Episode 410 | Autonomy Markets: Is Waymo's Lead Becoming Insurmountable?

Episode 410 | Autonomy Markets: Is Waymo's Lead Becoming Insurmountable?

From The Road to Autonomy by Grayson Brulte

May 30, 2026 · 41 min · Episode 410

About this episode

Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo's expanding lead in the autonomous vehicle market and the implications of the Zeekr rollout.

This week on Autonomy Markets , Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s widening lead, the Ojai (Chinese-made Zeekr robotaxi) rollout’s political fault lines, and the new Texas autonomous vehicle and truck database. Waymo is actively preparing to deploy a fleet of Chinese-made Zeekrs across California and Arizona, now renamed Ojai, in blue and purple states, not a red state, at least not yet. Sticking to his original call that the Zeekr is an unforced error, Grayson lays out the emerging split where Jaguars head to red states and Zeekrs head to blue and purple ones. With Magna now producing roughly 250 vehicles a month, Waymo is on pace for 6,000 cars by year-end, and Walt argues the real unlock comes when the sensor stack gets cheaper and Waymo begins to add more than 1,000 new vehicles a month on the road. In Texas, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles launched the Automated Motor Vehicle Lookup, where any member of the public can look up the fleet size of any AV operator in the state along with any complaints that might be filed. Wrapping up the conversation, Grayson and Walt discussed the launch of Wayve Labs, Zoox getting an undeserved pass thanks to Amazon and…

People in this episode

Host: Grayson Brulte

Guest: Walter Piecyk

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Waymo, Zeekr, Magna, Wayve Labs, Zoox, BYD, Texas Department of Motor Vehicles

Places: California, Arizona, Texas

More episodes of The Road to Autonomy

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Road to Autonomy podcast page.