SPEAKER_03 0:00

I think Uber is one of the most evil corporations to exist in the world today. They make the robber barons look like benevolent people. At the end of the day, the only I'm gonna say it. The only reason why Uber is profitable is because they exploit private drivers.

SPEAKER_09 0:22

You're listening to the Ground Transportation Podcast with Ken Lucci of Driving Transactions and James Blaine of PAX Training. Learn how you can build a thriving transportation business with real profits, repeat clients, and enterprise value. And now for your hosts, Ken and James.

SPEAKER_07 0:40

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. This is one of my favorite episodes. Ken and I are together. The dynamic duo, the two of us together again.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Where the hell have you been? Oh, by the way, John.

SPEAKER_07 0:51

On the road, living out of a spring.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

I want to have a word with our producer.

SPEAKER_07 0:54

Oh boy, here we go. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 0:56

Stop bleeping me. Stop bleeping me.

SPEAKER_07 0:59

Stop bleeping, bleeping.

SPEAKER_03 1:00

Stop bleeping me. People need to hear the NC17.

SPEAKER_07 1:03

We're going to get an NC17 rating.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

We are. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:06

Ken Lucci, Ron Unfiltered People. We just got kicked off at Apple Podcast, everybody. You can now find us on YouTube.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Listen to my podcast, and all this bleeping. And it's not the F-bomb. It's like the word shit, right? I can't say that. I'm just warning you, John, because this episode is going to bring it out in me.

SPEAKER_07 1:25

Keep going. I I've learned to kind of listen through the Morse code and like the D D. I'm like, all right, two long ones and a dash. I know what that is.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

I am who I am. Not going to change now. 61. It's going to be very difficult to change.

SPEAKER_07 1:37

So just to get your blood pressure up, what are we covering today, Ken? What are we talking about?

SPEAKER_03 1:43

We are talking about the upcoming Robo Taxi Wars. They are heating up people, and we're going to have some fun with it. They're heating up right in front of our eyes.

SPEAKER_07 1:55

I remember the internet is a massive turning point. I remember the dot-com bubble. I remember all those things. And you want to tell us what it was like when cars came out?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

At least the automatic transmission and power windows. I remember.

SPEAKER_07 2:10

Well, I can see that.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

I remember when power windows were quite the option.

SPEAKER_07 2:15

Hey, look, I will tell you. My very first car, I remember when we bought it, my dad wanted me to have anti-lock brakes, and I had a 95 Mustang as my first car. And back then, ABS was an option. There's not anything on the road right now that doesn't come with ABS, even in the commercial side. But I think we're coming up with a big turning point that will be looked at as the internet, as ABS, as airbags, as all of these big turning points are. Where do you think we start on this one, Ken? I mean, there's a million places we could dive in. Where do we start?

SPEAKER_03 2:51

Can we have some fun? Can we watch? Let's, John, tee up the guy from Uber because I really want to school this gentleman a little bit.

SPEAKER_08 3:01

Who do you think is a bigger threat? Waymo or Tesla? I think there's going to be more than two winners. Do I think Waymo and Tesla will ultimately be winners? Yes, I do. I don't know who's going to bet against either of those, but I think there will be more winners.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

Sir, there are going to be more winners, and I'm afraid your platform is not going to be one. Keep going, John.

SPEAKER_08 3:24

If you look at delivery as a comparable vertical here, McDonald's and Starbucks also are strong leaders in their individual verticals. They've spent billions building out fixed assets.

SPEAKER_03 3:35

I no doubt, no doubt you went to an Ivy League school. No doubt you probably work for McKinsey like most of the pompous assholes that work for Uber. But what you're missing is those two verticals, those two examples, they're not delivery companies, they're real estate firms. Their biggest value is their real estate assets. Your parallels are specious. John, keep going. We've never met Andrew. My emails go unanswered to any of your teams. I guess you guys have probably figured out that we won't work for you because you've asked several times over the years. But John, will you please bring up the Google users compared to the Uber users? Andrew, just to this is just a small piece of data. On what planet does a platform that has 2.5 billion users and is literally involved in people's lives every day, 365, 7 days a week, on what planet do they need to build anything on your platform that has 1.1 billion users? What makes you think that there's any benefit to them being on your platform besides you Uber stealing their data and trying to at some point off them and compete with them? Why would they do that? John, bring up the next map.

SPEAKER_07 5:31

I think the better question is why would they partner with any TNC, right? Agreed. I think one of the things that's worth pointing out here, right? There's two things I don't want to put us off track. The first is that I think he does have a point, and that asking who is the bigger threat, Tesla or Waymo, those are the immediate threats.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

Well, you and I are going to answer that one next.

SPEAKER_07 5:56

Absolutely. But I think the second part of that, you know, now talking about they have to be on our platform, I would say there is almost a bit of arrogance in that thought. And it it it reminds me of Blockbuster. It sounds like Blockbuster.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

Absolutely, it sounds like Blockbuster. It sounds like Blockbuster. It sounds like Sears Roebuck. It sounds like Blockbuster when Blockbuster could have bought Netflix or vice versa. I think it was actually Blockbuster could have bought Netflix and they shouldn't have. No, that's exactly what it sounds like. Now, I don't know where that arrogance comes from. I'm thinking McKinsey, but I'm also thinking it's the Ivy League education. Okay. Good for you. I'm glad you went to Harvard or wherever the hell you went. Okay, but let's look at this map together. You started partnerships with Waymo. Uber made the ovations to Waymo, and they partnered in Phoenix together.

SPEAKER_07 6:47

Yep, that was the first one.

SPEAKER_03 6:49

And that was the first one. And now that partnership is suspended.

SPEAKER_07 6:52

But you could still book directly through the Waymo apps. So the first time I ever rode an autonomous car, it was not through the Uber app, it was directly through Waymo, right? So they had two different ways to get there: their native app and then Uber.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

So now that they've got their native app totally, totally, I mean, the Waymo app is absolutely great. Okay, now they've got it totally developed, and now they're in, and we're going to talk about the cities they're in on their own: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Nashville, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami. And Uber is only partnered in two cities now. Why do you think that they would reverse course, sir, and go on your platform? The answer is they wouldn't, and they don't plan to.

SPEAKER_07 7:42

Now, I will tell you, when they did that partnership, I was trying to figure out why. I just couldn't understand why. The only reason in my mind that occurred to me why they would do that is quicker access to users. Because even though they have a lot more users, they would have to tell all their users to go download an app. They did not have a ride share offering. So my mind, the only thing that made sense was hey, we can go partner with Uber, we can get people in and out of these vehicles. And I listened to an incredible episode the other day on one of my favorite podcasts, and it was all about testing. You know, it started with underwriters labs, and they talk about, you know, how testing works and how we make sure things are safe. And whether we like it or not, it'll come up later in the podcast. The general public is now part of a massive safety test. Whether we've opted in or not, we are now all part of this test. I know I'm teeing us up, but I'm not going to go there yet. And what occurred to me when I looked at that partnership was I think the reason they partnered with Uber was to be able to get users in natively because they weren't worried about the app experience. They just wanted them in the car.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

And they wanted the data. No question. There may have also been some regulatory expedients because Uber was already in those cities.

SPEAKER_07 9:08

I'm wrong, but Uber had already killed somebody in Phoenix by that point.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

Oh, well, their original 2017 or 2015 when they had the autonomous the fatal accident.

SPEAKER_07 9:17

The fatal accident.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

But I don't think I think it would be naive to think that autonomous vehicles are not massively accelerating. And to your point, John, bring up the Waymo map. Let's delineate the cities that they're coming to.

SPEAKER_07 9:34

All right. So what we're looking at here is your light blue, mainly in the lower part of the United States, is their existing where they're actually active. Now, if you look, they've actually got London and Japan are foreign countries they are now moving into. And all of those dark blue dots are going to be the places they're moving into. One of the things that we talked about very early on was that we as humans do really well with things like snow and rain and weather. When they started, they purposely started in the lower part of the United States because it's mostly sunny. When they were in Phoenix, it was they get these massive sandstorms. I believe they call them a haboob. They would get these massive sandstorms, and it was really common that they would just pull over. Or if it rained, anytime there was any kind of weather other than beautiful sunny skies, they would pull over. Now, back when I was at IATR when they did Autonomous maybe two or three years ago, I said it. I said, look, the second these programmers figure out a way to get it to ignore and see past and not have to track every individual raindrop, it's game over. Because when it comes to actual traction to the wheels, for a human to realize the wheels have slipped, it's going to take you a second, you're going to have to readjust. The second one of those wheels spins a hair faster or differently than the others, that computer can automatically correct in a way that we will never be able to. So I think they're starting to have or have solved that because now we're seeing them move into the northern part of the United States.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

You know, flat out. I'm just going to go out on a limit and say I think Uber is one of the most evil corporations to exist in the world today. They make the robber barons look like benevolent people. They make the slave drivers back when there was no child labor laws look like they're benevolent to children. At the end of the day, the only reason why Uber is profitable is because they exploit private drivers. Okay. And if they were not having the sexual harassment issues they're having because of their own inability to vet and you know separate the employee issue and all of that, and they weren't having the insurance issues, they would not be pivoting so hard and fast to A V. But the only reason they're profitable on the mobility side of their business and the delivery side is because the people that do the work for them don't understand their true costs and they are slaves to the algorithms. But now it's coming home to roost. Because with A V, they either have to split more money with very sophisticated people that own the vehicles, or they have to own the vehicles themselves. Because there's not one A V company that has not done detailed financial analysis on what it takes to keep their fleet on the road. Their private drivers have fallen for you can make $40 an hour working for us. No, you can't. No, you can't. And that's the only reason why Uber exists. And by the way, their financials are still not gap. You know, they're they're not gap. Okay. But the only reason why they're profitable and they've grown this way is exploitation of workers. Period.

SPEAKER_07 12:48

So hold on. I think there's a couple things you've hit on before we go back to Andrew, we need to talk Sean. I think first and foremost, I don't know that I would consider them the most evil, but I think one of the Who's more evil than them?

SPEAKER_03 12:59

Who exploits workers worse than them? I'm gonna challenge you on that. In the United States, who?

SPEAKER_07 13:06

So I will I will tell you, you want to grab the holes now. As a Midwesterner, if you start looking into the practices of the companies that control your food and control the crops, the exploitation there, I'll give you that. And I'm not gonna say names because boy oh boy, I do not want them coming for me. But as someone that has worked in American agriculture, I'll give I do agree with you. Is I think what happened at Uber is that you had someone at the helm that was all about exploitation, that was all about that. I think they created a system where they're absolutely dependent on these drivers. The way that they went in and achieved what they wanted to achieve was way, way. I'll give you the example. Several years ago, when they were in Denver and they went in and they wanted to have cameras and they wanted to actually have cameras in every vehicle, Uber threatened to pull out. Well, we'll leave. We'll leave you out to hang.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

So when the government regulators wanted cameras in every Uber car in Denver, Colorado, and what happened?

SPEAKER_07 14:06

And Uber said we'll pull out. And I think what's happened, and for me, I see it differently because I come from this training standpoint. I was just in Atlantic City, I was talking about culture. I think what's happened is there has been this culture that was installed by Kalnik, right? Travis Kalnik, who started it.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

Be careful, be careful.

SPEAKER_07 14:24

Hey, I'll I'll call it like it is. We'll pull up the clip if we need to, right? There's literally a driver trying to explain to him how they're not being taken care of. And he literally basically tells him. I remember that.

SPEAKER_03 14:35

He was in the car with his girlfriend.

SPEAKER_07 14:37

Instead of instead of having the wherewithal say, hey, all right, tell me, how do we make it work for everyone? Once you get that culture in there, it is very hard to get rid of. And the reason I want to bring this up is I agree with you. There's a lot of practices, there are a lot of things I disagree with. I think drivers need to be educated on what they're making, they don't understand it. But I also think there's a lot to be said because they are going to have good people in that company, they're going to have bad people in that company. And I think a lot of it is once a ship gets steered so wrong. And I talk about it with culture, I talk about it with drivers, trying to get it back steered the right way is tough. And I think what we're seeing in this clip with Andrew is I think it's Flockbuster, right? And I think John, if you got the play the clip of Kalnik so we can see that exactly what happens there.

SPEAKER_04 15:28

I bankrupt because of you. Yes, yes, yes, you change. Hold on a second. What have I changed about lack? What have I changed? What? You dropped the prices on black. Yes, you did. We started with $20. We started with $20. You know, how much is the mile now? $275? You know what? What? Oh, don't like to take responsibility for that. Email for Tom Car. Good luck.

SPEAKER_05 15:58

Good luck to you two. But I know you don't gotta go far.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Wow. If that wasn't a let them eat cake moment, he gets out of the car, he's with his girlfriend, going to, I forget where it was, but you know, all I will tell you is be careful because he's on his way back. That's on another episode.

SPEAKER_07 16:17

That's a whole another episode.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

But by the way, I was wrong. He didn't work for McKenzie. He worked for Bain Company.

SPEAKER_07 16:25

This is Andrew, we're back to.

SPEAKER_03 16:27

Andrew McDonald worked for Bain and Company. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 16:29

And and put put those that don't know what Bain and Company is, right? If you've never heard that name.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

They're an investment bank. They're a consulting and investment bank, very similar to McKenzie, only they have much, much deeper pockets. And uh Bain Company is a Boston-based company. And I would tell you, you know, that's pretty much where the Masters of the Universe mentality comes from.

SPEAKER_07 16:49

I think what I'm hearing here is when Blockbuster was going out, right? For those of us who remember video rentals, DVD rentals at the very end, there was an opportunity to buy Red Box. I think one of the things that's happened is they had an autonomous division, they gave it up, and now I think that that is a little bit of coming home to roost, and that I genuinely am with you. I just don't see the need. So let's go back to the rest of this clip.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Let me tell you what happens if you put any of your vehicles on the Uber platform. There'll be a giant sucking sound of your data. There's a there will be a giant sucking sound of your data. And the next thing you know, in those areas of town, there will be the Uber Neuros and any other manufacturer that Uber can put on and make more of a dollar on. But Uber is Uber is the scorpion on the back of the frog. There's never been a decent partner with anybody. Anybody who's partnered with Uber has been sorry. So, Andrew, good luck. The answer is no, they don't need to be on your platform. And no, I don't think they will. I don't think Elon Musk needs to be on your platform.

SPEAKER_07 18:20

No, he's got Twitter. He's going to put it into Twitter. All of a sudden, X is going to be able to allow you to book rides.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

He's got more data, more data than you ever thought of having on AV. All right, John. Sorry, we need to finish this guy.

SPEAKER_08 18:33

I think everyone will work with us because ultimately we have distribution and ultimately they have expensive fixed assets that need utilization.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

Sure. Because you know, Google doesn't have any distribution, and neither does X.

SPEAKER_07 18:44

And neither one of them is. Have you seen their stock values? They need the money, bad.

SPEAKER_03 18:48

They really oh yeah. Google absolutely needs to depend on the Uber platform. Listen, we are in a strategic inflection point in the Shopert space for a variety of reasons.

SPEAKER_07 18:59

Well, I think we're there for all of passenger ground transportation.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

All of passenger transportation. But welcome to the party, Uber, because now you're going to have to deal with people. You're either going to have to buy the assets yourself, the A V vehicles, you're going to have to buy them, or you're going to be dealing with people who are financially sophisticated, and they're going to look at you and say, don't screw with the algorithm, don't screw with my fees. This is what you will pay me for these vehicles. So welcome to the party of now having the chickens have come home to roost when it comes to you having to pay the true cost of the asset. And don't think for a second that the Uber platform is the end-all and the be-all to add the tech companies that we're talking about. The only reason you've succeeded is because you've exploited workers.

SPEAKER_07 19:55

Let me ask you something. I'm going to throw you an absolute curveball. Did you dunk your cookies and milk as a kid?

SPEAKER_03 20:01

Not every time, but I did, sure.

SPEAKER_07 20:03

Okay. So do you eat Oreos? Yes. Was Oreo the original creator of that cookie?

SPEAKER_03 20:10

No. Um I think you Hydrox was, right?

SPEAKER_07 20:13

Hydrox.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

We can bring it home. What the hell are you talking about?

SPEAKER_07 20:16

I'm talking looking at me again. Make a point. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I think what we will see, and to that first point, is I think that what will happen is you will have Waymo and you will have Zux and you will have Tesla. Zux right now is trailing behind that, will all have first mover advantage. But just like Hydrox versus Oreo, all these others, you will see people come in later. Great example. Apple just released the revolutionary iPhone dual foldable phone. Samsung's on like the eighth generation. But Apple's now come in. They've sat on the sidelines, they've watched it all played out, just like happened with Oreo and Hydrox. The reason I brought up the cookie is that's a great example of Hydrox is all but dead. The name was gone. There was no Hydrox on the shelf growing up. So I think what we're seeing now, unless the steam keeps up, we may find that the absolute winner in 10 years is someone we've never heard of. And it's worth noting that all of Detroit, the Koreans, Toyota, the Japanese, these guys have kind of stepped to the sideline a bit. They're not doing public testing.

SPEAKER_03 21:28

Well, let's back up a step. So let's talk about this. Uber's claim to fame, and I have to give it to Travis Kalnik. Uber's claim to fame is they created the app and made the world convenient. I mean, that was one of the most used and downloaded apps. Now that's not at all a sizzle point, right? No.

SPEAKER_07 21:44

And now you're with AI, anybody can have an app in 2020.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

Anybody can have an app. And what they're up against now is the sophistication of other technology companies, being Uber, being Zooks, meaning Amazon.

unknown 21:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

And Tesla and Google.

SPEAKER_07 22:02

And they own the assets, right? That's the big difference.

SPEAKER_03 22:05

And it's a rounding error on their balance sheets. Okay. And at the end of the day, the only reason why Uber survived is they could bully their capacity. Okay, now think about Amazon Prime. Think about everybody who has Prime now, once Zeux is bought is built out, now everybody who has Prime has a membership to Zeux or has a special benefit. Okay. Exactly.

SPEAKER_07 22:34

So showed up in the app one day.

SPEAKER_03 22:36

Look, I'm not sorry to see the Robo Taxi Wars start because there's going to be a lot more opportunity for chauffeur fleet operators on the autonomous front than there will be disruption. But I do believe that it's a day of reckoning for Uber that has basically bullied their way across the world. And now they're going to have much less leverage in all aspects. They're going to have much less leverage because now they have people that are exponentially valued more than them.

SPEAKER_07 24:15

I think the other side though is at least so far, we've only focused on their actual passenger moving division. If you start looking at Uber Eats or DoorDash or any of these others, the ones that tend to own these robotic deliveries, right? Again, no assets. I think what we saw was Uber and Lyft set up a broker model. And instead of going to companies, they went and they tried to get individuals.

SPEAKER_03 24:45

Wait a minute. They started in New York with all the black car companies and they screwed them over.

SPEAKER_07 24:50

They did. They did. And originally and originally Uber started with black car in San Francisco.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

San Francisco. But you asked a guy like John, I think it's John Asarno in New York. And they originally approached Uber, approached all of the black car operators, and they basically screwed them over. So there is not anybody that feels bad that Uber's balance sheet is going to be affected negatively by autonomous vehicles.

SPEAKER_07 25:20

I don't but but back to kind of the examples I gave earlier, I wouldn't count them out. Because one thing that Uber has done that is absolutely credible.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

They're a cockroach.

SPEAKER_07 25:34

Tell us how you really feel.

SPEAKER_03 25:35

I've already said I'll never do business with them. We've been approached three times over the past four or five years. Yeah. We we won't do business with them, period.

SPEAKER_07 25:42

And I I think I think the big thing for me though is it's interesting because in our world, when I came in 10 years ago, Uber, Lyft, all of these things were kind of viewed as this massive thing. And I think that was really just a stepping stone to fully autonomous. I genuinely what we thought of in the industry as this huge disruptor, this massive thing. I think that is going to be completely different. I recently had Bill Rouse on the podcast, and we were talking about what it looked like with taxi and Uber and his fleet size and his family been in taxi forever. And I think now this is going to change the game even more. Because where this breaks down, and I think where the autonomous makes the least amount of sense is when you stop doing point-to-point. If I've got a shuttle running around at an airport, makes sense. If I'm going from one bar to another, makes sense. If I've got a group move or I've got a sports team that's got to go under a stadium, no, how the hell's that gonna work?

SPEAKER_03 26:47

It's not gonna be.

SPEAKER_07 26:48

If I've got a tour that's gonna go to national parks with no cell service, even if I stick a Starlink on it, what the tour guide is gonna be up there, there's always gonna be someone there. But I think what we're seeing, and you've talked about it from a financial standpoint, Uber will have two choices. They're gonna have to eat their words and go buy a fleet, or they're going to have to find a way in. And I can almost guarantee they'll find a way in. The way they'll find a way in is buying companies. They will find tech companies and buy their way in.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

Oh, they're they're cock, don't worry about their cockroaches. Look at look at John. This is everybody that they have Uber has partnered with. This is Uber's autonomous vehicle ecosystem, the major A V Tech, Robo, Taxi, and Mobility Partners, and they're partnering with everyone. Bet on every horse. Right. You know that I'm a big fan of Neuro. The guys at Neuro.

SPEAKER_07 27:41

By the way, you had way too much fun putting suck your data on this side. I want to point that. We were talking about censoring earlier. I'm sure I'll get bleeped, but they will suck your data, has been like that will be the headline for this.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

There's just no question about it, because again, you have got to understand the rationale and the mindset of a bully. I don't know if you've ever been a victim of a bully, but a bully only I'm a nerd, yes.

SPEAKER_07 28:06

Yes. The only way football.

SPEAKER_03 28:09

The bully, the only way a bully exists is on the bully pulpit. Okay. And at the end of the day, that's their reckoning. Their reckoning is going to be they cannot bully people like Zeoks or Elon Musk or Google. That's going to be their undoing. Now, most of the people on this list need them for their demand. Now, I argue that though at some point the Waymo logo is going to come off of here. But if there's no doubt in my mind, the bottom that I put there is, you know, partnering with Uber and let them suck your data so that eventually they compete with you. There's just no doubt about that. None. That's what they do.

SPEAKER_07 28:57

Well, I think one of the things, and if you look at how By the way, you think we're gonna get a cease and desist on this? I think we'll get a cease and assist on suck your data. Then or we need a trademark it. But I will say, I think one of the things that occurs to me is you haven't you really made an impact in media unless you get a cease and desist.

SPEAKER_03 29:15

I have no assets, by the way. I have no money. I'm broke, I've done nothing.

SPEAKER_07 29:18

I have children, so good that you can't get the money back out of children.

SPEAKER_03 29:22

Right, exactly. Just bring your kids into court with you. The judge will feel bad for me.

SPEAKER_07 29:25

Yeah, yeah. Well, you get the shoes that are worn out, make it look good. I think one of the things that occurs to me is if you look at how Amazon operates, there's a lot of vendors on Amazon that have become very upset with how they do it. Because one of the things that Amazon is known for is they will allow you to sell on there. They will use the data, they will determine what products are selling the best.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

And then they'll compete with you.

SPEAKER_07 29:49

And then they'll compete with you. They'll come out with an Amazon basics version of that product. Didn't they do that with diapers.com? I'm not familiar with diapers.com. By the time that was an issue, my kids were out of diapers. But I know what's happened with several different products where they've basically come in, they've gotten their own white label product, and then what's happened is they've actually been accused, and I don't know if there's been lawsuits, but I know there's been open accusations, where they've then purposely pushed people down. So that Amazon Basics product is always ranked higher. It's recommended, it's suggested, and then they're purposely pushing down the one that had the sale.

SPEAKER_03 30:24

But at the end of the day, if you, as a someone that provides a product, if you're on Amazon platform, you're in the Walmart store, you're in any of the big box stores, if that's your primary and only means of distribution, yeah, you're at risk. From a valuation perspective, you're totally at risk. All right. The next half of this, now that we are lamented and beat the hell out of the poor guy from Uber.

SPEAKER_07 30:51

Yeah, I gotta tell you, I know people that work for Uber. I have nothing bad to say about. They have practices I don't like. I think like every massive corporation, it depends on the angle. I don't know that I'm quite on that same camp you are, but I do think that one of the things they've got is that the precedent that was set when they started is very hard to break.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

We will deal with culture on another episode. I want you to remember because what you've just hit upon there is at the heart of why I do not believe that they will be successful with Uber Elite.

SPEAKER_07 32:33

It's being able to change the culture.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

Correct. Okay, John, take us up with these fun videos.

SPEAKER_09 32:39

All right. Well, this first one doesn't really have a video component to it, but I thought that this was an interesting news story from NBC. Tesla Cybercab draws concern from Texas Fire Department over lack of steering wheel. What do you think of this?

SPEAKER_03 32:54

It should. Well, James, you're the nerd on this, but don't you think that there's going to be little hiccups like this as they roll out nationally?

SPEAKER_07 33:07

All right. So here's the thing. As far as I'm aware, this is the first time we've actually taken the steering wheel out of a vehicle. Now the problem becomes first responders, police, all these others, they in the past, as far as I'm aware, and as far as everything I've seen from the first responders material, they are instructed that in an emergency, they jump in the Waymo and they drive it like a normal car. So they can move it out of the way, they can do all the things they normally do. The problem with the Tesla Cyber Cab is that it doesn't natively have that. So what's interesting is there are rumors and there are some clips and videos that the things are still there. Like if they needed to, they could literally rip out the sides, the dash mail to do it. But I haven't seen any reports, but we've seen this screen that's come up that's been shown where they essentially have a touch screen override. So you're able to stop, you're able to go, you kind of drive it using the touch screen.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

Okay, so look on the left-hand side of that screen and tell us what time.

SPEAKER_07 34:09

So if you look at this, you've got all of your different cameras, you've got your doors, you've got stop, you've got go. And then essentially, you are going to take the touch screen, you drag your finger up to go forward and you move left and right to turn, drag it back to go in reverse, you've got your stop. It is like a video game. So for someone like me that has kids, I mean, I watch my son play driving video games, and it's exactly the same intuitiveness there. Now, the other thing to be aware of, and Waymo's got the same thing. I don't know where Tesla's call centers are. Waymo is reportedly in the Philippines based on two in the Philippines.

SPEAKER_03 34:43

Yeah, two in the Philippines and two in the US, correct?

SPEAKER_07 34:46

Right. So they've got the ability to remotely have someone drive a vehicle. Yeah, the tellys. So I would imagine that Tesla has the same thing here. The concern that I have is as a first responder, this means that unlike a Waymo, which I could just get into a driver's seat and I can tell everybody, just get into the driver's seat and the pedals work. This is a totally different game.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

So let me ask you a stupid question, though. Yeah. You and I both know firefighters. Do you think it's gonna be a problem if a RoboTech gets in the way? They're just gonna bat it out of the way with the fire truck. It depends.

SPEAKER_07 35:22

You know, I teased earlier that there are some dangers and that we're all part of a test. Look, I'm a hockey player, I play with firefighters, I play with sheriffs. A lot of those first responders are hockey guys, and so I get to play with them all the time. And a lot of it isn't, you know, people are always like, oh, they're brass, they're gonna do this. No, these guys, dude, it's an emergency. If I gotta bust out your window to not have the house be put out, 100%. Bust out the window. And a lot of these guys, I mean, they're hardworking guys, they're just trying to get stuff done. No quite. You've got guys like Mike Rose. Mike Rose is a firefighter. I believe he's a chief out in New York. These are guys that, you know, they're trying to save lives. They don't have time for BS. The concern I have with this is yeah, it's super easy. But one, how the hell do I put it in this mode? Right? It's not like, and what's gonna stop me, uh tech savvy guy, from putting it in firefighter mode. And then two, how are we gonna teach every firefighter, every EMT, every police officer how to do this? And then what happens if there's an internet outage?

SPEAKER_03 36:25

Listen, I can see you doing this. I can really see you getting into a cyber cabin starting to play with the screen to try to get it into the manual override.

SPEAKER_07 36:35

Oh, there would be no playing, it would be very quick. You would do it. Uh John, just how do you prevent that from happening? Well, I think it's gonna be a problem. But I also think, you know, these are teething problems. I think we've brought it up before on the podcast. When cruise control came out, they called it autopilot. And you had guys in RVs that would put on autopilot and they'd go in the back and make a coffee, and the next thing you know, they're in a ditch.

SPEAKER_03 36:57

Okay, John, tee this up. What do we have going on? Looks like a Waymo behaving badly.

SPEAKER_07 37:02

That is that is like Ken's trademark's new. It is. It is a Waymo behaving badly. Waymo behaving badly. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 37:09

Uber's gonna suck your data. Uber's gonna suck your data. Are they gonna charge me for it? No, there's Waymo behaving badly. Go ahead, let's see this.

SPEAKER_09 37:18

All right, so this is a Waymo vehicle struggling to navigate a flooded Phoenix street.

SPEAKER_03 37:23

Oh, poor Waywei.

SPEAKER_09 37:25

Poor Waywei.

SPEAKER_05 37:32

Oh, poor Weiwei. Oh, he's backing up. Oh he's backing up. Oh, he almost got him. He's gonna stay out of conducting muddy files.

SPEAKER_03 37:49

Poor Weiwei. He looks confused, the poor guy. The Waymo is like going back and forth.

SPEAKER_07 37:59

So so this will come up later, but I love that Ken, you're already talking about it like it's a person or the poor guy, you know. You're anthropomorphizing it.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

If you say so. Thank you. Appreciate you using big words. I'll have to look that one up later. He's going back and forth, back and forth. He's just so confused. I feel bad for him.

SPEAKER_07 38:18

Well, it's ironic because Isn't it ironic? Well, but from a safety standpoint, you don't go through standing water if you don't know how deep it is. So I think, you know, at first where it slows down, that makes sense to me. The no-brainer here is get in the left lane and go around it. I have no idea why it shows reverse. That doesn't make sense to me.

SPEAKER_03 38:39

Right. And there's still a lot of mystery around the tellies. The research we've done is that each telly, this is the human being that is has the ability to.

SPEAKER_07 38:49

Let's say define telly, because right now we're talking about them like there's some celestial being up in the clouds.

SPEAKER_03 38:55

Tellies are human, they're human beings that are in the command center, if you will, and they are supposed to be able to override Waymo vehicles.

SPEAKER_07 39:06

Do we think of them as call center reps? You got a call center farm, and instead of taking phone calls, they're watching Waymo and then talking when they need to to the but here's the problem.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

The problem is that Waymo's not been forthcoming, or there's no regulatory that says you need to have X number of tellies for each Y number of vehicles. The rumor I heard was the Waymo personnel, each one is managing 50 vehicles. Now, a lot can be said if those, I don't know how they do it, whether they have they split them up geographically, but if you have weather patterns and traffic problems in one area, do you do is the best way to have one telly in charge of all of it? I mean, is there a button where they can they right. Is there a button that they can hit the button and the and the Waymo automatically pulls over to the side of the road? The issue is there's no regulation that says you will have X number of tellies per X number of vehicles.

SPEAKER_07 40:09

Well, and the problem with that is to a certain point you start defeating the purpose of autonomous, right? If I have to have one telly per one vehicle, why the heck does it have to be autonomous? I might as well have a guy driving it. Well, the because because but it used to be like four engineers to one vehicle. So at some point, that is likely flipped. We'll never know that point. We'll never examine it. But in the beginning, they talked about four to one on the engineers.

SPEAKER_03 40:35

Well, keep in mind, eventually the tellies go away. I don't want to drop a bomb on a bunch of people.

SPEAKER_07 40:42

I don't think they can go away forever. I think you always have to have AI some kind of dispatcher, some kind of air traffic control, human control.

SPEAKER_03 40:50

Tesla believes that everything that they will be doing in full maturation is with AI. I think it's problematic. I also think it's problematic that the federal government doesn't come down and say, look, we want to visit your centers and we want regulation. We want X number of tellies for every Y number of vehicles.

SPEAKER_07 41:12

But without getting political, I'll just hit you with the age number. If you look at the average age of someone in Congress, yes, yes. They're not like you, Ken. They don't have like a young heart and know about tech. If I go to Congress, I can literally drop five words in tech and compete.

SPEAKER_03 41:28

I have a problem running my phone, so don't, okay. Just because we're trying to give you credit, and now he's saying the iPhone. Just because we've hired John Bruton to build us a relational database, don't make I'm not over the tech rainbow yet. All right, John, what else? All right, go ahead.

SPEAKER_09 41:42

Yeah, this is this is tragic. So this is from Katy, Texas, on June 19th, 2026. A Tesla vehicle crashed into a woman's house. Unfortunately, this 76-year-old woman died on the way to the hospital. And it was sitting in her home. City just sitting in her home.

SPEAKER_03 42:05

James, would you call this a teething issue? God forbid. I don't mean to make light of the woman dying, but is this a teething issue that you talk about?

SPEAKER_07 42:13

Unfortunately, the first aircraft they had people fall out of the sky and die and fall out of planes. Eating issues.

SPEAKER_03 42:19

We've gone from hydrox and Oreos.

SPEAKER_07 42:23

Yeah, dunking your cookie of milk to now. Unfortunately, right? And we we've also seen, and this is tragic, but it's unfortunate, in almost every major tech escalation, you are going to have loss of life. You know, God bless the four astronauts that died in an Apollo capsule when it had a fire, right? It was tragic. Yep. But they kept going, they kept developing it.

SPEAKER_03 42:49

And at the end of the day, if that didn't happen, they would not have made changes or not.

SPEAKER_07 42:53

They wouldn't have made changes and they wouldn't have changed their process. We talked about Uber's program, right? Not to throw Uber back under the bus because there's been other issues, but Uber hit a woman in uh in Phoenix, and that was for them one of the things that I think ultimately pulled them out of that. But they had someone and that had a safety driver, and the safety driver was screwing off and not paying attention. And they hit a woman and killed her. I think there's a couple things here that you and I talked about before this episode that come back up. First and foremost, if you don't know this, an electric motor is different than a gas engine. A gas engine has what's called a power band. So as you rev up a gas engine, there's a certain point where you'll hit the peak power. An electric motor, because of the way it was designed, because the way they're built, have peak power all the time. I hit that pedal, instant acceleration, all of the power. If I drop it to the floor, it's there. If I'm driving through a neighborhood at 25 miles an hour and I drop that pedal to the floor, the transmission in a gas-powered vehicle has to shift to a lower gear, the engine has to rev up, and it has to then come up to speed. The fact is, in a short amount of distance, that Tesla can accelerate like a Corvette. Even the base model. So that's problem number one with something like this is even if that Tesla had just slammed on the gas pedal, it's gonna get much more momentum, much more speed. Problem number two, that Tesla is full of weight. Lithium-ion batteries, it weighs a ton. There's a massive argument. I don't know where it landed. I haven't kept track on this as much as I would have liked to because I've been traveling. But the biggest argument here was was this autopilot or was this a driver that fell asleep, got distracted, hit the gas pedal? There's a lot of argument going on there. And we saw the same thing in the crash in Florida. We've seen a lot of that with Tesla. And one thing I will say is, you know, Tesla does play it fast and loose. There's a lot of times where, you know, there's a huge deal about Elon pulling off LiDAR. There's a huge deal about he's just gonna use cameras. Elon is not afraid to push the envelope, and he's also not afraid to point the finger. When something like this happens, they're immediately gonna point the finger at the website or not.

SPEAKER_03 45:15

Look, I can tell you we're gonna have quite a few episodes because, like it or not, a big operator the other day said to me, you know, Ken, I'm tired of talking about autonomous. I said, dude, you better get used to talking about two things.

SPEAKER_07 45:29

AI, buddy.

SPEAKER_03 45:31

AI and AV. I don't like it any more than you, okay, because I have to, in order to speak intelligently on it, I have to dive in like crazy. Every single morning I'm getting things on A V.

SPEAKER_07 45:44

But imagine the guys that ignored the internet. When the internet started coming about, the guys that won that were the guys that were talking about it, knew about it, figured out how to profit from it.

SPEAKER_03 45:53

When I was in the limousine business, a limousine operated down in Florida, a $5 million operator. I had a division of the company called Flexedan, which is basically you bought memberships to it, and I sold that to a guy that I like named Brooke Nagousi. I thought I was going to operate it after I sold a limo company, but I just fell out of love with it. And Brooke said to me, Oh, no, Uber will be out of business. And I said, Brooke, not gonna happen. And he was like, Don't worry, there'll always be a Tampa livery regulatory body and an Uber, Uber's gonna go out of business. I'm like, sir, it's just not gonna happen. I feel the same way about AVs. I mean, you know how much we've we both got into the subject, but AVs are here to stay. The critical mass is just because of the AI connection and the AI integrations and how the two subject matters are so intertwined, it's just gonna exponentially grow from here. And I said to the operator, look, it's gonna create opportunity for you. Don't worry about it. It is all right, John.

SPEAKER_07 46:54

What other real quick though, before we go to this next video, I want to point something out because I want to drive home your point because a lot of operators are in that same boat of, oh, I'm tired of it. When we had the agricultural revolution, it used to be that we had not it'll be quick. Give me a second, Ken. I promise I'll bring it quick. You had a ton of people working the fields. You had a ton of people that had to be out there. What happens? Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. Automation comes. Now those numbers get greatly reduced. Now you have computers come out. Most of the office jobs that exist right now, computers come out, they create tons of jobs. Now what's happening? AI is coming in. They're taking all of those people that had to do all of those jobs. Now we've got automation. Now it's contracting. Look at our industry. Thank you, our industry. Thank you, Mr. Wizard. But look at it. We had an industry that has been very labor intensive, right? We go from the horse to the car. Now we have all these people driving cars. Now all of a sudden, automation is coming and it's becoming less labor intensive. Well, there is a labor expansion and contracting, and every single one of these massive inflection points in history, it expands out to need massive amounts of human labor, automation, all of these things, tooling comes in, it shrinks back down. It expands out. It is a historical fact. And we are at the point where we are at the cusp of watching it come back down. And it's not going to slow down.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

Thank you, Mr. Wizard. I appreciate that. But to your point, not to make light of it, but in two Tell me I'm wrong. No, you're right. Because in 2008, when we were doing the Super Bowl in Tampa, there were companies still dispatching on paper.

SPEAKER_07 48:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:37

I want you to think about that. That was 18 years ago. Yeah. God, I had so much more hair back then. God almighty. But to your point.

SPEAKER_07 48:43

You know you can buy more hair, right?

SPEAKER_03 48:45

I know, I know. It's too cheap. But look, I mean, to your point, there's just absolutely no question that you didn't look upon Limo Anywhere and Santa Cruz as, oh my God, this is a revolution, right? All it was doing was cutting down a tiny bit of labor. Whereas now your point is exponentially labor is changing with AI and A B. Okay. It starts slowly and then a hockey sticks. Thank you, Mr. Wizard. John, tee up this video for us. This is a Waymo, by the way. This is one of the new ones. This is one of the new ones. This is based on a Zeker, Z-E-E-K-R-R, and it's a Chinese minivan. The color scheme would not have been my choice.

SPEAKER_06 49:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:30

But that the Jaguars, the Jaguar pace, the original Waymo's came out of the factory. The originals were about 236,000. They finally got it off of the assembly line with the AVs down to 181. Okay. The Zeker comes out of China at 50 and about 5,000 in tariffs. Let's not get political. Does this still have a steering wheel in it?

SPEAKER_07 49:55

Because I haven't ridden in one of these yet. It does. I saw one in Vegas, and I'm pretty sure I saw a steering wheel in it. I wasn't able to ride in it.

SPEAKER_03 50:02

So 55 out of the factory, about 20,000 on an AV kit. That's just the originals. 80 grand from 181. So literally they've cut it in half. And what's happening over the next five years is they believe the Chinese manufacturers of AV believe that they can get their units with the AV tech out of the factory for less than $30,000.

SPEAKER_07 50:29

See, and the concern is that brings up a security issue. Hacking is now the new big thing. Having all of that made in China and trusting all of our vehicles that are autonomous on the road to be made in a foreign government that is known to be communist is a little sus.

SPEAKER_03 50:45

John, John, do me a favor. In the future, instead of you tracking the number of S bombs and F bombs I drop and bleeping me out, I would like you to keep track of the rabbit holes this guy takes us down. We've gone from Hydrox cookies and Oreo cookies to the fing convention, okay? To agriculture, okay? He's better fun. He's dude.

SPEAKER_09 51:08

Isn't the first time you've brought up communism on the podcast?

SPEAKER_03 51:11

I mean, he is literally Mr. Wizard. Better bleep that out. John, show us what we've got here.

SPEAKER_09 51:17

Wait, I'm confused. Am I or am I not bleeping you out on this one, Ken?

SPEAKER_03 51:20

You better bleep out the F bombs.

SPEAKER_09 51:23

No, within reason.

SPEAKER_07 51:24

Within reason. Within reason.

SPEAKER_03 51:25

I will send you a memo. You could bleep out the F-bombs, but you are not to bleep out the S bombs.

SPEAKER_07 51:31

We're going with radio, not late night cable.

SPEAKER_03 51:33

All right, show us this Waymo.

SPEAKER_09 51:35

All right, so this next video, if we recall the map that we pulled up earlier on the Waymo website, Denver was one of those new markets that they're expanding into. So this is the Waymo behaving badly at a Denver farmer's market.

SPEAKER_00 51:52

A new video of a Waymo driverless car stopped in the middle of a weekend farmer's market in Denver yesterday. You see it here. You can see people walking by while the vehicle is apparently trying to figure out what to do next. This is another video of the car driving right through. This happened on South Pearl Street while vendors were setting up.

SPEAKER_02 52:10

While the incident reinforces some people's fears about the driverless vehicles, Waymo says their system is still safer than having a person behind the wheel. Boxer One's Kim Posey joins us now with a new reaction.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

Yeah, this whole thing happened about 8 15 Sunday morning. The director of the farmers market says the Waymo was driving west here on Florida. Now there was a road close sign here on the right side of the street, but the left side of the street was still open to vendor traffic as vendors were still setting up. She says that the Waymo followed a vendor vehicle through this area and then turned right here on South Pearl.

SPEAKER_07 52:46

He looks confused.

SPEAKER_03 52:49

He looks confused. I feel bad for him. It does. He looks kind of lost.

SPEAKER_07 52:52

I think the big thing to note here though, and this is something that autonomous vehicles are not going to get better at anytime soon, is our inherent ability to look at a situation and quickly figure out and determine something doesn't feel right.

SPEAKER_03 53:09

This news story did bring up two things, though. Number one, there's no question that all of the information coming out about autonomous vehicles, anytime there's an issue like this, you notice that the reporters go back to, and Waymo goes back to, but autonomous vehicles are much, much safer than a human being driving.

SPEAKER_07 53:32

That's the selling point.

SPEAKER_03 53:34

So would you say this is another one of your teething issues?

SPEAKER_07 53:37

The fatality, the woman that lost her life, that's a tragedy. The one thing I will say is notice, and it doesn't make it any better, but notice the situation. So it's got limited visibility. It sees a car going down a road, it barreled through. If it was it drove through, the one thing I will say is that we are also at a point because autonomous is so new, every little tiny thing it does is on the news.

SPEAKER_03 54:06

No question about that.

SPEAKER_07 54:07

Look, I'd be lying if I didn't say I've gone down roads and not had any idea that something was going on and there's something sketchy like that, and you either back out or you go through it two miles an hour. That's what a human would have done. And if a human is driving down that road, you get lost, really only in rabbit holes on the podcast. Okay. Um, but I I think the difference in scenarios and the difference the way this is laid out is this is somewhere where it pulled in, like you said, it was confused, and in both of the videos we've seen on Waymo's side of it, the Waymo stops, and it's you know, either a telly's taking over, something's going on. I think the behavior there is the key because you don't want it to guess. It's much better for it to stop and say, hey, new unknown situation encountered.

SPEAKER_03 54:58

Yeah, I think they're always gonna have problems on construction sites, road closures, construction sites.

SPEAKER_07 55:04

Well, and humans trying to tell it what to do. Hell, I don't know what the construction workers want.

SPEAKER_03 55:08

Right. The emergency situations where wait a minute, this is Main Street. Why is Main Street closed? Yeah. John, do we have any other videos? Okay, we have one more. Oh, this is okay. This is a good idea.

SPEAKER_07 55:19

You're gonna talk about rabbit holes, and now we're going to full humanized robots.

SPEAKER_09 55:23

I I don't know how much time we want to spend on this. Maybe we can just tease this.

SPEAKER_07 55:27

This will be a teaser. We'll have to do an entire episode on Mr. Optimus over here.

SPEAKER_09 55:31

Yep. So imagine Optimus is, James, you probably know the most. Can you define what Optimus is?

SPEAKER_07 55:38

Tell us about Optimus, Mr. Rosen. So so let's, yeah, let's start with the formal Optimus is a humanoid robot. Long story short, he is basically the first step towards Mr. Data on Star Trek. It is a robot that is signed to look and walk and have hands and feet that are similar to ours. It is a robot somewhat made in our own image with our own ability to do that right now.

SPEAKER_03 56:02

He's quite a bit taller than me, so he must have been made in your image.

SPEAKER_07 56:05

I think the thing to note with him though is we have been doing robots similar to this for years. AI has allowed us to now give it a personality and more functionality. There is an entire episode worth of stuff to unpack here. So I think what we'll do is we'll play and we'll tee it up, and I think we come back to him in another episode.

SPEAKER_03 56:26

For those of you who can't see this, this is a social media commercial from Business Narrative.

SPEAKER_07 56:33

It's an official Tesla commercial, don't you?

SPEAKER_03 56:35

It's Tesla just confirmed. Optimus goes on public sale in 2027, and suburban life is about to change forever. So, John, go ahead and run this.

SPEAKER_05 56:47

Yes, I did. No, you didn't.

SPEAKER_09 56:49

Send a text on anything weird.

SPEAKER_05 56:51

We'll be right home.

SPEAKER_09 56:52

Of course.

SPEAKER_05 56:55

Can you find the curved track?

SPEAKER_09 56:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 57:00

Perfect. Here, this too, please. Can you please handle this for me?

SPEAKER_09 57:07

No problem. Nice job.

SPEAKER_05 57:12

No, you have to be in it too.

SPEAKER_03 57:15

Wow. At the end of it, Optimus during that video was doing a bunch of routine domestic things. It was doing the laundry, it was watching the children.

SPEAKER_07 57:24

This video scares the s out of me. And I don't usually get censored.

SPEAKER_03 57:28

And at the end, it was the little girl saying, Optimus, you need to be in the family photo. This is really eerie to me.

SPEAKER_07 57:38

I don't like it.

SPEAKER_03 57:38

And to go further to go a little bit further down the rabbit hole, we want to tee up that if Optimus is going to be available to the public in 2027, what do we think? When do we think Optimus is going to be made available for commercial use? And do we think Optimus is going to be a chauffeur?

SPEAKER_07 57:59

So I think the more important question is why in the world would you start with a non-commercial use? Because I see him in factories, I see him doing all kinds of actual work. Why are you trying to put him in someone's house? That's the biggest thing that I watched that video and I don't understand. Is I would be selling this robot to every manufacturing line on the planet that has complex work, and I would be saying, you don't have to rework all of your assembly lines when you want to do something new. Optimus can replace anything a human can do. And oh, by the way, we can pop his hands off and we can put tools there instead.

SPEAKER_03 58:39

I I don't disagree with you. There's always that doesn't make sense to me. Well, when Elon comes on the podcast, I'm sure he will clarify his business plan for you, and you will be able to challenge Elon.

SPEAKER_07 58:52

Only if we promise not to suck his data.

SPEAKER_03 58:57

He's sucking NASA's data, he's sucking everybody's data.

SPEAKER_07 59:01

Don't you worry about we just became a rated on podcast in one episode.

SPEAKER_03 59:06

It's true. I mean, Tesla's got more data than anybody.

SPEAKER_07 59:09

You're the one they do. They are covered in cameras and they are a data company.

SPEAKER_03 59:13

Absolutely. Okay, so this is where we're gonna leave it on Welcome to the Robo Taxi Wars. This was a far-reaching episode. We learned about the difference between Hydrox cookies and Oreo cookies. A little bit about the it's not the cookies, it's about first movers advantage. It's a business lesson. We talked a little bit about the agricultural revolution. We're in a revolution right now. Now we're talking about the AVAI revolution. It's been another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. James, I'm so happy to do this episode with you.

SPEAKER_07 59:46

Good to have you back, Ken.

SPEAKER_03 59:47

It's listen, you're the one that's been traveling. I mean, at the end of the day, you've been a busy guy.

SPEAKER_07 59:53

These really are my favorite episodes, though. I think when you and I get to dive in, right, between your swearing and my rabbit holes, I have the most fun when we're here together. And I think it's important because we have two very different perspectives. But in the end, I think all of the points we make are equally valid. And this is the future, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:13

No question, it's the future. I believe long term the ground transportation industry is going to benefit from the autonomous, autonomous vehicle revolution and AI. I believe that AI should be first. We'll benefit from that first. But at the end of the day, there's going to be quite a bit of autonomous vehicle opportunities out there. Nothing for anybody to be afraid of, nothing for anybody to be concerned with. Their businesses are still fantastically, the growth possibility is great. Everybody just get some popcorn and watch what it does to our friends at Uber now that the shoe is on the other foot. They cannot bully people. They can't take advantage of people that own private cars and that don't know what their cost structure is. They can't change the algorithms. They're going to be dealing with people who are very financially sophisticated, and I, for one, am very happy to be here to watch it. This has been another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. I've been joined by Mr. Wizard. Have a great day.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:11

Bye, everybody. 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 PAXTraining.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.