YouSaid · the spoken record

Tekedra Mawakana

lines on the record: 69
first: 2023-06-08
most recent: 2023-06-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Kidding me. I think it would be helpful if the federal government said publish your safety case, be transparent. Make the case of why you're safe enough. I think it would be helpful if the state of California prioritized making the road safer and enabling this technology onto the roads”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly stuff like that because everyone's To continue focusing on regulating the safety of the driver. So licensing, titling, registration, but there won't be expertise around the entire country on autonomous vehicles. That should really stay concentrated.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the federal government sort of regulates safety of the vehicle and then the states think about the safety of the driver, you and me licensing, titling, registration. I think it's important for that safety regulation to stay at the federal level. And then I think the regulatory regime should really give companies the chance and obligation to state their safety case. Like, be transparent. How is it that you're determining that these vehicles and this technology are safe enough to be on the roads without someone behind the wheel? And so we've been pushing for more of like a safety case-based approach because everyone's technology is different. So you can't just say this is the regulatory standard. Right.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A mattress A bag of trash. A person walking down the street. So if you sort of don't have the surface road experience that we have, right, I don't know how your driver ever gets smart. And all it does is highways. And so we think of it as a really good second area, but not an area that should be thought of as easier. Right. Because it has to have all those other capabilities in order to be successful.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's an easier business. I mean, it's interesting. I think there's a perception that it's easier because you don't have to deal with, let's say, downtown San Francisco. It's interesting, though, because what you encounter on a highway. As in the long tail of options, is as sporadic as any other road.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also legit, I mean, like being able for, you know, if you're a shipper or carrier and you can have logistics with the Waymo driver in the center and not have to think about the same kind of constraints, that, I mean, humans need to rest. We want. We don't want sleepy human drivers on the road. And so thinking about the benefits that we could bring from a sustainability and also congestion, logistics perspective.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're building the Waymo driver to be fully generalizable. So trucking, delivery, ride healing, those are the business applications that we're focused on. And eventually personal car ownership as well.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly right. And will the sort of development cycles shorten over time? Is the way that we actually have to resource it going to change, probably over the next five years. But right now, the way we think about it right now, it's building the driver is going to be an always on part of our job.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we really have, like you said, distinct sort of subject matter areas of expertise. So we kind of bring that to bear whenever we talk about something. And we have a lot of deference in each other's areas of expertise. And we're jointly responsible for what is the strategy. Where are we headed? And how are we going to get there? So from an organizational perspective, and I sort of say this because I think we've learned this, it's like everyone at the company knows they only need to hear from one of us. And that's been a pretty important pivot because everyone I talk to not at Waymo who works for co CEOs. And I think all these people so much, they always come up to me and they're like, I hate Having co-citos. Yeah. That's helpful because that's not what people”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Versus That's right That's right. And we've already seen in our first million miles that we improve the roads around us. It doesn't mean that sometimes annoying things that happen, but annoying and unsafe or different.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If technology could be deployed to actually do something meaningful in the world. Let's do it. And I think we're really, really focused on doing just that. You know, 43,000 people, I think, died in on the roads in 2022. 1.35 million globally. I just think there's this”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, you know, we're trying to change society and culture. And I think alphabet and certainly the bets were built on this notion of”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're not going to do a meta, are you? Yeah, no, I do. I feel like that was hard. That was not a fun part of this. But I think we've recognized the cost of capital has changed.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Try to find out myself. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I spent a lot of time thinking about making sure that the company is properly capitalized, but I am not worried about I'm worried about what it will take for us to get this audacious mission. To a state of heightened commercialization. Like that's what I really spend my time thinking about. We have the investors, we have alphabet, we have our cap table. They're really bullish on us. And they came in understanding this is a long-term proposition.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think from the beginning, we've really looked at this as trying to build a business from the ground up. And so, which is part of why, you know, when you ask me about the cities and I started talking about the TAM, I mean, Dimitri and I view it as our job to figure out how to make this company profitable. And so we're really laser focused on doing that in ride hailing.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interested. I don't know if you know that. Not making money. We're a sister company to Google. If you're an expensive sister, the alphabet is actually, yes, our largest investor and shareholder. Yeah.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's within alphabet. So we spun out in 2016 to be an alphabet entity. So we're a bet. And so we go straight up to alphabet. So we're a sister company to Google.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Both companies are really good at what we do. And so I think we're excited to see how we can bring this technology to people who faithfully open the Uber app and want to go from point A to point B or bring their food home. And we're excited to bring that service to their riders. So it really has been a quite exciting partnership by two companies that like to move fast but move deliberately. Right.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are other jobs. There have been other jobs created in our operations, for example. We have a lot of jobs that didn't exist before. And I think that's going to continue to happen. But I think whenever there's a transformation like this happening in society, there are just going to be people who are really worried. And, you know, I've spent a fair amount of time meeting with different groups that represent truckers. My uncle was a truck driver. My uncle passed away. Driving his truck. He had a heart attack in his truck. And so I feel like from a very personal perspective, I know how hard that job can be. And I also know how important it was to him.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, I mean, I get it. This is the like, we're focusing on this at this moment, but I think if we zoom out, forget about us, forget about their particular concern in this state. This is something this country has to figure out, which is how are we going to transport goods? How are we going to give people the best jobs they can have? We want that too, that maybe”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, what we want them to focus on is whether or not they think that this technology can make roads safer and what is the compromise position that everyone can take around this issue. Because at the end of the day, we were all of COVID and now really concerned about the driver shortage in this country.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a jobs issue. And it's also. Sort of a resistance to change issue. And so, you know, we're gonna stay in close dialogue with elected officials. We're gonna have to figure this out over time. It's not gonna happen quickly, though.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think it's a significant issue for industry. You know, our current roadmap is not as focused on California because we knew that this was going to be a hurdle. It already hasn't been lawful in the state. So it's not changing the law. It's just codifying what has already been. I think, you know, we're going to have to”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have to inspect it with the That's exactly right. We have former commercial truck drivers, or actually the people who train our trucks. Right.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in San Francisco, I think we had an action where we were trying to secure more space for our employees to part. At work. And unfortunately, I think the Teamsters took that as an opportunity where we were trying to actually do delivery out of that location. And that was going to take jobs. And it's not the case, but it kind of doesn't matter. I think the bigger issue that it's pointing out is we have to stay in constant dialogue on why this is good for the city, why this is good for everyone with transportation needs, what they were actually focusing on was delivery. All of our deliveries in the city are for local nonprofits and charities. So there was just, I mean, it's what we're doing here.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there can be. Yeah. Right, but I didn't have my own car, so it's like borrowed someone's car did it. And so there's like this notion of, you know, this driver is going to be more experienced than most drivers who've ever had a driver's license.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We sort of think of it as building the world's most experienced driver. Like, I turned 16. I mean, I don't know. I went around those cones a couple times. I got a driver's license. Right.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's caused consumer confusion. I think my bigger worry is that it would cause regulatory confusion, and I haven't seen that yet.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're level four, but a Tesla is like driver assist, so that's like level two. capabilities back in 2013 and we found that internal Google employees knowing that this was just a project where they were giving feedback, they just stopped paying attention and they were going 65 miles an hour down the 101, not doing what we asked them to do. And that's when we decided as a company we're going to go for full autonomy”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it goes back to your question about competition. That's the danger of a lot of people in the market moving too fast and not having the same approach. Also, I think the other danger is just consumers not understanding the capability set of the driver, right? Can I completely unplug, take a nap, and let this thing take me where I'm going, which you can do in a way Mokar? Or do I need to be alert and ready to take over when it starts beeping at me? And that sort of level three and the levels of autonomy, level three, level two.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“24 7. People do. There's confusion. There's confusion. You know, we try to remind people that those are personally owned cars. You can go and buy a car and understand what it's capable of, but we're offering a service. And we think that's why we're doing that. More people can try it out. You don't have to go buy something. You can actually be in Phoenix or San Francisco and just try it.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay. And so it's important for people to understand because we're the only ones offering fully autonomous. Yes, he had promised.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's why we work so hard to make sure people understand this is the Waymo driver, and we're the only ones that have the Waymo driver. Right.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think critics are unfamiliar with the technology, not interested in becoming more familiar with the technology, worried that a safety critical sort of mindset or approach may not happen and that they'll get blamed.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it depends on the writer. I think for skeptics, it's getting in the car the first time. And then actually they're like, what was I like, what was the story that I was holding on to? Somehow I thought it was going to be a roller coaster ride and it wasn't I think for people who've not had independence, it's like a tearful moment because they're like, Holy crap,”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we are not taking that approach. We can't afford. This is safety critical, and it's never been done before. So that's the reason we didn't apply to go straight to charging on day one. We said, we're going to enter the city, we're going to collect data, we're going to move and offer a service. We're going to create a waiting list. We're going to build up demand. We're going to get feedback from our early trusted testers. And then we'll move into a fully public service.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it is not naturally barreling its way down the path. I think in the way that we are approaching it, it is iterative as opposed to Uber.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think that what's happening right now in San Francisco, you know, we have our permit application out there. People have commented on it. We've gotten safety advocates. Public officials have all come and supported us. I think over 20 letters of support. But we just know that we're going to operate under a microscope before this becomes the status quo, right? And under that microscope, one of the approaches we've taken is to just work directly with policymakers. So we're in constant dialogue. Why did it want to slow?”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're learning from an operations perspective what it takes. And that's the reason I bring up the 1 million in our safety records, because we feel really proud that we've figured it out because you can't perfect this product in a lab. You can't figure these things out in the lab. And if there's dry driving.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've not thought about that because what we're focused on is how do you actually manage a fleet? Vehicles that do not have drivers. The actual expertise that you have when you're building a ride hailing network with human drivers is quite different because you can surge, you can communicate directly with the drivers. There's all of this.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or the firefly, which was the bespoke vehicle that we built. And then we had our Chrysler Pacifica minivans. So we have all of this experience across. And that's because we're building a generalizable driver”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we're a technology company building the driver. Other people who we partner with are doing cars, we think it's really important to partner with automotive companies that have all of the experience. In their case, they are a car company and that acquired a technology company. And so I'm not sure exactly how they think about it, but I think for us, we will have generations of cars. Like right now, we're on our fifth generation driver. And we've been able to deploy multiple generations of our driver across different vehicle platforms. So not only passenger vehicles all the way up to the one you were in today, the ones you were taking in the past might have been a Prius, might have been Alexis, might have been the”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we sort of think it's important that this technology not be viewed as sort of a project that's happening at one company, but actually a transformation. How did you hear?”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. There were 18 minor incidents, 10 of those were humans who ran into stationary. The others were human, but we were moving. And there was none in intersections, which is important because that's actually where the worst accidents happen and nothing involving pedestrians or cyclists.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We think it's great that there are more than one player focused on making roads safer. Like in our mind, this first and foremost should improve road safety. We need that to be true for all of us, right? We actually need to make sure that the markets in which we operate are actually improving road safety, which is part of why we published our paper around our first million miles. Now we've got RO miles. Now we've gotten to our two million.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. So we've tested snow, we've tested rain, we've done a little sort of Miami thunderstorms across 25 cities in the US. But yes, those capabilities come later on our roadmap.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We will go on highways there as well as everywhere eventually. Los Angeles is really important, not only because it's a complex transportation city, but also the demand for this is so high. We announced it and we already have 20,000 people waiting to try out the service. We're really thinking about all the cities where transportation is key to how people live and work.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly right. So the reason back in the day that we picked Phoenix is because it was fast growing, the regulatory climate was great. We've decided to continue to go back there and expand. The Sky Harbor Airport is the first in the world that's gotten this clearance for AV pickups. And so we've just found them actually super forward leaning on the technology. And also they have real transportation pain points that they view these cars as able to help them solve. Right.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a pretty compelling market. Regulatory is certainly top of mind all the time in this case because we're dealing with a state level regulatory agency. It's LA and San Francisco are sort of similar hurdles that we're making our way through. We have ongoing dialogue with all the regulators. And then Phoenix, like the top fastest growing city, is a very interesting population of older people and younger people sort of college and retirees.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So obviously, we think about market opportunity, like how big is the TAM first and foremost. Same with TAM as business lady. Oh, yeah. So how big is the market opportunity? How many people actually today pay for ride hailing? You know, if you think about LA is $2 billion.”
2023-06-08 · On with Kara Swisher · Look Ma, No Hands! With Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT