Listen to Mark Farrell, the Mayor of San Francisco, explain why he wrote an open letter to Autonomous Vehicle companies requesting enhanced cooperation with municipal authorities.   Hear the Mayor describe the outcomes from the resulting Safety Briefing, with presentations from Zoox and GM Cruise.   Whay sensitized the Mayor to autonomous vehicles, well before the recently publicized and highly unfortunate fatal accidents.

See the Mayor’s official release on the subject and learn more about Mark Farrell’s background.  More about GTK, your host Ali Tabibian, our conferences, publications and subscriptions thereto. If links aren’t active in your app, please go to www.techcarsmachines.com.

A raw transcript is here.

Listen to Y Combinator 2018 Winter Event graduates Mike and Jack Ross, co-founders of Beanstalk, describe their objectives, challenges, and solutions for indoor farming.

Understand how Beanstalk uses spin-offs of technologies outside of agriculture to make its approach successful.

Visit  Mike Ross and Jack Ross.  More about GTK, your host Ali Tabibian, our conferences, publications, and subscriptions thereto. If links aren’t active in your app, please go to www.techcarsmachines.com.

A raw transcript is here.

Listen to Y Combinator 2018 Winter Event graduates Igino Cafiero and Aubrey Donnellan, co-founders of Bear Flag Robotics, describe their objectives, challenges, and solutions automating tractors that services orchards.

Understand how Bear Flag focuses on the near-term-possible in autonomy to target near-term commercial deployments.

Visit Igino Cafiero and Aubrey Donnellan.  More about GTK, your host Ali Tabibian, our conferences, publications, and subscriptions thereto. If links aren’t active in your app, please go to www.techcarsmachines.com.

A raw transcript is here.

Listen to William Santana Li, Founder and CEO of Knightscope, and a Ford Motor Company veteran, describe how he’s raised $40MM without venture capital to build the leading security robot company.

Understand how Knightscope focuses on the near-term-possible in autonomy to achieve commercial deployments today.

Visit William Santana Li and Knightscope.  More about GTK, your host, our conferences, publications and subscriptions thereto. If links aren’t active in your app, please go to www.techcarsmachines.com.

A raw transcript is here.

Listen to Chuhee Lee, Vice President of Technology and Strategy, a veteran of Volkswagen of America’s Electronic Research Lab, describe how his group’s activities improve the user experience for the 11 million vehicles a year that the VW Group manufactures.

We’ll explore vehicle infotainment, autonomy, customization, and the evolving concept of “luxury”.

Visit Chuhee and VW ERL.  More about GTK, your host, our conferences, publications and subscriptions thereto. If links aren’t active in your app, please go to www.techcarsmachines.com.

A raw transcript is here.

Listen to Josh Switkes, CEO and co-founder of Peloton Technology, describe how his company enables safe tailgating between trucks, helping the industry save fuel and improve safety.   Understand why the company has raised $80MM from the likes of Intel, UPS and Volvo.

What’s unique about trucking? Why is Peloton’s implementation of limited autonomy, a proprietary truck communication technology, and a network operating center proving to be the right approach?  How does regulation influence Peloton?

Visit Josh at www.peloton-tech.com.  More about GTK, your host, our conferences, publications and subscriptions thereto.

A raw transcript is here.

In Part 3, we discuss recent progress and prospects for widely available, substantially autonomous vehicles.  We’ll look at advances and leaders.

In this 3-part segment, we ask and answer: What’s real and what’s not in “self-driving?”  Which advances have near-term applications, and which vehicles are driving themselves already?  In Part 1, we quantified the enormous size of the transportation industry, and how that size means there’s no reason to exaggerate autonomy claims: partial autonomy and unrelated technology advances are making a big difference in everything from energy sources, to safety, to infotainment, and to utilization rates. In Part 2, we reviewed the history, challenges, and over promises in the field of vehicle autonomy.

This 3-part segment is a companion to our publication, Driverless Cars are Mostly Fake News, but the real parts are Big News to which you can subscribe here.