Grayson Brulte sees promise and potholes ahead on the road to self-driving

Shift: A podcast about mobility

Automotive News

Business

4.8 • 31 Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Grayson Brulte, founder and CEO of The Road to Autonomy, discusses recent developments in autonomous driving, including Sterling Anderson’s departure from Aurora for a new job at General Motors. Brulte details Aurora’s driverless launch and a short-seller report that has since detoured the self-driving truck startup. He further surveys Waymo’s progress, sizes up Tesla as a potential robotaxi rival and — finally — ponders a doomsday scenario for the city of Detroit.

Transcript

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0:00.0	How will we move, charge, and power our world in the next decade?
0:04.7	Join TechBrews event on May 29th to hear from the experts shaping transportation and energy.
0:10.4	Get 25% off with code AN25 at EmergingTechBrew.com slash events.
0:28.7	Hi, everybody. Welcome to Shift, a podcast about mobility. I'm Pete Bigelow, your host and reporter of the automotive news.
0:39.4	Joining me on the podcast today, I am pleased to welcome back Grayson Brulte, founder and CEO of the Road to Autonomy. He's also chairman of the Council for Economic Resilience, an organization promoting the future of automation and autonomy.
0:45.5	Grayson and I are going to survey the autonomous vehicle landscape and discuss all the recent
0:50.6	news developments of which there are many. Normally, I'd have one of my automotive news colleagues on to discuss this week's headlines,
0:58.9	but since Grace and I are going to tackle a lot of that,
1:02.0	including General Motors hiring Sterling Anderson from Aurora,
1:05.6	we're just going to dive right into the deep end today.
1:08.3	I want to give you a sneak preview of today's conversation.
1:11.2	I'm usually not one for hyperbole, and I don't think that this is, but be aware that at the
1:17.3	end of this week's episode, Grayson offers up what I think is a pretty dystopian scenario
1:22.7	for Southeast Michigan. And if you think about what he says, it's going to kind of make sense,
1:29.1	at least in a plausible way.
1:31.0	So heads up,
1:32.3	listen to the end this week.
1:34.0	And now,
1:34.7	without further ado,
1:35.8	I am pleased to bring you
1:36.7	my conversation with Grayson Brulte.
1:39.9	Grayson, welcome back to the shift podcast.
	...

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