Dough - The Future of Cars
Sliced Bread
BBC
4.6 • 695 Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will your car be driving you by 2050?
Greg Foot, host of the BBC Radio 4 show Sliced Bread, now brings you Dough.
Each episode explores future wonder products that might rise to success and redefine our lives.
Experts and entrepreneurs discuss the trends shaping what today's everyday technology may look like tomorrow, before a leading futurist offers their predictions on what life might be like within five, ten and fifty years.
The series kicks off with a look at the future of cars.
Will new battery technology transform the range and price of electric cars? Why are fully autonomous vehicles still not yet allowed on the UK's public roads? Which self-driving vehicles are we most likely to see first? Will we really let our cars do the driving for us anyway? Could vehicles communicating with streetlights make journeys quicker for select motorists?
Alongside Greg in the passenger seat is the futurist Tom Cheesewright and expert guests including:
-Phil Blythe CBE - a former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK's Department for Transport and Professor of Intelligent Transport Systems at Newcastle University -Paul Shearing - Director of the Zero Institute at Oxford University and the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Battery Technologies -Paul Newman - Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Oxa, a UK-based company developing software for self-driving vehicles
Produced by Jon Douglas. Dough is a BBC Audio North Production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism. |
| 0:09.0 | In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero? |
| 0:16.0 | Simply doing your job, being a decent human being. |
| 0:20.0 | A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by |
| 0:23.1 | their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism with me, |
| 0:28.6 | Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. You're about to listen to Doe. |
| 0:38.4 | Episodes are released weekly on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts, |
| 0:42.2 | but if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episode first on BBC Sounds, |
| 0:46.4 | a week earlier than anywhere else. |
| 0:51.6 | Hello, I'm Greg Foote and welcome to Doe, the BBC Radio 4 show that explores future wonder products that might rise to success and redefine our lives. |
| 1:01.3 | Each episode, I sit down with entrepreneurs and experts to discuss what today's everyday technology may look like tomorrow. |
| 1:08.2 | This time, we're discussing the future of our cars, asking what might |
| 1:11.9 | you be driving in 2050 or will it actually be a case of your car driving you? |
| 1:21.6 | Well, in the passenger seat today with me, he's always in the forecasting fast lane. He's got |
| 1:26.4 | his foot on the gas of educated guesses. |
| 1:28.8 | It's futurist Tom Cheeswright. Hello, Tom. Welcome. Thank you, great to be your co-pilot today. |
| 1:34.5 | The future of the car is something that you think about a lot. You've previously done consultancy work |
| 1:38.8 | for some of the major manufacturers, Ford, BMW, Audi, to name a few. You've even built your own EV, your own electric vehicle. |
| 1:46.4 | I have indeed a lockdown project gone awry, yes. My children and I, we bought a MOT failure car. |
| 1:54.0 | We ripped out all the guts, put electric stuff in, and it's been on the road for four years now. |
| 1:58.0 | In fact, I drove it here today. |
| 1:59.8 | Wow. A quick word for regular listeners to Doe. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.