Jason Calacanis on the Robotaxi Endgame

<p>This week on <a href="https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/autonomy-markets/">Autonomy Markets</a>, <a href="https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/grayson-brulte/">Grayson Brulte</a> and <a href="https://x.com/WaltLightShed">Walter Piecyk</a> are joined by special guest <a href="https://x.com/Jason">Jason Calacanis</a>, one of the first investors in <a href="https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/uber-autonomy-myths-realities-waymo-capital-raise-miami-depots/">Uber</a>, to debate his bull case on Uber, who wins the robotaxi endgame and whether local governments will cap the deployment of autonomous vehicles.</p><p>Jason earns the first clappy hat of the episode for saying what few in the market will, <a href="https://indices.roadtoautonomy.com/robotaxi/tesla/">Tesla</a> is obsessed with safety. The incidents <a href="https://indices.roadtoautonomy.com/robotaxi/waymo/">Waymo</a> has absorbed would be showstoppers under Tesla, and Tesla knows it. Jason, who drives FSD daily on Hardware 4, puts the system at 98 percent of the way to Level 4 and wants to buy a Cybercab fleet.</p><p>The robotaxi endgame, in Jason’s view, comes down to manufacturing. A shift from 2 percent of global miles on rideshare to 30 percent requires more than 100 million autonomous vehicles and a $5 trillion fleet build-out larger than the AI data center build-out.</p><p>Tesla wins the gold because it owns the factory. In Jason’s opinion Waymo will have to buy a car company, likely Rivian or Lucid, after it spins out of Google and IPOs. Uber owns the demand and will take the rest of the market with its 20 partners, several of which Jason predicts will pivot to building only robotaxis. His market share call is 40 percent Tesla, 35 percent Uber and 15 percent Waymo.</p><p>Walt pushes back on whether there is enough at the table for Uber’s twelfth partner and questions whether any of them are close to Tesla or Waymo today, with 300 <a href="https://indices.roadtoautonomy.com/autonomous-driving-licensing/nuro/">Nuro</a> powered Lucid Gravity vehicles by June being a win. Jason counters that Nuro and <a href="https://indices.roadtoautonomy.com/robotaxi/avride/">Avride</a> will be driver-out within 24 months and that no one else can afford the $100 to $300 per customer required to build another Uber-scale network.</p><p>The sharpest debate of the episode is regulatory capture. Jason argues local governments will cap and license autonomous vehicles the way they did Airbnb, that drivers will be the first mass une