Hi everyone, welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. I'm Sonal. Today's episode is all about cars,

car culture, autonomy, and cities. Transportation revolutions have shaped our cities throughout

history. We've literally built cities first around rivers, then around train lines, and then

designed entire cities and suburbs around cars. But as autonomous cars come on the horizon,

and as transportation as a service already becomes more widespread and ubiquitous,

how do we think about what changes are coming next? What are the implications for design, product

management, infrastructure, and more? Joining us to have this conversation, we have A6 and Z partner

Frank Chen, who's talked a lot

about AI and autonomy, including most recently sharing 16 questions for autonomous cars. We have

Taggart Matheason, director of product at Lyft, who covers a core platform, passenger experience,

and product development strategy for autonomous vehicles. And finally, we have Carl Pope, who kicks off the conversation.

He's a former executive director and chairman of the Sierra Club, and the author with

businessman and former mayor of New York City, Mike Bloomberg, of the upcoming book,

Climate of Hope, how cities, businesses, and citizens can save the planet.

Well, I think the core question we're

facing with autonomous vehicles is whether they're going to impact cities the way cars did or the way

freeways did. Why do you make that distinction between cars and freeways? Cars were essentially

just carriages with a different form of locomotion. Horseless carriages. That's right. Cities

accommodated them. The great era of urban mass transit came after cars, the streetcar suburbs that spread out

from Boston and New York and Philadelphia and San Francisco.

And Los Angeles were all powered while they were cars.

They were quite compatible with cars.

...