My guest today, Aisha Evans, has followed an improbable path.

Born in Senegal, trained as an engineer, she leads a billion dollar company called ZUX.

That's Z-O-O-X.

ZUX is making a radical bet on the future of driving.

They're developing a fleet of robot axes that will pick up and drop off riders on demand.

But one glimpse of these cars, and you will know what I mean by radical.

No steering wheel, no front or back seat, just a big open rectangle with two bench seats

facing each other.

They're only testing these vehicles, but I want to find out how long it will be before

they're functional, so I can buy one.

Welcome to People I mostly admire, with Steve Levitt.

Have you noticed that I almost never have CEOs as guests on the show?

That's because my experience with CEOs is that they won't say publicly what they actually believe.

They just bought the company line.

I'm making an exception today, because I've heard Aisha Evans is different.

And we're about to find out whether or not that's really true.

And just a heads up.

At a few points in this episode, he'll be able to tell I'm wrestling with a head cold.

I'm feeling better, but thanks in advance for bearing with me.

Do you have the sense that autonomous driving has turned out to be a tougher problem

to solve than the engineers and data scientists expected?

I feel like I've been hearing for a decade that we were right on the cusp of fully autonomous vehicles.

...