Do EV enthusiasts care about the Ferrari Luce? Plus, Is Nuro Prepared To Win The Autonomy Race?

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]I I think the heavy compromised EVs that we have today are already eclipsing gas performance cars. It's just that nobody really cares.

[00:00:14]Hello and welcome back to the Pluggedin Podcast, a weekly news show from inside EVs all about the future of transportation. I'm Matt Hogan >> and I'm Andrea De.

[00:00:23]>> And on this week's show, Tim's out on vacation as you can probably tell or see. And uh so Andre is filling in, but that's all the better cuz Andre and I are sort of the biggest traditional gas car enthusiasts on the staff. And uh this time we're talking about whether car enthusiasts care about EVs at all and whether EV enthusiasts care about supercars and performance EVs. Now, if you pay any attention to the market, you probably know which one we're talking about, which is of course the Ferrari Luche, the first electric Ferrari. It's big, it's fast, and it is extremely controversial. Finally, Tim and I are going to sit down with Andrew Chapen, the COO of Nuro, to get an update on the autonomy race. So, let's get started.

[00:00:59]The big news this week is the Ferrari Luche, the brand's first EV. It's a four-door touring car designed in part by iPhone design legend Johnny IV. And it has sparked uh let's say a conversation to put it charitably, right, Andre? Um, but before we get into, you know, the the conversation, the discourse, uh, God help us. Uh, here are the topline specs you need to know, which is first, it's got 1,035 horsepower with 730 pound- feet of torque. Good for 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds.

[00:01:29]Uh, it's got rear wheel steering, trick adaptive anti-roll, uh, suspension, sort of like you get on the Puro Sangu. Um, power levels that you can engage by hitting the right paddle, sort of like shifting gears as you speed up. uh 329 miles or 530 kilometers of WLTP range, which uh you know that's going to be lower for the EPA. Uh that's out of a 112 kilowatt hour usable pack. Uh powered with 350 kilowatt charging and all for the low low price of $550,000 or about $640,000 at current exchange rates. We'll wait to see full pricing. Uh who said EVs aren't affordable? Anyway, uh Andre, I want to jump in on what do you think about just the specs? You know, the the numbers.

[00:02:12]>> Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that, you know, you can go a lot quicker for a lot less money. The specs are okay, but it's not that impressive if we start comparing acceleration, power, torque figures to other performance EVs. I mean, it's slower than a Tesla Model S Plaid, which is like 5 years old. Now, what gives me high expectations for the Luch is the way it drives thanks to its four motor um you know the the four motor the quad motor setup. Yeah.

[00:02:42]>> I mean this means it's going to have super advanced torque vectoring which will allow you to you know like swing the tail out in corners and it will allow it to put its power down really well.

[00:02:53]>> And I hope it will also give you the chance to like tailor the handling. AMG is doing it with the new four-door EV.

[00:03:01]It really with with the dials that allow you to, you know, tailor how how the car feels. Um, the quad motor thing is the most impressive for me. The most impressive for me, sorry. Um, I mean, quad motor EVs are the coolest. And, um, the Rimaca comes to mind and that's fantastic. I mean, sure, it has 2,000 horsepower, but you can also like take it sideways at a ridiculous angle, which is crazy.

[00:03:32]>> I mean, I think that's a big part of what Ferrari is doing here, right? Is one thing that on the specs front, it's been a long time since a Ferrari was the fastest car in the world. It's been a long time since Ferrari was the quickest car in the world. Um, that's not really what they do that often. Um, they sort of the whole thing is the driving experience. I mean, I've I've driven a 296 GTB. It's not the quickest supercar in the world. It's not the fastest, but it is like the most engaging I've driven. Um, but there's sort of a weird question here where, you know, selling on engagement, the quad motor setup is going to be really good in theory. Uh, but also this thing's heavy. It's like 5,000 lbs like most electric supercars and sports cars. Um, so it's not even really a clear leader there in terms of agility. Um, you know, it it's an interesting uh qu open question whether it drives well. The only thing that makes me think yes it will is that Ferraris they very rarely disappoint in that you know sector. Um but I don't know like do you think the specs are good enough >> to be honest purely based on the specs?

[00:04:35]No.

[00:04:36]>> Yeah. But I hope it delivers the kind of Ferrari driving experience that people expect from this car. And that it's that would be its like only redeeming um feature because and you know it looks weird. The specs are worse than a TYON and >> or or a Xiaomi SU7 >> Ultra >> and other cars.

[00:04:59]>> But let's go in on that because I think that's that's the big topic of conversation, right? Um the the the controversial part isn't just about the specs or anything. I mean, no one's even talking about the specs. Um it's really about how it looks. It you know, if you haven't seen pictures, there will be one on the screen of course, but um if you're listening to this, I mean, it's sort of a high- riding EV sedan with a little I mean, it looks like a Pstar 4, which they market it as a crossover in terms of proportions. It's got a tall floor, short nose, which is maybe not what you expect from a you know, grand touring Ferrari. And you know, you can pretty clearly see the influence of Johnny IV, the Apple designer here, for sure. Um, yeah. So, what what do you think about the way it looks?

[00:05:38]>> I think the front overhang is unusually long. Like the the front axle is set too far back and it makes it look kind of weird. I think if it were like maybe 10 in further forward, it would completely change the the stance and the proportions.

[00:05:55]>> And of course, it should be a bit lower, too. Tim saw it in person, correct?

[00:06:00]Yeah, he did. Sadly, he's I would love to hear his thoughts on this. He's on vacation, but >> he he he said it it looks sedanny in person. So, >> yeah, we have to see. I mean, I think it's really interesting. Um, personally, I wasn't expecting it to look great because I don't love the way the Posangu, the only other four-door Ferrari looks. Um, and I kind of thought they were just going to do that, but electric, they took it a totally different direction than I expected. Um, but it's really interesting just in the um context of like I think it's good to lean into EV proportions. EVs have fat floors. We know that and you can try to hide that. Um, but I think there's something to be said for leaning into it. But you're right that there's also like, well, EV packaging concerns are not nearly as restrictive as when you have an engine there. So, you could push the nose to, you know, uh, push the front wheels to the corners because those super short overhangs are pretty essential to Ferrari's design. But it's interesting because they also talk I don't have the number in front of me, but I think it's something around like 23 24 cubic feet of storage in this thing, which is like more than the Lexus ESV I just tested had. Um, so it's kind of weird when you think about like did they extend the nose to give it a bigger trunk than like most sedans? I >> I don't know. Um, we'll have to see how all that packaging shakes out in the real world. But I wanted to talk about, you know, moving on to our second topic, which is sort of zooming out of this.

[00:07:22]We've had these two huge EV reveals in the past two weeks in terms of performance cars. The AMG GT four-door that you've mentioned and this Ferrari.

[00:07:31]One has 600 kW charging, you know, partially silicon anode battery, all this crazy groundbreaking tech. The other one is the first Ferrari EV. So, you would think, you know, sort of the conventional wisdom would be these would be stories that everyone's reading. And if you look online, everyone's talking about the Ferrari Luche. But when you look at our web traffic, our stories on super high performance stuff, whether I mean AMG GT four-door, but also rumors about the BMW M cars, Porsche TYON, whatever, they just they don't seem to do very well on our site compared to stories about like the EV9 and the Chevy Equinox EV and just those things lap the Porsches and the Ferraris. And so it's interesting. we have this very EV focused audience, but when there's these really, you know, new high-end supercars and sports cars that you would think would get a lot of attention, people don't seem to be reading that much. Why do you think that is, Andre?

[00:08:25]>> To be honest, I think EV enthusiasts and, you know, traditional car enthusiasts and driving enthusiasts don't really overlap.

[00:08:33]>> Yeah. I I think the people who are into EVs now were into tech generally speaking like 10 years ago and EVs are just phones with wheels for them.

[00:08:45]>> Yeah.

[00:08:45]>> And and sure they like a car that's fast, but they're not into, you know, the geeky mechanical stuff like we are.

[00:08:53]>> Yeah.

[00:08:53]>> And >> it's just a number. I mean, EVs produce ridiculous power numbers and >> yeah, >> you know, it's um it's hard to be impressed by them.

[00:09:05]>> Yeah, we're desensitized to it.

[00:09:06]>> Completely desensitized.

[00:09:07]>> If you said that's why it was so interesting because if you told like a car enthusiast like, "Oh my god, there's a new car that is a 1000 horsepower and goes 0 to 60 in 2 seconds." They'd be like, "What?" And then they find out it's electric. They're like, "That's easy." You know, like, and that's part of it. It's like electric powertrains are already perfect and they're already faster than they need to be. So, it's hard to get too excited about pushing the boundaries, but that's why I'm excited that you are on this week because I think you and I are both major fans of traditional gas performance cars. You spend a lot of time in, you know, BMW M and AMG cars in your career.

[00:09:38]I came here from road and track where I focused on sports and performance cars and yeah, it just it seems like traditional car enthusiasts don't seem to care about electric, you know, sports and supercars. And I guess my question to you is like do you think that is going to change as we you know in 5 to 10 years the people who right now are excited about a gas manual transmission BMW M3 or or someone like you who's not you a version of you that isn't an EV convert yet but still has your manual modded BMW in 10 years is that person going to be a car a new car enthusiast including EVs or is that person going to just become a classic car enthusiast and you know talk about the good old days and then the EV enthusiast will continue to be this sort of tech oriented acceleration number Tesla type guy who's probably not doing track days, probably not worried about at the limit handling and is more worried about the gadget stuff.

[00:10:33]>> I I think there will be more overlap between the tech focused EV person and the driving enthusiast in the future. I think many of these people are, you know, the the traditional driving and car enthusiasts. I I think they're still running on some old stereotypes about electric vehicles >> and the progress in the e on the EV scene is remarkable. These cars are advancing at a ridiculous pace. I mean, even >> 3 years feels like an eternity, you know, driving um the latest stuff compared to what was around in 2023, I guess, >> for sure. you know, and I think EVs will keep getting better and I I'm I'm not sure. It's it's a difficult question and there's a lot of nuance to it, I think. But um I think for sure some of the people who are only um into EVs as a tech proposition will start to appreciate them more as actual cars. And there will also be people who, you know, um don't like EVs right now. Yeah, I think they w will start liking them because there will be more EVs. They will be better and um they I mean Porsche is making a 718 EV, >> right?

[00:11:51]>> That that's got to count for something.

[00:11:53]And I'm I'm sure Porsche won't make a crap sports car.

[00:11:57]>> Yeah. And I think the improvement is going to come from both ends, right? For >> for starters, like >> car companies have to figure out how to sell the specific benefits of EVs, and I think they're not used to that. Like Ferrari, I always say one of the big problems Ferrari and Porsche is facing is that the customers they're selling to now had Porsches on their wall 40, 50, 60 years ago. And those were not, you know, electric cars. They were manual transmission, naturally aspirated cars.

[00:12:24]And that's why Porsche has had so much success making like the GT3 manual, you know, priority on manual and making it naturally aspirated in these things.

[00:12:33]people will pay for that experience that feels more like the thing that they remember >> even though it's slower than a turbo.

[00:12:39]>> Right. Exactly. But I think there's also these companies just haven't learned to take advantage of all these EV specific benefits. And that's where I want to tie it back into what you're talking about with the quad motor stuff. Like there's so much you can do when you have, you know, Ferrari was telling me when I went to like a tech backgrounder for the what at the time they were calling it the electric car, but what became the luche and they were talking about you have individual damping control. You have independent independent anti-roll control. So you have hydraulic control of both wheels. You have regen independent or independent regen and independent power on all corners. So every axis of rotation for each four corners is totally manipulable by software. And I think that's a level of control and fidelity that you could never get with a gas car. But that doesn't mean that all of that benefit is going to sort of materialize right away.

[00:13:30]And I think, you know, it's not selling people like fake engine noises and fake gear shifts that's going to get them there. It's like when you're in a Rivian R1T quad and you realize or or a Mercedes G580 EV and it can pivot in place, it's like, oh my god, what is that? That's going to bring out that enthusiasm. And I think your point about EV enthusiasts getting more interested in driving dynamics is also going to happen because one my like bull case as as a car enthusiast and an EV enthusiast is like in the past a lot of what you know for sports and performance cars you could compete on handling and chassis balance or you could compete on power and engine. And it has always been easier to sell power and engine. And that's why you get a lot of cars, especially I mean you're in Romania or Romania, but um it's a different market there, but for us it's like what's a bestselling sports car. For the longest time, it was a Mustang, a car that didn't have the best chassis, but they threw a giant V8 in it. It was awesome.

[00:14:29]And so you saw that a lot >> for what you were getting.

[00:14:32]>> So you saw that a lot of of companies saying, "Oh, screw trying to make like a perfectly dynamically balanced car.

[00:14:37]Let's just throw power at the wall." And I think very quickly that is going to stop working because when you can make when a Kia can make 700 horsepower and it's not even going to make headline news anymore. Selling speed is not going to work. And so the thing you're going to have to do is improve that feeling that the feeling that we love of getting into a flow state with the car, feeling it move below you. And there's just car companies that are already really good at that. I think I wrote recently the Polestar 3. I have a lot of problems with that car in design decisions they made in it. But in terms of how it drives, it's way more fun to drive than any gas powered, you know, super SUV because yeah, it does have the trick suspension and air suspension and all, but it also just it has a seamlessness to it that they can never match and still has torque vectoring. It has all these great technologies. And I think right now we're just in an early phase with EVs where they're a little too heavy and a little too new. They just haven't figured out all the details. But I think you've written before about the quad motor BMW M3 EV that's going to come. Things like this AMG GT, if there's a next generation TYON, the Luch, like they're going to keep pushing this boundary. And especially once you unlock lighter batteries, if we ever get to solid state, these things like these cars are very quickly going to eclipse gas cars. But it just it's going to take time, I think, for consumers to warm up to that. Uh, you know, We're still not over losing the manual transmission and that's a that's a fight car enthusiasts lost at least in the US market like 20 years ago. Um so yeah, I think it'll happen.

[00:16:14]>> I I think the heavy compromised EVs that we have today are already eclipsing um gas performance cars. Yeah, >> it's just that nobody really cares >> as our re readers >> keep telling us or rather not telling us, >> right? And I I think also part of that, right, is one thing I always tell my car enthusiast friends, they're like, "Oh my god, this car, you know, you drive an EV and you're like, "Ah, it doesn't have like a great engine the way like this BMW straight six or whatever." And I'm like, "You got to understand like most of the EVs on the road, they're not replacing BMW straight sixes and Mercedes V8s and, you know, Ferrari flat painted V8s." Like any EV is so much better than the 2.0 L 4 cylinder you are getting in a RAV 4. I mean, that's a 2.5, but all >> the base four cylinder, >> right? All of the most of the engines and cars that people actually buy are readily four and three cylinders that are not particularly fast. They don't sound particularly good. I mean, that was why, you know, the car that I think has most gotten enthusiasts to pay attention to it and gotten EV enthusiasts excited was the Hyundai Ionic 5N. And I find it very funny because that's the best simulation I've ever had of a gas car experience. And the engine they're simulating is the 2.0 0 L turbo from the Hyundai Elantre N like which is not a particularly charming or great engine. I mean it's a great car, don't get me wrong. Um but yeah, I I think they'll get a lot better um as time moves on.

[00:17:39]>> I I find it interesting that Hyundai chose to make it sound like a simulated engine, like they didn't go for outright realism with the noise you hear in the Ionic 6, >> unlike AMG. and I was a passenger in a prototype for the um four-door EV.

[00:17:59]It's I if you blindfolded me and put me in that car, I could swear it's powered by gasoline, >> man.

[00:18:06]>> So, they're going for realism. Like, you can even feel the the overrun crackle.

[00:18:12]Like they have some sort of vibration devices in the seats and when you lift off and the crackle comes on, you you you not only hear it, but you also feel it. That is so Mercedes and I'm I'm very interested to try that hopefully this year and then try the Ferrari Luche which is going to amplify the sound of its electric motor and it's not going to simulate a sound and I don't know I think in the long term it's clear that we're not going to make EVs sound like gas cars but if that's what it takes to get people excited like I'm all for it.

[00:18:41]Um I loved it in the Ionic 5N and I would love it a lot more if it was simulating an engine that actually sounds good like an AMG V8. So excited to see how that develops. Hopefully we get more car enthusiasts, traditional car enthusiasts on board, hopefully EV enthusiasts get a little more excited about the performance stuff cuz frankly like this is I mean when you look at 600 kW charging silicon anode batteries like this is where we push the limits and that technology is going to trickle down. So if you are a EV enthusiast who is very into driving or you are a car enthusiast that recently got into EVs, let us know in the comments, reach out.

[00:19:13]But there's one more big question hanging over that future of driving enthusiasm, which is of course, are you going to be driving at all? And uh it's an increasingly important question as robo taxis take to the streets. And so me and Tim sat down and had a great conversation with Andrew Chapen at Nuro about it. So let's get into that. The autonomous vehicle race has kicked into high gear lately. Whimo is expanding quickly across the US. Uber is making deals across the space and car companies like Rivian and Lucid are also vying for a piece of the pie. Today we're speaking with someone at the center of it all.

[00:19:46]Andrew Chapen is the COO of Neuro, a developer of autonomous driving systems that's getting ready to help launch Lucid Gravity Robo Taxis on the Uber app later this year. Andrew, welcome to the Pluggedin podcast.

[00:19:59]>> Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

[00:20:02]>> Yeah. So, let's start with just a topline question like for the people who don't know what Neuro is. Nuro is one of a growing field of autonomous vehicle startups. um one that's been around for kind of a while. Um tell us how Neuro is different from other companies in this space.

[00:20:23]>> Absolutely. For a little bit of background, Nuro has been around about 10 years and for the first seven to eight years of our life, we were very focused on autonomous goods delivery, last mile delivery for meals, packages, groceries, etc. And we were known for our custom purpose-built no person in the vehicle delivery bot. So it was the size of a small passenger uh passenger car, excuse me, and it was designed just to deliver goods. In the c past couple years, we have expanded our horizon in terms of the applications that we are targeting uh and are now transporting both goods and people. And so more recently last year, we announced this very large partnership with Uber and Lucid to basically build a custom robo taxi for the Uber platform. And so we are an AI powered driver. And what's different about us is that we are not a vertically integrated model. And so we are more of this universal autonomy platform. It's just a hardware and software package, the neuro driver that can plug into a wide variety of applications. So we do not have a consumerf facing brand like a Whimo or ISUs or so on. Um we are the layer that powers autonomy for a wide variety of applications. Obviously again robo taxi is one, goods delivery is another and then personally owned vehicles is another. And so we are trying to be this open ecosystem almost more like the Android for the autonom Android OS for the autonomy world as opposed to more of a closed ecosystem vertically integrated model.

[00:21:59]>> Yeah. So as part of that expansion you talk about you know goods delivery is still part of this. When you're talking about goods delivery first of all are you including things like large trucks and commercial vehicles because I know you know on your site it mentions that the idea is that it's sort of scale agnostic right you can put it in larger vehicles. Um, so I'm curious about, you know, how you think trucking factors into this. I know you guys at one point acquired a self-driving trucking startup. Um, but also, you know, in general, in your view, long-term in the autonomous vehicle market, what's the marketing split between or the market split between transporting goods versus transporting services? Where do you see the bigger opportunity?

[00:22:37]>> Sure. In terms of the first question on vehicle form factor, we will be integrating the Neuro Driver across many different vehicle types. And so we have an active partnership in the works that has not been announced yet on the logistics side that will be a much larger form factor than what we've announced with Uber and Lucid with the Lucid Gravity. And so we are very much a platform agnostic system. We can plug into a wide variety of applications.

[00:23:01]Having said that, we are not pursuing trucking today. Okay. So the actual full semi-truck form factor on highways is not one that we are doing. It presents a different set of technical challenges that are pretty distinct from a lot of the surface street driving that our other applications do. And so never say never, but I think in general the industry has been somewhat bifurcated between companies that are targeting trucking applications and then companies that are targeting more mobility type applications.

[00:23:31]>> Gotcha. But so with within your domain, you know, of of the more surface street vehicles, do you feel like there's a bigger market then for the passenger stuff versus things like grocery delivery, last mile delivery, things like that?

[00:23:43]>> Both markets are in the trillions in terms of TAM. And so the opportunity is really, really massive. But I would say more competitive heat, if you will, has been on the uh robo taxi market. That is just the application that I think has come to market first for consumers. And so whether you are a ride sharing company, whether you are an auto manufacturer or so on, the idea of transporting people is is the area that I think folks are feeling the most competitive pressure on. And in many ways it makes sense because uh you have this massive market, you have people in markets like the Bay Area who are willing to try these novel new services and technology and you have the ability to take a hardware cost. uh when you look at the sense and compute that goes onto an autonomous vehicle and amortize that over many thousands or even millions of rides. And so the economics start to look uh a little more favorable. But uh again, we are on the cusp of seeing autonomy proliferate across both human transport, goods transport, and other applications. And so it's really just the tip of the spear.

[00:24:50]>> You mentioned the specific technical challenges with trucking. What What are those?

[00:24:56]Well, when you have a semi-truck, you are have you have this massive thing, a ton of mass that is traveling at a very high rate of speed. And so the breaking time is quite long. Uh the horizon on which you have to perceive objects and the road in front of you is quite long.

[00:25:15]And just operationally, it's very hard to not have to navigate surface streets as well. And so I think the the trucking use case has some areas that are more complex and some some that are different or less complex. But on the whole again just it presents a set of challenges that is just orthogonal enough to what we deal with in terms of robo taxi and goods delivery on surface streets that tackling all of that at once would be biting off a lot to say the least.

[00:25:44]>> Yeah. So, it seems like, you know, the key thing that you guys have announced in the robo taxi arena, obviously, is this partnership with uh Lucid and Uber.

[00:25:52]Tell us a little bit about how that's going, you know, what your long-term view on that is.

[00:25:56]>> Absolutely. Well, it start to start with just what makes it different. And so, if you just think about building a robo taxi, there are a few things that have to be true. The first is that that vehicle has to be capable of having a certain level of redundancy in terms of the core vehicle system. So hard uh braking, steering, other kind of more traditional vehicle-based systems because if you take the driver out, you no longer have this layer of human redundancy to respond to a situation where a system fails. And so um when you look at the realm of vehicles out there in the world that have that redundancy that is level four autonomy capable in terms of that integration, it's a very very small number. And so part of the reason why we ended up working with Lucid on this is because they have designed their vehicles with a lot of that redundancy already in place. And so that has made the integration incredibly quick. When we got we got our first Lucid Gravity vehicle to to basically start experimenting with last year and within 7 weeks we had it driving autonomously on our closed course in Las Vegas. And so the fact that it is so technologically advanced has allowed us to compress timelines on the program in a really massive way and that a lot of other vehicle programs just can't. And so that's that's a big thing. The the next thing I'd point to is that we are integrating the neuro driver hardware on the production line. So it is not a retrofit where the vehicle comes off the production line and then we have to bolt some sensors on and integrate the compute so on. It really is this very seamless integration. So, all of that is to say, I think it's a it's kind of a one-of-a-kind in the autonomy world today, and we are progressing really well. We've got a milestone-based program structure with Uber and Lucid, and we've hit our first few milestones on time, which I'm I'm proud to say. And so, overall, I think everyone's feeling quite good about progress. Uh, obviously, still a lot of work to do to get launch ready, but it's been a super exciting program to work on. So, I want to zoom in then on what you were saying about needing to put the equipment in on the line, needing a very small number of vehicles that are sort of capable of the level of redundancy you need. I mean, it sounds like um you know, there's obviously advantages of not being vertically integrated, but then you have this challenge of you need a vehicle that really works with the platform you're developing. So, you know, the flip side of this, there's obviously companies like, you know, Whimo that are working really tightly with one platform, but then companies like Rivian, Ford, General Motors, obviously Tesla is is one that talks a lot about it. They're talking about trying to build their own eyes off autonomy in the pretty near-term horizon. Um, so how seriously do you take the competition from legacy automakers, from upstart automakers? Um and what do you see the advantages of your model when you have to integrate those things versus doing it you know sort of having to design the vehicle and the platform all together?

[00:28:49]>> Sure. I would think about that question from two different angles. On the one hand, you have the hardware and vehicle platform integration and I think you have to take any relatively technologically advanced legacy automaker seriously in that regard because they obviously have all this infrastructure, all this manufacturing process that would allow them to produce in a very seamless very scalable way if they got to the point of having the autonomy performance at a level that could could really scale. The other part of the problem is just the fundamental driving task and can you build a driver, can you build the software layer that can perform and can it be scalable? Uh can it be safe at different levels of autonomy so on and uh I give Tesla a lot of credit for what they've done with Tesla FSD relative to the cost of the hardware. I mean I think the bomb of the sense and compute on that vehicle is is quite inexpensive on a relative basis to to other AV solutions out there. And so um they clearly have have done quite well in terms of their core AI models powering that driver. Having said that, I don't think anyone in the world has really successfully demonstrated that you can move up the chain of autonomy sophistication from level two, level two plus ultimately to a scaled level four.

[00:30:05]And so Neuro is very much focused on being a level four first company. That is our technical north star. We've done five years now of driver out deployments where again we have a vehicle on the road, no safety driver, um fairly broad OD operational design domain. Uh and so again I think there's just there's enough that's kind of different in terms of the tech development that if you get to a point where you start to see legacy automakers doing even smallcale fully occupantless driver out deployments, I think that will be a pretty big watershed moment for the industry. But uh we're just not there. And in in general, that talent, that technical talent that is going to build you a really advanced AI driver is one that is hard for automakers to acquire. And so as we think about our collaboration, potential collaborations with that industry, a lot of it is bringing that core competency. We are trying to focus on what we do best, which is again building this AI powered end-to-end uh driver that will ultimately power a number of different autonomy applications.

[00:31:11]Gotcha.

[00:31:14]>> Yeah. So, it seems like we're at this stage in this kind of like second wave maybe of of the AV um world where that that problem of like can you make a car that drives itself um pretty reliably is getting solved. Like Whimo is out there, Nuro will be out there soon in in a p in a more public way. I think the next step is like okay can can these be profitable businesses? Can you make a real business out of robo taxis when like you say developing this this technology is really expensive. The sensors are really expensive. um what needs to happen in terms of costs coming down in terms of fleets scaling up in order for this to be like a real business and and how is that maybe different for you as as more of the software provider than than some of the other companies?

[00:32:10]>> It really depends on what application that you're talking about. Again, part of the reason why Roboaxi has been the first application that you've started to see real scale deployment is because you can take a very expensive hardware stack and advertise that cost over many many thousands or millions of rides. And I will say that the hardware piece of the equation, so the sensors and the compute that power these vehicles, that cost is coming down rapidly and and various companies are investing more or less aggressively in bringing that down. Um, Nuro, for example, one of the things that that I think led Uber to make the bet on us that that it has was the fact that we have been really aggressive in downcosting our system. And so when you look at other level four systems on the road today uh that are actually doing commercial rides, that system is incredibly expensive. I mean, many of those cars are 200k plus when you talk about the base vehicle and the autonomy hardware. Um we are in terms of just our core system uh we think five to 10x cheaper than a lot of those and so again I think part of what makes us this very scalable universal platform is that low cost. Having said that for a personally owned vehicle application I think we need to see that cost come down even farther. So far, consumer willingness to add, you know, 5, 10, 20, whatever many thousands of dollars you want to look at on top of the vehicle price to have that functionality has been a bit mixed. Uh, I think on the level two plus, level two side, uh, it's a lot cheaper just because you don't need as as robust of of hardware as as Tesla has demonstrated. Um, but again, we need to see that curve come down significantly before you're going to have level four autonomous vehicles owned by personal consumers at scale. But again, it's it's happening. It's just a matter of time.

[00:33:56]So, it's it's not an if, it's a when.

[00:33:58]>> Does that uh reduction in cost for your platform also manifest as, you know, the way you describe it, it sounds like it's a little more lightweight of a system?

[00:34:06]And does that therefore mean its energy demands are also lower? because I know that's another, you know, competing factor in this is just managing the battery. Uh, you know, there's a limited number or amount of energy in there. So, how are you guys doing on the efficiency front?

[00:34:19]>> Yeah, it's a good question. I I would break the hardware piece into the sensors and the compute. And on the sense side, we do have a multimodal configuration where we use camera, radar, LAR. So, we are very much prolar on that debate. Um, on the compute side, that's where you start getting into to more of the the power consideration. And in general, if you are building an AI model, the less constrained you are on compute power, the easier it is to solve a given task or a given problem. And so, uh, again, you have other companies out there that, uh, I think because of their balance sheet, because of their strategy, have been able to give themselves a very large compute envelope to play with uh, to achieve a certain performance level. We are trying to operate from day one with that constraint and we're proud of what we've done there. But yes, directionally if if you are using a lot more compute on the vehicle, it is going to require a lot more power. And so part of what we think really makes uh our partnership with Uber and Lucid work is the fact that we have chosen this vehicle that has massive range because if you have a 300 400 mile range on one of these cars, the uptime is a lot higher and so the asset utilization is a lot better. The unit economics are a lot more favorable. But if our compute was going to draw too much power from the vehicle, that obviously becomes a big drain on the range. So it's it's really this multivariable optimization equation that we have to consider. But um all else equal, I think the efficiency of of what we've achieved in terms of performance with a pretty narrow compute envelope is something we're quite proud of.

[00:35:55]Yeah, I think I feel like the um I don't know it off the top of my head, but I feel like the the Whimo Jaguars probably have half the range of a of a gravity.

[00:36:04]It's probably 220 220 miles or something like that. Um so that that makes a lot of sense that more range just let you keep these things on the road for longer.

[00:36:15]>> If Cruz hadn't done Chevy Bolts, they'd still be here today.

[00:36:20]>> Just kidding.

[00:36:21]Um do what do you think about the regulation question because right now there is this patchwork of regulations at the state level all over the country deploying means like navigating all these slightly different um you know approvals and all of that. Does Nuro think that we need a federal framework to to supersede that and what what would something like that look like? The short answer is yes, absolutely. I I think a unified federal framework would be incredibly helpful in terms of AV companies broadly scaling to many different markets. Um we operate today in Texas, California and Nevada and the regulatory regimes in those different states are obviously pretty different and so far I wouldn't say any of the regulatory regimes that we've dealt with in those those jurisdictions are, you know, existential in terms of our ability to deploy. In fact, you know, we had one of the first, if not the first actually, uh, exemption from the California DMV for our custom delivery robot. Um, but having said that, I think if you're not having to navigate very different regulatory regimes as you scale from stateto state, it really makes things a lot easier. And ultimately, consumers are going to want to know that these products and technologies are safe. And so the idea that you'd have the federal government or or some regulatory body working collaboratively with the industry to define those safety standards just makes a lot of sense. My my general view is that this industry starts to look like aviation in the very long term where collectively we just don't tolerate >> any safety flaws. we have we have a ways to go to to get to that level of of near perfection obviously but that is where I think the future is headed and and I will say that the current department of transportation has really wanted to collaborate on this and so I think the the conversations are happening but these processes just just take time >> now at the you know regulatory and state level obviously there's broad differences of you know how we're approaching this I want to take it down a notch though into the consumer level, how are you looking at it in terms of how a person in San Francisco versus a person in rural Oklahoma both approaches uh the existence of, you know, autonomous cars and then how they're going to use and deploy that.

[00:38:50]If you go back in time a few years ago, I think the noise and rhetoric around consumer skepticism was a lot louder than it is today. Uh, I think people are realizing that this technology is safe.

[00:39:04]It provides a really great user experience and once you take a ride and you kind of quickly get bored, you you just trust it and and that's a good thing. And so when I think about the broad realm of risks to our industry growing and being successful and saving lives, you know, of the 40,000 people a year that die on US roads, uh, consumer willingness to adopt this technology is not one that that keeps me up at night.

[00:39:29]Again, we have to earn that trust. And so, we have to maintain a really stellar superhuman safety record over time to not have that be eaten away. And there will be differences in different geographies and different cultures in terms of willingness to to adopt it. But in general, you're going to see robo taxi in particular start in more metropolitan, denser areas because that's where the economics work. That's where you have density of demand. And I think again when you just start to see these vehicles on the road, you know, people who have ridden in them, it's just this very organic viral effect of of that trust building over time.

[00:40:06]>> We we got two more questions for you, Andrew. This has been this has been really great. Really appreciate the time. Um, you mentioned that the consumer acceptance is not what keeps you up at night. So I have to ask what does keep you up at night in terms of like the risks or the roadblocks or the challenges to this becoming really a big deal? What what are you thinking about?

[00:40:26]Because there is, you know, there consumer acceptance may not be one. And I I think I agree with you that like you put anybody in a robo taxi a good one and their their mind changes pretty quickly. But there is also push back around the country around, you know, um labor issues and safety issues and other stuff. So what does keep you up at night in terms of broader roll out?

[00:40:49]>> When I look at the industry as a whole, I think the only company that has really cross the chasm of scaled commercialization is Whimo and I give them a lot of credit for that. I'm I'm honestly grateful for the fact that they've shown the world this is a solvable problem. um the rest of us are still getting the technology to a place where it can be mature enough to take on a lot of that scale and handle all those edge cases and so on. And um again, we think as Neuro that we are right there ready to do that, but um there is just still some progress that we need to see in terms of feeling really confident to to deploy at scale. So that that really is the number one focus of the industry right now. Just getting the core autonomy maturity to the place where we can deploy it across many thousands or tens of thousands of vehicles and prove through our our rigorous validation process that it is safe. Um again we we maintain a very high bar internally for not deploying anything that we can't prove is safe. And so it's just about getting that overall performance to a place that can scale. Um I think the next thing is just the capital required for this industry. It is an incredibly capital intensive business between the vehicle assets themselves um all the compute that is required to train our AI models um obviously the talent that we uh need to build these AI models is very expensive and so you just have a lot of companies who are among the most competent well- capitalized companies in the world who have failed at this you know literally companies like Apple GM these iconic American brands who have invested billions if 10 billion plus into these efforts and had not a successful product to show for it. That that means that what we're doing is just incredibly incredibly hard and the amount of capital and investor support and institutional support and so on required to stay on this journey is is massive. And so again, not to toot our own horn here, but Neuro is an independent company. We've raised about two and a half billion over our lifetime. And so I think the fact that we are in the arena with these behemoths um despite having raised such a a modest amount, you know, I put modest in quotations, uh is something that we're really proud of in our own capital efficiency. But it's really just about proving to the world that we are safe, deploying at scale and capitalizing all of that along the way.

[00:43:13]And I think you're probably mostly focused, like you said, on, you know, the next couple of years, on making this technology work, um, on deploying it publicly.

[00:43:24]When you look farther out, if you do look farther out, five or or 10 years down the line in America, what does this what does the autonomous vehicle space look like to you?

[00:43:35]>> 5 to 10 years. So that would be early 2030s to mid 2030s. Uh I I'd say in five years you are going to see significant scale in autonomous robo taxi. That's probably not a surprise. You will also see significant scale in autonomous goods delivery across >> hot meals, groceries, packages, everything. A lot of the dynamics in terms of hardware cost amortization and scale and so on apply to goods delivery just as they do robo taxi as I mentioned. And so I'm I'm incredibly bullish on that space as well. I think personally owned vehicles are going to take a bit longer for the reasons that we talked about. Um, one is the hardware cost. Um, two is just the automotive manufacturer product cycle and basically they're not going to put a level four system in their vehicle until they feel confident that a it's performant. Uh, b the cost is effective and c the consumers want it. And so I think we just have longer on that curve before it meets all of the OEM thresholds. But by the mid 2030s, I think you'll start to see luxury brands, kind of the the more premium brands have level four autonomy products available to consumers. And hopefully in the years before then, you know, you see some of these other folks start to make progress moving up that ladder.

[00:44:53]>> All right, Andrew Chapen is the COO of Nuro. Thanks so much for joining us.

[00:44:58]This was great.

[00:44:58]>> Yeah.

[00:44:58]>> Yeah, thanks for having me. Great conversation. All right. Well, that was a great conversation and now we're going to move on to plus minus, our segment about who's up and who's down in the worlds of EVs and autonomy. Andre, I'll start with you. Who you got? So, I have a minus this week and I'm sad to hear that Polestar has effectively put the Polestar 6, it's um dedicated electric sports car on the back burner, even though it was apparently 95% done and all they had to do was like finish the back seat and u come up with a folding roof mechanism. Yeah, >> and that's a shame because I mean it was one of the few genuinely exciting EVs that I was looking forward to and one of the few true arrivals to the Porsche 718 EV, which we were not sure is coming anyway. Yeah, that's a bummer. I mean, I think they had to finish the back seat, finish the roof mechanism, but most importantly, they had to find people to buy it. And I'm guessing at this point they probably expected first that the EV sports car market will have matured a bit and second that Polestar would maybe be in a better position than it is. I think they had a lot of ambition for how quickly the brand would grow and at least here in the US. I don't know how you feel in Europe but in the US it's it's been a slow roll for them for sure.

[00:46:11]>> Yeah, it's pretty much the same here.

[00:46:14]Although on the demand side of things, they I think they opened orders way back in 2022 or 2023 for the first 500 launch edition cars and they sold out pretty quickly. So maybe >> people were interested >> at least 500 of them. Um but yeah, I >> that's another episode I want to do eventually on like are EV pre-orders even real because we've had a lot of situations where something we hear a great number immediately and then nothing happens.

[00:46:43]Anyway, uh my plus this week is uh the Walmart charging network, which seems to be growing pretty quickly. Uh the company announced this week that it already got 300 ports up and running, double what it had last month and that it's bringing contactless payment to all of them uh in the future, which is good because last thing we need is another app. Um I think this is cool because it's uh you know, it's just honestly when I'm on an EV road trip, what I want more than anything at a charging stop is a bathroom. And it's such a it's such a small requirement and so few of them get it right. And I like when my Walmart or my charging stops at a Walmart because I know there's at least a bathroom and I can get some food. So, uh I think this would be cool. And I just I like seeing more companies recognize that like building out charging infrastructure is going to bring people into your business. I mean, Walmart was early to partner with Electrify America and and bring in, you know, charging that other people owned and now they're like, "Wow, this is awesome for our business. We're going to bring it in. They're rolling it into Walmart Plus subscription. So, you got 10% off if you have that. And uh I don't think it'll be much help to you, Andre, in uh Romania, but uh I'm curious. Have you ever been to a Walmart?

[00:47:51]>> I have not. I don't think they're present in Europe at all anywhere in Europe.

[00:47:56]>> Yeah. Um >> what makes Walmart special? Is it >> Honestly, nothing. I mean, they're just gigantic and super cheap. I mean, to be clear, I I don't think Walmart is a great company. Um although I do consider them basically if they are in a different country they would be like an official American embassy just cuz they're gigantic. They sell everything.

[00:48:15]For a long time they were open 24 hours although that went away with co. Um but yeah it's uh it's it's a it's an American institution. It's the largest retailer in the country. Um less relevant now with Amazon but coming back. All right. Well that'll do it for this week's show. Thanks for listening to the Pluggedin podcast from Inside EVs. We'll be back next Friday. Today's show was produced by Michael Perkins and it's brought to you by the Motorsport Network. Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcast, subscribe to Inside EVs YouTube channel, and check out our latest coverage on inside.com.

[00:48:46]See you all next time.