Has any company made a bigger impact on the automotive sector in the last decade than Tesla? Love them or hate them, Tesla has masterfully used the extraordinary latitude it’s been afforded by investors and customers to disrupt the profit, supply and dealership structure of the industry.  This latitude is also potentially the Company’s biggest weakness, contributing to Groundhog Day execution problems and unnecessary “self-driving” claims. We revisit and offer updated commentary from our original Everybody Hates Tesla episodes of a few years ago.

Note the “skip to” audio time stamps below.  You can read the related article here in 3 minutes.    

Host: Ali Tabibian of GTK Partners. 

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(0:00) Updated introduction

(6:27) Beginning of “Everybody Hates Tesla, Part 1”

(10:00) Electrification

(15:40) EVs are inherently premium vehicles

Can your AI make life-and-death decisions? Mercedes-Benz’s Drive Pilot can. Does your AI vendor take legal responsibility for those life-and-death decisions? Mercedes does. Drive Pilot is the only certified Level 3 passenger car system globally. Georges Massing, global head of the company’s automated driving and cabin technologies, tells us how. We hear his thoughts on how the technology ecosystem can work with Mercedes.

You can read the related article here in 3 minutes.

Mercedes-Benz’s global website is here. Host: Ali Tabibian of GTK Partners.

On some podcast players you can click to jump to the timestamps below.

(0:00) Introduction to Mercedes

(4:05) Introduction to Georges Massing

(12:50) The Mercedes brand

(17:42) The user interface

(23:25) Autonomy

(44:38) Mercedes & the ecosystem

Reilly Brennan, author of the must-read Future of Transportation newsletter and partner at Trucks VC, returns to Tech Cars Machines for a discussion on recent trends in transportation investing. We discuss financing round sizes and valuations, AI in autonomy and robotics, the promise of hydrogen combustion engines, the EV market, and much more.

Host:  Ali Tabibian of GTK Partners

Timestamps:

• (0:00) Introduction
• (2:35) Overview of Trucks VC and market trends
• (9:19) Discussion on capital investment dynamics
• (12:00) Private and public market investment trends
• (20:00) Insights on AI and robotics
• (27:00) The rise of hydrogen combustion engines
• (36:00) Predictions and industry insights

Links:

• Read the related article here in 3 minutes.
• Learn more about Trucks VC.
• Check out Reilly Brennan’s Future of Transportation newsletter.