Hello and welcome to the Automotive News Shift podcast, where we bring you the latest on automotive technology, trends, and transformation.

I'm Molly Boygan, tech and innovation reporter at Automotive News.

Our guest today is Richard Ward, executive director of the American Vehicle Owners Alliance.

That coalition has been supporting legislation that would have given vehicle owners unrestricted access to raw vehicle data.

But just after my interview with Richard Ward was recorded, the landscape changed.

I'll explain a bit more about that in a moment.

But first, let's talk about the week. For that explain a bit more about that in a moment. But first,

let's talk about the week. For that, I'm joined by my colleague, Doug Bullduck, managing editor of Automotive News Europe. Hey, Doug, how's it going? Hi, Molly. Great to be here.

Great to have you. So, Doug, Mercedes-Benz, is planning to launch its level-plus system in German cities before the end of the year.

How big a deal is this for the push for personal autonomy in Europe?

Well, it's interesting because going to level two-plus after already having approval for level three

kind of looks like, okay, why are we going backwards?

But it's probably a very smart move because it will be more affordable and also more in line

with what people want.

This point-to-point navigation that you can do in a city setting is more than likely

going to be very, very useful to people because we know that when you're in a city,

you're going to be stuck in traffic, you're going to be at lights and all these other things.

So if you have a limited amount of attention that you have to give to the situation

and just being able to let the car do the work, that's going to be appealing, I think,

to a large number of people, whereas the level three, which was more so highway-related.

So if you wanted to go from this exit to that exit on a highway, okay, that's fantastic,

but you're always wondering, when do I go in the loop, when do I go out of the loop?

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