With GM's Cruise autonomous division backing away from its goal of deploying robotaxis in San Francisco this year, the gang discusses the pros and cons of different approaches to this unique moment in the autonomous drive space. Cruise's pivot from overambitious goal-setting represents one approach, Tesla's continued bluster and trend-defying confidence is another, while Navya's woes show that even seemingly more-pragmatic strategies can lead to overblown expectations and financial and technical challenges. These three case studies anchor a wide-ranging discussion about the expectations and realities of self-driving vehicles, how the hype got so out of control and how to start to bring it back down to earth.

After a few chaotic weeks that have seen Kirsten putting on a wildly successful mobility conference for TechCrunch, Alex's employer Argo AI signing a hugely impactful deal with Volkswagen and Ed preparing to launch his book, the gang gets back together for the first time in a while. After catching up on some of the recent news, the show cuts to Kirsten and Ed's conversation with Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson from the Renovo minivan outside the TC Mobility Session conference. Having long awaited the chance to learn more about the ambitious and sometimes-enigmatic startup, Ed and Kirsten pepper Levinson with questions about Zoox's plans, partners and self-driving system in a relatively brief but packed conversation about a company that is rethinking the car from the ground up.

With fully autonomous cars taking longer to develop than some had hoped, partial automation and driver assistance is coming back into focus and with it all the thorny problems of human machine interfaces. Carl Pickering, the former head of Autonomous Technology Strategy and Global HMI Manager at Jaguar Land Rover has a new startup called ADAM Cogtec that he thinks could provide a breakthrough in attention management. Using technology derived from techniques used to measure cognition levels in coma patients, ADAM is taking an entirely new approach that could change how the relationship between man and machine is managed.

There's a war quietly raging right now, over something you probably never guessed people would get worked up over: an open data standard that allows cities to manage shared mobility services. Launched by two-time Autonocast guest and LA DOT General Manager Seleta Reynolds, the Mobility Data Standard is tipping the balance of power away from well-funded startup invaders and towards city officials... and startups are fighting back. David Zipper of the German Marshall Fund, Citylab, The Atlantic and more has been covering this conflict better and for longer than anyone, and he joins the show to help Alex, Kirsten and Ed make sense of it.

The Autonocast's partnership with Siemens and the AutoSens conference rolls on from Detroit, with a conversation about how cities can prepare for autonomous vehicles. Joining the conversation are Ed Olsen of May Mobility, Marcus Welz of Siemens Intelligent Traffic Systems and Ed Bernardon of Siemens Strategic Automotive Initiatives, who combine their various areas of focus in a lively conversation about the promises and challenges of urban AVs. With May's autonomous shuttles and Siemens' smart city infrastructure systems already deployed in real cities, the lessons learned are already reshaping perspectives on this complex and evolving topic.

With Tesla getting into the custom silicon game, the gang dives into the wild world of processors for autonomous vehicles while attending the Auto-Sens conference in Detroit. Joining the show to help explain this complex field are two deeply knowledgeable guides: David Fritz, Global Technology Manager for Autonomous and ADAS at Siemens, and Jim McGregor of Tirias Research. Produced in partnership with Siemens, this episode demystifies the rise of custom silicon, the different strategies around autonomous vehicle compute, and the next generation of AV architectures

It's been another busy week in the world of mobility technology, so the gang has plenty to discuss in the latest episode. First up is Google's move into the automotive center stack with Android Automotive OS debuting on the Polestar 2, then comes Cruise's unexpected cash raising round and finally Waymo's partnership with Lyft in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Plus, Alex was in the New Yorker and Ed finally finished his book (like actually, for real).

As countless dead-end demos have proven, building the features and functionality of an autonomous drive system is far easier than creating a system that can reliably keep passengers safe in the chaos of a modern roadway. Dr Phillip Koopman of Edge Case Research spends his days looking at all of the potential safety challenges inherent to autonomous drive systems and is developing UL4600 as a framework through which AV developers can demonstrate the safety engineering and validation that their systems have gone through, as an AV-specific compliment to functional standards like ISO26262 and ISO21448 (SOTIF). On this week's show, Dr Koopman argues that some in the AV space still don't take safety seriously enough, explains how UL4600 can raise the safety bar for the entire sector, the unique challenges of the end-to-end deep learning approach and much more.