Pedestrian deaths have risen by nearly 50 percent over the past decade. Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, analyses the long-running challenges, and provides fresh details on a troubling rise in fatality rates during the first six months of COVID.

The CEO of Optimus Ride discusses his company's strategy of placing self-driving shuttles in campus environments, its plans to raise additional capital and the transition to full autonomy.

Phil Koopman, co-founder and chief technology officer at Edge Case Research, offers a consumer-friendly complement to the SAE Levels of Automation. Further, he discusses safety standards for self-driving cars and methods for ensuring systems can handle rare driving scenarios.

Stewart Stropp, senior director of automotive retail, talks about the results of J.D. Power’s inaugural U.S. Electric Vehicle Consideration study. For some consumers, a Tesla isn’t always tried and true. For others, one factor that makes them hesitant about a EV is a lack of information.

Shawn Kerrigan, chief operating officer and co-founder at trucking-tech company Plus, says his company will commercialize an advanced driver-assist system for trucks this year, and that’s a starting point on an evolution toward fully autonomous big rigs. He further discusses rising demand for freight movement amid the pandemic.

Alisyn Malek, executive director at the Commission On The Future Of Mobility, a nonprofit thinktank, discusses the infrastructure needs for electric vehicles, the role of public transit in a post-COVID world, and kickstarting a new effort to address global mobility challenges.

Tooling has always been an auto-industry backbone. In a software era, Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig, the CEO and CTO, respectively, at Applied Intuition, argue it’s all the more important. The two discuss software and simulation that let others develop and test AVs, and their experiences bridging Detroit and Silicon Valley.

Otonomo CEO Ben Volkow delves into the Israeli startup’s plans to go public via a SPAC, how the company guards consumer privacy and the insights gleaned from more than 100 data points emerging from cars.

Anhalt, who took the helm of Elektrobit as CEO in January, talks about the company’s approach to software-defined vehicles, its strategy for this year, and her career experience going from software development to automotive.

Laura Major, chief technology officer of the Hyundai-Aptiv joint venture, talks about the company’s recent driverless permit approval in Nevada, its newly released voluntary safety self-assessment and its plans to deploy a robotaxi with Lyft in 2023.