>> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Mountain View, California, at a really cool start-up, Phantom Auto. They're coming at this autonomous vehicle thing from a very different direction. They're not a car company, it's not BMW and Audi and Nissan and all the other people you hear about. It's a pure software play, but it really has a huge impact on the autonomous vehicle industry. We're excited with the guy who's putting all these development, business development deals together. He's Jordan Sanders, director of business development and operations. Jordan, great to see you. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. >> So, again, when I first heard about you guys I thought, "Okay, do I order "this to drive my grandfather to the store," because he shouldn't be driving even though he has his driver's license, but no, that's not it at all. You guys have a very specific target market and it's really more a biz dev than a direct-to-consumer market. >> Yeah, exactly, so we are a B2B business and our target customers are those who are closest to getting their autonomous vehicles on the road. And so, that's frankly where we're seeing the most traction for now, at this point, from customers. As you get closer to true deployment of level four robo-taxis you realize a need for remote assistance, and we think we have the best solution on the market. >> Jeff: Right. >> To actually remotely drive the car and have a human in the loop to promote safety and service. >> So, as you look at your kind of tam, your ecosystem that you're going to market with, obviously we all know Waymo. We see the cars driving around all the time, the Nest is right up the street, but how's that landscape evolving? You know, we obviously hear about Uber, we hear about Lyft, you hear little bits and pieces about BMW and different car companies. As you sit back from where you're sitting, how do you kind of segment the market, how do you figure out where you're going to go next? >> Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, right now, you know, there's obviously a lot of excitement around this market and where it will be in five years. Right now the number of actual autonomous vehicles deployed is relatively low, and so that is frankly what our business is tied to. Again, it's enabling every vehicle on the road to actually operate safely, and so in terms of total addressable market, how we see it evolving, right now it's a relatively small number of cars and a relatively small number of players, but we see huge opportunity and huge growth in the sector over the next five years and 10 years. >> Right, and obviously a big integration challenge for you guys because each platform that you partner with is, you know, we hear all the time, some of them are using some shared infrastructure, some of them are trying to use their own, some are RADAR, some are LIDAR, some are camera, some are combination, so from a business development point of view you guys have to integrate with all those different platforms. >> That's correct, and so that's from the very beginning, we're building our end-to-end service to be very flexible and the software piece especially can integrate with any vehicle, with any vehicle manufacturer, because frankly we want to be open to the market and we don't want to just cover, you know, one customer's vehicles. We are sort of a third party who can provide a safety solution for a number of AV operators. >> Right, now the other interesting thing that people probably don't think about is, you know, we hear all about the technology in the cars and the machines, right, and IOT and it's all about machines, but in bringing a human operator into the equation it's not just to operate the vehicle, it's actually a person and all that that means. I wonder if you can kind of explain how that impacts people's autonomous car vehicle when there's actually a person involved. >> Yeah, definitely, so I think, you know, I think about this from a personal standpoint, so part of me is very excited for autonomous vehicles and I've ridden in several autonomous vehicles, feel very comfortable in them very quickly, but I also live in Silicon Valley and not everyone does just get to zip around in autonomous vehicles and is working in this industry, and so we do view there's going to be a, you know, a big consumer adoption kind of hurdle to overcome, and a piece of that is having the passengers in the car comfortable and feeling that, you know, someone has their back, right? >> Jeff: Right. >> So that's a key part of what we believe that we deliver is a human touch to self-driving cars, which we think is very important just at a psychological level, knowing that you have somebody who is monitoring your ride and is ready to intervene and protect you, you know, in the event that something goes wrong with the ride. And the other thing is by having a human in the loop it also enables all sorts of interesting ways of providing better service, and that's going to be a very, a key piece of whenever everyone inside the car is a passenger, there are no longer drivers, we're passengers. There are going to be lots of opportunities for enhancing passenger experience, and we think part of that can be, you know, providing a human service, an actual human on the other end making you feel comfortable and also connecting you with almost like a concierge. >> Right, and like OnStar has been around forever, right, that's probably the first kind of two way- >> You said that, not me, yeah. >> Two way communication, right, into the vehicle, which at first was I think mainly a safety feature. You crash and it sends out a 911 and then I think they kind of evolved it into a little bit of a concierge service. >> Exactly, so again, there's certainly that piece that we think is going to be really important for consumer adoption. I mean, I think AAA did a survey recently that showed 75% of consumers are afraid of trusting a machine, an autonomous vehicle. Now, we're very confident that the AV tech, once you get inside an autonomous vehicle that you very quickly realize, "Wow, this is a great driver," and we're very bullish on, you know, autonomous vehicle technology and believe that it's very reliable. But again, in those edge case scenarios, having a human who's going to intervene on your behalf and be able to actually operate the vehicle will be really important. >> Right, so somebody's watching this and going, "Ha-ha-ha," you know, "I'm a hacker, I'm going to hack into the stream," and it's not going to be Ben, the nice, smooth driver taking over the car but some person that maybe we don't want taking over the car. So, in terms of security and network infrastructure, how much are you leveraging your partners' infrastructure, how much are you leveraging your own, where does kind of security fit in this whole puzzle? >> Yeah, it's a great question and certainly one that, you know, we're hearing from a lot of customers. So, we are working with a variety of cybersecurity firms for making sure that our solution is extremely secure across multiple vectors, so whether it's just on the software piece or really our end-to-end solution, from the hardware that we can offer in the car, to the software, to the actual control center, the operation center where the driver's driving you, making sure that we have end-to-end security to avoid any situation like that. >> Right, so Jordan, for the people that aren't in Silicon Valley, what should they know about autonomous vehicles, how close are we, how much is it just, you know, stuff in the newspaper and you know, kind of nirvana still or just, you know, specialize Waymo vehicles that we see all the time in this neighborhood. How close is this to Main Street, how close is this to being that vehicle that picks me up when I get off the Caltrain to San Francisco and I need to go to a meeting over the Embarcadero? >> Yeah, so I think what people should know about this technology is that it is incredible technology that will be life-saving and that needs to get on the road, but that needs to happen in a safe manner and at a time where you can have full confidence in the operation and all settings, right. The technology is incredible, and so what Phantom Auto is here to do is to get these life-saving vehicles on the road quicker, and so what I would say to the average person who's a little uncertain of this technology is that it is incredible and you're going to enjoy the experience and it will be life-saving, and again, I think Phantom Auto is working to actually bring that experience to consumers by getting these robo-taxi services deployed. >> Jeff: Right. >> Pull out the safety driver and have a remote safety driver, a Phantom Auto remote operator ready to take over control of the vehicle in the event that you need assistance. >> And in terms of where you guys are as a company, right, you're a relatively small company, got this cool Lincoln here, where are you in terms of your company? Do you have POCs in place, do you have customers in place, kind of where is it in terms of the deployment of the technology within your ecosystem? >> Yeah, well we realize that we're bringing a very critical solution to these operators, so again, if you're an autonomous vehicle developer and operator and really thinking seriously about deployment you realize that you need a solution like ours, and so on the business standpoint we have several deals already closed, some pilots planned over the next few months, so you'll be seeing a lot more, I think, of us very soon out in the market. >> All right, now you're going to see more of us on the street. So, Jordan, let's stop talking and let's go take a ride in the car. >> Let's get in the car. >> All right, he's Jordan, I'm Jeff. We're getting in the car, thanks for watching. (techy music playing)