Driverless mobility, argued from the road up.
Smart Driving Cars Podcast is a conversational briefing on driverless vehicles, from NHTSA rulemaking to Waymo, Aurora, Zoox, Uber, Tesla, and freight automation. It suits listeners who want the practical case for autonomy argued through safety, cost, regulation, and real deployment constraints.
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Smart Driving Cars Podcast is a specialist show about autonomous vehicles as transportation infrastructure. It is built around news, but the real subject is the value proposition behind driverless mobility. Fred Fishkin sets up the headlines and links the discussion to the Smart Driving Car newsletter. Alan Kornhauser then stretches those headlines into a broader argument about safety, affordability, vehicle use, and regulation. The result is conversational and technical at the same time. Episodes can open with weather, travel, holidays, or a quick aside, then move quickly into NHTSA comments, Senate hearings, MIT Mobility Forum interviews, robotaxi approvals, or freight automation. The show pays close attention to Waymo, Aurora, Zoox, Uber, Tesla, Subaru, and the people shaping AV policy. It also keeps returning to less flashy but crucial questions. Why should an automated vehicle sit parked when it could reposition itself? How much safer does a driverless system need to be before society lets it operate? What happens to ride cost if the driver is no longer the expensive part of the trip? Can trucking become more productive without treating the human in the cab as the only source of value? Those questions give the show its shape. It is not mainly about gadgets. It is about mobility, logistics, public rules, and whether automated driving can serve real trips at a lower cost. The conversation often pushes back against perfectionism, especially when regulations or public debate demand that AVs solve every road condition before serving any useful route. It also pushes back against hype by staying close to hearings, public comments, technical guidance, and deployment details. Michael Senna appears in its episodes as a recurring outside voice, bringing in transport systems, China, tariffs, battery electric vehicles, and the broader industry context around driverless mobility. The show has a lived-in rhythm. It can be funny, blunt, repetitive, and deeply focused on the same few practical consequences. That persistence is the point. Smart Driving Cars Podcast is for listeners who want autonomous vehicle coverage from people arguing through the mechanics of how the technology reaches roads, fleets, agencies, and riders.
Made for: For transportation planners, AV watchers, policy-minded technologists, mobility investors, and serious listeners who want more than launch news. It rewards patience with dense, practical discussion.
What sets it apart: The show connects autonomous vehicle headlines to deployment economics, safety standards, fleet operations, and everyday mobility value. It is less about spectacle than about whether the systems can actually work for riders, freight, regulators, and cities.
What's the latest in smart driving cars? Listen in to lively discussions with Princeton University Professor Alain Kornhauser, co-host tech journalist Fred Fishkin and guests. How soon will you be riding in a self driving car? This is the podcast to tune in to for real info without hype or spin.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It turns autonomous-vehicle headlines into sustained arguments about safety, regulation, deployment, affordability and the practical value of driverless mobility.
Smart Driving Cars Podcast treats autonomous driving as a live argument about deployment, safety and public policy, carried by Fred Fishkin's crisp prompts and Alan Kornhauser's emphatic analysis.
Driverless mobility gets a Princeton seminar, and you get the questions hype usually dodges.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A freight-first autonomy conversation that stays practical, even when the trolley problem appears.
The episode keeps its attention on the MIT Mobility Forum and the conversation with Aurora CEO Chris Hermson, presented as direct and clear. Fred Fishkin and Alan Kornhauser return again and again to the practical side of autonomy in freight: truck-driving risk, the role of an…
Autonomy is framed through empty repositioning, parking, and the next rider's location.
Smart Driving Cars treats autonomy first as a mobility question, not just a vehicle story. Fred Fishkin and Alan Kornhauser point to an MIT Mobility interview with Echno Robotics CEO Carl Enyama, moving from DARPA to robotaxis to warehouses, then settle into the less glamorous…
A policy-heavy AV update with concrete detail and a clear commercial focus.
Fred Fishkin and Alan Kornhauser use this Smart Driving Cars conversation to sketch where autonomous-vehicle policy is headed, starting with a Washington, D.C. trip to NHTSA's National AVC Safety Forum.
A Washington hearing becomes a practical test of when driverless systems should be allowed on the road.
Congress becomes the backdrop for a grounded debate over driverless safety, with Tesla and Waymo executives joining safety experts in a Smart Driving Cars discussion tied to a Washington hearing.
A practical case for driverless mobility, with safety and cost doing most of the work.
Smart Driving Cars makes a clear case for driverless mobility, with Michael Senna arguing that autonomy may be safer, more courteous, and far cheaper than human driving.
Alex Roy turns AV history into a blunt lesson about expectations, scale, and what mobility is actually for.
Smart Driving Cars revisits Alex Roy's Florida AV Conference remarks and frames AVs in 2025 as a field that still needs basics, not hype. Fred Fishkin and Alan Kornhauser guide a history-heavy discussion that traces the gap between early expectations and what AVs have actually…
A practical mobility-policy debate about communication standards, China exposure, and keeping ICE in play.
Smart Driving Cars turns its attention to vehicle-to-vehicle communication, with Michael Senna revisiting DSRC, the European Commission's push for Wi-Fi-based systems, and the FCC-driven move away from a technology that saw little use after 20 years.
Cars, explained from the garage outward.
EV arguments from the performance garage.
Engineering breakthroughs, translated without the lecture.
Shop-floor talk for serious engine people.
Future shock, made practical.
Shop talk from the people on AERA's tech line.
Michael Sena discusses his article on China's battery electric vehicle exports and the impact of US and EU tariffs.
Hosts Fred Fishkin and Alan Kornhauser are joined by consultant Michael Senna to discuss his newsletter The Dispatcher.
Michael Sena discusses vehicle-related telecommunications, privacy, security, and court battles in Texas and Sweden.
Alex Roy joins the Smart Driving Cars podcast to discuss his presentation from the Florida AV Conference.
Smart Driving Cars episode 411 moves from Aurora CEO Chris Hermson and the MIT Mobility Forum to Jan Lacoon's Princeton talk on "enabling the next AI revolution," then into Uber's $10 billion robo-taxi strategy shift.
Fred Fishkin and Alan Kornhauser open Smart Driving Cars episode 410 with MIT Mobility's interview recommendation, then move to Conrail's April 1, 1976 formation, Artemis II's four-astronaut moon flight, and Waymo's roughly 500,000 paid rides a week.
["Smart Driving Cars episode 409 centers on NHTSA's National AV Safety Forum and Sean Duffy's push to reduce autonomous-vehicle regulations.", "Alan Kornhauser argues that driverless trucking can turn one 24-hour tractor-trailer assignment into 20-plus hours of vehicle productivity while keeping a human available for emergencies.", "Duffy frames the work as a golden age of transportation, with one federal AV framework, streamlined crash reporting, and proposed FMVSS updates for vehicles without steering wheels or pedals.", "The later discussion turns to Waymo coverage, a Greater Washington study on AVs and vehicle miles traveled, and Kornhauser's warning that AV and traffic-control technology should also be treated as a national-security issue."]
Alan Kornhauser links Waymo’s 70 remote assistance agents for 3,000 vehicles to his roughly 40x safety estimate.
Alan Kornhauser urges NHTSA to consider crash mitigation and mobility access in its proposed automated-driving rules, not only crash avoidance.
Ted Cruz's hearing on self-driving cars was "focused on safety" and featured "very little grandstanding."
Michael Senna’s January issue of Mobility Industry Insights, titled “Addressing the Opposition to Driverless Riding,” argues that safety is only one objection to autonomous vehicles.
ITN America reports 1.75 million door-through-door rides and more than 60,000 trips for hair appointments, challenging the idea that older adults travel only to doctors.
Michael Sena discusses his September edition of The Dispatcher, focusing on China's battery electric vehicle exports and the tariff responses from the US and EU.
Fred Fishkin and Alan Kornhauser discuss Tesla's Supervised FSD and its potential licensing to other automakers, with a brief tangent about the solar eclipse.
Fred Fishkin and Alan Kornhauser discuss autonomous vehicle technology with guest Michael Sena, covering topics like Toyota, Tesla, and AI.