we'll hear from mike johns, the passenger in that viral video after getting stuck in a driverless car. and we'll speak to philipp kampshoff, who's the man looking at the future of motoring on behalf of the global management consultancy mckinsey. and two of the industry's biggest players willjoin me. david liu, the man behind america's plus. it makes software for autonomous trucks. and also chrissy taylor, the big boss of the biggest car rental company in the world. that's enterprise mobility. so let's start our engines for talking business in 2025. wherever you're watching, welcome. now, we might think autonomous vehicles are a relatively new idea, but take a look at this. the totally automatic car. no driver at all. more than 50 years ago, in 1971, the bbc showed how autonomous — or driverless — vehicles, could work on the uk's roads.

but as we know, early predictions have failed to meet expectations. so why has it taken so long? well, in cities like beijing, in china, and in san francisco, phoenix, la and austin, in america, you can actually order a driverless cab and a car will come to pick you up. mike johns was one of those passengers. he's someone whose job it is to look at how the future of humans and tech will work together. he ordered a car to take him to the airport, but then it started going round in circles. he told us about the experience that he also captured on video. the car comes up, the door automatically opens. i actually ordered that, the door automatically opens. you're feeling good. people are looking around. "wow, that's the future. he's in there." get in the car. shut the door. the car takes off. those same people are looking. that's the funny part. those same people are looking. now the car is going in a circle. 0k. why is this happening to me on a monday? and at this point, this is

probably lap four or five, where you end up hearing the voice coming over the system. hi, there, mike. this is gab. — i'm calling from waymo support. i actually had it scheduled and planned to do this ride with my son because he's... it's going to be a normal thing for him, so i might as well start at an early age. he's only 12, so it would have been a lot different had he been in the car. why is this thing going in a circle? i'm getting dizzy. it's. .. look at what it's doing. i understand. i'm really, really sorry, mike. we're currently working with the situation of the vehicle. we went from this human—less experience that hears a recognised voice, uh—oh, there's a voice, it's instructing me, it's telling me something. it's a little bit soothing, but is this a person? i got my seat belt on. i can't get out the car. has this been hacked? what's going on? ifeel like i'm in the movies. is somebody playing a “oke on me? , . and i got a flight to catch. if you have your app pulled up, i need you to tap my trip on the lower left corner of your app. why is my phone a part of this discussion? at any rate,

by lap six or whatever, i had to do the "edit the ride" and they were able to kind of auto—correct their mistake. we're a part of an experiment, and you're paying to be a part of this experiment. and any mistake that happens, wejust auto—correct as we go along. when it comes to autonomous vehicles that are on the road, we're still in this half—baked phase. well, the company waymo, which operated the car that mike got into, says a software update has already taken care of that issue. earlier last year, it recalled more than 600 cars to make them less likely to drive into telephone poles. well, waymo is owned by alphabet. that's the company behind google. it's the biggest operator of autonomous taxis in the us, and it's a veritable who's who of tech that are getting into the sector. zoox is owned by amazon. elon musk�*s tesla is working on its own range of autonomous vehicles. the chip maker nvidia has its own platform and is investing widely, including in china's weride.

meanwhile, in china, baidu is already running 300 robotaxis in wuhan, but other major players have tried and failed to make it work. it emerged in february last year that apple was ending its autonomous car project, despite never actually confirming it had one. general motors folded its autonomous vehicle brand cruise in december after some high—profile injuries. so why have they failed? well, it could be down to users themselves, or rather their nervousness to embrace the new tech. according to the american automobile association, a full two—thirds of americans fear self—driving cars. a quarter of them are, quote, uncertain of them, and fewer than 10% actually trust them. and, if anything, those fears have got worse over the last four years. one of the people working with some of the big players is the man who heads up the american arm of the global consultancy mckinsey and its

center for future mobility. philipp kampshoff, welcome to the programme. it's good to have you with us. and, look, part of yourjob is assessing attitudes all over the world when it comes to new technology like this. what are you hearing from people about the way that avs will change the way that we get around the world? it's very interesting because a lot of people talk about electric vehicles, and we at mckinsey would say actually autonomous vehicles might be the much bigger game—changer than electric vehicles. for the city of washington, dc, we asked the question, "what is actually cheaper — owning a car "or using e—hailing 100% of the time?" you know, like uber or lyft. and the answer is 2,500 miles. if you drive more than 2,500 miles in a year, you should own a car. if you drive less than that, it will be cheaper for you tojust use e—hailing. now, in your e—hailing, the most expensive part is the driver. and autonomous vehicles or robotaxis come with a promise

that you can take out the driver and save that cost. so all of a sudden, the break—even point changes from 2,500 miles to 7,500 miles. now, you can ask the question, "how many people in the city of washington, dc, "do actually drive more than 7,500 miles per year?" and the answer is about 50%. so for 50% of the population in dc, from a pure economic perspective, it doesn't really make sense to own a car any more. and what fascinates me, philipp, here as well, is that it's notjust about how we get around. that therefore has the ability to reshape how we consider building our cities around the infrastructure that is needed, the way that we might consider things like car parking and on—street facilities. it utterly changes the game. and yet, whilst that's been the dream for so long, it's still some way off, isn't it? yeah. so if you ask me, i founded mckinsey center for future mobility about ten years ago and when we first started, we looked at autonomous driving

technology and, to be honest, we said it is still very far out. at least 10 years, maybe 20 years. we will see. now, fast—forward to today, i actually have changed my mind, probably 12 months ago, maybe 18 months ago. i am a true believer that the technology is pretty much there already. and so if the technology is available, what are the hurdles that will still come in the way of adoption? i put it into two different buckets. it's sort of consumer acceptance. and then for the autonomous vehicle robotaxi players, they need to be able to make the business case a profitable business case. so when the two of them come together at that point in time, we will see adoption at scale. so if we dive into the first one, customer acceptance, this looks actually quite different across the globe. mckinsey has done a survey last year with about 36,000 people

across the globe, and we asked the question, "should governments already legalise "autonomous robotaxis today?" interestingly enough, in the united states only 11% said yes. in germany it was the same. 0nly11% of the people said, yes, government should legalise robotaxis already today. now, that number looked very different in china. in china it was 31%. and then, if you add the people that said, "well, maybe not today, "but within the next couple of years," then china scored as high as 97%. so, in general, the public in china is much more open. i would really say the us and china are competing at eye—to—eye level. now, how this is going to play out in the coming years, it's going to be interesting to watch. now, i could totally see a world where actually both of them will win

and both of them will focus on their respective geographies. because one thing you need to keep in mind, this might actually become a concern of national security, because, when you think about it, you have tens of thousands of robotaxis driving around in your cities without any drivers, all being controlled by the same software. at that moment, cybersecurity becomes a really, really important topic. that's why you might not see, you know, chinese autonomous players operate in the us, or the other way around. ifa if a rover taxi has a crush, we don't hear about human taxis being involved in the same way. is that one of the biggest challenges in how we receive the success or failure? every time a rover taxi does something wrong, it usually makes

headlines, and it doesn't have to be an accident. we see in the past where it has caused a small traffic jam and that already made major news. so yes, everything a rover taxi does is really under a lot of scrutiny at this point in time. it's really important for the autonomous players to overemphasize safety. evenif players to overemphasize safety. even if these vehicles operate safer than any human drive for over a sustained period of time, the public perception will change over time. now, i posed a question at the start of this show and asked whether this is the year that autonomous vehicles finally, really — excuse the pun — move into the fast lane? is it your belief that that will happen this year? because there have been so many predictions, so many expectations, so many hopes that autonomous vehicles would be rolled out en masse by now. we have bbc footage from the 1970s showing what these vehicles may be capable of. it's still not happened.

is this the year it happens? i would say maybe this year and the next couple of years together. what you will see this year and then the following years is its adoption in two dimensions. 0ne — in the cities where you have already robotaxis, whether that is phoenix or san francisco or la, we're going to see a scaling of the operations. so you will see more and more vehicles operate in these cities. and in some of these cities, the area in which the vehicles can operate is still very confined. so you will see an expansion of that service as well. and you can truly go in all parts of the city. so that's one. the other thing that you will see next year and in the following years is an opening of additional cities. we have already seen some of the announcements, whether that is austin, texas, whether that is atlanta or miami. we will see a commencement

of these services in a lot of these southern cities of the united states. and i'm saying southern cities, because robotaxis still operate much better in good weather conditions. they still, for the most part, struggle in heavy snow, for example. and also, the compute power takes a lot of sort of energy and electricity from the batteries, and the batteries tend to perform better in warm weather conditions than cold weather conditions. so bringing this all together in the second part of the 2020s, you will see one city after the other being unlocked and then a scaling within these cities. now i'm saying this... this is only going to happen if we're not running into major accidents. the moment major accidents are going to happen, a lot of these operations are going to be shut down. philipp kampshoff, it's been so good to have you on the programme this week. thanks for being with us. thank you for having me. well, one of the most advanced

players is the american company plus, it makes software for autonomous trucks and says its tech could help solve a labour shortage and make supply chains more efficient. i'm joined now by its co—founder and chief executive. david liu, welcome to the programme. thank you for having me today. david, we talk a lot on this programme about autonomous vehicles. but, interestingly, you deal with trucks and big business logistics. what role will you play in how we get stuff from a to b? it's a really, really important segment of our overall mobility and economy. 70% of the goods we use and consomme today are transported by trucks. yet trucking is one of the most dangerous jobs. and also, we are facing a huge driver shortage. so what we're looking to do is to utilise the technology to automate a big portion of that, to make transportation safer and more efficient. and what do you have to do differently, or think about differently? how do trucks differ

from maybe cars or robotaxis? so, on the large part, there's a lot of similarity between autonomous trucks and robotaxi. there are some important differences, though. so first of all, the trucks are much, much heavier and much bigger in terms of the size of the vehicle, which requires the truck to be able to see much further than what a regular car would have to do. secondly, the transportation mode where the vehicles are operated in are quite different. a robotaxi mostly runs within cities in low—speed environments, while trucks are typically run on highways at higher speed. so we do need to put in different set of technology to be able to see more clearly around the trucks and be able to handle a longer braking distance, for instance. so there are some technological differences between the trucks and the cars.

the public have concerns about automated cars. how do you manage to assuage their concerns about bigger trucks being on the road without drivers? yeah, so, first of all, safety is the number one concern that we work on. autonomous trucks and autonomous vehicles, by the time that they're rolled out on large scale, need to be much safer than the average human—driven vehicle. so what we are able to do with technology is that the autonomous vehicles are able to see the road at all times. so, you know, it's 2a/7. at every 100 milliseconds, we make a decision about what the vehicle is seeing. and then based on that, we're watching the road and make a sound decision. you know, human drivers are great but not flawless. it's not just the software,

is it? you're working with big industry players, these 0ems, as they're called, original equipment manufacturers, companies like volvo. how seriously are they taking this? we work with three of the largest global trucking 0ems — volkswagen's traton group, hyundai's commercial group as well as iveco. so all of the these major global 0ems look at autonomous technology as the future of where the industry is going. autonomy provides a lot of benefits to what they were trying to do, which is to provide safe and efficient transportation mode for the customers. now, there's been a big problem with labour shortages, hasn't there? the truck industry is struggling to get the drivers it needs. that's caused huge problems for the global supply chain. is that what's driving this technology or is it actually about things like cost, making things cheaper in the long run? so helping address the driver shortage problem

is one of the key drivers for what we do. we know, in the us, there's, you know, currently 80,000 driver shortage on an annual basis. uh, that's a significant shortage. you know, basically about 3%—5% of the total industry. and, you know, that's limiting the expansion of our economy, that's, you know, has huge implications on the overall supply chain and overall economic growth. so what we are looking at doing is to use technology to address that, to improve and increase, uh, more transportation capacity into the industry. so that's a key driver. the other side benefit of our technology is to provide safer and more efficient driving modes to the existing infrastructure. as a measure in this

type of technology provide safer 24/7 monitoring around the vehicle, it never gets tired. itjust makes the transportation infrastructure much safer. with a tone what we can do is automate first the part that's most labour—intensive and most boring and tedious for the drivers, so we note long—haul trucking is a very hard job. the drivers are on the roads a lot of times during the year. they don't get home for weeks at a time. but we will be able to automate that part of the job so that drivers can really move on to take on the jobs more around local driving, more around handling logistics, you know, on a regional basis, so they can go home every night and leave this part of that

where you have to travel weeks at a time to the machines to do and then drivers can reallyjust monitor. we are transforming the part of the jobs to be better, easier to handle. now, there have been a lot of predictions about how automated autonomous vehicles will change the future. what's your prediction in the medium to long term? talk to me about what it will look like in the next few years. so i think that the next two to three years are very critical for our industry. we are standing on the cusp of starting to commercialise autonomous trucks. uh, what we're doing with, uh, three of the largest global trucking 0em is, um, to start commercialising what we've been working on for the past few years. we're already doing a commercial pilot in texas, in the united states and in sweden, in europe. um, what we're looking at doing this year is really to validate the safeness of the

aspects of our solution. and then starting in 2026, we're going to conduct driverless pilots, uh, together with our 0em partners, and start deploying and commercially scaling our solution starting in 2027. so by 2027, we anticipate to see some of the autonomous trucks coming off the production lines from our 0em partners. david liu of plus, really good to have you on the programme this week. thank you. it was a pleasure. my final guest is one of the biggest players in the auto industry. the company she runs, enterprise mobility, is known for being the biggest car rental company in the united states and elsewhere. it now operates in more than 90 countries. it is a $35 billion global business. but how will autonomous vehicles change the way it works? chrissy taylor, it's good to have you on the programme. we're focused particularly on autonomous vehicles in this programme and what difference they could make to the way we get around.

what demand is there, particularly within the organisation, when people come to you, and i know we're in very early days of this technology still, but is there any discussion around autonomous vehicles in your business? there is a lot of discussion around autonomous vehicle. it is early days right now, but the technology is moving very, very quickly and the cars are undergoing a huge transformation. and so for us, thinking about the long—term view of autonomous and how that creates an amazing customer experience is a conversation that we're having every day within our organisation, because autonomous vehicle plays a huge role and will continue to play a huge role in the entire mobility ecosystem and how people get around. you operate all over the world and i wonder where those discussions are more advanced. are you seeing different countries are further along on this journey than others? most of those conversations for our organisation, with our headquarters being here in st louis, missouri, are happening in the united states. and what's important is that

we're engaging with these companies that are autonomous vehicle companies, but also the surrounding ecosystem around autonomous. we are making sure that we're engaging and understanding the capabilities so that we can provide better experiences for oui’ customers. what are the biggest hurdles for you in adopting this sort of technology? i think there is uncertainty around it and how people are going to move around, but that uncertainty creates huge opportunity. so when we think about trends, it's not just about av, it is a very important technology, it's also about the connectivity of the vehicle, the vehicles talking back and forth to us. so we have 550,000 vehicles in our fleet that are connected, and that plays a huge role in autonomous. also, most of the autonomous vehicles, if not all, yet to be determined, will be electric vehicles. and so the transition to electrification for us is very, very important. and then shared mobility, because more and more people are sharing vehicles

and moving differently. so that also plays a role in autonomous. and given that you're operating on such a scale, how do you make decisions now about what you invest in? how do you make sure you've got the right cars in the right places for the right people at the right time — especially when that technology is changing so quickly — to perhaps something you would be prepared to invest in today is suddenly outdated six months down the line. mm—hm. the best way to keep a pulse on mobility trends and what customers are telling us is our 90,000 employees. we have operations all over the world. we have almost 10,000 locations, and the majority of our customers are on the front lines talking to our customers, leasing cars, renting cars, car sharing with them. and so the way we keep the pulse on technology and what customers want are our amazing 90,000 employees. and look ahead for me here, you know, if i came to one of your outlets two years from now and i said i want to rent a carfrom you — is it going to be an av?

never say never. i think there's still more time to go in the autonomous vehicle technology. but they have made huge strides and they are solving complicated problems. so never say never. um, it definitely is around the corner and we are excited about that opportunity. chrissy taylor, so good to talk to you on the programme. thanks for being with us this week. thank you. thank you very much. well, we're at the end of the road for this week. i hope you've enjoyed the programme. don't forget, you can keep up to date with the global economy on the bbc news website or smartphone app. thanks for watching. we'll see you very soon. bye—bye. hello. while some parts of the uk got to see the sunshine right the way through to the end of the day on saturday, for others it was a grey, gloomy start to the weekend. a pretty chilly one as well. you can see the extent of the cloud on saturday afternoon and underneath it, temperatures in parts of lincolnshire hovering around freezing for much of the time. northern ireland with a few brighter breaks up

to around 11 degrees. and that split remains as we go through into the start of sunday. mildest conditions in the west. temperatures close to freezing in many areas whether you've got the cloud or not, so maybe down to —4 in parts of north—east england a bit more cloudier compared with saturday. best of the breaks in the cloud in northern parts of scotland, northern ireland and actually a few brighter breaks out towards the west of england and wales possible. temperatures, though, not going to recover a huge amount through the day, except that is in the west around 6—10 degrees here, but we will see the cloud thicken up later. western isles northern ireland could see some outbreaks of rain into the evening. patchy light rain or drizzle towards the south—west as well. thatjust edges a bit further eastwards as we go through sunday night and into monday morning. to the east of it, again, chance of some frost around as we start the brand new week, but it will be another fairly cloudy start for many on monday. this time though, a greater chance of some rain or drizzle across parts of the west, and that may even fall as a bit of sleet and snow

over the higher ground. not a huge amount around many places to the south and east just about dry. best of the sunshine on monday, still in the north—east of scotland. one thing on monday though, temperatures will start to lift just a little bit compared with what we've seen through the weekend. into tuesday, we've still got a fair bit of cloud, maybe a few brighter breaks as we start to pick up the breeze, but the clouds thicken up with a weak weather front straddling central areas. some rain around the coast, maybe a little bit of sleet or snow over the likes of the pennines. some heavier showers into the north—west of scotland. and then through wednesday and thursday, the cloud amounts will still generally dominate. now, it's to the south where we could actually see some longer spells of rain push in linked into this weather system, which is going to bring a miserable few days across parts of portugal and western spain. but as that clears through another batch of rain for thursday and then turn our attention to the west, the jet stream's waking up for the end of the week, and what that could signal later in the week is a potentially stormier period, with much more in the way of rain, a bit of hill of rain, a bit of hill snow, and potentially snow, and potentially

some disruptive winds. some disruptive winds. take care. take care.

to resume fighting if further negotiations collapse. hello, i'm christian fraser. welcome to the programme. donald trump is due to arrive in washington shortly ahead of his inauguration on monday. tonight, he ll attend a fundraiser, a dinner and firework display, at his golf resort in virginia, with further events scheduled here in the capitol tomorrow. the temperatures here are due to plummet in the next 24 hours, there is frantic work underway to move the inauguration indoors. with the set now being built in the capitol rotunda. meanwhile, thousands of anti—trump demonstrators have been marching through washington to protest

against the policies of this incoming administration. 0rganisers had expected 50,000 people.