm concerned, is autonomous vehicles providing service at US airports. They represent, in my estimation at this point, the biggest threat to the chauffeur service market. Okay, now, right now, Waymo is only in the top three of the top 50 busiest airports, San Francisco, Phoenix. San Jose. Now those are, you know, those are among the top 50 busiest, right? Most of our work in the chevre space is done in the top 20. Okay. Which the top is the New York market, which is JFK, LaGuardia and uh, Newark. Then the second market is LA Right now they're dropping off and they're picking up. Only in San Francisco, Phoenix, and San Jose. But here is the queue. they have a 30 mile radius in Phoenix right now. They expanded it out a little bit, but frankly, our market share growth has got to be in the wealthy suburbs. It's gotta be. When we're picking up families with the SUV going on ski trips and extended vacations, so we have to 100% have to make sure that we are within walking distance and in a prime location at every airport. Let me say that again. For the board of directors of the NLA primary responsibility of lobbying in this industry, we all need to, including the state associations, make sure. We're at the table with every airport where we are able to continue to have a primary placement to add value to our clientele, which is in short walking distance to and from the parking area where the chauffeur vehicle is. Okay. We require a unified, comprehensive national strategy to defend our positioning and also communicate our value at these airports. Now, FBOs, which are the fixed based operations. Those are gonna remain a safe silo. I can tell you from doing years of FBO work down in Tampa, there's absolutely no way that the FBO is gonna let some errant AV out onto the tarmac. It's just not gonna do it. They're just not gonna allow it. So we're gonna be okay on the F B's, but that's a small part of what we do. So. Airports are where we have the biggest threat at the moment. And why? Why am I so worried about corporate? It's simple. 67% of the reason why corporations use us if you're listening. You know this from running your own businesses. Most of the work that we do for corporations are in sedans and SUVs. That's 67% of the total corporate spend. So we must have a strategy going forward to grow that market share. And you know, frankly it is no question. We need better technology and we need better technology, uh, and a better user experience because the younger kids that are traveling are absolutely without question using apps for everything they do, including finding their mate. So the frequent travelers are becoming younger. Our corporate traveler is getting towards retirement age, so we must have a grow a grow forward strategy on airport service. And boy, I just coined that one. But there's also a clear indication that we have to do a better job at communicating what our value is on the larger equipment to the corporate growth market. But here's. What I'm concerned about, my concern is the airport business is the milk and bread of what we do. And if we lose that, we're gonna lose market share. Now, the future use cases for us, which we're gonna get into, is gonna be working with corporations to do autonomous shuttles and autonomous van work. Now, that's a when, not an if, and we'll get into that in a little bit of time. right this second. And we've worked on a few financial models. For a, uh, group of, uh, of colleges and universities looking to deploy autonomous vehicles in closed campus applications. Now Mississippi State is doing it. University of North Carolina, Charlotte is doing it, believe it or not. Florida State in Jacksonville and North Carolina a and t State University, they all have some variation of AV shuttle programs. Now, keep your eye on Jacksonville. Oh my God. I never thought I would say that in my life. Keep your eye on Jacksonville, Florida. They have an autonomous innovation center and it's debuted in Jacksonville. I actually am gonna go down and take a look at it because the City of Jacksonville deployed the first autonomous vans in public transit service and over 125 municipal transit systems, uh, have active projects or feasibility studies investigating autonomous vehicles. And I think most of'em, uh, you know, are gonna go down there and take a trip to Jacksonville to see how they're being deployed. And they are actually using a, uh, Mercedes Sprinter and it's been, uh, outfitted by a company called Perone. Uh, it may say it may be Perone, but Perone Mobility. Um, and it's a zero emissions fully autonomous vehicle. Now Driving transactions is following about a hundred projects, and we are compiling a complete list of all United States and global autonomous vehicle manufacturers for our upcoming report, we are watching and working with and contacting every manufacturer from, uh, that are building these units or adapting and putting. Autonomous vehicles, uh, excuse me, autonomous vehicle tech in an existing vehicle. But, you know, these are gonna end up being all purpose built vehicles eventually. Now, where we see initial use cases when we as, Liberty Operators going to start seeing opportunities, okay, we're gonna see it. Definitely now we're seeing it in campus shuttles. We are also seeing it in closed route shuttles. Meaning that a programmable route, in a private community, a downtown circulator, we're seeing community routes, replacing public transit buses with autonomous buses. we're gonna talk about this event and remote lot shuttles like they did at the French Open. eventually when these vehicles are commonplace on public roads, you're gonna see corporate shuttle, last mile shuttles, transit station, shuttles, airport transit and hotel shuttles, and planned private community shuttles. The airport transit. Right now, Atlanta Airport is got a program and Newark Airport is doing a pilot. Atlanta's already built it out. They're actually chosen, whoever the manufacturer is they're gonna work with, and they built out the routes as they renovate the airport. Newark is, is, uh, doing it differently. They have a pilot with three different manufacturers. So this is a matter of when, not if, and anybody who says there's an if involved in whether or not these are gonna de deploy, be deployed. In my estimation is extraordinarily naive and not up to date on the data available. We, to this point, have reviewed and studied and analyzed five different economic reports from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, McKinsey, Stanford University, and MIT. It's a matter of when not if so large regional operators and large networks should position themselves. As embracing the eventuality of autonomous delivery. Now what I'm showing on the screen, for those of you who are, are just listening, there is a current large transportation tech aggregator out there. I'm not gonna mention their brand'cause I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of tech aggregators. I'm a fan of fleet operators who know what it takes to actually price out. Operate a motor coach. But this is a, this is a transportation tech aggregator that has on their website an autonomous campus shuttle, that they're doing with the University of Texas, Austin. And they are describing a vehicle on their website and they're putting themselves in a first mover position. So if I owned a large regional operator. 20 million plus, maybe even a little smaller. But if I, if I certainly was in the market to provide any kind of corporate shuttle work or any kind of campus shuttle work or any kind of healthcare shuttle work, I would be positioning, pre-positioning as available or pre-positioning by at least putting information on autonomous shuttles on my website without question, because. The tech aggregators are doing it. Now, I don't know who's gonna own the equipment because everything in the prospectus of a tech company is, well, we're a technology company. We don't own any assets. We have this kind of ebitda, yada, yada, yada. But it's a rude awakening when you have to start operating fleet. So if I'm a network or a large original, I'm absolutely embracing. And, and putting myself in the position as being in the, in the conversations that are taking place. Which leads us to how do you future proof your chauffeur business as EV AVS evolve? It's all about education participation, a unified strategy and a collective voice, which, you know, we kinda have a shitty reputation or lousy history. of unification and collective voice in this industry, but we need to get with the other passenger transportation associations first and foremost. If I'm an operator today, I'm becoming knowledgeable. I don't care what size operator, knowledgeable operators and associations on the state level must know and participate in local, state, and airport dialogues on autonomous vehicles. Develop and enhance relationships with regulators, airports and government stakeholders continue to push back on illegal operators. That's a completely different issue, but it's just as big. It's actually more of a threat to our industry than avs and honest to God, uh, what New Jersey just did as far as a bill of a TRA on the transportation committee, on pushing back on illegal operators, every one of those guys should be fined$10,000 a day. And it's simple. They, they literally, if you are using your vehicle in commercial use and you're not properly regulated and you don't have properly permitted and licensed, it should be 10,000 bucks a day because it's a risk to the public anyway. Future-proof your business by focusing on the safest, most profitable vehicles and service silos and geographic areas. Well, what does this mean? This means that you have to know your numbers and you have to focus. Your business growth in the most profitable areas that are not gonna be negatively affected by autonomous, which we'll get there in a second, but the safest, most profitable. I firmly believe larger vehicles, many buses and motor coaches are gonna be the last. I don't even think in my lifetime you're gonna see an autonomous motor coach with 55 people on it, but. There are use cases in geography where autonomous is just not gonna work, but you need to put yourself in the dialogue at every college, every campus, any kind of private community, any kind of campus, et cetera. Establish user sentiment among your major client groups. And I think this is something I put both on the operator level, you know, if I'm operating one of the large networks. Like an Empire. Big, big fan of every single network out there, Boston Coach Empire, Carrie, et cetera, RMA, et cetera. I would literally be asking my clients, have you thought about a policy when Waymo comes to you about a Waymo for business account? Have you thought about that? Are you considering that? And for the corporations out there that have huge corporate shuttle contracts, we've worked on a ton of'em. Who shall remain nameless If I'm a provider of a corporate shuttle contract? I'm asking the question if I'm shuttling you right now to and from remote parking lots, I don't care if it's on public roads or not. I'm asking the question. I am literally looking into when we, a report comes out, every manufacturer that's out there and says, Hey, can you provide a 20 passenger av even if I have to put a guy on it right now, because, you know, I'd like to look at that. So evolve. Our business involves education, strateg strategy, transitioning our thought processes, partnerships, and op, and being open to opportunities. Continue to educate yourself on AV developments, deployments, technology and vehicle manufacturing that's coming. They look, there's, there's gonna be a big manufacturing plant of a company called Bentler, which we have some experience with that's opening outside of Jacksonville. develop, will participate in an industry national, private luxury or autonomous delivery technology platform. Um, we're gonna have a position paper coming out when. The Tesla robo taxis finally, produce a sticker price. and we wanna know what the, you know, the Tesla platform is gonna want. We are building out a financial model on what it takes to operate those units, but there's some missing data we need to know about, but we will, we'll be able To have that information and eventually, if you are a very profitable livery operator, why wouldn't you invest in five robo taxis and put'em on the road? You're in the best position to do it. Collectively state associations should be coordinating with local and regional, on level on education information and messaging it with the NLA, keeping them informed. I will tell you right now, there's two private communities that are, I know for a fact are looking at going autonomous vehicles on the island or in, in their, in the community. And there's gonna be more and more. But you need to be in the messaging and in the conversations, develop a comprehensive and coordinated, unified national strategy, we're just not good at to assure that we're positioned positively at every airport. You know, I don't really think that airports respect us that much because they think only wealthy people take chauffeur services. You know, that's true. It is the wealthy 1% to 5%, but we also provide. Great service to anybody that's got a huge amount of luggage going in and outta that airport. Young families with children and uh, and baby seats and the rest of it. So we need a place at the table and cl and specifically we need to be close enough to baggage claim, um, participate with other transportation, mobility and autonomous vehicle industry groups, which we're gonna get to. There are mobility, urban mobility summits. There are mobility associations we need to participate in. uh, my friend Leonardo from JI just got back from a mobility summit in, I believe it was Spain. He's gotta download me on that and read me into that. I also think that the NLA needs to to poll and collaborate with the GBTA and business travel news readers. On the user sentiment, will your company approve AV as a travel option? And when, what do you need to know about doing it? Because Waymo is positioned to do Waymo for business. You know, and let me be clear, let me be crystal clear. I'm not naive about the subjects at all because I've studied it for so many hours. I, I, I can't see straight because it's a when, not a if. Number one, we believe currently that there will be a minor market disruption in sedan and SUV. currently is a 6.6 billion to$7 billion industry for us. Growing at 2.7%, compounded annual growth rate a skim, we might lose some of that market share if we don't get our technology act together and put together a chauffeur app that works globally. and, uh, contrary to popular belief, it it can be done. and it's being done, you know, talked about now, our position is that there's gonna be many more opportunities than disruption for. The profitable and capital ready operators in the space colleges, university campuses, private communities, last mile shuttles, primarily, et cetera. And those will develop and they will evolve as the coalesce of AI and AV come together. So our current position on autonomous taxis including luxury, autonomous taxis. We are predicting, projecting that they will be rolling out in the top 20 US cities. It is a matter of when, not a matter of if, and considering they're already in 10 cities, I believe that it'll be in the top 20 within the next three to five years. What is the effect gonna be on the taxi industry? You know, I, I think the taxi industry is going to end up being subsidized rides, Medicaid, Medicare. Uh, because, you know, people need help getting in another taxis, and then it'll be what I call the cash client, the client that doesn't have the smartphone and doesn't have the, the credit card. So it'll be a, cash segment as well. I don't think that AV is gonna affect non-emergency medical. I do not believe AV in my lifetime, at 61 years old. I don't believe that it's going to affect the motor coach industry. but I do think we're gonna have a little bit of a skim, uh, reduction off of our current market share. of sedan and SUV and airports, let me be clear. The market share for autonomous vehicles is always going to be in the urban areas where the drops in picks are like that. There is no way they can make it work. Sending a vehicle 60 minutes from the airport out into the wealthy suburbs, it's just not gonna, it's not gonna happen. The model doesn't work unless the vehicle prices go way, way, way down. because they just can't afford the dead heading. Right? So, what am I saying? The future of the chauffeur business, there is much more opportunity than there is disruption, but the stakeholders in our industry need to embrace and force new technology because the 60-year-old corporate executive is walking out the door within five years and he's going to be replaced, he or she by someone in their thirties that does everything on an app. That's not an opinion. That is a fact. So. I will be a broken record until the day I retire, which will be about 65, about how behind the technology is in our industry, and the fact that the biggest thing that threatens our industry is absolutely not autonomous vehicles, but it's what I call omniscient thinking, and that is thinking that tomorrow. Will be exactly the way today is and exactly the way yesterday is, and I can show you, share with you and and promise you that with the evolution of AI coupled with av, we are at a strategic inflection point. We either need to get our stuff together to give our clients the technology interface that they prefer to use our future clients. Or we are going to risk market degradation. But I have faith, uh, that we will address, uh, the technology piece, uh, specifically, uh, user app for ordering, tracking and paying for by reservation anywhere on the globe. Uh, certainly in the top six countries where 67% of all corporate travel is and every major city in the United States. and then I think we have to do something on the corporate travel and corporate portal side, but that's a, that's something else. So I hope you found today's episode. I think I've gone right around where I need to be on time. This is a precursor to what's to come. If you want to keep up with autonomous vehicles, here's some great sources. The AV industry organization, the av industry.org, smart cities dive.com. Airport industry news.com, future travel experience.com. The driverless commute.com, certainly chauffeur driven.com'cause we're gonna continue to write AV articles there and driving transactions is publishing our first advisory report on autonomous passenger vehicles due out around June 1st. And it's gonna include every manufacturer and technology player in the industry. As well as some deep dives on current deployment use cases and future use cases, and a little bit more on future proofing your business. So my name is Ken Lucci from Driving Transactions. This has been the Ground Transportation Podcast. I want to give a shout out to my partner in crime, James Blaine, who could not join me today. The truth is he's kind of had it with me about talking about autonomous vehicles, so. He said, said many times. Just shut up, Ken. We're done talking about autonomous vehicles for a while, even though he nerds out every time we talk about autonomous. But Thank you for listening and have a great day.

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.