This is the Elon Musk Podcast, your daily hit of what is really
going on at Tesla, SpaceX X AI, and the rest of the Musk
universe. I'm your host Will Walden, and I
have covered Elon Musk for more than five years, spent a year on
the ground at SpaceX, Starbase during early Starship
development, and before this I spent my career as a software
developer working with billion dollar companies.
I've also built and sold my own businesses and now I make
content and help other people grow their companies.
Now on this show, I used that experience to break down the
news, filter out all the noise and give you clear context you
can actually use. Waymo begins testing in
Minneapolis with its white Jaguar.
I pace, SU VS and Zeker RT vehicles rolling out under human
control now. The company says that is the
first step toward ride hailing in the city once it proves
performance on local streets. Now today, you'll hear what
Waymo plans to do, how Minnesota officials and drivers reacted,
why winter conditions are the ultimate hurdle for driverless
vehicles. A Waymo spokesperson told us
that the goal is not only testing, but ride hailing.
How will that path play out in a city known for ice, snow, very
cold weather and complex traffic patterns?
So here's the plan for today. I'll explain what we MO is doing
in Minneapolis and how the phased rollout works.
Then walk through the safety claims, illegal stuff, labor
concerns in the city's expectations.
And then we're going to talk about an analysis of what winter
conditions and local policy will demand before riders can tap a
button for a driverless car. And we'll get right into that
after this very short break. We MO's Twin Cities move starts
with manual driving, then supervised autonomy, then
potential public rides. The company's product
communications manager told us that they intend to offer ride
hailing in Minneapolis, not just testing.
Testing began Thursday morning with no date sent for passenger
service, which signals A validation first approach before
they invite normal people like you and I into these vehicles.
Now here's how the rollout works on the street.
First, a human driver sits behind the wheel to collect data
and map the city streets using the full sensor arrays and suite
of cameras, radar and LIDAR to build a 360° picture of the
city. And after mapping, the vehicle
drives the route while the human remains behind the wheel to take
control if needed. This creates repeatable routes
and edge cases for libraries that Waymo can analyze before it
asks regulators and the public. For rider only, ServiceNow
Minneapolis is a deliberate choice.
The company calls winter a big question, so it wants a dense
urban area with serious coal to test whether it's 6th
generation. AI and cleaning mechanisms can
keep sensors clear and decision making stable now, starting in
the urban core, then expanding outward let's the team validate
in high complexity traffic before it scales to wider
coverage. Now this is an effort to answer
the hardest problem in one of the hardest environments first.
And safety is the center of Waymo's pitch here.
They point to its record in other cities setting fewer
injury crashes and fewer pedestrian injury crashes
compared with human drivers over the same distance.
Those are directional claims that set expectations for local
officials and riders who will ask about crash rates, near
misses and emergency vehicle interactions.
And if Minneapolis sees similar results during supervised
testing, that'll support the case for a limited, then broader
rider rollout over time. And Minneapolis law does not
explicitly allow or prohibit autonomous vehicle testing,
according to the state Transportation department.
That means the next legislative session will likely take up EV
policy with agencies asking to be part of this discussion.
And a clear framework would set responsibilities for companies
reporting requirements for incidents and rules for when a
vehicle can operate without a human at the driver's seat.
Lawmakers will weigh local transit priorities and workforce
efforts while they draft these rules.
A labor concerns surfaced immediately.
The Minnesota Uber Lyft Drivers Association said driverless cars
could threaten income for drivers and faulted companies
for making deployment decisions without community input.
The group also raised a performance question specific to
Minnesota's climate, arguing that the technology is unproven
on icy roads in a winter traffic.
Those questions will press Waymo to share test data, incident
logs and performance envelopes for low visibility and low
friction conditions. Now, city officials see some
trade-offs here. A Minneapolis spokesperson told
us that the city wants safe streets and efficient traffic,
and it'll keep talking with Waymo as testing begins with
human drivers. The city also raised a basic
question. If ride hail grows, how does
that interact with public transit goals in mode shift?
Now my analysis on this is that Minneapolis will want to measure
any shift in bus or ride it rail ridership once EV trips are
available, and it'll look for rules to keep pickup and drop
off flows from clogging key corridors in the city.
And if they see a downturn in bus and rail ridership, then
they could start taxing driverless vehicles and ride
hailing services to make up the lost revenue from bus and rail.
Now, Waymo's current service footprint matters for
expectations of this new area. The company already runs rider
service in warmer cities and climates and has partnerships
with deliveries in the Phoenix area.
Recently expanded to Austin and Atlanta through the Uber app and
the several other U.S. markets on its radar, including
Washington DC, Miami, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, San Diego,
San Antonio, Seattle, Nashville, Orlando and Tampa, and also
announced plans for cold weather cities like Boston, Detroit,
Denver, New York City and also Buffalo.
Minneapolis slots into that broader push is a winter test
site with dense urban streets. Now I expect Minneapolis to
focus on performance during active snowfall freeze thaw
cycles that leave rutted ice in early morning glare with
partially obscured lane markings.
Sensor cleaning is a real constraint for Waymo.
Even with heating and hydrophobic coatings, slush and
road salt will degrade lighter returns and camera clarity over
time. Now, the mapping pass will help,
but the real proof will be how the system handles refrozen
intersections. If it hits black ice, what does
it do? What if it wants to turn into an
unplowed alley? Will it just smash through the
snow? And it'll also have inconsistent
bike lane markings after a storm.
How will Waymo deal with this? You know, and I've been digging
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Now, local precedent exists here, and that matters for
public comfort too. Southwest Transit has tested
autonomous vehicles and it's on demand prime service in the
suburbs with a human seated behind the wheel but not
actively driving. Riders have taken more than
17,000 trips in those vehicles with a very high satisfaction
rate, which gives officials a nearby reference point of how
people react to computer driven rides.
It also gives lawmakers a Minnesota specific test case
when they debate statewide rules.
Now, community voices around the city reflect both optimism and
also caution. A City Council member said crash
reduction and less need for parking could help, but flagged
concern about systems still struggling to fully identify
people. Now that puts a spotlight on
vulnerable road users, so the next phase should include
transparent reporting on how the system detects and responds to
pedestrians, cyclists, scooter riders, skateboarders, E bikes,
anything on the road. Minneapolis will want data from
the urban core, where those interactions happen consistently
and constantly. And Waymo's team frame the
arrival as more than just a test run.
A spokesperson for the company told us that they are here to
offer ride hailing in Minneapolis once the system
proves itself not to pass through and leave.
They're not just doing this to gather data then move to a
bigger city. And that sets a standard that
the company will be asked to meet with service maps, hours
and response times when it seeks a ride or only permit.
And the quickest way to build trust is to publish the safety
case, the route coverage and operation conditions before
inviting any riders on board. And these vehicles are cool.
They're Jaguar I paced SU, VS, and also Zeker RT models.
They have distinctive sensor stacks and roof hardware, so
they're going to draw some attention, which makes them
visible to drivers and pedestrians.
Visibility is helpful during the learning period, but it also
invites scrutiny. So I expect Waymo to run clear
markings and keep training personnel on site during the
early weeks to answer questions, log issues and collective
feedback and also talk about bugs.
Now, that feedback loop will shape the service map and the
weather policy moving forward. Also, there's regulatory stuff
going on. State transportation officials
expect the issue to come up in the next session, which means
hearings, draft bills and stakeholder testimony could take
years. And if lawmakers set data
sharing and incident reporting rules, Minneapolis could
position itself as a national winter city proving ground for
all AVS, including Tesla. With clear expectations around
performance, insurance and roadway etiquette for pick up
and drop off, companies will need to show they can operate
within those rules while improving Traffic Safety and
saving lives. But in the near term, the
testing geography is a big deal. Starting downtown puts the
system in contact with buses, bike lanes, curbside loading, a
lot of people walking in and out of the streets, jaywalking,
people running across the street, bikes, anything,
scooters, any sort of E bikes, any sort of skateboards,
anything like that. They're going to be everywhere
and expanding outward will add freeway merges eventually.
Bridges that ice before regular roads and neighborhood streets
where snow banks are very prominent in the winter time.
And I expect the most challenging phase to be the late
storm window when plows leave residual snow ridges that
obscure lane lines and narrow travel lanes and unpredictable
ways somebody's exiting the driveway and there's snow being
plowed or have been plowed on either side of their driveway.
You can't see that car coming out.
So what is going to happen when we MO encounter something like
that? Public transit still an open
question? City Council member told us what
they told us about the service and how it means for transit
ridership recovery. And you know what?
That's a fair question. If AV Ride Hill cannibalizes
short bus trips, that could reduce fare box revenue and slow
ridership gains. So they could make a lot less
money. But if it feeds riders to
transit stations, they can improve coverage and reduce car
ownership too. To clean up the environment a
little bit, many Yep this will need to watch trip patterns and
work with Waymo and pick up zones near transit hubs.
Now, my read on the timing here is pretty straightforward.
Testing began with the human at the wheel and no pasture start
date yet, which puts the emphasis on data collection
through the winter. If the system meets its
performance targets across snow, ice and low visibility
conditions, Waymo can ask to open a limited rioter program
within a geofenced area, likely starting with smaller fleets in
defined hours. Maybe if 10 vehicles and do it
when it's daylight and clear. Clear up public reporting will
help move that process forward. If they share all of their data
with the city and the state, they're good to go.
You know, I think this is a really big deal.
Tesla isn't there yet, but they will eventually head to
Minneapolis. And Waymo has started supervised
testing in Minneapolis with manual driving for mapping and
data collection, plans to keep a human behind the wheel during
early autonomous runs, and aims to offer ride hailing after it
proves performance in winter and city traffic.
State law has no explicit AV authorization, legislators
expect to take up the issue, and local voices raise safety, labor
and transit corrections. The next phase depends on how
the system handles that snow, handles that ice, and the dense
urban interactions, and on what rules that Minneapolis sets for
driver operations in the future. And please, if you want to
support the show even more, go to patreon.com/stagezero and
please take care of yourselves and each other and I'll see you
tomorrow.