Elon Musk's lidar bashing has grabbed public attention and dominated conversations about autonomous drive technology, but his dismissal of high definition mapping has flown under the radar. According to Shaun Stewart, a Waymo veteran and new advisor and investor at the mapping startup Carmera, we're missing out on an important discussion.

INRIX transportation analyst Trevor Reed joins the show to break down the long-term trends in traffic, how urban development affects your commute, and how local differences in traffic could create a more fragmented future market for mobility technologies.

2018 was without doubt "the year of the scooter," as brand-new startups grew at dizzying rates and micromobility replaced autonomous vehicles as the hottest trend in mobility technology. Oliver Bruce has been at the center of all the excitement, and I joined him at his Micromobility Summit earlier this year to discuss the wild ride that was 2018, the reasons micromobility has taken off, why scooters sparked the trend, where it's all going and more.

Dr Missy Cummings of Duke University joins the show to help walk us through the findings of other automation studies as well as the importance of sound methodology and peer review in studies like Fridman's. As a professor at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, a consultant on human-automation interaction and the author of numerous peer-reviewed papers (not to mention one of the first combat-qualified female fighter pilots), Dr Cummings brings enormous authority to this complex and fascinating topic.

According to Sam Anthony and Julian De Freitas of Harvard Psychology, the level of interest in ethical dilemmas for autonomous vehicles is not matched by its relevance to actual AV development. Drawing on his experience as co-founder of Perceptive Automata, Anthony explains why this resilient idea needs to be put into the context of real AV development as he and De Freitas explain their recent paper "Doubting Driverless Dilemmas."

Welcome to Merge Now, The Drive's new weekly podcast series featuring conversations with the people shaping the future of mobility technology. In this preview Ed Niedermeyer, Senior Editor for Mobility Technology at The Drive and host of Merge Now, explains what the show is all about, what the name means, and who will be stopping by in the episodes to come.