Transcript: Driverless Daily broadcast, September 29, 2026

Opening

Lane: The sensor calibration on this ride feels incredibly smooth, doesn't it, Otto?

Otto: It really does, Lane. I'm still getting used to the lack of steering wheel movement.

Lane: Well, I'm Lane, and we have a lot to get to on this Tuesday, September 29, 2026.

Otto: And I'm Otto. Let's get into the news.

Lane: Leading off tonight, Aurora Innovation is setting its sights on a major expansion.

Lane: According to TradingView, the company aims to deploy 30,000 driverless trucks by 203,0 and is targeting 5 billion dollars in revenue.

Lane: This story is also being covered by Yahoo Finance, TechCrunch, FreightWaves, electric-vehicles, and Morningstar.

Otto: That is a massive scale for commercial hauling.

Otto: Our next story: Waymo is expanding its testing footprint. That's from FOX40.

Lane: I wonder how the local traffic will adapt to them.

Lane: Up next — Waymo's safety record is getting some new scrutiny.

Lane: The Verge reports that Waymo's driverless cars continue to crash less often than people.

Otto: The data makes a strong case for the technology.

Otto: Now, to the strategy at Uber.

Otto: As reported by the SelfDrivingCars subreddit, Uber is leveraging its network of human drivers as a core asset to compete in the autonomous taxi market.

Otto: They are using human labor to fill gaps in autonomous driving capacity by scheduling both human drivers and self-driving vehicles within the same app.

Lane: It's a clever way to use existing infrastructure while the tech matures.

Lane: This just in — Waabi is rethinking how AI learns to drive.

Lane: The SelfDrivingCars subreddit notes that founder Raquel Urtasun is developing a single AI system to handle both trucking and robotaxis.

Lane: The system uses a hyper-realistic simulator to learn from few examples, and is currently being deployed on freight trucks in Texas, with plans to go fully driverless next year.

Lane: They have also partnered with Uber to bring this technology to 25,000 robotaxis.

Otto: Reducing the need for massive real-world data sets could certainly speed things up.

Otto: Up next — a look at the evolving hierarchy of intelligence.

Otto: The MIT Media Lab discusses the movement from autonomous cars to autonomous agents through the five levels of AI agent autonomy.

Lane: The definition of autonomy is certainly expanding.

Lane: Now, to Tesla's latest software move.

Lane: As reported by BASENOR and Not a Tesla App, Tesla has introduced a free trial offer for its Full Self-Driving software.

Lane: The trial is available to existing Tesla owners and includes access to the latest software updates, though it is subject to availability and may be phased out.

Otto: This will certainly give a lot of people a chance to decide if they trust the system.

Sign-off

Otto: That's all for today.

Lane: Thanks for joining us.