PepsiCo Is Bringing Driverless Trucks Into the Mainstream

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Ready to soundtrack your summer? With Red Bull Summer All Day Play, you choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end DJ, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track.

Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings.

Visit redbull.com/brightsummerahead to learn more. See you this summer.

Alex Ossola (0:31)

AI stocks bounced back after last week's sell-off.

Plus, a judge strikes down President Trump's $100,000 fee for H-1B visas. And driverless trucks are here, and they're ready to bring you chips and drinks?

Miriam Gottfried (0:44)

No one ever tried to see.

Alex Ossola (0:46)

It's Monday, June 8th. I'm Alex Ossola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that moved the world today.

First up today, the stock market. Tech stocks made up some ground after big declines last week. The Nasdaq ended up 0.9 percent. And index tracking chip stocks climbed 5.6 percent. Here's a little historical nugget showing that this is a typical pattern. Dow Jones market data shows that, on average, the Nasdaq gains half a percent the day after a drop of 4 percent or more. And the Nasdaq sank 4.2 percent on Friday. Meanwhile, the S&P edged up 0.3 percent and the Dow slid.

In other markets news, go Knicks. As we've discussed on the show, and you might have seen pretty much anywhere else, the New York Knicks are in the NBA Finals with a current 2-0 series lead. And the only people more excited than fans are investors. Few professional sports teams are a part of a publicly traded company. But the Knicks are. And shares of their parent company, Madison Square Garden Sports, have more than doubled over the past year. The stock hit a record high of more than $390 a share last week. There could be a number of reasons for this, but some think Knicks fans are treating MSG Sports like a meme stock and pushing up the price. Today, shares slipped by less than 1%.

And on the topic of the Knicks, President Trump plans to attend Game 3 of the Finals tonight, and New York City is bracing for extra heavy security. In a press conference today, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that there's a wide security perimeter around Madison Square Garden, one of the busiest parts of Manhattan, starting this afternoon.

Jessica Tisch (2:25)

So the message is simple, celebrate the Knicks, but avoid the MSG area tonight if you do not have tickets for the game or some other valid reason to be there tonight. Thank you and go Knicks.

Alex Ossola (2:37)

The president won't be the only politician at MSG tonight. New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani said he will also be there. He bought a standing room only ticket for nearly a thousand bucks.

Today at Apple's Developers' Conference WWDC, the company showed it's going all in on AI.

It demonstrated a new version of its Siri chatbot technology it developed with Google. Siri is more conversational now. And Apple executives showed Siri AI buying concert tickets, creating plans for events, and identifying and interacting with objects and photos. Apple is adding more generative AI features across its products. The most powerful models will be limited to its most advanced devices, and some functions will require a subscription or come with a limit on how much you can use it each day. But Apple didn't unveil any shocking or unexpected features today, and its shares closed down 1.9% after the presentation. It was also Tim Cook's final time emceeing the event as Apple's CEO.

Esther Fung (3:34)

On a personal note, some of the greatest highlights of my time as CEO have been events like this.

Alex Ossola (3:41)

Cook is set to step down as CEO on September 1st. He will remain Apple's chairman.

Imagine seeing a 26,000-pound box truck on the road. Its steering wheel is turning, but there's no one behind it.

Esther Fung (3:56)

I'm getting on an autonomous truck now.

Alex Ossola (3:58)

That's journal reporter Esther Fung, who was in Phoenix this past weekend to check out one of the 35 driverless trucks PepsiCo is operating in Arizona. This makes Pepsi the first major US consumer goods company to say they're actually using autonomous trucks at a large scale on public roads.

Miriam Gottfried (4:14)

No one ever tried to see.

Alex Ossola (4:16)

Esther said that in her test run, the steering wheel rotated itself as the truck turned and the truck never went over the speed limit. A Pepsi executive told Esther that the driverless trucks are more reliable than human drivers and that they arrive on time 99% of the time after you factor out variables like weather and traffic. Pepsi employs thousands of drivers in the US., some represented by unions that have strongly opposed the rollout of autonomous trucks. Pepsi anticipates retraining and redeploying some drivers to other types of work, but also hiring fewer drivers in general.