The Driverless Car Debate & The Price of Eggs

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Ann Berry** (0:28)
Barnes & Noble Education, the OG textbook company, has a new strategy for selling to students who examine how investors are grading the approach.
Drink responsibly gets the advice from big alcohol companies, but might it be leading to their big tobacco moment? And eggs, major producers are settling price fixing claims. We crack open what it could mean for investors. Plus Waymo, Zouks, Tesla, they're all racing toward a driverless future. But do Americans really want it? For Friday, July 10th, it's Brew Markets Daily, and I'm Ann Berry.
Around the office, we are always sharing market stories that catch our eye. And with fresh news of the day, always popping up as the trading session goes on, there isn't always enough time to explore these stories in the show. So on this summer Friday, while you're all pretending to be working from home, and we know that you're actually sipping bellinis by the pool wherever you may be, before we get flooded with results, as we get into the new earning season, we wanted to dig into some of those stories that just John and I found interesting, that peaked our curiosity. So it's a curiosity episode. So John and I both have two topics to share with each other. We haven't really previewed them much together, so we're just going to get our knee-jerk reactions. And we just thought we'd take it as an experiment, see what we each think, see what you all think, write in, let us know. And I'm going to kick it off with one that caught my eye. So let's start, John, with Waymo, Zooks, Cruise. Do Americans really want driverless cars? And so there's been a lot of buzz about Waymo. You and I talked in the show this week about Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, announcing expansion into four more American cities. I caught them doing a reconnaissance in London.
I was there over the last two weeks, and I could see Waymo cars with human drivers, but with the whirring of all the lidars and the detectors, clearly doing reconnaissance in preparation to launch the driverless version. You've seen them here in New York.

**John** (2:29)
Right, here in New York City, they still have drivers in them, but they're sort of mapping out the city, I imagine. And then, when I was in Los Angeles, as long ago as 18 months ago, they had driverless versions of Waymo that were going around the city. You know, Los Angeles is spread out. There's a lot of highway. It seems like it would be easier to figure out than the congested roads of London and New York City, but it seems like it's coming.

**Ann Berry** (2:50)
It's definitely, definitely coming. That is absolutely the intention. But the question is, do people want it to come? So let's start with you. We're going to do our sample size of wine. Have you been in a Waymo?

**John** (3:01)
I haven't been in one yet.

**Ann Berry** (3:02)
Would you go in a Waymo?

**John** (3:03)
I would.

**Ann Berry** (3:04)
Why would you go in one?

**John** (3:05)
Well, I think the conversation around these driverless cars is often because we see some humorous problems that Waymos have. You know, it backed up into a U-turn and people were goofing on it.

**Ann Berry** (3:16)
Yeah, they become meme-ified.

**John** (3:17)
They become meme-ified. Sometimes it can be more tragic. There have been actual accidents that have caused injury to people. Overall, if I'm looking at statistics, the CDC cites that car accidents are one of the leading causes of death in the United States with over 40,000 fatalities a year. Those are significant numbers. Driving is one of the most dangerous things that there is. And so, while there may be accidents or problems with some of these self-driving cars, I think that overall, humans are probably more prone to accidents than maybe these cars are.

**Ann Berry** (3:51)
So you would vouch for Waymo and the like because you would say, let's get rid of human error as much as possible. That's what I'm hearing.

**John** (3:58)
Okay, let's put it this way. What I get into, I'd rather drive the car myself because I trust myself.

**Ann Berry** (4:03)