Uber-Backed Moove Raising $1.2 BILLION in Debt for Waymo Fleet Expansion
Tesla Completes First-Ever Driverless Vehicle Delivery, Why Autonomous Vehicles Will Fail in Urban Centers, and Getting Into a Waymo Drunk..
Hey, it’s Harry! Welcome to the 68 new subscribers who have signed up since our last newsletter. I’m excited to have you join the 1,905 AV enthusiasts, executives, and industry professionals who are already on board. It’s great to have you along for the ride as we explore the intersection of autonomy and rideshare, and the business of AVs.
Top Stories of the Week
Uber-Backed Moove Raising $1.2 Billion in Debt for Expansion (link, no paywall). This debt round will help them finance a rollout of an autonomous driving fleet with Waymo, and expand in the US. Moove is currently Waymo’s fleet operations partner in Phoenix and Miami (coming soon)1.
Uber was the lead investor in Moove’s March 2024 $100 million fundraising round and the company has a solid business outside the United States renting vehicles to Uber drivers. But in that world, they are one of many Uber fleet providers. The big story here is that they’ll be using this new debt round to finance a rollout of an autonomous driving fleet with Waymo in the United States.
This is a key milestone for Waymo since the one thing the company hasn’t been able to outsource yet is the financing of vehicles. This deal also highlights that the unit economics of AVs may be nearing breakeven since Moove will now own and manage their own fleet of autonomous vehicles.
If we assume that Moove spends half of this debt round ($600m) to purchase Waymo’s Jaguar I-Paces ($175k total per the latest estimates from Sep. 2024), that would give them a fleet size of 3,428 vehicles, which would eclipse Waymo’s current fleet of just 1,500 vehicles. It’s a safe bet that the cost of the latest generation I Pace has also come down since 2024, and they also have the cheaper Zeekrs in testing - so the potential Moove fleet could be even larger.
Obviously, there’s a lot of speculation still surrounding this deal but the other big unknown is where and how Moove will deploy these vehicles. Will it be in ‘Waymo on Uber’ cities like Austin and Atlanta? Or will they partner directly with Waymo? My guess is that it would be the former given Uber’s ownership stake in the company and the potential for higher utilization. But we don’t know what Waymo is thinking and ultimately, they hold a lot of the cards in these relationships.
Autonomous Vehicle Safety with Professor Phil Koopman (link) - my latest interview with Professor
, autonomous vehicle expert and researcher with nearly 3 decades of experience in the field. We chatted about Phil’s move out of academia, what sparked his writing on AV safety, and how the industry has (or hasn’t) responded. He also shares his thoughts on Waymo’s track record, Tesla’s robotaxi plans, and why AV safety isn’t just about counting crashes. We also get into what builds—or breaks—public trust as these companies shift from pilot mode to full scale.Make sure you are subscribed to the TDD podcast as our next interview will be with ex-Tesla/Lyft executive Jon McNeill. Lots of good interviews lined up for the next month!
Cool Rides
Riding in a Tesla Robotaxi during some HEAVY rain (link).
‘I tried Google’s self-driving car Waymo, the ride was quite smoother than human drivers who break, throttle and steer abruptly’ (link).
AVs/Human behaving badly
‘We just witnessed 2 Waymos stalled out in a water main break…no passengers were harmed’ (link). Here’s another one confidently wading through the waters (link). It does seem like Waymos have an issue with bodies of water.
Waymo pulled over for an illegal left turn in Beverly Hills (link). Here’s a close-up of the moment it got pulled over (link).
‘Good job Driver! Some dude thought it was a good idea to jump in front of the Waymo and luckily our driver was not distracted and immediately stopped!’ (link).
Other Stuff
Tesla sends driverless Model Y from factory to customer to promote its robotaxi tech (link).
Ford CEO Jim Farley says Waymo’s approach to self-driving makes more sense than Tesla’s (link).
Author Malcolm Gladwell explains why he thinks driverless cars will fail in urban centers—and why he ran circles (literally) around a Waymo vehicle (link).
The Autonomous Vehicle Rollout: Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber) and Alex Kendall (Wayve) at CVAI London (link). Great interview by
at his CVAI conference. It doesn’t sound like Uber will be building its own AV tech anytime soon. Dara said potential AV partners used to worry Uber would favor Uber ATG, but now that it’s gone, the doors are wide open for partners like Waymo, Wayve, and more. Dara also feels that Uber is getting “zero credit” for being a major self-driving car player. The big caveat here is that Uber isn't developing any of the tech themselves, and relying solely on partners like Waymo. If Waymo decided to pull the plug, Uber would be in trouble in the short term.‘Boom! 💥 Just got my invite to Tesla's Robotaxi program!’ (link). Looks like invites are starting to get sent to non-influencers in Austin so if you’re interested, you can apply here for the chance to ride in a robotaxi.
“Me getting into a Waymo drunk: “Sooo…how long have you been a Waymo?” (link).
What else we're listening to
Junko’s Tech Probe by
:Personally I like the hybrid approach that combines AV and teleoperations since it combines the best of both worlds. For Waymo, it’s not feasible to have someone watching every ride in real time. So live agents will typically step in during low-speed or edge cases, like when my Waymo got stuck in a tricky parking lot at Leo’s Tacos here in LA. After 20–30 seconds, I’m fairly sure a live agent helped it back out. No big deal. For higher-risk moments (say, a vehicle stuck in an intersection), that likely gets escalated to a more senior agent, or maybe even a full-time Waymo employee in the U.S.
As for customer support, Waymo’s clearly aiming to automate and eliminate most rider issues up front. It’s tough to expect a support agent overseas who’s never been in a Waymo to resolve nuanced problems, but it’s also not scalable to have U.S.-based agents handling everything. Over time, I imagine many of the remote agents gets phased out, similar to the current Uber customer support experience (more chat based, automation, etc). In the meantime, agents can triage issues and escalate the serious stuff to more senior agents. It’s not perfect, but it’s manageable — and the long-term fix is just making the Waymo Driver smart enough to prevent most of these problems in the first place.
Shout-outs
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Until next week.
-Harry
7/5/25: An earlier edition of this newsletter incorrectly stated that Moove ‘also runs fleet management for Uber (for Waymo) in Austin and Atlanta.’ but this is incorrect. A different company with a similar name (Moove cars) is handling fleet operations for Uber (for Waymo) in those two cities. Moove cars who also received investment from Uber, has now rebranded to Avomo. Thank you TDD reader Arnav S for pointing this out.