Self-driving vehicles have moved beyond speculation. Thousands of passengers ride in autonomous vehicles daily across multiple cities, yet the industry remains far from mainstream adoption. In this episode, William Mee, a software engineer who spent nearly a decade at Google and built critical fleet dispatch systems at Zoox (Amazon’s autonomous vehicle company), reveals what actually works, what’s overblown, and why different companies are making fundamentally different bets on the technology.
From the sensors and AI systems powering autonomous perception to the messy operational reality of fleet management and the edge cases that still stump AI, this conversation cuts through hype and delivers insider perspective on where self-driving really stands in 2026.
What You’ll Learn
- Why the technology is proven but scaling remains the challenge
- The radical differences in approaches: Zoox’s purpose-built hardware vs Tesla’s camera-only strategy vs Waymo’s retrofit model
- How fleet orchestration works and why teleoperator ratios matter more than most realize
- The role of simulation, neural networks, and transformer models in autonomous systems
- Why edge cases—from pranksters placing cones to first responder interactions—create real safety complexity
Key Discussion Topics
- Perception, prediction, planning, and collision avoidance as core technical pillars
- Why sensor fusion (LiDAR, radar, cameras) matters more than cost-driven camera-only approaches
- Training vehicles, simulation, and detailed 3D mapping as essential development infrastructure
- The business of operating autonomous fleets: operators, maintenance, charging, and logistics
- Safety measurement through simulation metrics and North Star KPIs
- The chaos of real-world urban environments vs controlled test environments
- Job disruption and the emergence of new skilled roles in fleet operations
Guest Background
William Mee is a software engineer with nearly three decades of experience across frontier technologies. He spent just under a decade at Google working on products including Google Maps, AdWords, and Android before moving to Thumbtack and Coda. In 2023, William joined Zoox, an Amazon company building purpose-built autonomous vehicles, where he developed the fleet orchestration and dispatch system. In 2025, he pursued an Executive MBA at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Additional Resources
- Andrew Ng’s Newsletter: The Batch
- DeepLearning.AI
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About Business Unbound
Every week, your host Florian Haufe dives deep into conversations with visionary global leaders to bring you insights, inspiration, and the real stories behind success.
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