Jan 2, 2019 · 35m · a16z
a16z Podcast | Cars and Cities, the Autonomy Edition
Carl Pope · 10m spoken Frank Chen · 8m spoken Sonal Chokshi · 8m spoken Taggart Matheson · 6m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
This episode of the a16z Podcast explores how autonomous vehicles and shared transportation-as-a-service will radically reshape urban architecture, auto industry business models, and daily human productivity. Featuring experts Frank Chen, Taggart Matiasen, and Carl Pope, the panel analyzes the economic, technological, and societal shifts driving the transition away from personal car ownership.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The host holds 25.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 4.6 Guest teaching 3.4 Guest disagreement 1.5 The host pushing back 1.9
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 26:25 Radical reframe of pedestrian rights
Carl Pope flatly cuts off Taggart's mild discussion about smart traffic lanes, asserting that the reality will be much more radical and that human driving will ultimately have to be outlawed.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 10:32 Refusing the ox cart comparisonSonal directly challenges Carl Pope's assertion that cars are seen as obsolete ox carts, arguing that automobiles carry deep status symbol value and car culture that ox carts never possessed.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 33:43 The ATM employment paradoxFrank Chen corrects common assumptions regarding automation job losses by showing how the introduction of ATMs counterintuitively led to an increase in overall bank teller jobs.
The host holds their own ▶ 15:23 Defining ubiquitous and context-aware computingSonal demonstrates strong technical background by accurately synthesizing Taggart's customization examples into formal computer science paradigms of ubiquitous and context-aware computing.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| How Autonomous Vehicles Will Transform City Design | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Sonal questions Carl Pope's framework on cars vs freeways, pointing out that suburban expansion and gentrification make his city-flourishing claim sound counterintuitive. Carl defends his premise by citing urban real estate figures and parking space ratios. | |
| Reclaiming Urban Space and Reducing Commute Friction | 4 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Frank Chen and Taggart Matheson detail how AV fleets eliminate parking lots and repair shops. Sonal guides the discussion by asking for adoption timelines and prompting an explanation of SAE autonomy levels, which Frank breaks down clearly. | |
| Fleet Turnover Rates and the Transition to Shared Mobility | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Carl Pope lays out the math of shared fleet turnover condensing vehicle lifespans to three years. When Carl compares driving to riding an ox cart for younger generations, Sonal pushes back directly, highlighting car culture and status symbol history. | |
| The Shift from Mechanical Specs to Software and UI Design | 5 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Frank Chen explains how consumer metrics shifted from engine performance to infotainment UIs, turning auto sales into a B2B model like aerospace. Sonal demonstrates expertise by quickly synthesizing this into a B2C to B2B enterprise transition. | |
| Personalization and Modular In-Car Experiences | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Taggart Matheson describes personalized ride profiles akin to Spotify playlists. Sonal elevates the conversation by correctly framing this as ubiquitous computing combined with context-aware computing. | |
| Economics of Transportation as a Service (TaaS) | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | The panel discusses the economics of TaaS and housing savings from omitted parking space. Sonal contributes an expert observation connecting driver idle time to the resurgence of podcasts, though Carl banteringly notes people may prefer laptops over listening. | |
| Deployment Strategy, Geographic Localization, and User Trust | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Taggart outlines geo-fencing strategies to constrain AV deployment risks. Sonal highlights geographic localization challenges by contrasting orderly US freeways with chaotic Indian traffic dynamics. | |
| Environmental Benefits and Fleet Electrification | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 | Carl Pope forcefully dismisses incremental traffic management views to argue that robot vehicles will fundamentally alter pedestrian behavior and force bans on human drivers. Frank recounts public backlash to his own provocative essay proposing human driving bans. | |
| Repurposing Urban Space and Improving Walkability | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | The group explores turning former parking spaces into housing and pedestrian zones. Sonal brings up walkability metrics as a key determinant of healthy cities, which Taggart illustrates using San Francisco's Embarcadero waterfront. | |
| On-Demand Dynamic Services and Mobile Commerce | 6 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Sonal shares an insightful real-world story of a local nail salon owner dynamically reallocating labor across storefronts via transit. Frank educates on economic history, explaining how ATMs unexpectedly expanded total bank teller employment. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Pope: US cities devote more space to parking than housing
“From my perspective, we have to remember that in every American city, with the possible exception of New York, more space is devoted to sleeping cars than sleeping people.”
Pope: Autonomous vehicles will hollow out inner-ring suburbs
“Then all of a sudden, a huge amount of urban real estate, downtown central city real estate opens up. And I think what it does is it sucks both residential and business activity away from the inner ring of suburbs. Those hollow out, and then we have the challe…”
Frank Chen: Autonomous vehicles will be managed in centralized fleets outside cities
“So think of all the infrastructure that supports these cars, because we're going to have centralized fleets to get the cars fixed and maintained, not my problem. So all of this space is going to free up.”
Frank Chen: Future generations will never experience parking anxiety
“And how far will I have to walk? That will just disappear. There'll be generations of people who will never know that anxiety.”
Chen: Incumbent automakers project initial autonomous vehicle rollouts between 2019 and 2024
“Well, if you look at the public estimates given by the auto manufacturers, I'm talking about the incumbents now, you'll see a range anywhere from 2019 to 2024 being the year where they first introduced their autonomous vehicles.”
Pope: Every shared vehicle replaces eight private cars
“Every shared vehicle replaces roughly eight other vehicles, even today with today's technology and today's ownership patterns.”
Pope: The autonomous vehicle transition could be complete by 2025
“So it might start a little later than the optimists think. Might start in 2022, but it might be over by 2025.”
Pope: Driving your own car will become an expensive luxury option
“And once you start selling autonomous cars in large numbers, people will not buy cars that have to be driven. Being able to drive your own car is going to become a very expensive option. It's going to be like leather seats, but much more expensive.”
Pope: To screen-native youth, manually driven cars are ox carts
“And for this generation, the automobile is an ox cart if you have to drive it.”
Pope: Youth status competition has shifted from automobiles to electronics
“For kids today, when they're six, they start competing for who has the best electronic objects. So they actually have focused status on handheld electronic objects, whether they're game consoles or phones.”
Chen: Smartphone choice has surpassed car brand as a primary consumer identity
“It's much more important whether you own an iPhone or an Android phone and what set of apps you use than whether you drive a Ford or a BMW or whatever.”
Chen: Automakers will shift to Boeing-style B2B fleet sales
“Well, one of the big changes, especially if we're going to switch to fleet ownership, is the car manufacturers will start being a lot more like Boeing and Airbus than they will be like Ford and BMW today.”
Frank Chen: Durability will outweigh consumer aesthetics in car buying
“Will the car go 305 100,000 miles is going to be much more important buying criteria than what sound does the trunk make when it closes?”
Pope: Ford cars contain more lines of code than a Boeing 757
“Ford is already making cars that have more code in them than a seven 57.”
Pope: Fleet owners will let riders order modular cars customized with specific options
“I think cars become very modular. I think you have a basic chassis and drive train. And then it can be easily outfitted and perhaps outfitted by the fleet owner to be a really small, it takes two people to work to it's for a date night. And the fleet owners wi…”
Frank Chen: Autonomous ride service costs will approach private car ownership
“At some point when the autonomy comes into the equation, then it might get close to the Price at which you sort of own and operate and drive your own car.”
Carl Pope: Apartment prices will fall when parking requirements are removed
“And the price of your apartment will go down when the apartment building no longer has to provide a parking space.”
Frank Chen: Autonomous vehicle developers are divided on geographic localization strategies
“And so both research approaches are active. I've talked to people pursuing the look, it's going to be localized in the safe braking distance and how aggressively to take that right turn when you're at a stoplight. All of those things will be pre-programmed for…”
Matiasen: Simulated AV riders still instinctively check for oncoming traffic
“It was not an autonomous vehicle, but we stated that it was an autonomous vehicle for some user research, and one of the interesting things was we had a button that basically said start ride, and we said, oh, you know, the car's autonomous, you don't have to w…”
Pope: Shared Autonomous Fleets Will Drive Shift to Electric Vehicles
“The key intervention here, which I'm hoping cities will guarantee, is to make sure that autonomy comes with sharing, with fleet use. Because once that happens, that drives you for a whole host of reasons to electric vehicles.”
Pope: Cities will stop giving away curb space for free
“Curb space is essentially given away almost for free, and that'll stop.”
Matiasen: AV sensor data will evolve cities out of traffic congestion
“I think as these cars evolve, the sensors that are on these cars and the amount of data that we're picking up allows us to basically get this heartbeat in the city of where all of these cars are, what the traffic patterns look like. And on a long enough timeli…”
Pope: At 70% AV adoption, pedestrians will cross streets without looking
“We'll reach a tipping point when, say, 70% of the vehicles on the road are being driven by a robot which, like a horse, will not run someone down. And at that point, pedestrians are going to start crossing streets the way they did in 1900, without looking and …”
Pope: Future cities will restrict human drivers to dedicated lanes
“And at that point, we will have to take the right to drive away from people, unless they're in dedicated, you can drive it lanes. We now have bike lanes which are dedicated and special. You can drive your own vehicle lanes are going to become dedicated and spe…”
Pope: Driving is the largest U.S. profession and will be automated away
“We're going to lose the largest profession in the United States, which is driver.”
Chen: The introduction of ATMs actually increased total U.S. bank teller jobs
“After the introduction of the ATM for banking, the total number of bank tellers in the country increased, right? Because what we did was we built banks with ATMs in convenient places and put tellers in them. So we expanded the reach of banks so that you're, yo…”
Chen: Human demand for novel products and services is infinite
“The human capacity for novel products and services is essentially infinite. People will invent new things that they want, and technology will give us efficient ways to create those new products and services that people want, and it's going to unfold in unpredi…”