Hardware Podcasts

Ep. 33 | From Autonomous Golf Carts to Semis: The Journey to the Self-Driving Truck

Moore's Lobby · 6 Oct 2021 · 43m · Episode 6

What this episode covers

Brandon Moak, CTO and co-founder of Embark Trucks, explains how he and co-founder Alex Rodrigues scaled an autonomous driving system from a student golf cart project to a $5 billion public company. Moak details the technical stack, including the fusion of LIDAR, radar, and cameras, and the strategic decision to focus on hub-to-hub highway trucking to avoid the complexity of urban passenger vehicles. He discusses the operational challenges of scaling, including adapting to COVID-19 restrictions and mitigating chip shortages through risk-buying, while emphasizing Embark's safety-first approach and software-as-a-service business model.

Most relevant to

companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Embark Trucks, Y Combinator, Tesla, Google, Cruise
Chips
LIDAR
Also
Elon Musk, University of Waterloo

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