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Your ultimate authority for 
daily Elon Musk news. 

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Exploring the world's biggest 
ideas with your host Will 

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Walden. 
There's something new every day.

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So Waymo just switched on fully 
driverless freeway rides for 

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paying passengers in San 
Francisco, Los Angeles and 

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Phoenix. 
In the expansion connects SF to 

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San Jose with curbside access 
and Minita San Jose 

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International Airport. 
Now, is this the moment 

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robotaxis move from the city 
streets to true region to region

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transportation that everyday 
riders will actually use? 

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Tesla does not do this yet. 
And freeways are the backbone of

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how people travel in these metro
areas. 

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So letting the service take the 
fastest route changes the value 

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of a robo taxi trip. 
Riders who were limited to 

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surface streets can now do 
airport runs, crosstown commutes

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and city to suburb hops without 
a human being behind the wheel. 

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And the company says this 
rollout follows a steady safety 

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record in city driving. 
And it is extending that 

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approach to higher speeds and 
more complex merges. 

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Now freeway access is the unlock
that turns the novelty into a 

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network. 
The post break picture here is 

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simple. 
Then it gets nuanced. 

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First the capability. 
Vehicles can enter and exit 

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freeways, keep pace with 
traffic, and choose the route 

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that actually gets people there 
faster when the limited access 

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Rd. is best. 
Then this step arrives after 

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years of restricting service 
zones and gradual expansions in 

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the Bay Area and Phoenix, and 
after months of controlled roll 

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outs in Los Angeles 
neighborhoods. 

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What matters now is how the 
service scales across corridors 

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that millions of people rely on,
and how Tesla responds. 

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And in practical terms, riders 
in the Bay Area can book trips 

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that include freeway segments 
between San Francisco and San 

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Jose, and they can get dropped 
curbside at the San Jose 

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airport. 
That removes one of the most 

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obvious gaps in earlier service 
maps where airport access and 

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cross peninsula travel forced 
route compromises. 

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LA riders should see more direct
routing between neighborhoods 

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split by wide interstates, and 
Phoenix riders already familiar 

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with driverless trips can now 
use freeways when that is 

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objectively the quickest option.
Now the company positions this 

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as a proof of generalization. 
The driver handled dense 

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downtown's first, then complex 
suburban arterioles, and now it 

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steps into sustained high speed 
traffic with more lane changes, 

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merges, and incident handling. 
The claim is not that freeways 

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are easier or safer by default, 
but that the system's perception

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prediction in planning stack has
matured enough to operate at 

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freeway speeds while maintaining
its conservative margins. 

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You know the internal message is
expansion methodically, not a 

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single headline moment. 
They're not looking to grab 

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attention here. 
They are working to make a robo 

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taxi that can drive you from 
network to network, from city to

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city, from state to state, all 
across the United States. 

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Now, this roll out also relies 
on clear playbooks for awkward 

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edge cases. 
And if a vehicle defects on the 

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freeway, it'll pull over safely.
A response protocol in 

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coordination with Highway Patrol
will then avoid secondary 

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incidents. 
Those procedures exist in city 

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service, where cars can stop at 
curbs with freeway shoulders. 

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Ramps and interchanges demand 
different timing and 

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communication. 
Now. 

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The team says it has worked with
authorities on the scenarios, 

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and that collaboration will 
matter if the service is to keep

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public confidence as miles 
accumulate. 

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Now scale is the other story, 
and the numbers point to a 

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service that has moved beyond 
pilots. 

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Public reporting from recent 
weeks describes more than 1500 

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vehicles in the fleet, with 
steady weekly ride counts in the

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hundreds of thousands. 
And the mix is still anchored by

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electric crossovers equipped 
with prioritary lidar, cameras, 

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radar, and onboard compute 
designed for redundancy. 

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Now, hardware matters here 
because freeway driving brings 

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sustained vibration, higher 
closing speeds, and the need to 

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read both lane level markings 
and long range signals well 

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enough to plan several 100 
meters ahead. 

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And competitors know freeway 
credibility is the threshold 

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that you have to cross to Uber 
plans to treat field driverless 

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taxis in San Francisco use and 
lucid gravity SU VS with 

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autonomous technology from Nero 
moving beyond a booking 

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partnership into direct 
competition on those same 

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streets. 
And the interim goal is to build

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toward more than 100 vehicles 
during the ramp. 

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And if schedule holds, Bay Area 
riders will compare 2 driverless

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services next year and also 
Tesla. 

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And that will be coming up. 
And the deciding factors will be

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reliability, pick up, latency, 
trip time and, of course, price.

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Tesla is pushing a different 
path, though that still requires

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an attentive human ready to 
steer or brake at any moment for

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now. 
And the company markets the 

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experience with a robot taxi 
label in its app. 

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But the underlying system today 
is supervised driver assistance,

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not a completely driverless 
service. 

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And that distinction matters on 
a highway, because a service 

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that requires human fall back 
cannot offer the same value 

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proposition as a fully 
unattended ride, and it cannot 

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claim the safety or availability
profile of a Level 4 fleet. 

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Now Amazon is in this, too. 
Zoox is expanding its own 

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footprint with free rides around
the Las Vegas Strip, and those 

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deployments will keep pressure 
on all players to show smooth 

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autonomy and complex traffic. 
But the bar for freeways is 

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completely different. 
It is not enough to handle 

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predictable loops. 
A driverless service has to 

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merge in heavy traffic, navigate
unpredictable human behavior at 

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on ramps and off ramps, and keep
situational awareness across 

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multiple lanes at 55 to 70 mph. 
That is why this particular 

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expansion is seen as a marker of
technical maturity rather than a

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simple map update. 
And the policy backdrop is 

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moving in parallel. 
City and state officials are 

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trying to balance the promise of
fewer crashes and lower 

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emissions with reasonable 
guardrails for new risks. 

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Some local proposals would 
require a human operator and any

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autonomous vehicle, which would 
collapse the economics that make

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driverless service compelling. 
Others focus on incident 

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reporting, data sharing and 
coordination with first 

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responders, which can improve 
transparency without freezing 

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the technology in place. 
How those choices land will 

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shape where and how quickly 
freeway service rolls out next. 

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Safety investigations are part 
of the learning curve, too, and 

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everyone in the sector is 
dealing with them. 

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Reports or unexpected driving 
behavior have drawn federal 

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attention, and the result is a 
more formal feedback loop 

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between regulators and 
companies. 

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The outcome the public should 
watch for is not the absence of 

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scrutiny, but the presence of 
clear fixes, lower incident 

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rates over time, and better 
explanations of how the systems 

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are tested before features turn 
on. 

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For the general public and for 
riders, the litmus test is 

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simple. 
Does the car show up when the 

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app says it will pick a route 
that makes sense and complete 

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the trip without odd pauses or 
last minute reroutes? 

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Freeway access improves all 
three because a service can't 

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avoid fragile Surface St. 
shortcuts and take the obvious, 

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faster straight line path. 
It also enables more convincing 

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airport trips and cross metro 
rides that felt unnatural when 

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the car refused to enter on the 
highway and the business. 

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If a driver of this fleet can 
handle freeways reliability, it 

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can spread fixed costs across 
more miles, use vehicles more 

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hours per day, and price trips 
more competitively against ride 

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hail with human drivers. 
That is where the competitive 

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dynamic tightens. 
The player that proves it can do

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this safely at scale with 
predictable margins will set the

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preference point for the rest of
the industry, and they may find 

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itself defining the regulatory 
expectations others must meet 

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now. 
The engineering leap took years 

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because the problem seems simple
and it's not. 

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The freeways look structured, 
but the emergent behavior is 

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messy. 
People are weird. 

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On the highway. 
A system has to predict whether 

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a driver 2 lanes over will dive 
across to make a really quick 

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exit and cut a bunch of people 
off, whether a stop vehicle on 

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the shoulder hides A pedestrian 
about to step into traffic, and 

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whether an object ahead is safe 
to straddle or requires a lane 

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change right now. 
And that demands perception 

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range, multi agent prediction 
and a planner that chooses 

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smooth human like decisions 
without taking risks a 

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professional safety driver would
reject. 

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And they have to talk about 
different things. 

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Now you can hear how the rollout
is described. 

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It's not framed as a bold stunt 
or a sudden leap forward. 

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It's just calm. 
It's presented as the next 

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capability enabled by a driver 
that has already survived hard 

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miles in the city. 
Learn to deal with cut insurance

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and builds up the operational 
protocols to handle the 

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exceptions. 
Now this company is connected 

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the dots between city service 
areas in the corridors that make

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those areas feel like one 
region. 

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City to city, the competitive 
responses will keep coming, too.

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Uber wants to become both the 
marketplace for other robotaxi 

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fleets and a direct operator. 
Tesla's pushing toward 

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unsupervised capability from a 
supervised base. 

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Zoox is packaging autonomy with 
purpose built vehicles, and each

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path is coherent. 
But the freeway litmus test will

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expose differences in system 
maturity, safety, performance, 

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and user experience quickly 
because riders do not forgive 

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weirdness at 70 mph. 
Now the next meaningful 

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questions are the ones riders 
will ask without thinking about 

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autonomy at all. 
How long a time until a curbside

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pickup is available at more 
airports? 

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When will late night rides feel 
just as smooth as daytime trips?

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And how quickly do service maps 
fill the gaps between 

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neighborhoods that still require
awkward detours? 

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The answers will come from 
miles, hundreds of thousands of 

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miles of usage. 
If freeway trips become routine,

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volume will rise and the service
will feel less like a pilot and 

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more like transport 
infrastructure you can rely on 

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any time of the day. 
Hey, thank you so much for 

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listening today. 
I really do appreciate your 

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support. 
If you could take a second and 

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Greatly appreciate it, it helps 

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Caught up quickly and. 
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Com slash. 
Stage 0. 

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And please take care of 
yourselves and each other, and 

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I'll see you tomorrow.