Autonomy claims meet public-road reality.
Autonocast follows the self-driving car industry where product demos, safety claims, robotaxi launches, and company narratives collide. Recent conversations move between Tesla FSD, Waymo, Zoox, Cruise, CES, Austin robotaxis, and the cultural meaning of buttons and touchscreens.
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Autonocast is an industry-minded conversation about autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, assisted driving, and the companies trying to define the future of transportation. It is not a clean-room technology briefing. The show works closer to the street, where product claims meet public roads, media narratives, and the stubborn details of deployment. Recent episodes return often to Tesla FSD, Waymo, Zoox, Cruise, CES, Austin robotaxis, Las Vegas demos, vehicle interfaces, and the business machinery behind autonomy. The discussion is fast and frequently argumentative. It can be funny, too. A conversation may begin with rose-colored glasses, CES fatigue, or a party sponsor list, then turn quickly toward cash burn, robotaxi optics, safety data, camera cleaning, double-parked trucks, cardboard in the road, or whether a company has shown the organizational discipline required to operate at scale. Tesla receives sustained attention, particularly around FSD, robotaxi claims, cross-country zero-intervention driving, Austin operations, and the company's changing financial and strategic picture. Waymo is often present as a benchmark. Zoox appears through a ride on the Las Vegas Strip with Jesse Levinson, where the vehicle itself becomes part of the conversation. Cruise is treated through the fallout from GM's decision to stop funding Cruise robotaxi development as a standalone enterprise. The show's range is wider than company scorekeeping, though. An episode with Dr. Rachel Plotnick connects automotive touchscreens and buttons to emotion, culture, pleasure, panic, and the politics of interfaces. That breadth matters because Autonocast is most interested in the gap between the promised future and the version that has to work in traffic. It notices language, incentives, confidence, uncertainty, and showmanship. It also notices hardware, routes, fleets, sensors, and passengers. The result is a blunt, informed, sometimes messy chronicle of autonomy as an industry still proving itself. Autonocast suits a listener who wants more than headlines about self-driving cars and is comfortable with technical detail, business context, and skeptical pressure applied in real time.
Made for: Suits a listener who follows autonomous vehicles, mobility startups, Tesla FSD, robotaxis, and transportation technology as business stories as much as engineering stories.
What sets it apart: Autonocast stands out by combining field-level observation, industry memory, and pointed argument about the narratives around autonomy. It moves easily from ride reports and demos to cash flow, safety transparency, interfaces, and deployment strategy.
A weekly show discussing the future of transportation Alex Roy, Edward Niedermeyer, and Kirsten Korosec
A Zoox ride on the Vegas Strip brings up the business-model question you wanted asked.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A skeptical look at Tesla's pivot, where weakening car profits meet expensive bets that remain unproven.
Tesla's next act gets a skeptical, financially grounded reading as the episode weighs pressure on the core car business against expensive bets that still have to prove they can carry the company.
A loose CES roundtable finds its best detail in a demanding autonomous-vehicle ride.
Atonicast's CES recap frames the show floor and the after-hours circuit as one messy, overlapping scene. Kirsten Korosek, Ed Niedermeyer, and Alex Roy open with a bit about impersonating one another, drift into CES party talk, then settle into the episode's strongest passage: an…
A coast-to-coast FSD run becomes a grounded look at the habits, confidence, and uncertainty behind Tesla's autonomy claims.
Autonicast uses David Moss's coast-to-coast Tesla FSD run to slow down the phrase "zero intervention" and look at what sits behind it. Moss talks through the small, practical choices that shaped the drive: changing speed settings in cities, at chargers, and on rural 75-mph…
Austin's robotaxi contrast is clearest when the cars are watched from the curb.
Austin becomes a sharp curbside test for what robotaxi deployment actually looks like. Autonocast tracks Ed Niedermeyer's street-level observations of Tesla and Waymo, including Tesla Robotaxis running alone and development vehicles moving in a telling pattern: a human-driven…
A loose but pointed debate on Tesla culture, autonomy suppliers, and the risk of following the crowd.
Autonicast takes on a difficult automated-driving question: whether Tesla can move beyond a culture shadowed by its mixed record, and whether automakers should commit to one autonomy supplier before the technology has been properly tested.
Autonomy signals before the market catches up.
Practical tech talk across two generations.
Tesla talk with systems-level patience.
AI law and news, talked through with an AI.
Alex Roy says his fourth Tesla FSD cross-country attempt reached a snowy Pennsylvania truck stop, where a dirty backup camera and a one-way exit loop left Paul Pham standing outside in sub-zero weather.
Autonocast #355 opens with Alex Roy saying a friend's Cybertruck changed his view of Tesla because FSD seemed better in that truck than in his Model S.
David Moss says a Tesla Model 3 completed a cross-country FSD run from the Tesla Diner in Hollywood to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with zero interventions.
["Autonocast #340 tracks Tesla's Austin robotaxi rollout, where Ed Niedermeyer says the second car he followed braked into the left lane near police vehicles on Altdorf Road.", "Kirsten Korosek, TechCrunch's Transportation Editor, hosts Alex Roy, co-founder and general partner of New Industry Venture Capital, and Ed Niedermeyer, author of Ludicrous and Ride AI Summit programming director.", "The discussion contrasts Tesla's small South Austin geofence, manufacturer-plate development cars, and influencer access with Waymo's broader Austin service and Argo AI's tighter testing rules.", "Alex says Waymo looks like ChatGPT and Tesla looks like Grok, while Ed argues Tesla is using a custom stack, hard-coded responses, and behavior-cloning data from its own fleet."]
Autonocast #339 centers on Tesla's robotaxi claims, Waymo's expansion, and the backlash around AVs in Austin and Los Angeles.
Jesse Levinson, CTO of Zoox, discusses riding in their robotaxi on the Las Vegas Strip and pedestrian interactions.
The hosts discuss GM's decision to stop funding Cruise's robo-taxi development and absorb its technology, analyzing the failure of Cruise to become a serious autonomous vehicle company.
Dr.
Alex Roy and Ed Niedermeyer interview Jay Roberts about breaking the Tesla Autopilot Cannonball Run record.
Noah Goodall discusses the conflation of automatic emergency braking with autopilot in safety claims, highlighting the need to isolate autopilot's actual safety benefits.