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Autonomy Insiders

Daniel Abreu Marques 18 Episodes Oct 14, 2026

Autonomy Insiders is a weekly podcast that provides a clear view of autonomous driving. Each episode features interviews with leaders across the autonomy ecosystem, including robotaxi operators, OEMs, platform players, regulators, and investors. The podcast focuses on Europe and China, markets that are often under-covered, and connects back to the US for comparison. Topics include deployment constraints, unit economics, partnership strategy, safety cases, regulation, and the real work of scaling fleets and operations.

Episodes

Europe’s Own Path to Autonomous Mobility | Lukas Neckermann Oct 14, 2026 00:41:53 Is Europe hopelessly behind in autonomous driving, or should it skip the race altogether? Lukas Neckermann thinks both camps are wrong.If the driving software comes from California, China or Israel, what actually stays in Europe? Who earns the money, who employs the people, and who owns the fleets?Lukas coined the term “mobility revolution” more than ten years ago, built on three zeros: zero emiss

Inside Germany's Autonomous Driving Law: The Hurdle Nobody Has Cleared Oct 7, 2026 00:43:16 Germany wrote the world's first legal framework for driverless commercial service in 2021. Five years later, no operator holds a regular Level 4 approval. Why?Till Stegemann is a lawyer at Rödl in Berlin. He advises cities, transport operators and companies on autonomous mobility. He is a co-author of the German Federal Ministry of Transport's handbook "Autonomous Driving in Public Transport", a p

Grab's Autonomous Vehicle Playbook for Singapore and Southeast Asia | Dominic Ong, GM Autonomous Oct 1, 2026 00:45:14 Southeast Asia should be the last place AV's arrive. Dense, improvised traffic, monsoon rain and some of the cheapest driver labor in any middle-income region. Yet in April 2026, Punggol in northeast Singapore became the first residential neighborhood in Southeast Asia with a public autonomous passenger service.In this episode of Autonomy Insiders, Daniel Abreu Marques talks with Dominic Ong, Gene

The UK's Autonomous Vehicle Permit Process Explained Sep 23, 2026 00:49:24 London's first robotaxi service runs on the Uber app with a safety driver still behind the wheel. Here is every step a company must clear before the UK lets it take the driver out.Tym Syrytczyk co-founded the Institute for Driverless Transport (IFDT), an independent UK research body, and writes Self-Driving Insights. His recent piece on getting permission to run a robotaxi service in London is the

beti: The French AV Operator Behind WeRide's First European Robobus | Benjamin Beaudet, CEO beti Sep 16, 2026 00:32:24 Europe's first fully driverless commercial robobus runs in France. beti is a French operator of automated mobility networks, and a spin-off from Bertolami, a family coach business that has moved people around rural France for 75 years. CEO Benjamin Baudet explains the layer of the autonomous driving industry nobody photographs: the people and software that keep a driverless bus service running onc

Robot Pit Stops for Robotaxis | George Kalligeros, CEO Aseon Labs Sep 9, 2026 00:34:05 Everyone measures robotaxi progress in miles driven. Almost nobody measures the hours the vehicle spends not driving. George Kalligeros, co-founder and CEO of Aseon Labs, is building a robot that compresses a depot into a single parking space.When a robotaxi drops below its charge threshold, it leaves the zone it is earning in, drives three to five miles to a depot, queues, gets serviced, and driv

France's Driverless Transport Rules, Explained by the Assessor Aug 26, 2026 00:36:49 France already has a working legal framework for approving driverless public transport. Most of the industry has never heard of it. Aryldo Russo of GESTE Engineering takes it apart piece by piece.Getting a vehicle type approved in Europe is one problem. Getting a driverless service running on a specific street, with a control room behind it and a city that has to agree, is a completely different o

How WeRide Built a Global Robotaxi Business in 9 Years | Tony Han, CEO WeRide Aug 19, 2026 00:45:19 WeRide CEO Tony Han on where robotaxis actually break even, how the Uber partnership works in Abu Dhabi, and why Europe could be profitable from day one.Most robotaxi conversations cover one city, maybe one country. Tony Han runs a company that has tested or operated in more than 60 cities across 13 countries and holds autonomous driving permits in eight of them. Daniel Abreu Marques sits down wit

The Hidden Human Layer Making Autonomous Vehicles Scalable | Nick Allen, TaskUs Aug 13, 2026 00:38:41 This video is sponsored by TaskUS.Autonomous fleets do not scale on software alone. The hidden advantage is the human layer and Nick Allen reveals how TaskUs powers the remote assistance, safety, validation, and emergency response that keeps robotaxis moving when the real world gets messy.If you think autonomy is just about removing people, this conversation flips that script. Daniel Abreu Marques

The Robotaxi Industry's Real Bottleneck Is Not AI. It's the Curb Aug 5, 2026 00:44:17 Everyone in autonomous driving argues about sensors, foundation models and remote assistance ratios. Almost nobody argues about the last ten meters. Bern Grush, CEO of Pudocity, on why the robotaxi industry's real constraint is not the AI. It is deciding where the vehicle stops.Safety is an engineering problem, and engineering problems eventually get solved. Pickup and drop-off is not. It is a spa

Public Trust in Autonomous Vehicles: What Europeans Actually Fear Jul 29, 2026 00:36:38 Europe's autonomous vehicle problem is not the technology. It is that almost nobody outside the industry knows what is coming. Guido Di Pasquale, Managing Director of PAVE Europe, on trust, education, and what actually decides whether Europe becomes a player or a market.Most AV coverage tracks the technology, the funding rounds and the deployment maps. This conversation covers the layer underneath

From AV Pilot to Public Service: What It Really Takes to Operate Autonomous Vehicles in Europe Jul 15, 2026 00:54:41 Most conversations about autonomous driving stop at the vehicle: the sensors, the AI, the next demo. But once an autonomous service carries real passengers in public transport, the hard part is not the car. It is everything around it.In Episode 19 of Autonomy Insiders, I sit down with Stefanie Berliner, who leads the DACH business at Holo, and Anders Toft, who runs operations. Holo operates autono

EU Type Approval Explained: How Autonomous Vehicles Get Certified for European Roads Jul 22, 2026 00:50:08 Certification, type approval, homologation. Not the sexiest words in autonomous driving, but arguably the most decisive ones for whether AVs ever reach European roads at scale.The EU's Level 4 regulation (2022/1426) has existed for four years. As of today, not a single vehicle holds EU type approval under it. The common narrative blames slow regulation. My guest tells a different story: the framew

Agentic AI for Robotaxis: Inside Autobrains Jul 8, 2026 00:38:15 The autonomous driving industry has mostly converged on one architecture: a single, monolithic end-to-end model trained to handle the entire driving task. Igal Raichelgauz, founder and CEO of Autobrains, argues that approach hits a wall on edge cases and compute cost.His alternative is "agentic AI." Driving is broken into a large but finite set of specialized agents, each an expert in a specific s

Designing Driverless Cars for Everyone (Not Just Early Adopters) Jul 1, 2026 00:45:55 Driverless cars can pass every safety test and still lose the passenger — because trust, not technology, decides whether robotaxis actually scale.Dr. Clare Mutzenich on the human factors inside the autonomous vehicle almost no one is designing for.Most coverage of autonomous driving is about the driving. This conversation is about everything else — what happens inside the cabin of an empty robotax

European Autonomous Driving: Inside Niulinx and the Robosharing Model Jun 24, 2026 00:48:09 Europe has no autonomous driving champion. Luca Foresti wants to change that, without copying the American robotaxi.Daniel sits down with Luca Foresti, CEO and founder of Niulinx, a Politecnico di Milano spin-off that just raised 38 million euros, the largest autonomous driving round in Italy to date. Instead of chasing a full robotaxi, Niulinx is building "Robosharing": you call a car with an app

The EU's "Now or Never" Moment on Autonomous Vehicles, Pierfrancesco Maran, Member of EU Parliament Jun 17, 2026 00:37:31 Almost nobody in Brussels is against autonomous driving. That is not the problem. The problem is that most policymakers treat it as a distant future, not a present priority. So the agenda slips while the US and China move.Pierfrancesco Maran is trying to change that. He is the newly elected chair of the European Parliament's ENVI Committee, and before Brussels he spent thirteen years running mobil

What Waymo's Data Reveals About Who Actually Rides Robotaxis Jun 10, 2026 01:05:35 Everyone in autonomous driving asks when the technology will work. William "Billy" Riggs asks the harder question: what happens after it does, when you have to fit it into a city that wasn't built for it?Daniel sits down with William, professor at the University of San Francisco and Director of the Autonomous Vehicles and the City Initiative, to challenge ten years of industry narrative. His thesi

Inside Loxo: Driverless Delivery Vans in Europe Jun 3, 2026 00:33:27 Robotaxis dominate the autonomous driving conversation. Urban goods delivery rarely gets mentioned. Yet Europe has roughly 30 million light commercial vehicles doing last-mile and middle-mile work every day, and almost no one is building Level 4 autonomy for them.In this episode, recorded live at the Automated Mobility Summit in Zurich, Daniel sits down with Amin Amini, co-founder and CEO of Loxo,

Hands-Free Charging for Robotaxi Fleets: The Hidden Layer That Makes Robotaxis Profitable May 27, 2026 00:47:07 Everyone in autonomous driving argues about software stacks, sensors, and miles driven. Almost nobody talks about what happens when the robotaxi pulls into the depot. And that is where autonomy quietly stops.A self-driving car cannot plug itself in. It cannot clean or inspect itself. Today, a human walks over and does it. At fleet scale, that single manual step breaks the economics.In Episode 12 o

Is the Uber-Waymo Partnership Coming to an End? May 21, 2026 00:43:35 The Uber-Waymo partnership has shifted from strategic alliance to transactional relationship. And transactional relationships have shorter expiration dates.Waymo on Uber, where riders can only book a Waymo through the Uber app, exists in exactly two cities: Austin and Atlanta. Since those launches, Waymo has announced close to a dozen new markets. None with Uber. Nashville went to Lyft.In this epi

How Apollo Is Building the Insurance Layer for Autonomous Vehicles May 13, 2026 00:52:42 You can build the safest autonomous vehicle in the world, but without insurance, it doesn't go on the road. In Episode 10 of Autonomy Insiders, host Daniel Abreu Marques sits down with Chris Moore, President of Apollo ibott (Lloyd's Syndicate 1971), to unpack why insurance is the unsung gatekeeper of AV deployment and why most insurers are still sitting on the sidelines while autonomy scales.Chris

Flexdrive: Lyft's Secret Weapon in Autonomous Mobility May 6, 2026 00:42:41 When people talk about Lyft's autonomous strategy, the conversation usually starts and ends with Waymo. Underneath that headline sits FlexDrive, Lyft's wholly owned fleet management subsidiary and one of the most underestimated assets in the AV industry today.In Episode 9 of Autonomy Insiders, Daniel Abreu Marques sits down with John Parks, CEO of FlexDrive, to unpack how Lyft is quietly building

Germany's Only Full-Stack Level 4 AV Startup: Inside MOTOR Ai Apr 29, 2026 00:40:13 Germany has one company building a full Level 4 autonomous driving stack from scratch. Not an ADAS feature. Not a highway assist. A complete autonomous driver, developed in-house in Berlin.That company is MOTOR Ai, and it is pursuing EU type approval with 20 million euros in seed funding.In Episode 8 of Autonomy Insiders, Daniel sits down with Roy Uhlmann, CEO of MOTOR Ai to unpack what it actuall

AV Charging Infrastructure: How Terawatt Is Building the Physical Layer Autonomous Fleets Need Apr 22, 2026 00:42:02 Everyone talks about the sensors, the software, and the regulation behind autonomous vehicles. But almost nobody talks about where these fleets actually charge. In Episode 7 of Autonomy Insiders, host Daniel Abreu Marques sits down with Peter Cohen, General Manager for Autonomous Vehicles and Rideshare at Terawatt Infrastructure, a company that has raised over $1 billion to build fleet charging hu

Inside MOIA: Autonomous Turnkey Solution for Europe Apr 15, 2026 00:47:14 In this episode, Daniel sits down with Rainer Becker, Director of Business Development at MOIA, the autonomous mobility arm of VW, to unpack how MOIA is building Europe's most ambitious autonomous ride-pooling operation. They cover: MOIA's turnkey solution model with its three pillars (autonomous vehicle, fleet management platform, and operator enablement), how the autonomous ID Buzz AD is built o

Baidu Apollo Robotaxis in Switzerland: Inside PostAuto's AmiGo Project Apr 8, 2026 00:37:11 In this episode, Daniel sits down with Martin Neubauer, Head of Autonomous Mobility at PostAuto AG, to unpack how Switzerland's largest public transport operator is deploying autonomous vehicles in rural and alpine regions where traditional bus services are becoming unsustainable.They cover: Why PostAuto chose Baidu Apollo as its autonomous driving partner, how the AmiGo project works with 25 Leve

Autonomous Driving in Switzerland: Regulation, Pilots, and Why Chinese Players Chose Swiss Roads Apr 1, 2026 00:39:08 In this episode, Daniel sits down with Oliver Nahon, Director of Operations at the Swiss Association for Autonomous Mobility (SAAM), to break down what's really happening on the ground in Switzerland's fast-moving autonomous driving ecosystem.They cover: Switzerland's new ordinance on automated driving (Level 3 and Level 4), the three conditions for driverless vehicle deployment, why remote superv

$41 Billion in Physical AI: What Investors Need to Know About Robotaxis & Humanoid Robots Mar 25, 2026 00:54:55 AI is leaving the screen and entering the real world.In this episode, Martyn Briggs, Director at Bank of America Global Research, breaks down what "Physical AI" actually means, why $41 billion was invested in it last year, and what comes next.We cover:World models and the shift from generative AI to physical AIWhy vehicles are being redesigned as robotic platforms, not mechanical onesThe 158+ acti

Autonomous Driving Chips: Tesla, Xpeng, Rivian and the In-House Revolution Mar 18, 2026 00:45:29 Most automakers are racing to master the most critical component of autonomous driving: the semiconductor. Augustin Friedel, Associated Partner at MHP and an expert in software-defined vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems, and AI-enabled mobility, exposes how industry giants like Tesla, Rivian, and Chinese OEMs are not just buying chips—they’re designing their own to unlock better performa

Inside Bolt's Autonomous Strategy: 100K Robotaxis for Europe's Streets Mar 11, 2026 01:07:38 Charlotte Eisner, Head of Commercialization and Partnerships at Bolt, joined Daniel Abreu Marques on Autonomy Insiders to discuss Bolt's autonomous strategy, strategic partnerships with Pony AI and Stellantis, and their ambitious plan to deploy 100,000 autonomous vehicles across Europe by 2035. The operational backbone of Bolt’s strategy is leveraging strategic partnerships and policy expertise to

Welcome to Autonomy Insiders Mar 8, 2026 00:01:17 Welcome to Autonomy Insiders!Autonomy Insiders goes behind the headlines of the autonomous vehicle industry. Your Host Daniel Abreu Marques talks to the leaders shaping AV, with a special focus on the markets most media ignores.

Autonomy Insiders

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