The grandma of robotaxis is winning

Waymo is the tortoise now beating Tesla’s hare. [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a long-lost nephew of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - [Waymo]( is winning the driverless chase. - Deepfake [audio clips]( clips create a dangerous race. - France’s [prime minister]( is a fresh face. - This door disaster is [Boeing’s]( coup de grâce. Waymoing Is Waymo good enough to be a verb? The Alphabet-owned robotaxi company recently [announced]( that it plans to unleash its cars onto the Phoenix freeway soon. The news is a game changer for [Waymo employees](, some of whom use the cars to get to work. Until now, riders could only take surface streets to get to their destination. Adding the freeway into the mix has the potential to cut their commutes by half: Image credit: Waymo As it stands, Waymo operates in only [two cities]( — Phoenix and San Francisco. But it’s expanding into Los Angeles and Austin very soon. In a few years, who knows what other cities will allow Waymo to compete with the likes of Uber and Lyft. Will people prefer the comfortable silence of a driverless car over the awkward chitchat you endure with other rideshare businesses? Maybe our jargon will be the first sign of change. Nowadays, telling your friend “I’m Ubering to the party” is a pretty common thing to say. But “Lyfting” hasn’t caught on in quite the same way — possibly because its homonym “lifting” is already a verb, and a heavyweight one at that. Although there’s no word in the English language that has a claim on “Waymoing,” it does sound phonetically similar to “[wimoweh](,” featured in the intro of “[The Lion Sleeps Tonight](.” I guess it all depends on whether Waymo succeeds. For years, the self-driving unit has taken a more cautious approach to autonomous driving than its comparatively reckless rivals, Tesla and Cruise. Dave Lee [first tested]( a Waymo vehicle in 2015. He called it a “[throughly boring ride](” because it drove like a grandmother; hesitating at yellow lights and braking at the first sign of trouble. “The timid driving style of those cars spoke to Waymo’s ethos, a goal that is black and white: Either it would produce a fully self-driving car or it wouldn’t produce anything at all,” he writes. Waymo’s rivals did things differently, to the detriment of their business. Elon Musk first attempted to cut corners in 2014, when he rolled out “Autopilot” at Tesla, which Dave notes was neither auto nor a pilot. Last summer, an [investigation]( into the program said it had played a role in 17 deaths and 736 crashes in the years after its rollout. By winter, Tesla had to [recall]( more than two million of its vehicles to make sure drivers weren’t using Autopilot incorrectly. Cruise — the autonomous-driving arm of General Motors — was actually the first to roll out self-driving cars without a safety driver. In 2020, its cars hit the streets of San Francisco. But three years later, the company’s testing permit was revoked after authorities determined it withheld [footage](of an accident that left a woman critically injured. Dave says “the newly uncovered video showed the Cruise car dragged the woman 20 feet at 7 miles an hour before coming to a stop — on top of her.” In contrast, Waymo’s robocars have [traveled]( 7.1 million miles and have caused less than a handful of minor injuries. It sounds like the company’s careful approach is paying off. If we want to go driverless, Waymoing with grandma is the only way forward. Trump Said What? Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images North America There’s perhaps no greater opportunity for misinformation to spread than when Donald Trump is in court. This afternoon, he attended an immunity hearing in Washington, DC, that lasted approximately one hour and 15 minutes. During it, he [told]( a three-judge panel, “I feel that as a president, you have to have immunity, very simple … I did nothing wrong.” But in that amount of time, any person on the internet could have cloned Trump’s voice, had him say something far more bonkers — a high bar to pass, considering that one speech about [windmills]( — superimposed the audio deepfake on a courtroom sketch of the former president, uploaded it to TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, and waited for chaos to arrive. The first two sites would take your clip down. But the biggest platform — the one with three billion users, many of whom sit in the MAGA camp — would not. Facebook would merely slap a warning label on the fake audio clip, allowing users to engage with the post and share it with others. It’s an antiquated policy that Parmy Olson [believes]( could prove disastrous in a divisive election year. “In the world of misinformation, fake audio can have a more sinister effect than video. While fake ‘photos’ of Donald Trump [have a glossy, plastic look]( that belies the AI machinery behind them, fake versions of his voice are harder to scrutinize and distinguish,” she writes. A fake clip of Biden saying “I’ve always known Covid-19 was a hoax, it’s just useful to pretend it’s real” is about last thing you’d want Trump supporters to get their hands on. Let’s hope they never do. Bonus Trump Reading: Biden is enlisting some [unlikely allies]( in this election: former Trump administration officials. — Francis Wilkinson Are the Kids Alt-Right? Photographer: LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP Who is this man with perfectly coiffed hair and devastating eyebrows? If you had asked that question before today, I’d have guessed that he was French President Emmanuel Macron’s long-lost nephew, or perhaps a body double for his state-funded [documentary](. But 34-year-old Gabriel Attal is neither of those things. Since July, Attal served as the minister of education and national youth. And today, Macron named him prime minister — France’s youngest and first openly gay PM in history — a thankless job, by Lionel Laurent’s measure. “Like David Cameron to Tony Blair in the UK, Attal looks at first glance like a slightly blurrier copy of the original: A rise through the ranks of the elite grandes ecoles, an entree into politics via Francois Hollande’s Socialist government, and then a switch to Macron’s disruptive ‘third way’ philosophy,” he writes. But why did Macron choose his youthful doppelgänger for such a high-level job? Attal’s relative inexperience is an asset for the French president, Lionel explains: “Young voters in France are increasingly tempted by the far-right, with [Marine] Le Pen getting a 25% estimated vote share among 25-34-year-olds in the first round of presidential elections in 2022.” Macron is betting on Attal to [court the youth]( vote even more effectively than the far-right, which has targeted young people by dangling tax breaks on TikTok. “They’ve also been more willing to promote fresh faces. As young as Attal is, he’s older than Le Pen’s effective number two, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, who’s leading the European election charge against Macron,” he writes. Read [the whole thing]( (for free). Telltale Charts There’s something so tragically comical about the fact that Boeing used to seriously use the slogan, “[if it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going](.” We need a new catchphrase to capture the airline’s colossal fall from grace. Chris Bryant [suggests](: “If it ain’t Airbus, the regular bus will do just fine.” But “if it ain’t Boeing, I’m fine with going,” would also do the trick. “Airbus’ ascendancy has long reminded me of the allegory of the tortoise and the hare. For a long time, investors were transfixed by Boeing’s superior financial performance which Airbus struggled to match,” he writes. That is until the two 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 and tanked its reputation. That crisis certainly helped Airbus add to its lead in single-aisle jets, which Chris says is “the cash cow of the aviation industry.” Boeing’s latest [safety issues]( will only strengthen its rival’s position. If you’ve ever worked in retail, you know what a SKU — a stock-keeping unit, pronounced “skew” — is. A good business has a manageable number of SKUs to keep track of its products. A bad business has so many SKU codes that the workers in the warehouse start to add emojis into the mix so that they can distinguish them better. Although it’s somewhat amusing to see [Cheetos-branded popcorn](, pretzels, mac n’ cheese and “[fantastix](” (whatever the heck that is) at the grocery store, we really only want the actual Cheetos. Karl Smith [warns]( that too much variety can be bad for both brands and customers. It’s no wonder Newell Brands has stopped making 50 types of Yankee Candles and Coca-Cola now offers half as many drinks. “Shoppers don’t seem to lament the lack of choices — if they even notice,” he writes. We’re more likely to be overwhelmed by options — a “choice paralysis,” so to speak — rather than feel deprived of adequate choices. Further Reading You don’t need [more resilience](. You need more friends. And a better boss. And more sick leave. And money. — Sarah Green Carmichael College football playoffs are way better this year because [name, image and likeness]( deals motivated athletes to stay at school. — Adam Minter Henry Kissinger’s death created the world’s most [exclusive job vacancy](: that of wise man to the world. — Adrian Wooldridge Doom and gloom about the UK [housing market]( is overdone — yet again. — Marcus Ashworth The outcome of [the US election]( will affect 8 billion people, despite only 160 million Americans having a say in it. — John Authers ICYMI Nikki Haley is [closing in]( on New Hampshire. The SEC’s X account got [compromised](. Ghana’s presidential candidate [pulled off]( his mask. Gunmen [stormed]( a live TV studio in Ecuador. BuzzFeed is [on the verge of]( a debt crisis. Kickers January’s secret: It’s the [best month](. The [hidden tunnel]( under a Brooklyn synagogue. “Human-grade” [dog food]( is all the rage. How far are you willing to go for [good cheese](? Barry Keoghan [enjoys]( flirting with Jacob Elordi. What killed NYC’s dream of [a paleontology museum](. Notes: Please send Flamin’ Hot Fantastix and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Threads](, [TikTok](, [Twitter](, [Instagram]( and [Facebook](. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022