Don Burnett has followed a familiar path into autonomous vehicles, as an early member of Google's self-driving car program and the Otto trucking startup that formed the core of Uber's early foray into the technology. Now, as the founder of the autonomous trucking startup Kodiak he's up against some of the biggest names in the business as competition converges on the promising but challenging trucking business. Burnett joins this week's Autonocast episode to discuss what he's learned about the AV space, why he's focused on trucking, Kodiak's "middle mile" strategy, sensors and much more.

Every year at CES, the Autonocats invite hundreds of their closest friends in the AV and mobility tech world to a party of epic proportions. Since a party wasn't in the cards this year (thanks for everything, COVID!) we went for the next best thing: a live recording session for our annual predictions episode. If you missed it, don't worry: here, with minimal editing, is that "live" episode featuring a review of last year's predictions and a heaping serving of new predictions for 2021.

Zoox's 2020 journey embodied the recent highs and lows of the AV space, entering the year under a cloud and hunting for cash but ending the year revealing an amazing AV under the protection of Amazon's ownership. We were joined by both Zoox's CEO Aicha Evans and CTO Jesse Levinson for a full hour discussion, looking back at Zoox's wild ride, reflecting on the the AV space's tumultuous past few years and looking ahead as Zoox starts rolling out rides. You won't want to miss this fascinating discussion with one of the most underrated players in AVs.

2020 saw the launch of the Aptiv-Hyundai joint venture Motional, and the announcement of its plans to start a driverless service in Las Vegas. To discuss these happenings and more, we are joined by one of the most thoughtful CTOs in the space: Motional's Laura Major. The author of "What To Expect When You're Expecting Robots," and the only female CTO of a major AV player, Major's reflections on her career, AV development and the technology that holds it all together make for an episode you won't want to miss.

First up in our series of new year conversations with select leaders in the AV space, Austin Russell of the lidar company Luminar. In a year full of challenges, Luminar cemented its status as a major player by securing production contracts for its advanced sensors, went public using a SPAC reverse merger, and inked a major deal with Intel. Alex, Kirsten and Ed sit down with Russell, the latest AV-sector billionaire, and reflected on a wild year and the road ahead.

2020 is closing out with one of the biggest AV business stories of the year, first broken by our very own Kirsten Korosec: Aurora is buying Uber's ATG operations, ending the ride-hailing giant's tragic development effort. The gang discusses what this consolidation means for the sector, and looks back at some of the biggest AV-related trends of 2020.

David Zipper set out to understand what areas of automated driving were most in need of regulation under the new Biden administration, and his research led him to a single answer: Tesla. Zipper joins the show to discuss why Tesla's approach to automated driving is so aberrant, why it should be regulated and how the Bident could rein it in. If you want to go deeper into Zipper's popular Slate piece on this topic, you'll want to listen to this episode.

It's rare for Alex, Kirsten and Ed to agree on anything, but they're unanimous on one point: Anthony Townsend's Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car was the best AV book of 2020. This week Townsend joins the show to discuss his book, which looks at how urban, economic and political development could be transformed by autonomous drive technology. If any of these topics interest you even a little bit, you'll want to make sure to catch this episode and pick up a copy of Ghost Road.

At a time when the auto industry is seeing an influx of new startups like it hasn't seen in a century, one of the most interesting companies to watch is Magna International. Not only does Magna supply everything from an in-house EV platform and ADAS to body-in-white and drivetrains, they also provide the engineering and validation expertise to turn startup dreams into reality... and they can even contract manufacture the final result. To understand how a "full-stack" automotive startup enabler like Magna is approaching this unique moment in history, we sat down with Swamy Kotagiri, a 21-year veteran at Magna, currently serving as President and soon to be the firm's next CEO.