Podcasts about uber elevate

Sachin Kansal is chief product officer at Uber, where he oversees the Rider, Driver, Delivery, Grocery, and New Verticals product lines used for 33 million daily trips worldwide. He's been in product for over 25 years (at Google, Palm, Flywheel, and now Uber). He is known for his “extreme dogfooding” ethos—personally completing almost a thousand Uber driving and delivery trips to sharpen his product insight and user empathy—and his “ship, ship, ship” mantra, which drives rapid iteration across Uber's global teams.What you will learn:1. Dogfooding at scale2. “Ship, ship, ship” as a cultural mantra3. Obsession with inputs over outputs4. Uber's hybrid marketplace vision for autonomy5. How Uber changed its culture to focus on profitability6. What to do when data says “no” but your gut says “yes”7. Career advice: maximize cycles8. AI as a research assistant, not an oracle9. Uber rider etiquette tips—Brought to you by:• Paragon—Ship every SaaS integration your customers want• Stripe—Financial infrastructure to grow your revenue• Coda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace—Where to find Sachin Kansal:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachinkansal/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Sachin's background(05:00) Dogfooding in practice(11:24) Empathy and understanding drivers(20:18) Balancing metrics and user experience(22:04) Operationalizing dogfooding(24:26) Challenges and solutions in dogfooding(29:49) The motto: “ship, ship, ship”(36:37) Product announcements and live demos(40:49) Career advice for product managers(43:51) The evolution of product management with AI(46:55) Collaboration between engineers and product managers(49:36) Uber's vision for self-driving cars(55:59) Uber's path to profitability(01:01:58) Balancing data and gut decisions(01:07:21) AI tools in product management(01:10:14) Failure corner(01:13:48) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• Uber: https://www.uber.com/• Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/en/• Fivetran: https://go.fivetran.com/• Uber for Business: https://www.uber.com/us/en/business• McDonald's: https://www.mcdonalds.com/• Domino's: https://www.dominos.com• PalmPilot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot• Praveen Neppalli Naga on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pneppalli/• May Mobility: https://maymobility.com/• Uber strikes deal with May Mobility to deploy ‘thousands' of robotaxis: https://www.theverge.com/news/659563/uber-may-mobility-autonomous-ridehail-partnership• Waymo: https://waymo.com/• WeRide: https://www.weride.ai/• Uber and Avride Announce Autonomous Delivery and Mobility Partnership: https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2024/Uber-and-Avride-Announce-Autonomous-Delivery-and-Mobility-Partnership/default.aspx• Dara Khosrowshahi on X: https://x.com/dkhos• Uber Elevate: https://www.uber.com/us/en/elevate/vision/• Uber AV: https://www.uber.com/us/en/autonomous/• Uber Reserve: https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/how-it-works/reserve/• Uber for teens: https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/teens/• Flywheel: https://www.flywheel.com/• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app• NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google/• Behind the product: NotebookLM | Raiza Martin (Senior Product Manager, AI @ Google Labs): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/googles-notebooklm-raiza-martin• BlackBerry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry• Peaky Blinders on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80002479• Deep research: https://openai.com/index/introducing-deep-research/—Recommended books:• Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies: https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-Massively-Companies/dp/1524761419• Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It: https://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Wants-Read-Your-Sh-ebook/dp/B01GZ1TJBI• Steve Jobs: https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648537• Elon Musk: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982181281• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Wyatt discusses the shortage of skilled labor, the role technology plays in tackling this issue, and its broader impact on the economy. Wyatt and Sid address ongoing challenges in the skilled trades industry, and what innovative solutions lie on the horizon.Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar. A podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance.On today's episode, we talk with Wyatt Smith, founder and CEO of UpSmith. UpSmith builds technology to address skilled worker shortages, starting with gamification software to help skilled trades companies and technicians win.Guest Bio:Prior to UpSmith, Wyatt led business development for Uber Elevate, Uber's aerial ridesharing business unit. At Uber, Wyatt led a team responsible for 25+ commercial partnerships across the air mobility value chain, generating more than $5B in private sector investment. Prior to Uber, Wyatt served as a consultant at McKinsey. He began his career as a corps member with Teach for America, receiving the 2013 Sue Lehmann Award as a national teacher of the year. Wyatt holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a BS in Human & Organizational Development and Political Science from Vanderbilt University, where he served as student body president and as a young alumni trustee on the Board of Trust. Wyatt grew up on a family-owned cattle ranch in rural Alabama. He and his family live in Dallas.Timestamps:00:48 - About UpSmith01:29 - Wyatt's journey04:36 - What is UpSmith solving for?10:21 - UpSmith's North Star16:14 - How did we get into a trade deficit?26:25 - Today's uses for AI35:10 - Future thinking39:41 - Where to find Wyatt40:16 - Sid's takeawaysSPONSOR:ServiceChannel brings you peace of mind through peak facilities performance.Rest easy knowing your locations are:Offering the best possible guest experienceLiving up to brand standardsOperating with minimal downtimeServiceChannel partners with more than 500 leading brands globally to provide visibility across operations, the flexibility to grow and adapt to consumer expectations, and accelerated performance from their asset fleet and service providers.Links:Connect with Wyatt on LinkedInConnect with Sid Shetty on LinkedinCheck out the ServiceChannel Website

Luke Fischer, CEO and co-founder of SkyFi. Jeff and Luke delve into Luke's 16-year military career, including his deployments in Iraq and his transition to the civilian sector. Luke explains SkyFi's mission to democratize access to satellite imagery and the role of AI in enhancing its capabilities. They also touch on the practical and ethical aspects of satellite monitoring and the potential shifts in the market.   Chapters:   00:00 Introduction 03:26 Life in the Military and Deployment Stories 05:16 Challenges and Risks in Combat 16:47 Transition to Special Operations 30:25 SkyFi: Earth Intelligence Platform 37:03 Space, Security, and Free Speech 41:02 Uber Elevate and Electric Aviation 45:22 Joining SkyFi 53:33 Balancing Family and Startup Life 01:02:41 SkyFi's Growth and Future Prospects 01:08:18 Privacy Concerns and Technological Advancements 01:11:25 The Role of AI in SkyFi's Future   Luke Fischer: https://skyfi.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukemfischer/   Jeff Gross: https://www.youtube.com/jeffgrosspoker https://www.youtube.com/jeffgrosspodcast http://twitch.com/jeffgrosspoker https://instagram.com/jeffgrosspoker https://twitter.com/jeffgrosspoker

In this episode Harry speaks with Nikhil Goel. Nikhil is the Chief Commercial Officer of Archer. Archer is designing and developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for use in urban air mobility networks. Archer's mission is to unlock the skies, freeing everyone to reimagine how they move and spend time. Nikhil is also the co-founder of Uber Elevate, which will bring aerial rideshare to a large scale. 0:00 Intros 4:40 What was the inflection point for aerial rideshare? 11:10 What is the main advantage for aerial travel? 19:45 How can the price be reduced? 23:00 How far away is mass adoption? 31:55 What are some of the challenges? 34:40 Will aerial rideshare benefit everyone? Links: Nikhil's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ngoel1/ Archer: www.archer.com Uber Elevate: https://www.uber.com/us/en/elevate/vision/

In this week's episode, Riccardo Cosentino and guest co-host, Corail Bourrelier Fabiani, sit down with fellow alumnus Brandon de León to discuss his Oxford Saïd Business School dissertation on electric aviation.Brandon emphasizes the importance of public perception in adopting new technologies and explores the potential of electric aviation to transform urban mobility. The discussion covers technical advancements, regulatory challenges, and the necessary societal embrace for successful integration of electric aircraft into daily transportation. Brandon's insights highlight the intersection of technology, society, and the future of urban air mobility.“But what really validated my research was that social acceptance came up as an interesting issue already, before the first vehicle flies. And like I mentioned before, the next plans are also around big events, the World Expo in Osaka. Next year in 2025, this was to be flights. And in 2028 in Los Angeles for the Olympics there. Other companies from the US are also planning to fly. So yeah, social acceptance is already showing itself as a key risk.” – Brandon de León  Key Takeaways:Defining the pre-commercialization of electric aviationThe critical role of societal acceptance in the adoption of electric aviationThe potential impact of electric aviation on urban infrastructureInsights into the interplay of technological advancements and regulatory frameworksDistributed and decentralized mega projects If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. The conversation doesn't stop here—connect and converse with our LinkedIn community: Follow Brandon de León on LinkedInFollow Corail Bourrelier Fabiani on LinkedInFollow Riccardo Cosentino on LinkedInFollow Navigating Major Programmes on LinkedInRead Riccardo's latest at wwww.riccardocosentino.com Transcript:Riccardo Cosentino  0:05  You're listening to Navigating Major Programmes, a podcast that aims to elevate the conversations happening in the infrastructure industry and inspire you to have a more efficient approach within it. I'm your host, Riccardo Cosentino. I bring over 20 years of Major Programme Management experience. Most recently, I graduated from Oxford University Saïd Business School, which shook my belief when it comes to navigating major programmes. Now it's time to shake yours. Join me in each episode as I press the industry experts about the complexity of Major Programme Management, emerging digital trends and the critical leadership required to approach these multibillion-dollar projects. Let's see where the conversation takes us.  Riccardo Cosentino  0:54  Hello, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of Navigating Major Programmes. I'm here today with my co-host, Corail, and we have a special guest, a good old friend of ours joining us today on the podcast. I will pass the mic to Corail who's gonna co-host the podcast today and help me asking questions to this really great guest that has agreed to join us today. How are you doing, Corail? Corail  1:19  Hi, Riccardo, I'm doing really good. Thank you for having me co-hosting this great episode. And I'm excited to talk to Brandon. So maybe a little bit of background, we met doing a major programme management master in Oxford. And during that two years of our lives we met Brandon who was a superstar in our cohort because at the time, he was working for Tesla. And he was talking to us about this really exciting industry and how he's been part of the founders of Tesla. And he's been part of the team that made it a great company that we know today or the big adventure. And then he moved on to work for Rizwan and developing this into a great new enterprise that goes beyond Tesla by working on all different types of trucks and other things that I don't know enough about. But so I'm really excited to hear the story of Brandon. And I think Brandon, it would be great to start with you maybe introducing yourself telling us a little bit about how you ended up in the electric car industry and what drove you to that really expanding field. And yeah, to know a bit more about your background.   Brandon de León  2:37  Wow, what an introduction. Thank you guys so much for having me here on the podcast with you. It's been incredible to see what you guys have produced after the Master's course and hard to follow what you shared Corail. But I think, generally speaking, it's been an amazing learning experience. The Oxford Masters in Major Program Management, learned a lot from you guys, as well as the content. So happy to be here and share a little bit of what I've been working on and some of my background. It's been about 12 years since I've been in the electric car space, but maybe just a step back and give a little personal context about how I even ended up in that. I, my voice betrays me, I'm from the States originally, even though I'm coming to you from Holland today, I'm living in Rotterdam and working in Amsterdam. I grew up on the east coast of the U.S. mainly in Georgia in Florida. And then that's where I connected with Tesla. And what brought me down to Florida originally was my pursuit of International Business Studies. I wanted to study that because I had grown up hearing about how my parents met in Germany, in the army, and so early on, I was ingrained with these ideas of a world beyond the bubble that I lived in. So even though I grew up in small town, Georgia, I knew that I wanted to go and at least traveled to these places maybe even work in these places, if that were possible. And so in high school, when I discovered international business classes, I couldn't get enough. I also learned in those classes that there's a lot of ways society progresses, and probably the fastest mechanism to make that happen is commerce. So you know, regulation and government takes a long time. Nonprofits are phenomenal. But also some of them have limited impact. So it wasn't really clear what the best path was. But having parents that had done service for the country, as it were, and then pursued their careers and more local service type of roles and social worker and studying pre-med and things like that, I knew that I wanted to find a way to make the world a better place in my own little way. Right? So international business was my chosen vessel that brought me to Miami to study undergrad. And then in university there I had a chance to actually work in a company that I had admired for what I would consider a great engineering design and that was BMW their local retailer in the south Florida area. I persuaded them to let me take an entry level job that they didn't have at the time. But I was really eager to get out of the department store I was working at, and to go work in the company that I admired so much down the street and regularly saw the employees from that office. And so thanks to some persuasion and friendliness on their side, I was able to take a very administrative basic role. And I spent two years with BMW, but I realized that 18, 19, 20, there wasn't a lot of career options for someone that young, in the automotive retail space, at least not the traditional automotive, even with really innovative products like BMW. So I went on the search for career path, and I ended up in a bank and I thought, wow, this is terrific, financial district, maybe I peaked early, there's a career advancement ladder, it's all planned out, pension, etc, all the trappings of a great career, but then my interest in engineering and technology kind of clashed at a certain point, because new payment technologies came out into the market. And some people will be familiar with these dongles that you'd plug into an iPhone, which is relatively new back then. And you could swipe credit cards, and it was a revolution for small merchants and mom and pop shops, and I thought, this is wonderful, it's gonna be great for getting them better cash flow, they'll grow faster, it'll really helped a lot of small businesses out. But banking is a very conservative culture and does not run to embrace new technology. So at the time, we were working on a laptop that had an operating system that was three generations old, because the security patches were all well-developed and stuff, there was a clash there. And I figured, okay, I need to find a career path that's also aligned with my interest in technology or automotive or something along those lines. And after a lot of soul searching, and job board searching, I came across Tesla, and they were starting a store locally in South Florida. And through a lot of discussions for different roles. I ended up joining the launch team for the Model S, which was the car that really established the brand as a large volume producer of vehicles. And of course, its focus was electric cars. So that was 2012. I joined right after the vehicle launched. And it's been a wild ride since then. But at that time, because of my international orientation, I thought the wildest dream I have right now is that Tesla will do great. And then we'll get the chance to go and launch in other countries. And maybe I can be part of that. Happily, I had that chance. So although I started in California, and then after we launched the vehicle there, and I gained a lot of experience integrating, delivering the vehicles, the first vehicles and integrating it directly into the lives of people and families across California, I had the chance to bring that back to the East Coast. And then there was an opportunity to join a different department back at headquarters in California. And I jumped at that, because I knew if international opportunities emerge, there'll be people from there, they're good to go. And so that was a strategic step, it was not clear that it would work out. But happily, I was in the right place at the right time, there was an assignment to go help the team in Canada kind of get find their feet, if you will. And then after doing that a couple of times going out to Toronto, and doing what I would call international, but doesn't necessarily appear to be very international experiences going from California to Canada, I also had the chance to join a very small team of four or five that came out to Europe for a few months to do the same, essentially to help train the first model as launch teams here. And that was quite a privilege. When I came home to San Francisco, I thought oh, wow, this is it. Everything I could dream has happened. This is fantastic. What do I do now? And I didn't have to wait long for an answer because being at the headquarters in the beehive of activity, there was an opportunity that was presented to me to come over and help build critical partnership networks because we were starting to deliver vehicles but didn't really have solutions in place for if people were driving from the Netherlands or Norway down to Spain for holiday, what happens if they run out of charge or if the car breaks, and we had a very small footprint in Europe, within three weeks, I was on a one-way flight back to Europe. And I haven't looked back since. So that's a little bit about me in a very long-winded way and how I've gotten here to you. Corail  8:58  No, that was fantastic. Brandon, thank you so much for sharing your passion. It's really fascinating how you're constantly growing, reinventing yourself, but yet you seem to have such a drive. And that brings me to something a little picture that you shared of yourself recently that was you, yourself. I don't know how old you were maybe five or six. And you were in this beautiful little plane. And I think we talked about how you progressed from different career paths, but always with a certain drive and in that journey now I feel like you also have great interest into the future of electric aviation. And you decided to write your dissertation on this specific topic, and the social acceptance of electric aviation. Can you tell us a little bit more about this interest of yours and how you came to write about this in your dissertation in Oxford? Brandon de León  10:00  Yeah, sure. Thanks for reminding me of that picture. It's my haircut was terrible. But yeah, I was very young. And that was, it was a fun picture of me as a very small child in this mock-up of what must have been like a pretend F-16 for children at an Air Force stand at some air show in the U.S. So that was quite a throwback. Thanks for that. The, that picture I think really reflects my interest from the earliest of memories. And I call it transport now because it seems more appropriate. But it's really cars, planes, things that move fast. They're exciting, or have always been exciting to me. And I know that's sometimes cliche and certainly not exclusive to me. But that's where my fascinations were as a kid and that really hasn't died. But my career being mainly in automotive and electric automotive for more recent decade or so, maybe it's worth sharing, it's quick middle steps. So after about 10 years at Tesla, scaling the core product and ecosystems around it in North America and Europe, I thought, okay, what do I, the recipe is pretty much set at Tesla. So we have gigafactories opening, launched four or five different vehicle programs, how can I best use all this wonderful experience? And in 2021, I joined a company called Rivian, which essentially, is, for those who don't know, it a lot like Tesla in that it's a new company that makes cars. But their plan was to electrify totally new vehicle types, still ground vehicles, right? So trucks, which are hugely popular in North America, also SUVs, which are growing in popularity globally. Perhaps, if you look at the Tesla Model Y, the best selling car globally, right now in 2023, I think it was. And then for me sitting in Europe, perhaps most importantly, commercial vans, so they have or we have a huge order with Amazon for 100,000 delivery vans. And that was super exciting to me, because being in Europe, I know that trucks are not a big deal here. SUVs are typically on the smaller side or middle size, definitely not the large American scale. But I knew that if they produced the vans, then we would have a tremendous success on our hands. And that's gone really well. We've delivered over 16,000 vans now it's super exciting to see that happening. So essentially, why join Rivian was to extend electrification. So when looking for a dissertation topic, during our master's degree, I really wanted to take that opportunity to explore the other side of my fascination. One, because there wouldn't be any conflict of interest. So it was a lot cleaner to not do electric vehicles. And then the other side is there was a really interesting ecosystem emerging that was ripe for research. And that's electric aviation. It obviously aligns with my fascinations, but also super timely.   Brandon de León  12:32  So when I started looking into how can I use a dissertation to add some value, however minuscule to what's going on in this ecosystem that fascinated me so much, I started to reach out to people and one of the people I reached out to was someone I would consider a founding father, a modern time founding father in electric aviation. And he had spent three or four decades at NASA researching electric propulsion. And it really caught on towards the 2010s. And we'll get into that later. But essentially, I was asking people like him who are highly technical, unlike me, who's a non engineer, how can a non-engineer contribute to the conversation into the development of this space, and in our discussions that came out that acceptance is really interesting, because it is a known concern. But it's kind of a fuzzy topic, a fluffy topic, it's ambiguous, people aren't really quite sure what to make of it, how to define it, how to grapple with it. And there's not a unified message around it. That's, that seems ripe for Social Sciences dissertation. And that's what led me into it because there weren't any other spaces that weren't mostly other parts, or aspects of the ecosystem today, are highly technical, or regulation-oriented. And this was a space where someone coming from social sciences point of view could really add value. So that's what led me into it, happy to document it more. But that's the background and how I got there. Corail  13:51  I think it's so interesting that you're bringing, as you say, a non-engineer background into a field that is highly engineering-heavy. And we see in Oxford, we talk a lot about the work of Kahneman, for example, and how it mixes psychology and economy and what amazing ideas that created and I feel you coming from a different background is also generating discussion that we don't think the regular engineer doesn't necessarily think about. And I think it's quite beautiful. You talked about the social interest of your parents early on that kind of inspired you. And it's interesting that you went into social acceptance and which encompasses I think many things but also the how people receive what we're producing. Right? And I wanted to ask you a bit more about this because when I think about social acceptance of electric vehicles or electric planes, as of, I don't know, kind of French bias, (inaudible) we talk about how planes are terrible for the environment and we are always thinking about shaming each other in France for how much we travel? I know my aunt for example, is constantly telling me you shouldn't take the plane so often, etc. And so for me, I only see positive outcome, right, for electrifying planes. So why did you, how did you identify social acceptance as a risk? How is it perceived in the industry? Brandon de León  15:19  Yes, it's a great question. And actually, thanks for the chance to add more background because it's not, it wasn't something I was able to include in the dissertation itself, I had to really shrink down that context and generally referred to the study as a study into the acceptance of electric aviation without giving a lot of detail and color. So essentially, in order to understand that better, it's helpful to describe the 2010s and the emergence of the ideas around electric aviation and how it was going to look and feel what the vision was, and who was articulating it. So although there have been decades of research at NASA, in particular from the guy, Mark Moore, is the gentleman I talked to and brainstormed with around ideas, potentially, that could be useful to the ecosystem. So there was quite a lot of work done on the physics and the engineering aspect. But what was interesting is that it didn't come from a lot of technology seemed to come from the defense side, right, where you have the internet, GPS, other things that are developed for military or defense purposes, and then they become commercialized. This is a rare instance where, even though NASA had done prior work, and really help manifest the technology, or the idea around how to use it, it was actually technology, commercial minds, technology and commercial minds that were leading the development of this vision, a particular vision of electric aviation, and they called it urban air mobility, mostly. There were many different names and the names of all the increase since then, in the early 2010s, essentially, you had Google printing tons of money and so just to pick, cherry-pick a specific example, this is not the origin story for the whole ecosystem, but it's a major part of the background. So Google is just minting money, right? And Larry Page starts to make bets. And they're called Alphabet. Now, there's a play on words there. But essentially, Silicon Valley companies that make it that big start to then have to find new avenues to create growth. And these are the bets that they're making. And one of them was autonomous vehicles, right? And today, that's Waymo. And another one that was backed by Larry Page in particular was a company called Kitty Hawk. And it had different names, as in its predecessor phases, but essentially, they were making a two/four passenger air vehicle, and it was all electric. And it looked like nothing you've ever seen before. If I had to describe the inspiration, I think that in many cases, these air vehicles developed by the organization he was backing, or Google was backing. I guess it's more him than Google to be honest, on the on the electric aviation side. And other pioneers of electric aviation in the same timeframe, they kind of looked like scaled up drones, toys, essentially, they're called multicopters in that format. But essentially, the vision was that these were going to be flying taxis. And they were going to be in cities. Now I'm not old enough to remember this in person. But I've read stories about how Delta and United used to have these phenomenal helicopter services where you could catch a helicopter from the top of the Pan Am building in downtown Manhattan, or Midtown and then fly over to JFK, or whatever airport. And that was the heyday of aviation, right when it was really a VIP experience. And this wasn't just New York City, this was San Francisco, tons of other cities have this helicopter service. And it's not really the case anymore outside of a couple non-airline, independent helicopter services in, let's say, New York City for example. And enter Uber, another emerging tech company, who was really ambitious and wanting to really reinvent mobility, not just on the ground, but they also saw an opportunity to play a role in this airspace as well, if you will. And so they took what they knew about ride-hailing and the app and the data that they had seen, all the trips people were taking around urban areas like L.A. and New York and probably better than anyone they fully understood and had the data and the data orientation that a Silicon Valley company would do to understand how there's a huge amount of traffic between this origin and destination. And so airport, if we look back at this helicopter services presents an interesting option. And so they started to, they started a sub-organization or department called Uber Elevate, and they issued a white paper, I think it was 2016, maybe 2017. But the white paper basically articulated a really grand vision for all these air vehicles doing thousands of movements in urban areas a year. So it's a whole new kind of flying, not the wing and tube that we're used to going between over long distances or medium range distances.   Brandon de León  19:49  This was a whole different layer of air transport that hadn't been seen before, because presumably, existing small airplanes were, with the capacity of a ground taxi, four, five, six seats or whatever, were too noisy, not comfortable and outdated designs and they couldn't vertically take off. And that's a big difference too is that these new vehicles were supposed to take off and land like a helicopter. So that then unlocked a lot of opportunities to land in urban areas without a massive airfield and runway. And so that was the lower end division in that Uber Elevate white paper. These days, that evolution of that vision has evolved quite a lot and become a lot more mild. To give you one example, there were images circulating around the time of that white paper, where you would imagine a high-rise tower and different levels that would have open bays that the small car-sized air vehicle could fly into horizontally and land or land at a top and then the elevator would move it around. But essentially, it was beehive for these. And that's where social acceptance really became a question. Because if you have that many vehicles flying around in the airspace that's not really used today and they're potentially making a lot of noise because helicopters are super noisy. And that's the best benchmark that we have, even if they're electric and quieter, they're not going to be in silent, then how are people going to react to the noise? How are people going to react to the visual pollution or obstruction to whatever view they have, if you enjoy the city view of Manhattan, it's now going to have a lot of air vehicles in it. If you enjoy the Coastal View, perhaps you'll see a lot of vehicles above the beach, that sort of thing. Social acceptance was early on identified as a risk, something that needed to be dealt with. But how to deal with that wasn't really clear. Riccardo Cosentino  21:29  Brandon, I have a quick follow-up on that. Because it's very interesting how this was a dissertation. So was the final project for the master's degree or for a master in major program management. Can you articulate how you end up picking an industry as a major programme? I'm assuming, I'm paraphrasing a little bit because your study is not about one particular project, one particular company, it's really just societal, and how society is going to who's going to embrace this new technology or not. And so when you were discussing with your supervisor about this topic, how was it received from the academic side because we're all educated, and we're all told my major project is a project about 1 billion dollar/pounds, whatever. But I'm not a believer in that metric. To me, it's, major programmes are about complexity and I think your dissertation fits perfectly that definition, but you must have had some back and forth with your supervisor, or even with some other academics. Brandon de León  22:38  Yeah, it's a great question. And I really thought this was a risk to my dissertation to be fair open to the point of marking, I didn't know if it was going to be received well, that how to articulate this as a mega project or giga project, as I called it. But basically, I think that if we look at the way we presented this content in the course, just to give the listeners an idea, that for most of history, or let's say the last century, there has been increasing focus on these growing, the projects of growing scale and complexity, and cost getting into the billions getting into this, they totally changed traffic patterns in the city or they, if there are huge new bridge or something like that and it's just visually imposing huge civil infrastructure or digital systems that cost a ton or aerospace programs like an A380 Airbus, which is just a mega behemoth of an airplane, right? And if the complexity is clear, super tangible. But I think that's the school of thought that are when we had the great fortune of I think straddling two eras of the faculty at Oxford. And the first chair that we encountered was Bent Flyvbjerg. And he literally wrote the book on this stuff. And so far as the Oxford Handbook for Major or Mega Project Management, and in that, through that lens, or what he helped us understand, it was this more centralized type of project. And then later, we actually had another generation of leadership for the faculty come in with the new chair, Daniel Armanios, and he was very interesting in that he introduced the concept of it not necessarily having to be a centralized, that's a singular entity, the mega project could be distributed, decentralized, even. Right? And so after reading both of their research, I'd actually found that Flyvbjerg and contemporary said, coined the phrase of an array of projects. And I thought that fits this. This is actually exactly what I need to articulate how this is a large, complex project, although it's effectively being built in a decentralized manner and actually, quite extremely decentralized manner. There are over 800 different organizations that have released a concept for an electric aviation or electric air vehicle of some kind or another. There's this nonprofit that tracks the industry and most of the funding is with a handful and most ofthe technical progress is at a handful, but the reality is that there is a massive number of companies that intend to enter this space. And essentially, by building these vehicles, they're having to also engage regulators and build the regulatory envelope for this to actually happen. And then also go out and entertain cities and get them on side. They even let it fly. So ultimately, what they're all building towards is a central vision, even though it's moderated a bit since the over white paper in the beehive towers in the city, what they're actually when you step back and look at it all, what's actually being constructed, is something quite central. And that is a layer of air transportation, a new air transportation system that doesn't exist today. Because electrics, there's no charging out there. It's also and this is the part I didn't really get to yet is that a lot of the companies want to get towards autonomy. Some people might know already, there's a pilot shortage historically, pilots are now being paid very well, after having years and years of declining. That's not the case anymore. There's a vast shortage of pilots today. But also, if you're looking at technically looking at these vehicles through a technical lens, from a physics point of view, the energy density in lithium ion batteries or automotive grade, especially. But even research batteries, they're still limited compared to typical combustion fuels, hydrocarbon fuels, in so much in how much energy they can carry per kilogram. And if you're in aerospace where every gram matters, it's critical that you lighten the vehicle, because it's a trade-off for payload and revenue. And so although electric vehicles have started to scale up the production of lithium-ion batteries and automotive grade electric batteries have really gotten cheaper and better energy density so they're improving every day, in labs across the world they're still just crossing the threshold where they're useful in the air and just unlocking short-range missions. So this is a new, this is a new transport layer that is just becoming feasible in the late 2010s  and still in development. So that's where I basically come back to your point, which is it's not a central program, it's definitely super distributed and decentralized, but they're all building in essentially a common vision of electric air transport that doesn't exist today. Riccardo Cosentino  27:21  Okay, one more question that on that note, and then I'll pass it back to Corail. As an industry, I mean, where would you position it in the developmental phases of an industry? And maybe, if you could make a comparison, we always go back to the internet, right? So every time there's a new revolutionary technology, we always say, yeah, think of the internet in 1995 or finger the internet in the 2000. On that basis, so with that in mind, where would you place this industry in the developmental arch? Brandon de León  27:59  Yeah, maybe if I could go a few years before the internet just for a comparison that rings harder in my mind is mobile phones. I think we're at the place, there's a famous study from McKinsey that I'll get the number wrong slightly. But I think that they hint here McKinsey did a study for AT&T, I think it was where they predicted in the early 90s roundabout then that the maximum total addressable market for mobile phones is 900,000 Americans. I think we're at that stage with electric aviation. And I don't mean that in the, to poke fun at our friends at McKinsey, I know we all have some, anyway, consulting generally. But I think that it is impossible to anticipate the actual scale that this will be deployed at over time. And I say that because if you look at this technology, the business model for many companies is not clear yet. So I think that's, once the technology is ready, we're at the point where the technology is only just becoming certified. And even with helping hands from governments that are eager to be technology leaders in Q4, right about Q4 last year, the first electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle certified anywhere in the world was certified in China. And just this month, the first one was transacted to a Japanese customer from another company in China for demonstration flights at the upcoming expo, World Expo in Osaka. Nothing's actually, there's no revenue yet. Unless you talk about small revenue regimes from Defense Departments and things like that to help with the testing and helping R&D funds. So we're really pre-commercialization. And that's precisely why I wanted to jump in for the dissertation into this space. And I thought it was really rich picking for that study-wise because what we hear in the program and all the things we've learned about mega project management and so on, is that when did they go wrong, if not in execution mostly in the planning phases in the earliest phases. So this was a huge opportunity to talk to people across the G7 really across OEMs, regulators, infrastructure companies and so on. Even NGOs. And to get a sense for okay, where's everyone's head at individually and collectively. What's the sense for how they're all thinking about this particular aspect? Social acceptance of a new technology? Yeah. And so that's, I think lends itself to the study, but super early is the answer to the question in a couple of words. Riccardo Cosentino  30:19  Thank you.   Corail  30:20  Brandon, that's really interesting. And to go back to your dissertation, I think you were planning to interview 10 leaders and you ended up with 29 interviews. I think it shows the real interest that it sparked amongst the leader in that industry. And do you feel like they got interested because this is a topic that they didn't necessarily so much sought about? And they wanted to discuss more with you? Or was it very much a risk that was very present in their minds? And you just found that they had already thought about a lot of solutions to raising social acceptance? Brandon de León  30:59  Yeah, it's a fair question. You're absolutely right. My ambition was 10. I accidentally overshot that by three times. I paid for that on the back end, when it came to actually giving the proper level of attention to the data analysis and cleaning the data from the interviews. Yeah, that was, it was quite a heavy fall. But it was really a pleasure to, because once I started to talk to people in the space, Dr. Mark Moore and I had engaged over LinkedIn, of course, and email and then had a call. But I think that really, I realized early on, and one of the things that I picked up on from one of the faculty members, Dr. Harvey Mahler, was that observation can actually be a part of your research. And I thought, let me, let me go to at least one event where these people gather and just see what's the level of discourse? Is this really a risk? Or is it just something that I see in their social media content or things like that, and I was really lucky, because there were three major industry events, if I can call them that, that were happening right around the time I was doing my dissertation and or the early stages of it. And so I went to London to eVTOL Insights London Conference and it was very much inside baseball, you had the top leaders from the companies that were trying to develop and certify these air vehicles. But you also had the leading regulators, globally for aerospace were there, it was really interesting to just, fascinating to hear the conversation between them. But what I picked up on was that acceptance came up, it was, in some cases a footnote. In other cases, it was a panel topic. But it was never, there was only such a limited depth that could be accomplished in that format. And having chatted with Dr. Mark Moore, having seen that in person in London, but also at Revolution Aero, which is another major event in Dublin, I realized that there, there's not a lot of exploration of this topic, if this is essentially the limit of it. And there are other podcasts in the industry too, that I've listened to where it maybe it gets explored a little bit more, but usually, it's pretty, pretty limited how much people can talk about this, because the overwhelming focus right now is to use every dollar of investment. And right now there's over $15 billion, I think it's over 18 at last count, invested in this space, mainly in the vehicle developers, that will in the future produce these electric air vehicles, essentially, the ones that are just planning to actually produce the vehicles, a lot of them aren't necessarily interested in acceptance, that's something they consider a responsibility of the operator to go out and develop acceptance wherever they plan to operate the vehicles. The operator meaning like airline, essentially. And then the other case, some vehicle developers or pureplay operators, they see the acceptance risk a lot more clearly. And in some cases, they've experienced it before with their traditional air vehicles.   Brandon de León  33:42  So I think, for me, it became clearer and clearer that this was both interesting for me, and potentially helpful for them to have a longer form conversation, the average interview was something like 45 minutes to an hour, someone as long as two hours a couple of them, when as long as two hours, I made the coding quite a long process. But it was super insightful for me. And I felt really privileged. As I was reaching out to people, the reception I was getting was quite strong. I thought 10 was going to be the high end and also a significant enough sample that would make the research worthwhile and meaningful. But then actually, I started to realize that if there's greater interest, I'm happy to expand that to a larger number, especially if it allows me to get perspectives from multiple people representing the different sides of the ecosystem. So like I mentioned, regulators, not just in Europe, but also in North America. And also OEMs, not just in Europe, but from North America as well. So a lot of the funding sits in North America right now. And depending on who you ask the technological leaders, some of them are in Germany, some of them are also in California and Silicon Valley, and so on. So I didn't want to represent just one small pocket of the ecosystem because again, it's a larger array globally. If I could do a better job of capturing those points of view from a European point of view as well as an American point of view, I wanted to do that. And so that ended up getting me to nearly 30 interviews pretty quickly. That's how it grew so fast. Corail  33:44  I think it's fantastic. And there must have been so much work to just code this amount of interview, I just cannot imagine in the limited amount of time we have to do this dissertation. It's a lot. So congratulations. Brandon de León  35:26  Thank you. Corail  35:27  So can you share with us then how so I wanted to ask you, Brandon, how did this leader define the risk? And what were the solution that they were putting forward?   Brandon de León  35:39  It's a great question. I think maybe the step back as a precursor, or the best example of what they were trying to do before was helicopter services from decades ago. And if you live in New York City, or Sao Paulo, or Hong Kong, helicopter services are not an infrequent site. So there are places in the world where it's still quite common. It's just that in the U.S. we, being American, that's sort of my bias, those services had dwindled. After there was a famous incident in New York City at the top of the Pan Am building, I think it was bad weather that affected the helicopter landing. Long story short, one helicopter did a particularly bad job landing, and crashed onto the rooftop. And when it did, a propeller went this way. Another one fell to the ground, I believe it was or some debris fell to the ground and killed the young lady. The other one might have injured someone when it flew into a nearby building. This was, I didn't read the entire history of this industry, the helicopter service industry. But what I can tell you is that if you look at the old timetables and the brochures, being a historical geek and an aviation geek have done more than my fair share that there are very clearly helicopter services advertised in most, in a lot of major metropolitan areas from these mainstream airline names we all know and love today, or despise today, depending on what you think of it. But anyways, the reality is that those services dwindling, I think, in part happened, because there were restrictions put in place, when you had an incident like that it captured the attention of the public around, probably not just that city, probably not just the U.S., perhaps major cities around the world, especially as news could spread wherever the American newspapers are read. So I think that that put a little bit of ice on helicopter services. And so today, if you look at Blade, which is an operator that works does fly from Manhattan over to JFK, for example, to do the airport shuttle type use case, I believe they take off on the perimeter of Manhattan, they're not, they're just off on those waterfront, they're not on top of some building in the middle of the city. So things have definitely changed. And so when it came to acceptance and how they view it, one was, there was this precedent for things going wrong. And if things go wrong, it can really pause an industry. So making sure perceptions are warmed up to the idea of this happening again, because what they're talking about doing is literally lending in many different places across downtown Manhattan, for example of the island of Manhattan, actually being able to pop down on different buildings, but also perhaps green spaces or whatever, wherever they can place what they call a vertiport, which looks a lot to normal person, like a heliport, small helipad with a V instead of an H. There are other things there. The industry insiders will tell you, there's a lot more to it. And there is charging equipment and storage and things like that. But all that to say what the vision was in 2016-17, when Uber was hosting these huge industry segments with 72 experts one year and hundreds the next year to try and really build steam around this vision of urban air mobility. They knew they had an uphill battle. And then on top of that helicopters are famously extremely noisy. That's part of why they have limited routes that they can fly. The other part, of course, is safety and things like that there. If you look at London, I think there's one main helicopter route through the whole of London that goes, basically follows the river, for the most part. And then I think the only operational heliport inside core London, that's not a hospital for an air ambulance is essentially on the reverse side, too. So helicopters are really limited in where they could go, partly because of the noise, but other you know, fears, safety and things like that. And so that's essentially, what captivated the interests of the industry participants most was how do we reduce noise through technical innovation, better propeller design, electric motors are inherently quiet, they're not jet engines. Even if you hear things build as for marketing purposes, and electric jet, it's quite different. It's more of a fan. So I think that they saw an opportunity with electric propulsion to be much quieter, and also more safer, ironically, because you can put many more electric motors and propellers. So if one goes down, you're not worried about that you can still safely land the vehicle and then yes, I think basically centered around noise primarily because the industry insiders knew that, fundamentally, the vehicle was safer, more resilient, more robust, more redundant, if you will, with different electric motors and propellers, a higher number, some have six, some have eight, some have 12 propellers built into the vehicle design. So if one fails, it's really not a major issue for most of the format's of these electric air vehicles. But getting people to warm up to the idea of it was a real risk the way they see it. Riccardo Cosentino  40:29  So Brandon, obviously, this is a podcast about your dissertation. And you wouldn't, you wouldn't have a dissertation without a conclusion and some findings. What were your key findings? Brandon de León  40:40  It's a good, I think that so if I, my research question largely centered around how do these executives from all over the ecosystem, all sides of it, essentially define social acceptance? Who and what do they think drives it? And then also, effectively how they plan to approach it? Right? So how do they think that they can maximize social acceptance and minimize social rejection? And the primary finding I found in the case of the first question was, there is no single definition for acceptance. People describe it differently. You'll hear things like regulatory acceptance, social acceptance, of course, public acceptance, community acceptance, market acceptance. So it depends on the mentality of the person and what they're responsible for, and what they're interested in. So if you're looking holistically, you could argue that it's social acceptance, but some of them, a lot of them necessarily focus in on the stakeholders that are closest to the activities that are proposed. And first and foremost, these vehicles have to be certified in a very rigorous process, the organization's have to, as well. So regulators are front of mind. And then market acceptance, of course, they think there has to be some demand, whatever their chosen business model, whether it's airport shuttles or other things. So they look at it through those different lenses. But when you're at a conference, those are sometimes thrown around as synonyms. And people innately understand the acceptance, that means other people being okay with this, but who they're concerned with. And the degree of embrace is something that I found varies quite broadly. And I think what's interesting is, even with that said, it's kind of there's a structure, there's always a question of who are they talking about we're concerned with, and then what's the degree of embrace, and that was a common thread, and their different phraseology, if I can call it that. And then so far as who and what drives it, if you look at a template stakeholder map, this is a lot of the literature around stakeholder management is written by Dr. Friedman. And Dr. Friedman has multiple books on the topic, he's the most cited guy in the field. And I tried to stick to these bedrock, most cited folks in these different disciplines because I felt like you said, this is quite an ambiguous space I'm diving into, I need to anchor myself to really key literature here. And so there's a beautiful map of stakeholders, and he breaks them into primary and secondary. So we call primary stakeholders, essentially, everyone who's in the value chain, plus government and community. So the people, we're directly interfacing with whatever you're doing, plus the people helping you produce it, and finance essentially. So most of the industry is focused on primary stakeholders. And I think operators are a little bit more aware of the secondary stakeholders, but through the interviews, the 29 different executives, we touched on every one of them got covered at least once. So although there was an overwhelming focus on primary stakeholders, naturally, there was an awareness of an interest in getting all stakeholders on board. And so they defined it very differently. But when you ask them who they needed to actually get to accept, it was pretty comprehensive. So no surprise, these people were executives in this industry, or in adjacent industries that made them relevant for joining these jobs for decades, right? They have, I think, on average, almost two decades of experience, many have masters and doctorates. They've done this before, or at least led businesses before and are aware of the spectrum of stakeholders that they need to talk to. What I had hoped to get into, and maybe this is because I was just coming out of academia with that hat on was the nuts and bolts of human thinking and decision making around taking this vehicle or this airport shuttle or not. We didn't quite get into that. I think that what I quickly understood was that the level of discourse didn't go that deep yet. And so I was asking you about which bias do you think plays a role in the decision to take this air shuttle or not to the airport? And after a couple of interviews, I realized, okay, let me bring it back up a level and further define, really who's involved and who's being mentioned the most, who's most important or seen as most important? And that's about as far as I could go in that space. There was a fourth question, I omitted it earlier, but essentially it was to what degree is acceptance a risk and simple to say most of them surprisingly, there was a lot of actual alignment here, social acceptance was considered a risk but also a high risk, I think partly because of the helicopter service example, in Manhattan. And also just generally helicopter services being so restricted over decades that they, everyone in this space has seen, made it really clear that they need to do a lot of work on the side. But what was interesting to me is a few of them went further and said it was existential to the industry. And again, thinking back to that Manhattan rooftop, you can imagine why they might think that because if public opinion turns against the industry, there's no writers, there's no financing. And then it's not a great day for the participants in the industry. So that one was pretty clear. And then the other one was sort of how to maximize social acceptance. And that was really fascinating for me to hear. Because again, I was talking to people on all sides, there were some people who were in marketing, communications, leadership roles. There were other people that were in, essentially engineering leadership roles. What was fascinating is that, essentially, they all largely saw the demonstration flights as a major win that were happening. There were limited demonstration flights happening by a couple of companies that were making sure that they were being seen as leaders in this space, and then also taking advantage of being first mover at certain major events. So for example, last was it, I forget the month, I think it was June, I was able to go to the Paris Air Show. And there was a company from Germany called Volocopter, who was led by a former Airbus executive. And they were flying their two seater prototype called the VoloCity. And this is the one that's supposed to appear during the Olympic Games this year and do some flights over Paris as well. On this day, it was flying over the airfield Le Bourget in north of Paris, which is in aviation history, it's a fascinating place tons of history, museums there, Charles Lindbergh landed there when he did this transatlantic flight. Anyways, long story short, to see this electric multicopter. Aircraft take off and fly over the airfield was really cool for me, because of my research. But also, it was stunning, because even though I have worked for decade-plus in electric vehicles, and I know just how quiet electric transport can be, I was shocked that I couldn't hear it, it was inaudible, from a very short distance away. Doesn't make any sense in the mind. It doesn't compute, it should be audible. It's not once it's maybe a football field away, in my personal sense. And so I think that what, what they were getting on to is what I experienced at Tesla, which is the technology, if it's really good, is convincing on its own, all you have to do is show people allow them to drive an electric car allow them to go to an air show and see this thing flying. And understand that it's, it feels silent from most places. And I think they're definitely onto something with that. Others went further to say we need to do education campaigns, I think that generally the spirit is roughly the same. But when asked to diagnose the state of acceptance building, most of them agreed that not much has been done or not enough has been done there. Some companies have gone on like 60 minutes and other major news shows for a segment to talk about flying cars, or flying taxis and these sorts of things. Because it's interesting and cool that there's some new innovative air vehicle. But other than that, and social media content, which really only gets to their followers, few had gone out of those. And more is happening now happy to talk about that in a minute. But essentially, that those were the four areas that I asked about, and was able to get concrete answers and learn what their perspectives were. Corail  48:32  That's great. Brandon, I wanted to ask you, like you said that a lot of them flagged this risk as a critical risk. And yet one of your one of your notes in your dissertation is that yeah, there is very little that is done about it. And as you're saying it's starting to increase, and we have the Olympic Games coming in Paris, and potentially, I'd love you to talk more about this and what will happen during the games. But first, why do you think so little is done if it's seen as this important risk that needs to be managed early on?   Brandon de León  49:07  Yeah, it's a fair one. And also, it was the thing that perplex me coming out of the dissertation. Obviously, in the month since doing the dissertation. I've had more time to digest it and think about it. And to factor in more of their point of view, I think. But essentially, and also last week I was able to join one last conference in my roadshow, if you will, to see what had changed since I had done the conferences about a year ago. And I think the short answer, if I were to speak for them, what they would say is that acceptance is important, valuable, meaningful and critical when we get to commercialization. But right now, the reality is that most companies don't have enough money to make it to commercialization. They're staring down their coffers and they don't see enough financial runway and funding left to potentially even get through certification. Some of them have just enough to get there. But it's very clear that almost all them if not all of them are going to have to go back and raise more funds. So when the funds are that precious, they're looking at how do we maximize every dollar, or euro or pound, right? And in those cases, essentially the critical milestone they need to get to to show that they have a viable product and business insofar as at least producing these vehicles, if not, to operate themselves to sell to someone else to operate, is to get certification, or to show meaningful certification path progress, and it's no small task. So just to give you a taste, they have to prove that they can, they're certified design organization, that they have a production method that can make exact copies over and over again, and this has to be signed off by the regulator, this is not something they can self certify, like in much of the automotive space, which is also highly regulated, it's still a fraction of the regulation level of aviation. And then even once they get the design, organization approval, and the production organization approval, and I might be getting my words a little bit wrong here. So aviation experts don't scare me. But essentially, they also have to be able to get an approval that they have processes in place that are certified for maintenance, repair, and overhaul, just to name a few. There's other things that they actually have to get certified for. But essentially, getting those things, those ducks in a row is billions of dollars. And again, if the whole industry has, let's call it 18 billion and counting, and there's over 800 players, you can imagine most of them aren't going to make that. And even the ones that have raised money, they've burned billions in many cases already. There are major, let's say, some of the companies that have raised the most funds in Europe, for example, have about 12 months of runway, but they still have more than 12 months to get to certification potentially. So I think that they're resource-constrained and focused on the core next milestone but, to your point, I think it's also because it's a fuzzy topic. It's not really clear who's responsible for it and then who should be spending money on it, and if one company alone can do it. And there's other interesting things that I uncovered into the research in the financial filings of some of the companies that have gone public through IPOs, or specs in recent years. Some of them consider developing public acceptance as a potential risk to their first mover advantage, because it'll benefit the whole industry and their competitors too, in that subset, right or in that collective. So while they see it as a good thing to do, from a social point of view. And maybe even from a business point of view, they can appreciate that it would be helpful to reduce some friction in the future. I think they're betting that it's overcomable. And they're biasing towards maintaining a first mover advantage if they can do. Our research from literature and social sciences would argue that maybe that's not the best balance, happy to talk about that more. But essentially, they're taking a pretty big bet there that they're going to launch. And then be able to build awareness, convert people to believers, and interested customers, at least as fast as they can produce vehicles and put them into servers and build capacity. So I think that's where it's a bit of a risk is that if they don't start to build awareness, early, the lag, there's a time lag between building awareness and first awareness and actually being willing to use a service. Not everyone's an innovator, early adopter. And I think they're counting on the fact that they're going to have a slow ramp. So they're not going to be over capacity. They're going to have more than enough innovators and early adopters that are willing to take their services, or use these vehicles. And they rather maintain the first mover advantage, largely not everyone, but most people seem to be acting in that way. Corail  53:40  Okay, I guess I have one final question. I'm really intrigued about what you're thinking about the opportunity that the Olympic Games are representing in Paris for this industry? Are you excited to see something in the air at that time? Please, tell me what are your thoughts on the games coming? Brandon de León  54:01  Oh, yes, sorry. I missed that point entirely. Thanks for making sure I answered. So I think, yeah, it's a fantastic point. Because, for better or for worse, you can hate or love the Olympics, right? There's a lot of debate around that. But I think that the reality is major sporting events of other types, and just major events generally, whether it's a Swiftie concert, or whatever, that is a prime opportunity to build awareness and plant those seeds if you can get your product in front of that audience. It's massive for any business, right? This is why in the U.S., you see companies paying millions and millions and millions for 30 seconds during the Super Bowl, which is our American Football Championship, right? Every year. And it's the same thing is at play here. And so, the Paris Olympics are very interesting because Paris as of late, especially, has been a city that is very intent, with the city leadership on improving quality of life, introducing better transport, a lot more biking paths and making it just easier to use, to a more livable city, let's say it that way., I'm living here in the Netherlands bicycles are a way of life. And the people who are pushing the bicycle culture and infrastructure and urban planning from the Netherlands point of view at the universities and Amsterdam and other places, Paris is one of their favorite cases to point to. I think more people this week or this month, it was reported, more people were biking than driving in Paris for the first time in known history since I guess the advent of automotive. So I think it's really exciting time in Paris, but also Paris is also known for and France, too, for being unabashed in protecting their culture and also making sure that their perspectives are respected. And so you see a lot of this in sort of the way from the space I work in. Now with SUVs, one of the things I've noticed and seen is a policy around SUVs, where I think it's a proposal or it's gone into effect now, where SUVs will pay more for parking in the city. So what happens and where this comes into play with the Olympics is that for years, people have been in the industry targeting the Paris Olympics as a launch point some other some companies that were planning on doing flights at the Paris Olympics in this summer in 2024 realize they weren't going to make it in time technically, to be ready to fly. But this particular company called Volocopter, that I've mentioned before, out of Germany, they're very keen on demonstrating again, they were the ones that flew the Paris Air Show last time, and they've since done a massive amount of flights in the U.S. going around different cities and stuff on a roadshow. So they're very eager to build awareness, which results from this researcher's point of view, of course, and they see the Olympics as an iconic moment, because they're European company. They're very much proud of that. And also, if you look at the history of Airbus, Airbus was a European project, Pan European right parts come from all over Europe to build those planes. And this is maybe a second coming of Airbus in so many ways, in this new air transport world. And so it's super symbolic to be able to fly at Paris, in front of the crowds of Olympic spectators, not just at Paris airshow where you have a lot of aviation, aware or interested or geeky type folks, or people who work in the industry. It's a home field advantage when you're flying above that crowd. But when you put it in front of the Olympic audience, that's a whole nother level of magnitude and exposure and media coverage. And so that can do wonders for the company and change its fundraising prospects, it's runway and its ability to develop future products and launch into other markets and really, potentially accelerated and develop its first mover advantage, too. So it's huge. What's interesting is in September, the Paris city council acting on complaints from citizens about this plan of that air vehicle flying there now, I would say negotiations is not very clear what conversations are happening. But it was brought into question whether they're actually going to be allowed to fly over the city, whether or not they can get certified in time to do it. And that last check, I believe the CEO was reported as saying that they might not launch in July as originally hoped if the certification doesn't come on time. But they're hoping at least to be able to do it in August for the Paralympics. So there's a nonzero chance that they don't get to fly. That could happen. And that would be for them, I think they would class that as a really big disappointment, a missed opportunity, and so on. And also an opportunity for Europe and Paris, the show itself as a showcase for innovation in the space and air transport. So I think it's really interesting when you look at these big events, because they present such an opportunity. It's clear to the commercial side that they're chasing it. But what really validated my research was that social acceptance came up as an interesting issue already, before the first vehicle flies. And like I mentioned before, the next plans are also around big events, the World Expo in Osaka. Next year in 2025, this was to be flights. And in 2028 in Los Angeles for the Olympics there. Other companies from the US are also planning to fly. So yeah, social acceptance is already showing itself as a key risk. Corail  58:58  Yeah, that's crazy. It's kind of a live case study. For your (inaudible). The images you put in your executive summary of this electric planes flying were incredible. I have to admit, I didn't even know that it was already existing. and they were already flying planes, electric flying planes. So that was great. And I will be in Paris this summer, and I crossed all my fingers, that social acceptance is not blocking this line from playing because I want to be there and look at them.   Brandon de León  59:34  Same here.   Corail  59:35  Well, thank you so much, Brandon. I think I don't know Riccardo, if you have a closing question, or, but I think... Riccardo Cosentino  59:42  No, that's no, I think no, I'll leave it with you. Close.   Corail  59:46  Yeah. I think Brandon, that was fantastic. We learned so much. Although I read your entire dissertation. It was super interesting and fascinating. And I feel that you gave us even more explanations and stories in thepodcast. So thank you so much for being generous with all your knowledge. And yeah, I wish you the best in your career, really. Brandon de León  1:00:07  Thank you guys. Thanks for having me. Riccardo Cosentino  1:00:08  Thank you, Brandon. And thank you, Corail, for co-hosting the episode today. It's always an honor having you as my co-host, and there'll be hopefully more opportunities. And Brandon it's always a pleasure chatting with you. Brandon de León  1:00:21  Likewise. Take care, guys. Riccardo Co

Ian Villa, Co-Founder, COO and CPO of Whisper Aero is changing the way we fly.  As we think about the sky above us, as a more viable option to travel, we have to think about the impacts. Noise and efficiency are one of the things that can stop the democratization of the everyday human utilizing flight.  Ian and the Whisper Aero Team are on a mission to make propulsion quieter, faster and more efficient.  Ian has always been fascinated with flight and this double degreed Stanford aero guy is living the dream, getting to build the future of propulsion.  He pulls from his experience at companies like Northrop Grumman and Uber Elevate to help inform how to build a foundation for Whisper Aero that can go the distance.  Some of the boring things are the important things for a scrappy startup. Documentation, writing product requirements and creating systems early are traits that larger companies have and he is able to infuse that mentality early at Whisper Aero.  On the other end, Ian shares that what makes Whisper Aero able to compete with the larger companies is SPEED.  His Team's ability to react and adapt to the tech and customer needs gives them a key advantage that a larger ship (aka established company) will not be able to harness.  There are over 5,000 local/regional airports in America that are under-utilized and with the tech Ian and his Team are working on, we'll be able to cut travel time down significantly and enjoy the open skies while we do it... not to mention, this tech even makes everyday items better, like leaf blowers.  Tech is important, but the how and why you build something is even more.  Ian shares that he learned from his time at Uber Elevate that starting with Values, Mission and Vision are paramount.  If your People don't know where they're going and how important integrity is to mission success, you may not reach the destination.    Check out the Whisper Aero Team at www.whisper.aero Check out other ways Joseph and Team are serving other Leaders at www.cabreratoro.com Follow @cabreratoro_explore (Instagram) Follow www.youtube.com/@JosephCabreraExplore LinkedIn: CabreraToro    

If previous generations could've had one single piece of retrofuturistic technology, it'd probably be the flying car. Luke and Sarah try to make those dreams a reality as we find that, for the first time this series, this engineering endeavour actually came before science fiction dreams. We're joined by designers and engineers at the cutting edge of the industry: Aeromobil CEO Patrick Hessel, aviation expert Andrew Chadwick and Mark Moore, CEO of Whisper Aero and co-founder of Uber Elevate.Which inventions should we look into next? Let us know on Twitter @SarahCruddas @lukeaaronmoore @StakPod***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!*** See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Japanese-based start-up SkyDrive, Inc has a dream of building and selling flying cars - or virtual take off and landing vehicles to be exact.  Despite the presence in the space of a number of larger and better financed competitors ranging from Google founder Larry Page's Kittthawk to Boeing, Uber Elevate, Airbus and a host of others, the company believes that it can compete.  

A new age of flight is taking shape from brilliant engineers who are redefining how lower carbon emissions, minimal noise pollution and reduced maintenance costs can work together. Mark Moore's newest venture, Whisper Aero, is combating busier skyways with a new electric thruster design that reduces noise to a near-imperceptible level. . Moore, a former NASA engineer and Uber Elevate executive, discusses the need for sustainable eVTOL, eCTOL and eSTOL aircraft, how eliminating noise will aid public adoption, and why he decided to set up camp in Crossville, Tenn. . Subscribe to get updates on developments at Whisper Aero. . Like the episode? Drop us a review and follow SAE Tomorrow Today on your favorite podcasting platform. Help us become even better by sending ideas for future guests and topics to podcast@sae.org. . Follow SAE on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Follow host Grayson Brulte on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

$RTP Reinvent Technology Partners (JOBY - Uber Elevate) - SPAC Analysis --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/cryptopodcast/support

Today on the show we have Brian Uznanski. Brian is an Electrical Engineer at Joby Aviation, a secretive air-taxi startup based in Santa Cruz, CA. With nearly $1B in funding, endorsement from the US Air Force, and the recent acquisition of Uber Elevate, Joby plans to release its air taxis by 2023 and revolutionize the way we approach transportation. On this episode, you'll hear all about Joby's history and the eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) industry. Need your resume reviewed? Business idea analyzed? Startup pitch critiqued? Catch us at our Office Hours-- https://forms.gle/SPY6DWbHqqCc4XFEA

Llega una nueva sesión de METADATA, el podcast de tecnología de RPP y NIUSGEEK. En esta sesión conversamos sobre Ciber Seguridad con Julio Seminario, especialista de BitDefender, quien nos advierte sobre todos los riesgos posibles en 2019. Hablamos de ingeniería social, redes, ransomware y la enorme tasa de posibilidades que tienes para infectarte. Resumimos el UBER Elevate Summit, evento global de Uber en donde explicaron todo sobre las “ciudades tridimensionales” Además, explicamos qué diablos pasa en el mercado global de teléfonos con pantallas plegables que no termina de despegar. Esto y más en esta nueva sesión de METADATA

Llega una nueva sesión de METADATA, el podcast de tecnología de RPP y NIUSGEEK. En esta sesión conversamos sobre Ciber Seguridad con Julio Seminario, especialista de BitDefender, quien nos advierte sobre todos los riesgos posibles en 2019. Hablamos de ingeniería social, redes, ransomware y la enorme tasa de posibilidades que tienes para infectarte. Resumimos el UBER Elevate Summit, evento global de Uber en donde explicaron todo sobre las “ciudades tridimensionales” Además, explicamos qué diablos pasa en el mercado global de teléfonos con pantallas plegables que no termina de despegar. Esto y más en esta nueva sesión de METADATA

Today in episode 84 of Redirected, we sit down with our next guest on this 30 under 30 series, Nikhil Goel.  Today, Nikhil and I chat about the future of Uber. It was such an honor to talk with him about his plans and the impact he's made at Uber. He started at Uber on the emerging markets team, before cofounding the company's Elevate division. He worked with NASA and Uber executives to establish the vision for Uber Air — a global network of all-electric, urban air taxis. Suffice to say, Nikhil has a lot to say about career pivots and I'm excited to share this conversation with you. If you haven’t yet, please rate Redirected and subscribe to hear more. And if you have someone you'd like to see on the podcast, send us your recommendations in the comments below! Last but not least, be sure to check out the links below to learn more about Nikhil and all he's got going on at the moment. Check out Nikhil’s Forbes article! ▶ https://www.forbes.com/profile/nikhil-goel/?list=30under30-consumer-technology&sh=4dd49c074c82 Instagram! ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ngoel36/?hl=en Subscribe to the Redirected YT Channel! ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqUrE19kuOlhiFlMHZ3703w 

Imagine calling for an Uber and having an eVTOL show up to take you to your destination. Imagine traveling at supersonic speeds without the booming and disruptive noise. Imagine taking off in an airplane that has absolutely no pilot. On this last installment of our 2020 Recap Series, we’re not only imagining this innovation, we’re exploring how aerospace and mobility leaders are making it a reality. Our guests throughout the year have come from leading companies across industries including aircraft design, aerospace and autonomy. On this episode discover the advances in commercial travel and how Siemens Digital Industries Software is saving you time, explore how Uber Elevate is changing the game for rideshare, and how Aerion is solving the noise issue of supersonic travel. Tweet us! @saeintl on Twitter Follow SAE on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube Follow host Grayson Brulte on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram Subscribe to SAE Tomorrow Today or visit www.sae.org/podcasts to stay up-to-date on all the latest information from SAE. If you like what you’re hearing, please review and comment on your podcast app.

So many of us have been working from home since the beginning of the pandemic that it’s hard to imagine commuting to an office again. Besides saving us an average of $13,000 a year on transportation costs, research has shown that workers get more accomplished in a shorter period of time when we work from home. On the other hand, when employees are together in person, it fosters a greater sense of community and a stronger company culture than constant Zoom meetings ever could, which has an important impact on our mental health. How can we fix the commute so we can come together for at least a few days a week? Or make the virtual social experience more interactive and organic? Daniel Anstandig looks at the future of the commute on this episode of Innovation19, diving into the Virgin Hyperloop train, Uber Elevate, Tesla’s self-driving cars, and the Transatlantic Tunnel project. Plus, could virtual reality hold the key to awesome office networking again?  #elonmusk #spacex #commute #transportation #driverless #workfromhome 

So many of us have been working from home since the beginning of the pandemic that it’s hard to imagine commuting to an office again. Besides saving us an average of $13,000 a year on transportation costs, research has shown that workers get more accomplished in a shorter period of time when we work from home. On the other hand, when employees are together in person, it fosters a greater sense of community and a stronger company culture than constant Zoom meetings ever could, which has an important impact on our mental health. How can we fix the commute so we can come together for at least a few days a week? Or make the virtual social experience more interactive and organic? Daniel Anstandig looks at the future of the commute on this episode of Innovation19, diving into the Virgin Hyperloop train, Uber Elevate, Tesla’s self-driving cars, and the Transatlantic Tunnel project. Plus, could virtual reality hold the key to awesome office networking again?  #elonmusk #spacex #commute #transportation #driverless #workfromhome 

In this episode, we'll be discussing the sale of Uber Elevate, Oracle is moving its headquarters, FTC launching a privacy study, and much more! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/techvein/support

In this episode we discuss the life of test pilot Chuck Yeager, the trust issues that might surround the Boeing 737 Max and how the public will get past them, plus Uber Elevate's sale to Joby. Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! EP38 Transcript - Chuck Yeager, Uber Elevate Sold to Joby Aviation & Boeing 737 Max Trust Issues welcome back to the struck podcast I'm your co-host Dan Blewett and on today's show we've got a couple of major topics not as many uh scatter shot ones today but number one we're gonna chat about Chuck Yeager the uh the legendary pilot has passed away so i know Allen's got a a lot a lot to say about his legacy in our engineering segment we'll talk about the 737 max and specifically how consumers can get confidence back in this plane because i think it's really interesting most of us who are not aviation lifers aerospace you know engineers we don't really know what happens with the faa i mean we've heard on one hand this is a like the most technologically amazing plane like it's one of the best planes ever created but then it's crashed twice and it's been this villain of the story so we'll talk about how those two pieces get married and how people get back uh flying in the 737 max with confidence and lastly we'll talk about uber elevate who we did chat about last week and they were sold to gob aviation uh right after we had recorded that show so we're going to talk about uber and joby and that whole outlook so alan number one let's talk about chuck yeager so who was chuck yeager chuck yeager is probably the the most identifiable recognizable test pilot in the world he's a legend yeah yeah there's really two i think uh and on the soviet side it's trying to be yuri gagarin just because flying into space that's a big name is the test pilot and on the american side it tends to be chuck yeager there's a couple others in america that people could rattle off if you're in aviation but chicken was always the one and a lot of it had to do with the movie that was made based upon the book the right stuff uh that tom wolf wrote years and years ago back in the 80s and the thing about chuck egger and if if you're interested in aviation you should read chuck yeager's book the autobiography because it explains a lot about his his life uh he came from i believe it's west virginia if i remember correctly as a kid really young enlisted wanted to fly ended up in world war ii shooting down some enemy aircraft got shot down in france uh hid out in france him and another pilot i think he carried another injured pilot across the pyrenees mountains and if you've ever been to the pyrenees mountains you know because he had to get spain but if you've ever been to the pyrenees mountains or seen the pyrenees mountain it's like it's like the rockies in the united states those mountains are huge and it's cold up there and there's snow on them and they were evading uh german soldiers all the way to get to spain and once he got back into spain he kind of slipped back to the united states and then started flying again in combat and then after the war he ended up working in ohio at dayton ohio for a little while and then getting sent to edwards air force base or air base i guess at the time and uh becoming a test pilot obviously his most recognizable uh claim to fame was break the first person to break the sound barrier back in 1947 with the bell x1 which was essentially a rocket ship with wings and it was full of rocket motors and the and he did it while he had a couple of busted ribs and a banged up shoulder because he had he had fallen off a horse the night before uh wow yeah so he's sort of crazy he's not the biggest physical guy at the time a lot of touch pilots you couldn't it's like astronauts at the time they're not the tallest people you see in the world t...

UK to ditch tariffs on US goods in Airbus-Boeing dispute The UK is dropping EU tariffs against the US over aircraft subsidies, as it looks to seal a post-Brexit trade deal with Washington. Last month, the European Union imposed tariffs on US imports worth 4-billion- dollars after the World Trade Organization ruled the US had given illegal state aid to Boeing. The UK's decision will come into effect in January, when Britain becomes an independent trading nation. UAE says China's COVID-19 vaccine has 86% efficacy rate The United Arab Emirates' health ministry says China's state-backed coronavirus vaccine has an 86-percent efficacy rate. The Gulf nation started Phase 3 clinical trials of the Sinopharm vaccine in July, involving 31-thousand volunteers across 125 nationalities. The ministry also says the results show no serious safety concerns. Uber sells its air taxi business Elevate to Joby Aviation Uber Technologies has agreed to sell its air taxi business, Uber Elevate, to aerospace firm, Joby Aviation. The transaction is part of a complex deal that includes Uber investing 75-million- dollars into Joby and an expanded partnership between the two companies. The sale comes a day after the ride-hailing firm offloaded its self-driving unit to Aurora.

In the episode we discuss Uber Elevate - where is it going, exactly? We talk about advances in propeller technology and ways wasps are impacting plane safety down in Australia, and what there is to be done about it. Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! EP37 - Propeller Blade Advances, Uber Elevate & Animal Control at the Airport All right. Welcome back to the podcast. On today today's episode, we are going to cover a couple of really interesting animal related, uh, airport issues. Number one, a poor Brown bear got struck by a seven 37. Um, so we'll talk about that wasps in Australia. Have been actually a wreaking havoc also on seven 30 sevens in their pitot tubes. And we'll also talk about a lightning strike, uh, that prompted a New Zealand air, um, aircraft to divert. So, you know, keeping up with some recent, uh, lightning strike news and our engineering segment, we're going to chat about some interesting aerodynamics on, uh, on props and, uh, some aerodynamic stuff there. We're going to talk about a interesting new bell rotor, uh, tail rotor concept. And lastly, in our, uh, EVTOL segment. Uh, I know Allen has some pretty interesting thoughts on Uber elevate and just the scope and the, uh, the future of their business, because there's a lot of stuff that seems very. Nebulous. And it's starting to sound a little bit like maybe some, uh, as Scott Galloway, the business, um, professor would say yoga Babel. So Allen let's first talk about this, uh, bear strike. So that seems a really hard, how did the bear get on the runway, but also just really sad bears are super cool. Yeah, well, it's up in Alaska and they had a Brown bear and a Cub crossing the runway as a seven 37 was landing. And there's really not much to do about it. And it, it acted like the pilot didn't even see it obviously, or w. What had gone around and it's an occasion, you see things about aircraft striking deer, right? So a deer is a slightly taller animal, tends to be, and aircraft hit those two is there's a lot of, um, in today's world, there's a lot of periphery fences around airports because of nine 11. So there's not as much wildlife walking around on runways, but still wildlife gets in. And, and if the bears going from point a to point B and the run winds in the way, they're going to walk across it. And then this particular case, it just hit the inlet on the engine. And Dan, they then have the inlet and obviously it tilled the bear, which is just a bad situation. So I'm sure everybody just feels horrible about the whole thing that I'm sure it passengers saw it. It just doesn't. This is nothing good about it, right? Yeah. Well, they said that Cub was on, on harmed. Yeah, not a poor guy, but poor gal mama bear. Yeah. I it's terrible. I've seen cattle on runways, but it happened here locally. One time there was a cow or cattle, cattle had gotten loose and, uh, th the local airport didn't have a surrounding periphery fence at the time. So there's cattle on the runway. Thank goodness and aircraft. Wasn't trying to land because that would have been a real mess. But you just gotta be aware of that. And runways are not like any different than a road and you see deer on the road and there's drone runway. And then in Alaska, there's bear on the runway and Canadian geese. Right. We all know about the airplane landed in the river, right? So aircraft around wildlife, a lot more than you think. I think if you actually go look at the number of interactions between aircraft running into some animal on the runway, it's, it's a lot, it's a lot more than you think it would be. So everybody's got to keep their eyes open. I think Alaska is one of those places where you probably have to do it a lot more because it's just a lot. More wilderness there then you'd say and Newar...

Tech News and Commentary Dave and the team discuss Samsung steering its resources towards foldables, new streaming services, AWS issues, a Vatican Instagram scandal, Black Friday spending, Uber Elevate being sold off, retail’s losses in 2020, and more. Debbie in Raleigh, North Carolina listens on NewsRadio 680 WPTF and asked: “A question about the “ultra […]

Uber Lyft Drivers & Gig workers weekly news:  This week we talk about Uber and Lyft Drivers Win Ruling on Unemployment Benefits, Uber Deducts Millions from Drivers’ Wages for Airport Tickets They Can’t Appeal, Ride Hail a Drone? Uber Elevate Moves Forward with Hidden Level Collaboration, California’s Air Pollution Cops Are Eyeing Uber and Lyft, COVID-19 death renews questions of responsibility of Uber and Lyft to drivers, Lyft drivers accuse company of not providing free or even cost effective protective gear, are drivers and passengers wearing masks like Uber and Lyft require, Lyft Driver Says He Was Attacked then Arrested After Refusing Rider Without Mask, is there a PUA benefit extension coming, & I talk with the writer and director of The Rideshare Movie (Tremain Hayhoe) you can WATCH THE RIDESHARE MOVIE HERE FREE.Rideshare Rodeo Podcast is presented by UberLyftDrivers.com.

We take to the sky as a pioneering voice in VTOL, Mark Moore, Director of Strategy at Uber Elevate, joins host Grayson Brulte to walk through his journey from NASA to Uber and how eVTOLs (electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft) will lead to redesigned cities with transportation freedom. Mark breaks down the misconceptions of eVTOLs and their benefits compared to helicopters, including reduced noise pollution and the safety parameters built into eVTOL design that create thrusting control redundancies to ensure continued operation even if a part is broken. He shares his unique perspective on how the traditional roles of commercial operators and government agencies have flipped with Silicon Valley leading the charge on the technological innovations and capital investment for eVTOLs. The two discuss Uber’s Elevate strategy of collaboration for the establishment of an ecosystem of developers, public officials and key stakeholders to make the endeavor a reality. Mark compares the current and future eVTOL landscape with that of the early days of aviation and offers his insight on how the industry will evolve over the next two decades to allow city planners to “take off the gloves” and redesign cities for productivity around a nodal mobility system. And for the first time, Mark shares with Grayson how his groundbreaking “NASA Puffin Electric Tailsitter VTOL Concept” paper caught the eye of Google’s Larry Page and ultimately led to a meeting where Larry showed Mark the building where he was going to start the industry’s first eVTOL company.   Learn more about Uber Elevate at https://www.uber.com/us/en/elevate/.   Subscribe to SAE Tomorrow Today or visit www.sae.org/podcasts to stay up to date on all the latest information from SAE. Follow SAE on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.  

We have the machinery, so are we already living in the technology driven future promised by science fiction movies? Also an answer to why we haven’t met any time travel tourists…. yet. Guests Blair Crawford https://daltrey.com/podcast/ John Cadogan https://www.youtube.com/user/AutoExpertTV Matthew Szydagis https://www.albany.edu/physics/faculty/matthew-szydagis Carita Gronroos https://www.reikidrummoyne.com.au/ Joseph Ortega Biometric Tech History of Biometrics https://www.biometricupdate.com/201802/history-of-biometrics-2 Flying Cars  Terrafugia https://terrafugia.com/ Uber Elevate https://www.uber.com/au/en/elevate/ Aeromobil https://www.aeromobil.com/ Time Travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Mallett Matthew Szydagis - Tedx Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2-I5HUwfRg Other Videos Chris Bache - The Universe wants us all to evolve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yewNM9smrqo I wish I could go back in time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpvcUfEgNvI Contact Instagram: @mcuniversepodcast https://twitter.com/DanMcUniverse www.danmcuniverse.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Broadcast on 3ZZZ Radio on 26th Jan 2020 - (4. 49 mins)Visit cyberwiparama.blogspot.com for all episodes.අපි කුඩා කාලයේ , අනාගතය ගැන හැදුනු විද්‍යා ප්‍රබන්ධ බොහොමයක  අපි දුටුවේ හැම කෙනාම තමන්ගේ වාහන වලින් අහසින් යන හැටි.අතිශය ජනප්‍රිය වූ Steven Spielberg ගේ Back to the Future චිත්‍රපට මාලාවේ, ඔවුන් 1985 වසරේ සිට 2015 වසරට යන්නට කාල තරන වාහනයට නගින විට, එමට් බ්‍රව්න්, මාර්ටි මැක්ෆ්ලයි තරුනයාට කියූ ප්‍රසිද්ධ කියමන මෙහිදී මතක් වෙනවා.. "Roads... where we're going, we don't need roads" චිත්‍රපටයේ ඔවුන් දුටු 2015 ඔක්තෝම්බර් 21 දා ඉක්ම ගිහිල්ලත්, එදා ඔවුන් අනාවැකි කියූ ගුවනින් යන කාර් ඇත්ත වුනේ නැහැ නේද? ඔව්. නමුත් එය 2020 වසරේ සත්‍ය වෙන හැඩයි. අද අපි කතා කරන්නෙ අහසින් යන කාර් ගැන. ලොව අති නවීනතම තාක්ශයන් හඳුන්වා දෙන, ඇමරිකාවෙ ලාස් වේගාස් නගරයේ පැවැත්වුනු   Consumer Electronics Show හිදී අහසින් යන්න පුලුවන් ටැක්සි සේවාවක් ගැන, මීට සති කිහිපයකට කලින් අහන්න ලැබුනා. මෙහි වැදගත්ම පනිවිඩය තමා මේ ගුවන්  ටැක්සි සේවාව 2023 වෙන විට ක්‍රියාත්මක කිරීම වෙනුවෙන් මේ වසරේදී නගර තුනක නියමු ව්‍යාප්ෘති ගුවන් ගමන් පවත්වන්න සැලසුම් කිරීම.  ෙම නගර තමයි ලොස් ඇන්ජලිස්, ඩැලස් සහ මෙල්බර්න්.  ඒ කියන්නෙ ඇමරිකාවෙන් පිට,  මේ වසරේම, මෙවැනි ගුවන් ටැක්සියක් පියාසර කරනවා දකින්නට ලැබෙන්නෙ මෙල්බර්න් අහසේ පමණයි. මේ සේවාවා හඳුන්වා දෙන්නෙ ඔබ බොහෝ දෙනෙක් දන්න ටැක්සි සේවාවක් වෙන Uber. ඇත්තටම Uber හඳුන්වන්න වෙන්නෙ Cyber based ride-sharing සේවාවක් විදියට මොකද ටැක්සි සේවාවක තියෙන කේන්ද්‍රගත සැකැස්ම වෙනුවට මෙහිදී වෙන්නේ වෙබ් අඩවියක් ගෝ ඇප් එකක් හරහා, ඒ ආසන්නයේ මෙම සේවාවා ලබා දෙන වෙනත් කෙනෙක්ගෙ වාහනය හරහා තමන්ගේ ගමන ගොස් ඇප් එකෙන්ම ගනුදෙනුව නිමා කිරීම. සමහර විට නොදන්න කිහිප දෙනෙකුට වුනත්, ඇප් එක හරහා අදාල මුදල බෙදා ගෙන එකට ගමන යන්න පුලුවන්. මින් ඔබට පැහැදිලි ඇති, දුරකථන ඇමතුමක්වත් නොදී, ඇප් එකක් හරහා, තමා අවට මේ සේවාව සපයන්න එකඟ වෙන ඕනෑම ඌබර් වාහනයක සේවාව ලබා ගැනීමට හැකි වීම ඇත්තටම සාම්ප්‍රදායික ටැක්සි සේවාවන් අර්බුධයට යැවීමක්. මේ ride sharing සේවාවේ ලොව දැවැන්තයා තමා Uber. මහා මාරගය ජයගත් ඔවුන්, ගුවන ජය ගන්න Uber Elevate කියලා තවත් ආයතනයක් පිහිටවූවා. Huyundai මෝටර් සමාගම සමග එකතු වී මේ සඳහා යොදා ගැනීමට ඔවුන් භාවිතා කරන්න බලාපොරොත්තු වෙන  විශේෂ ගුවන් ටැක්සිය තමයි ඔවුන් එදා මුල් වතාවට ජනතාවට පෙන්වුයේ.  S-A1කෙලින්ම ඉහලට සහ පහලට යා හැකි ලෙස නිම වෙන මේ විශේෂ කුඩා ගුවන් යානවලට කියන්නේ ' Personal Air Vehicle' කියලා - මේ පලමු නිර්මානයට ඔවුන් දීලා තියෙන නම S-A1. එයට මීටර් 600ක් ඉහල අහසේ පැ.කි.ම් 290 කුපරිම වේගයක් සමඟ කි.මී 100ක් දක්වා පියාසර කරන්න පුලුවන්. එක වරකට හතර දෙනෙකුට මෙහි ගමන් ගන්න පුලුවන්. මුලදී නියමුවන් සහිතව මෙම යාන ගුවන් ගත වුනත් පසු කාලෙක නියමු රහිත යාන ලෙස යානා නිර්මානය කරන්න ඔවුන් බලාපොරොත්තු වෙනවා. මෙල්බර්න් නගරයේ මෙය මුලින්ම ක්‍රියාත්මක කරන්න බලාපොරොත්තු වන්නේ නගරය සහ ටුලාමරින් ගුවන් තොටපල අතරයි. දැනට පැයක ගමනක් වෙන මේ දුර ගුවනින් විනාඩි 10ක් දක්වා අඩු වෙනු ඇත. මෙම ආයතනය පවසන්නේ, ඉදිරියේදී අදාල නිලධාරීන් සහ ප්‍රජාවන් සමඟ එක්ව නව launch pads සහ ගමන් මාර්ග ස්ථාපිත කිරීමටත්, ඊට අදාල යටිතල පහසුකම් සහ රෙගුලාසිමය කටයුතු නුදුරු අනාගතයේම සිදු වෙන බවත්ය.මෙය ඉතා මිල අධික  ගුවන් ගමනක් වේ යැයි දැන ඔබ සිතනවා ඇති. Uber Elevate ආයතනයට අනුව, මෙම ගමනේ ගාස්තුව, UberX Luxury කාර් එකක ගමනක් වෙනුවෙන් වැය වන මුදලම පමනයි. කටයුතු එසේ සිදු වේ නම්, මෙම ගුවන් ගමන් සාමාන්‍ය ජනතාවට ඉතා පහසු මිලට, ඉතා අඩු කාලෙකින්, පරිසර හානිය අවම වූ, සන්සුන් ගමනකට මඟ විවර කරන විප්ලවීය වෙනසක් සිදු කරනු ඇත. අපිට කොතනට හරි ඉතා ඉක්මනින් එන්න කියලා ඉල්ලීමක් එද්දි, ප්‍රායෝගිකව එය පහසු nowena කොට, කතා ව්‍යවහාරයේදී කියවෙන ප්‍රකාශයක් තියෙනවා "උඩින් එන්න kiyalada කියන්නෙ" කියලා?    කාරනා කටයුතු සිද්ධ වෙන විදියට, නුදුරු අනාගතයෙදි, මේ කතාව මෙන්න මේ විදියට වෙනස් වෙන හැටියක් තමයි පේන්න තියෙන්නෙ."පොඩ්ඩක් ඉන්න.. මම ටැක්සියක් අරං උඩින් එන්නම් මේ දැන්ම"sources:https://www.news.com.au/technology/uber-reveals-details-of-melbournes-new-flying-taxi/news-story/501147a7d8c5f31590e21851656d4901https://www.uber.com/au/en/elevate/uberair/ 

In this episode we discuss Visa’s acquisition of Plaid, Magnus Carlsen, Dion Wired, Spotify for Pets, SAA, fast fashion, lab rats, cancer, virtual keyboards, Uber Elevate, Apple connectors, Blue Monday, open mic nights and a question from a listener about matric pass rates. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/across-the-pond-with-barry-and-chad/message

On this episode of Class Bravo, Ray and Cory talk about the most recent developments with the Boeing 737 Max and then dive into part 2 of the interview with Andrew Schmertz the CEO of Hopscotch Air.

Our cultural obsession with flying cars has been well-documented: the 1927 film Metropolis, the 1960s cartoon The Jetsons, the 1980s Back to the Future movies. But flying cars have always been a sci-fi fantasy, not a reality. That may be changing sooner than we realize. At CES 2020, Uber and Hyundai announced the first air taxi, the all-electric S-A1. According to Eric Allison, Head of Uber Elevate, this is just the beginning. He joins the podcast to talk about the vision of Uber Elevate, how Uber is integrating air travel into our end-to-end mobility experience, and using partners, data, and people to make flying taxis a reality. Listen to this podcast episode to learn: • How Uber is working to build the “operating system for cities” through partnership-driven strategy and a deep understanding of urban mobility • How both human insight and data analysis are informing the design, operation, and “inside out” passenger experience • Why local community engagement is so important to understanding and addressing the concerns of those affected (e.g., citizens, policy makers, and governments) • How Uber Copter and VR simulations have served as a rich testing ground for passenger feedback • The environmental, safety, and consumer cost challenges -- and how is Uber addressing them • When will we really be able to hop in an air taxi?

On this episode of Class Bravo, you'll hear Cory & Ray interview Andrew Schmertz the CEO of Hopscotch Air in Part 1 of the interview.  We talk about the air taxi industry, uber elevate, the pilot shortage, illegal charters and some other things that we're certain you'll find interesting.

Cory and Ray recap the top stories from Class Bravo during 2019, including the notorious 737 Max & pilot shortage. They also share their plans for the channel in 2020.

The incredibly skilled journalist Alex Gonzalez who is a contributing writer for the Dallas Observer, Local Profile, Dallas Voice, Crave DFW and many more joins us.We met Alex when he wrote a great article on Marcella when she starred in the Netflix Reality Show Dancing Queen. The article was titled "Marcella Raneri spills the tea on "Dancing Queen", self care, and handling rejection." and it was published on October 22, 2018.Since then Alex's career has exploded and he is gaining a lot of attention and the respect of everyone in the industry. Most of Alex's work is online but some of his articles are printed in local magazines. Alex writes a lot of articles about food, new restaurants, cool spots, art and culture and weekend events. He recently wrote a local food guide for people with dietary restrictions. He tells us about the most inspirational story he has ever written. Then he tells us about the most shocking story he just recently wrote about the porn industry. Alex tells us about his experience being a nude model in college. He did it as a part time job and still sometimes does it to make extra money. We freak out over the details of this situation and cannot even believe how nerve wrecking it has to be to get nude in front of your peers. The article "A Day in the Life of a nude art model" was posted online on September 9, 2019.Alex wrote a very powerful article that is posted on Linked In titled "I am no longer working for free -- and neither should you" and he is very passionate about this topic.He believes that when you are seasoned and no longer a beginner you should not be expected to work for free because it is insulting. You should always be grateful to your mentors, but you are not obligated to work for them for free for your entire career. Alex's dream is to go to work full time for a national publication like GQ, Billboard or his absolute favorite Rolling Stone. We talk about Frisco, Texas becoming the first test site for Uber Elevate, which happens to be in our back yard. The article published on September 18, 2018 and we cannot even imagine this future life of flying cars over our heads. Alex put together an amazing article called "Best Non conventional date ideas in Collin County, Texas".We are a bit shocked about the article he wrote that "Plano ranked 15th in the nation for infidelity". He tells us that he got to interview divorce attorneys for that article and he learned that the biggest issue that leads to divorce is money and the biggest issue to infidelity is lack of communication. An absolute incredible article called "29 acres to open living community for adults with autism" makes us realize how important this project is for so many people.P and P Talk with Miss Polly: A common fantasy many people have is spanking, bondige and hot waxQuestion of the Day: Is it a red flag if your partner gets mad if someone looks at you or checks you out.

Episode 009 – The Future of MobilityNeal Watterson, Global Head of Guest Products and General Manager of Uber for Business was a featured speaker at the ASA MSO Symposium in Las Vegas. Listen as Neal discusses the future of Mobility, Uber and the Automotive Industry. From a focus on safety, to the new paradigm that says “yes, it’s ok to get into vehicles with strangers” he paints a picture of a future that’s not that far off and may surprise you.· Uber’s primary focus on safety shapes all of their plans for the future· How autonomous vehicles will impact the automotive service industry· How shops can use ride-sharing to improve customer convenience· Uber for business programs for mechanical and collision shops· Uber Elevate—electric helicopters and flying cars (yes, flying cars)

Blknerd's Podcast: In this episode I talk about Uber Elevate, Uber aqcuiring "Cornerstore" a grocery delivery company, BBC reinventing it's iPlayer streaming service, my SPOILER REVIEW of the movie JOKER, and Gemini Man. Hope you Enjoy, Please Share and Subscribe https://anchor.fm/blknerd-50 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/blknerd-50/message

New Yorkers were introduced to Uber Elevate's latest development last week when Uber Copter rides to JFK airport became available to all riders with the Uber app. This comes just three months after the ride-hailing company began on-demand helicopter rides to NYC-based Platinum and Diamond rewards members in July. Brian Kelly, The Points Guy, invited Eric Allison, the head of Uber's Aviation Programs, on Talking Points, to find out why Uber decided to infiltrate this market, their plans for growth and how it differs from its competitors. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Subscribe on iTunes! Subscribe on Google Play Podcast RSS Feed   There’s so much going on around Frisco it’s hard to keep up with it all. So Lifestyle Frisco is bringing you “In Case You Missed It,” a quick rundown of some of the interesting stories and upcoming events this week. SHOW NOTES: Flying Cars: […]

Subscribe on iTunes! Subscribe on Google Play Podcast RSS Feed   There’s so much going on around Frisco it’s hard to keep up with it all. So Lifestyle Frisco is bringing you “In Case You Missed It,” a quick rundown of some of the interesting stories and upcoming events this week. SHOW NOTES: Flying Cars: […]

Uber Elevate flying taxis being tested in Frisco...the Whataburger vs. In-N-Out Burger debate has been settled...and the four young Houston area baseball players who are now on the same team at Harvard.

Dean Nelson is Chairman and Founder of Infrastructure Masons, with a 30 year career in technology working at companies including Sun Microsystems, Ebay and Uber Technologies. Our conversation explored the work that Infrastructure Masons is doing to help advance training, education, mentoring and internships to cultivate the next generation of talent need to design, build and manage the explosive growth of hyper-scale data centers, edge computing and other critical infrastructure for the information age. He shares the challenges facing the industry with the pending shortages of talent, the broad interdisciplinary skills in demand and the global nature of the industry. He also shares some of his own perspectives on the demands involved with souring and delivering the massive data center capacity required to support the explosive volumes of video and other applications today and in the future.  He also shares some of the implications of the “Jetsons”-like Uber Elevate service, which could transform cities as we know them.

Episode #14, the second in our new series covering urban air mobility, features Kate Fraser, Head of Aviation Policy for Uber Elevate. UAM is the next step in transportation, and this episode features an in-depth discussion around urban air mobility issues from an integrator perspective. We also explore the need for public and government acceptance and buy-in, and Uber’s crawl-walk-run approach toward launching a full multi-modal mass air transportation experience featuring the UberCopter.

Tech News and Commentary Dave and the team discuss The Office leaving Netflix for NBC’s own streaming service, Apple evaluating moving production from China, drones and airports, Apple’s 15″ MacBook Pro recall, Uber Elevate will test fast food delivery by drone in San Diego, a rain battle of the smart assistants, and more. Jason in […]

METADATA | E36: UBER Elevate Summit 2019 | ¿Qué diablos pasa con las pantallas plegables? | La ciberseguridad en su año más difícil

find us on twitter: @twpwk In a transportation dominated news segment we talk about everything from hikers to scooters to helicopters to satellites. And our main topic this week is all about the shoes you wear. Why minimalist shoes are a thing and why that weirdo in the Starbucks line with toes on their shoes might be onto something … that something just isn't fashion. News Bose's new headphones Uber Elevate influencers Starlink follow-up Everest Zuck gets voted … out? Scooters buying scooters The Buses of Brotherly Love Rail costs farmers money Amazon closing restaurant delivery Main Topic Shoespiracy Theories Minimalist shoes out there: Vivo Barefoot - https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us VIbram Five Fingers - https://us.vibram.com/shop/fivefingers/ Xero Shoes - https://xeroshoes.com/ Merrill - https://www.merrell.com/US/en/barefoot-1/ New Balance - https://www.newbalance.com/minimus/ Recommendations The best business description I read on Angel List this week: data and vegas Rick & Morty Good Omens Shameless Plugs For coffee drinkers: Bookcase Coffee For equity investors: Folio Find us on: ------------------------------------ Twitter: @twpwk iTunes Spotify Stitcher Google Podcasts Pocket Casts Overcast

Today is June 18rd, 2019 and it's an all new Human Factors Cast hosted by Nick Roome and Blake Arnsdorff. HUMAN FACTORS NEWS Europe publishes common drone rules, giving operators a year to prepare https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/europe-publishes-common-drone-rules-giving-operators-a-year-to-prepare/ Uber Elevate wants to deliver Big Macs by drone starting this summer https://www.engadget.com/2019/06/12/uber-elevate-drone-deliveries-san-diego/ Uber Claims ‘Aerial Ridesharing’ On Track to Be ‘More Economically Rational’ Than Driving in About Three Years https://gizmodo.com/uber-claims-aerial-ridesharing-on-track-to-be-more-e-1835435983 MIT develops a better way for robots to predict human movement https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/12/mit-develops-a-better-way-for-robots-to-predict-human-movement/ It Came From Reddit Posted byu/Trazan Starting my first mid-weight role in six weeks. How can I prepare? I’ve done UX for almost two years after switching from copywriting. Last week I was offered a new job with a big pay rise and some solid career development prospects. I’m set to begin in six weeks, how can I prepare in the meantime? Admittedly I’m a bit nervous. Posted byu/chandra381 Apart from r/userexperience what other online UX communities do you frequent? I'm curious to know if there are various other forums or Discord channels, for instance. I'm sure many others are too. Or consider a related question: What's your best source for keeping up with what's new in the UX field? Or in our case Human Factors ... Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/humanfactorscast Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanfactorscast Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/HFactorsPodcast Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HumanFactorsCast Follow us on Soundcloud: https://www.soundcloud.com/HumanFactorsCast Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/HumanFactorsCast Our official website: https://www.humanfactorscast.com Follow Nick: https://www.twitter.com/Nick_Roome Follow Blake: https://www.twitter.com/DontPanicUX Video/photo editing by Offlineable: https://www.youtube.com/user/offlineable Join us on Slack: https://bit.ly/2KDael9 Take a deeper look into the human element in our ever changing digital world. Human Factors Cast is a podcast that investigates the sciences of psychology, engineering, biomechanics, industrial design, physiology and anthropometry and how it affects our interaction with technology. As an online source for human factors, psychology, and design news, Human Factors Cast is your essential resource for new, exciting stories in the field.

Si creían que el podcast pasado fue extraño, entonces presten atención a la emisión de este jueves, pues Pontón, Matuk y Jimena se tuvieron que conectar desde California, Washington y China para hablar de CES Asia, E3 y Uber Elevate.

The state of the Internet according to Mary Meeker, Houseparty joins the Fortnite party, Uber Elevate is planning some important firsts, the DOJ is telegraphing its possible punches to Silicon Valley, and someone find Have I Been Pwned a good home. Sponsors: PixelUnion.net PaintYourLife.com: Text the word TECH to 48-48-48 Links: Mary Meeker’s most important trends on the internet (ReCode) Fortnite maker Epic acquires social video app Houseparty (TechCrunch) Apple Discusses Acquisition of Intel’s German Modem Unit (The Information) Google Is Moving More Hardware Production Out of China (Bloomberg) Uber Wants Your Next Big Mac to Be Delivered by Drone (Bloomberg) Snapchat’s Gender-Swap and Baby Filters Doubled Downloads of the App (OneZero) The DOJ’s antitrust chief just telegraphed exactly how it could go after Google, Apple and other big tech companies (CNBC) Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim Delivers Remarks for the Antitrust New Frontiers Conference Project Svalbard: The Future of Have I Been Pwned (Troy Hunt) Premium Feed Link! Subscribe Right Here In Your Podcast App!

In Episode 16, “Aerotropolis – The Future of International Airports”, Blenheim Partners’ Gregory Robinson is delighted to talk to Graham Millett, Chief Executive Officer of WSA Co. Graham has been given the monumental task of being at the reins for the construction of Western Sydney Airport. Graham brings extensive experience in the aviation industry as well as being a qualified pilot.Graham discusses the importance of looking outwards at other international airports in gaining a perspective of what elements create the perfect airport. He shares with Greg his plans on opening a carbon neutral airport with renewable energy, low wastage levels and plenty of recycling.Graham discusses the technologies he wants to completely immerse into the new Western Sydney airport with newer more advanced technologies than currently available at Kingsford Smith Airport which will ultimately help create a more relaxed and leisurely experience upon arriving at the airport. He shares with us his plan on working with Uber Elevate to create what sounds like “flying cars” to assist with congestion as well as time. Adding to Uber Elevate, he shares his vision of the airport having a strong public transport presence which again, will help lessen congestion and reduce pollution.He also stresses the importance of an airport being more than just an airport, his key goal is to create an Aerotropolis, which he defines as an aviation city. Graham and his team hope to create an airport which combines residential, commercial and industrial types of facilities, essentially becoming a hub of not just air travel but a hub of business.

In this bonus #mobilitymarch episode of the Smart Community Podcast, Zoe has a fascinating chat with Natalie Malligan, the Head of Cities for Australia and New Zealand at Uber. This is a short but jam packed episode, and it's also a perfect follow up to our previous episode featuring Sampo Hietanen, all about Mobility as a Service, so if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I'd recommend you go back and listen to it before this one, as Zoe and Natalie do talk about MaaS a bit here so Sampo's episode will be useful for a bit more context in that regard. In this episode, Natalie shares a bit about how Uber sees the future of transport and some of their projects worldwide, including taking part in the Transport NSW Mobility as a Service Challenge, and integrating the public transport services into the Uber App in the City of Denver in the US. Zoe and Natalie discuss how Australian consumers and governments are embracing Smart concepts, and how this has changed over time, as well as why Uber has been so successful in become a household name. Natalie explains how Uber views their role in the transport sector, and some of their other projects like up-coming on-demand aircraft service Uber Elevate and the open data platform Movement. Natalie and Zoe finish their conversation on how Uber has changed their approach over the years, and the emerging trends of micro-mobility such as e-bikes and e-scooters. As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it.Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.communityConnect with Natalie via LinkedInConnect with me via email: hello@mysmart.communityConnect via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook @smartcommpod

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Mark Moore, head of engineering at Uber Elevate, to talk about flying cars (2:05), starting out at NASA (2:35), why air taxis are inevitable (4:05), why were are in a “Wright Brothers era” of air taxis (6:50), planning to launch in five years (8:05), the gridlock problem (10:35), going pilotless (12:15), taking air taxis to the mass market (15:25), seeding a manufacturing boom (17:20), the pilot shortage (18:20), why our skies are about to get very crowded (20:45), how much it will cost (23:25), and why air taxis could convince us to give up our cars (25:25). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This month on Smart Dust, we’re exploring curious world of biohacking, from the 10,000 people in the world who currently have a chip implanted to the Lovetron 9000, which, well you’ll have to listen to find out.  We delve into the extraordinary start-ups currently disrupting Australia, everything from mattresses to a Conor McGregor endorsed teeth whitening kit.  And finally, what does the future of transport look like? Is it going to look like The Jetsons more every day with Uber Elevate planning to launch in 2020, or is it all down to the humble bicycle?  Find out on this months on Smart Dust. 

On this episode the guys talk with Steve Tibbitts from FabLab located in Tacoma. FabLab is a makerspace technology workshop that offers premier membership-driven prototyping. Their monthly rate includes access to their prototyping, electronics, woodworking, and metal working tools, which include: carbon 3D printers, laser cutter / engraver, table saw, band saw, MIG welder, drill presses, small mill, sandblaster and much more. For people that are carious about how to utilize the tools they have, FabLab offers a variety of classes to get you started. They're located at: 1938 Market Street in Tacoma, their hours are Sunday: 1pm- 7pm, closed Monday, Tuesdays: 4pm-9pm, Wednesday and Thursday: Noon-9pm and Fridays: Noon-8pm, and Saturday: Noon-9pm. They can be found online at: fablabtacoma.com. 2:23 – Steve explains to the guys what FabLab offers, how the inception became to be, their hours of operations, and they talk about the new Lime Scooters running around Tacoma. Steve talks about what he's recently helped someone make in the lab, a customer that makes dishes in the lab for soap that his wife makes, and how they got it started in Tacoma. Steve talks about their most important customer being the University of Washington, the importance of corporate sponsorship, and how anything's possible to make in the lab. 12:06 – Scott and Steve explain what the Raspberry Pi and Arduino are, Steve chats about the number of businesses FabLab has helped launch, his other business, Zeva, and the personal aerial transportation they're working on, Zero. Steve discusses Uber Elevate, the rules that are in place and changing around flying, Boeing recently announcing plans to launch SkyGrid and the recent news from California where a person was arrested while intoxicated with the auto pilot on in his Tesla. 24:14 – Steve talks about first getting the idea for Zero in 2004, submitting a proposal to Nasa for a grant, the importance of the personal airplane to vertically takeoff and land, and Boeing's GoFly competition. They talk about the MIT guys that came out with the first all-electric drive airplane, the green technology Zeva is using with the creation of Zero, and the price they're planning to charge for the air craft. Steve talks about the limitations of the energy sources for the vehicle, the speed of technology, and the number of competitors in the industry. 37:12 – Steve explains the challenges they face in the aircraft design, the strict criteria of the contest, the size of aircraft, and what emergency recovery that's in place in the instance that there is a failure with flying. They talk about the Russian hoverbike, the country whose police are currently using them, and where people can find more information on Zeva. Steve encourages people that are interested to stop by FabLab, what they offer, and Justin discusses what GCP has coming up, including their plans to join Patreon. Thanks Steve for joining the guys to share information about FabLab and Zeva and what they offer to the PNW community! Special Guest: Steve Tibbitts.

On this episode of TREccast, we chat with Michael Kaiser of The Beck Group! Michael was one of the lead designers on Beck’s submission to UBER Elevate for its vertiport system as well as a panelist during our Bank of Texas Speaker Series: Transportation Revolution program back in September. In our conversation, we talk about changing transportation infrastructure needs in Dallas, the inspiration behind Beck’s beehive design for the vertiport, and the fun (and difficulties) of designing the future. This episode is the fourth installment in our ‘Transportation Revolution’ podcast series, sponsored by BOKA Powell. Subscribe to TRECcast on Apple Podcasts and Soundcloud, and follow The Real Estate Council on Facebook (@therealestatecouncil) and Instagram and Twitter (@trecdallas).

On this episode of TRECcast, we talk to AECOM’s Steven Duong about hyperloop! Steven was a panelist during September’s Bank of Texas Speaker Series: Transportation Revolution, and we talk about how to develop infrastructure for technology that doesn’t exist yet, the role regulation will play in hyperloop’s rollout, and how getting from Downtown Dallas to Austin in under 20 minutes will change the way we travel and work. Duong is a senior urban planner for AECOM’s Dallas-Fort Worth metro office. He led the company’s proposal for Texas that made Hyperloop One’s short list of initial routes for a potential 2021 rollout. Working primarily in transportation planning and urban design, Duong served as project manager for the 100 Resilient Cities: Dallas plan and the North Texas Regional Joint Land Use Study. His project work has spanned several disciplines, including international master planning, context sensitive design and complete streets, transit planning, land use scenario modeling, environmental planning and urban resiliency. This episode is part of our ongoing Transportation Revolution podcast series, sponsored by BOKA Powell. Check out our previous episodes with UBER Elevate’s Travis Considine and a replay of our ‘Transportation Revolution’ Speaker Series panel. Be sure to subscribe to TRECcast on Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud and follow us on social media @therealestatecouncil on Facebook and @trecdallas on Instagram and Twitter.

On this edition of TRECcast, we talk to UBER Elevate’s Travis Considine about the rideshare giant’s forthcoming vertiport initiative and what it will take for it to succeed here in Dallas. We caught up with Travis following his appearance on our panel during our September’s Bank of Texas Speaker Series event, “Transportation Revolution.” Travis is UBER’s communications manager for Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, responsible for managing media relations and assisting the company’s policy teams at city and state levels. He has worked on the Elevate initiative in north Texas since Dallas was announced as a pilot city. Considine previously served as former Gov. Rick Perry’s press secretary and communications director for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Today’s episode is part of our ongoing “Transportation Revolution” podcast series and is sponsored by BOKA Powell: http://www.bokapowell.com/ Subscribe to TRECcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/treccast/id1438048995?mt=2 Follow TREC on Facebook @therealestatecouncil and on Twitter and Instagram @trecdallas.

The TREC Podcast has a new home and a new name! The new TRECcast is now available via Apple Podcasts! Subscribe and review TRECcast using the Apple Podcasts app, and non-iPhone users, fret not -- you can still find us on SoundCloud, too. To commemorate the move, we're kicking off our Transportation Revolution podcast series, sponsored by BOKA Powell, with September's Bank of Texas Speaker Series panel. Hear from Travis Considine of UBER Elevate, Steven Duong of AECOM, Michael Kaiser of The Beck Group and Rod Schebesch of Stantec as they talk about the future of transportation in DFW and beyond. In the coming weeks, we'll have interviews with them and much more, so stay tuned!

Eric Garcetti, the twice-elected mayor of Los Angeles, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about politics in the city and California — and why he's thinking about running for President in 2020. In this episode: (01:35) Garcetti's background; (05:09) Why he ran for mayor; (07:10) The challenges faced by cities like Los Angeles; (09:21) Homelessness, housing and transportation; (13:47) Jobs, education and cities as the “laboratories of democracy”; (16:05) What Garcetti has done wrong; (19:02) California's privacy bill and its cultural identity; (24:19) Is California competing with China for the future of tech?; (26:23) The Boring Company, Uber Elevate and manufacturing jobs; (29:36) Techlash and "interpreters" between tech and government; (34:23) "Thinking hard" about running for president; (37:49) Why Garcetti would run; (40:12) "No sane person would run for president"; (42:50) How do you defeat Trump?; (45:40) The crisis in the Democratic Party and midterms predictions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SPECIAL GUEST: Rob Wichman, Director, Ram Truck EngineeringNEWS:03:07 - Ram 1500 Engineering Deep Dive34:05 - Doctor Data37:40 - 100 percent Electric Buses in China44:50 - AAA Indicates 20 percent of Americans will likely go electric48:25 - Uber Elevate: Annual Flying Car Summit53:28 - The number of Pedestrians killed by vehicles is up since 2009. Why?55:40 - Port of LA Now with Natural Gas Powered Drayage. What Happened to Natural Gas Cars?59:53 - Automakers headed to D.C. to talk CAFE1:04:55 - Does Iran Spell the End of the Truck Boom as Oil Prices Rise?PANEL:- Gary Vasilash, ADandP- John McElroy, Autoline.tv

Entrevista con Eric Alisson, director de Uber Aviation transmitida el 10 de Mayo de 2018

- Toyota Reports Earnings- Volvo Out Performing All Automakers in U.S.- Consumers Warm Up to EVs- Uber Introduces Electric Passenger Drone- Uber and NASA Partner to Test Passenger Drones- Can Smells Help Prevent Motion Sickness in AVs?

- Toyota Reports Earnings - Volvo Out Performing All Automakers in U.S. - Consumers Warm Up to EVs - Uber Introduces Electric Passenger Drone - Uber and NASA Partner to Test Passenger Drones - Can Smells Help Prevent Motion Sickness in AVs?

Carol is joined by Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowicz and they speak to Scott Mushkin, Managing Director of Consumer Research at Wolfe Research, on why he dislikes Walmart buying India’s biggest online seller Flipkart. Julie Johnsson, Bloomberg News Aerospace Reporter, explains how the U.S. exiting the Iran nuclear deal is impacting planemakers. Glen Weyl, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, and Peter Coy, Bloomberg Businessweek Economics Editor, discuss the book “Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society"Eric Newcomer, Bloomberg News Startup Reporter, talks about the Uber Elevate conference in Los Angeles. And we Drive to the Close with David McKnight, President at David McKnight & Co.

Carol is joined by Bloomberg's Lisa Abramowicz and they speak to Scott Mushkin, Managing Director of Consumer Research at Wolfe Research, on why he dislikes Walmart buying India's biggest online seller Flipkart. Julie Johnsson, Bloomberg News Aerospace Reporter, explains how the U.S. exiting the Iran nuclear deal is impacting planemakers. Glen Weyl, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, and Peter Coy, Bloomberg Businessweek Economics Editor, discuss the book “Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society"Eric Newcomer, Bloomberg News Startup Reporter, talks about the Uber Elevate conference in Los Angeles. And we Drive to the Close with David McKnight, President at David McKnight & Co. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Peter and Dan discuss the latest technologies in the transportation industry. Electric autonomous cars, Virgin Hyperloop One, flying vehicles like Airbus and Uber Elevate, and Elon Musk's Boring Company and SpaceX rockets.   In this episode: Peter compares today's (2018 – 2022) transportation transition to early 20th century history, when mass-produced cars started to outpace […]

Peter and Dan discuss the latest technologies in the transportation industry. Electric autonomous cars, Virgin Hyperloop One, flying vehicles like Airbus and Uber Elevate, and Elon Musk’s Boring Company and SpaceX rockets.   In this episode: Peter compares today’s (2018 – 2022) transportation transition to early 20th century history, when mass-produced cars started to outpace […]

Nathan, Mike, and Mahler tackle sheep, genetically modified skin, dinosaurs, the “Heavenly Palace,” the ozone layer, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, an “act of war,” Trump in China, Uber Elevate, Blue Tuesday, the Paradise Papers, inequality, AT&T’s choice, chunky soccer moms, and more.

EP088 - PwC Partners Steven Barr and Byron Carlock Steve Barr (@Steven_J_Barr) is a partner in the Consumer Markets practice at PwC, and sits on the NRF Board of Trustees.  Byron Carlock is a partner who leads the Real Estate practice at PwC.  We sat down with Steve and Byron to talk about the current state of the US retail market and what the future may look like. In this interview, we discuss, Mallageddon, Omnichannel, Grocery, Mobile, and of course Amazon. PwC Consumer Markets Homepage PwC Real Estate Homepage Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 88 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, June 15, 2017. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.   New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason:  [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded on Thursday June 15th 2017 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your Cohoes Scot Wingo. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason is got show listeners, Jason tonight we have two guests on the show that are going to help us better understand some of the retail and real estate dynamics that we've been talking about here in 2017 first we have Steve bar Steve is an over 20 year veteran of pricewaterhousecoopers which I'll call PWC from here on out, where he is focused on the consumer Market Steve is a frequent for contributor on topics around retail Brands and cpg he's also on the Board of Trustees for an RF, we also have Byron Carlock and he is the national partner and real estate practice leader with PWC and Works close to the Steve to understand physical retail Trends and how they impact commercial real estate industry he's been at PWC since 2012 welcome Steve and Byron. [1:28] Thank you John long long time listener first-time caller. Jason:  [1:34] We are excited to have you guys on the show and we always like to get things started by giving a listeners a little bit of a perspective about your backgrounds and how you came into your rolls so maybe Steve we can start with you you want to tell us how you got here. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [1:49] Yeah it's good it's really great to be with you so I leave the consumer markets practice at pricewaterhousecoopers which includes our retail practice are consumer packaged Goods practice. And our travel and tours and practice. The practice includes our advisory Consulting business and our traditional audit and tax practice I've spent my entire career focused primarily in the retail and consumer space and like I said I'm glad to be with you tonight. Jason:  [2:18] Traffic in Byron. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [2:20] Sure and I'm on Byron Carlock I leave the national real estate practice I came to the firm from industry five years ago. And spent the first half of my career with the Trammell Crow family a prominent real estate family based in Texas with many companies in the various. Real estate categories of office retail multifamily. Hospitality industrial and then I ran three routes for a sponsor before coming to the farm. I also lead the practice across our lines of Services of. Assurance tax and advisory my jobs almost as fun as Steve's but I'm more the dirt guy and so I'm watching our industry go through an interesting metamorphosis especially in the retail category. [3:10] Awesome well as the the dirt guy Byron let me kick it off to you and you know so 2017 is you've been an issue for a while and I've got a majun this is kind of, what is the most brutal years you seen us as relates to Store retail you seen over 5000 stores announced that are closing this year we've had folks on the podcast that say we can get to 10000, and you're in that Plies Mall closures in the 20 to 30% range over the next two years, watch County help us frame it giving your long exposure to the market and in the physical retail side how, what are you seeing out there is it the worst year you ever seen in and any other pontifications would love to hear. [3:51] Sure I'm going to put it in more of an evolutionary disruption time frame because I think it's very interesting to sit back and realize. The 90% of retail sales still happen in brick-and-mortar. And so although e-commerce is the fastest-growing phenomena in retail it's still only 10%. Of the total spend and so what happens in brick and mortar is very important. And certainly worth watching and you're right the store closures are going to be big we can get 7700 somewhere around in there so you're right between 5 and 10000 and the square footage vacated you know in the tens of millions of square feet. But what's interesting for the real estate. [4:36] For the Realtek perspective is on that which is vacated it's an offer it's an opportunity for landlords to rehab and reposition. Answer there's National articles you know this week in the Wall Street Journal talking about. The mall might not have any retailers in it and some of the different uses that that real estate is finding as landlords reposition the real estate. So I'm coming at it from a bit more bullish perspective from the brick-and-mortar perspective in that I think we'll see New Uses even though those vacancies will. [5:16] Eradicate certain retail Concepts week we refer to sometimes as the mediocre in the middle. [5:24] Got it 60 what's your take on kind of where we are from a 30000 foot kind of you. It's interesting one of the things Byron and I chat about frequently is the question of whether were over stored or under demolished in life what I, yeah and what I mean by that is there are some great properties and some great locations. I really just don't have the right retail for for today's consumer. Transformation there is no question and you guys wouldn't have any back on the show if we didn't acknowledge that. There is some significant headwinds for certain retailers but we have a number of our clients and I'll lean with Byron toward some level of optimism because the number of our clients. Or investing in some very unique properties focusing on. Experience and press partnering in ways that might be non-traditional from a historical standpoint but really connect with with today's consumer. Jason:  [6:34] Yes what's really interesting you know I feel like I am definitely on your guy side of the fence as a pro brick-and-mortar guy Scott is really the, the digital doom-and-gloom guy on the cough but I think even he concedes that the brick-and-mortar is going to continue to be a really important part of the mix I will say however that, I do start getting nervous cuz you mentioned that average, 10% of sales are online in a lot of segments that are important like particularly in the malls. [7:06] That that percentage is more like 15 or 20% and 15 or 20% feels like an inflection point when it can really disrupt a category. [7:16] Yeah do you think we're going to see some some actual category disruption or do you think it's just going to be the the weakest players in each of those categories that that we see go away. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [7:27] Steve began alluding to it's all about the experience so it's that category. Can create an experience in a reason for someone to be on the showroom in the store and experiencing the product and learning about it then that disruption can be stalled if not why why take the time out of your busy schedule to get. And so the consumer needs a reason to be welcomed into the store and feel as though it's a worthwhile experience. [7:54] Yeah and I guess I would have to serve two thoughts the first would be you know in addition to the numbers you shared we're actually seeing. Many of our clients have their. Or their their direct businesses grow. 20 to 30% in the end in fact as you both know well. Some have even grown in the in the 40 50% range and something that said we called the last two holidays. And you know those have come true so we're seeing there's no question we're seeing the massive shift. The other point I would make and having listened to your show for quite some time I know when I open up the topic of omni-channel. I think there's a lot of people that talk about on the channel and I don't think many retailers are are are doing that well. But I do feel as if the retailers are on a continuous journey of improvement. And some of the retailers are starting to do it well but I continue to be very disappointed with. With many of the store base retailers often my family gets tired of shopping with me because often what I do is I walk into the store. You know what I'm doing, my work thinks and I walk as if I'm just any consumer and trying to feel is it what's what's that experience for me if I've done things like buy online pickup in-store and I continue. [9:30] Be amazed at how many stores make it very inconvenient for, the consumer to really have that buy online pickup in-store experience difficult to find a parking spot, if I have an impulse purchase or a different need there isn't a separate checkout Lanes sometimes it's very hard to find the the, the pickup spot within the store and so we really do need to see the Retailer's transform at the store level, and counterbalance, the convenience that comes with online shopping but like I said I think some are starting to do it well and others, if they don't do it you know I think they're going to add to that list of of dead banners bankruptcies and store closures. Jason:  [10:22] Yeah it it is shocking how much bad omni-channel there still is out there I know I have the luxury of living a few blocks from an Amazon bookstore and so I'm a horrible person, but my soda pass time when I have too much free time on my hands is just to try to go return Amazon purchases at the bookstore. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [10:42] Yeah and what's your experience. Jason:  [10:44] That they don't accept returns from Amazon it's me just being mean but are there any retailers you think of that you would point to as a sort of shining beacons of really taking advantage of the wrecking water footprint and doing omni-channel well. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [10:59] Yeah I can think of several I don't know if we're allowed to mention particular client names. Excuse me particular company names but yes there are some they're doing extremely well that make sure you feel like you are welcomed into the store almost as a treasured guests because they know your time starved they know you want special service. Play make you feel like your visit was worthwhile. [11:22] No I mean I don't know I mean for example and I'll give you a couple cuz I think sometimes we can think we can speak in terms of examples but you know what Gucci is doing at the upper end this year. Is a game-changer and when you go in the store and you see something you like you better get it because if you don't get it it may not be there tomorrow. Limited production runs with the special embroidery while statements that become interesting accessories to any outfit. [11:52] It's really a fun experience at the designer level. [11:56] Even all the way down to HomeGoods in a perch who you go in and get to see demonstrations in the cooking kitchen or in the luxury bathroom. And you think wow I want to live like that. And so when you see those experiences that make the product come alive it makes your store visitation worthwhile. [12:19] Now if it's a roll of toilet paper. Are bath soap or laundry detergent the commodity stuff is going to be sold on price and convenient. [12:32] An empire in what would I would add to that is you know so often when we talked about how many Channel I think there's a focus of it being. The online transaction store but also we see some retailers doing an extraordinary job of if I'm in store and they don't have the style or size that I'm looking for, several of the leading retailers are able to access their inventory real-time often with a handheld device. Somewhere you know exactly where I'm shopping and in many cases you know make a commitment to me. How to get that old to The Shopper overnight or if you're in a large urban area in many cases on same day and. Bonobos is an example of that is extraordinary I often go into markets. And two tours in a recent Market visit. Explain that I was shopping or just doing the tour and what was staying at a hotel and didn't want to carry bags and they made a commitment to me that. By the time I was back at my hotel room in Times Square that they would have a package waiting for me so I think it's important to think of, omni-channel you know going going both ways but some some are doing it well. But that also means then that some aren't doing it well and what's especially challenging as same-store sales Decline and there's significant deferred maintenance from Information Systems. [14:14] And investment in store associates in others it almost becomes self-fulfilling for those retailers that just don't have the resources to get it done and that's why I think this is going to be a balance of. The winners are going to continue to win and as Byron a said you'll being stuck in the middle or I would say you know being a struggling retailer. Really something transformational is going to happen or we are going to continue to see a decline but I I do believe those clear winners are there there's no question that they're very bullish on, specific real estate in specific markets at very strategic specifically. Jason:  [14:56] Yeah I would definitely agree Steve I think is you alluded to a lot of the. [15:01] The most successful omni-channel experiences with Chompers really require excellent. [15:09] In-store inventory accuracy in so if we see a lot of retailers investing right now in New processes and Technologies and systems to get that that inventory much more accurate so they can use it in a lot more customer experiences. [15:24] Another Trend that I think is interesting an omni-channel I'm curious if either of you have any thoughts. We now seen a couple retailers kind of announced that they're redesigning stores around these omni-channel flows so target has a new store model I don't think they've open one yet but that literally has sort of a. [15:44] A separate entrance for the fast visit you no pickup Goods type stuff. [15:50] And that entrance is literally you know more convenient and separate from the the the full brows customer and I know. [15:59] Starbucks already has a prototype store in their corporate headquarters that's a pure Order ahead pick up in in Branch experience where you literally can't order in in the store. [16:11] Do you see those kinds of trans catching some some wind. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [16:15] And I do know they're working at work harder at making it easier to return. [16:31] Yeah and end, it's actually great example and the reference I made a little little more subtly earlier was it was actually you know to the Target Model by the way I would say is, I'm in a worse thing several of the mass Merchants so you know Walmart and Target really begin to execute. Very well in the store I think those companies would would say there's always an opportunity for continuous Improvement but I think they're realizing, the Strategic imperative, to improve that experience and I'm quite optimistic that the leading retailers are are going to be able to pull it off in fact I think you know I think we're going to start to see, even greater separation but I would expect those retailers, and a few others to to separate themselves and and and do it quite well what will what will be interesting. Will be you know at what page can they do that because. This isn't just about you know onesies and twosies there they're going to have any of these retailers no specific brand they're going to have to transform these stores. Very rapidly. Happened to listen to your most recent podcast and I think that you know the conversation around the period of time that some have forecasted that it might take to transform. You know the Sears locations as as they close United quite an extended time arises I don't think there's enough time to do it at that pace and. [18:05] And he's going to have to make decisions that we're going to have to accelerate this and transform the in-store experience immediately. To continue to stay relevant to smash especially with Amazon. And look while I'm intrigued by how Amazon is is disrupting our world. I'm continuing to be curious at what point will Amazon be disruptive and end. Folk music may think you know I'm a bit crazy because we've seen them as the the disruptor. [18:43] Will the time come when Alibaba and you know enter the US market or will the time come when some transformational player we've seen it in retail and sometimes it's a very long life cycle. [18:55] I really can't stress enough the need for retailers. To accelerate that pace of change and even for the disruptors to continue to disrupt themselves, so thanks for bringing up the the a word it wouldn't be a Jason and Scott show that kind of talk a little bit about Amazon let's take the angle Steve will start with you and then I want you to chime in so, it sounds like your recommendation retailers this to innovate and stay in front and Amazon could be disrupted the what about Brands I know you guys talked to a lot of brands with what do you say to Brands when they're, you know when they're saying hey what what should we do about Amazon and we see people that have a spectrum of their evil adult partner up at all all the way to Univera deep Partnerships with. Curious how you advise folks on them yeah it's Steve I'll go first and Byron if you want to jump in. The age-old question here is that that question of Channel conflict right and not only. For for their own branded stores but in many cases for their Retail Partners from a wholesale perspective and. I'm not sure there's anyone right answer depending on the category I get much of my Amazon information from you two gentlemen. But we know well that as they've entered certain private label categories. [20:26] Steve quickly gas is Amazon a quickly gained a significant market share in a number of categories and I think the the most recent Mary Meeker internet Trends presentation which was fascinating. Was one at one of the latest examples where they talked about Amazon share with batteries and I think the other category she mentioned it was. In the in the baby category so Brands I don't think there's anyone right answer but I think I can tell you this. Our clients are struggling with what to do and how to do it like they're all coming up with. Individual Solutions some are arguing that just like a regular wholesale partner and others are looking to. Come up with unique School offerings and product that not only for Amazon but for there are other wholesale partners and then for their own branded stores. And I think we're going to continue to see folks have that dilemma and as we know there are a number of luxury players or some. Unique players whether it be lvmh or Birkenstock or others that have made choices of not partnering with Amazon or. Disengaging from pretzel prior partnership with Amazon so an interesting Trends to watch but I don't think there is a single answer that it applies to any category Byron I welcome your thoughts. No I think the biggest. The big disruptor to watch there's Walmart I think their acquisition of jet.com and their rationalization of that business into their retail model is the game changer as a southerner you know going to Walmart as a spiritual experience. [22:08] And to make that experience convenient. For those that want to do it over the Internet only broadens their ability to compete head-to-head with Amazon and so I think that's worth watching and when they make returns exchanges and pick up the. Everything like that convenient in the store think about all the distribution Outlets that they've already got on the ground in your neighborhood. [22:34] That make that experience all the easier because I think that's the one who watches the disrupter for the big a in, one thing I've been mean nasty from a commercial real estate perspective here in our region the warehouse kind of segment is really heated up as as e-commerce has grown it is is that a national thing is they're kind of a Spider-Man in balance for that warehouse type space that, it's important for that that amazon-like experience. [23:00] Yes I need for three years running in our emerging Trends publication industrial has been the leading product category and it's obviously, driven by the demand because of because of the importance of fulfillment in the new economy and so industrial is a darling I don't see it changing and the use of that industrial space is already changing to adapt to. The environment related to returns and so you see some industrial parks adding retail elements so, returns of e-commerce merchandiser actually sold out the back of the warehouse. And so it's interesting to see whether or not industrial buildings become. You know many outlet malls in the future as of adjunct service to the customer that is. Using the goods that are moving through those warehouses yeah we have a, but the ability to access for the Planes Trains and trucks during the holiday season has become, very challenging for for you know many of the retailers in MN online providers so it's it's not only a competition for the industrial space but a competition for, all of the components of that supply chain including the last mile. That's right that's very important to note I mean so you got your large you know million-square-foot distribution centers that can be remotely located. [24:37] But you cannot deny the need for smaller spaces close in for last mile delivery and so the competition for four walls that are compatible for that last mile delivery is heating up but it's also using space that might otherwise be underused. And so you're seeing vacant Office Buildings. Turn into last-mile fulfillment centers for pickups and deliveries you're seeing self storage units. I'll be available for you no nighttime delivery. Of the goods from the remote distribution facility and then distributed out by The Last Mile deliver first thing in the morning. And so the use of four walls can be fungible and I think that's one of the things we're learning about this disruption is space can be used for multiple things and it doesn't always fall into the traditional categories that we thought it did. [25:31] Cool and then Steve one last Amazon kind of nuance see if you've talked about how they're going to impact retail and brands, how about the cpg your grocery category you know they've they've got the ghost or we just kind of walk out with things they've got the pickup store that had fresh for a while that's in several cities they've got Prime now Pantry there's almost like eight platforms they're experimenting around so that it seems like they're pretty serious do you think they're going to, going to start to make some inroads there or do you feel like groceries too tough for Amazon. [26:03] I think they're going to make significant inroads in it and it's interesting I'll give you something that I'm watching that may not be obvious to to everybody but you know in in in my day, I'm 52 years old all of the large cpg companies in my life professional Life Time opens, I'm office is and had a mandate to be located in Bentonville and there's no question that continue to be true given, the tremendous strength and capabilities of Walmart which I continue to believe is is is going to do continue to perform well but what we're seeing is the same consumer packaged Goods companies now. Placing folks in Seattle and so Seattle. Seattle the new Bentonville from a cpg standpoint for the additional Bentonville cuz it's not it's not an origin and so that's my signal to say. Cpg companies know it's imperative. Set the alarm with with Amazon and the other thing that we're seeing is our consumer packaged Goods companies are taking a hard look at containers and scuse sizes, wait so that they're optimized for. The Amazon delivery model in really far for everybody's delivery model but there's no question Amazon is is going there I saw a. [27:36] Presentation very recently not not vouching for the numbers but the forecast there was that by, 2023 that Amazon would be the equivalent of 2000 grocery stores, in in in the US which if you compare that to you know that's the comprable size to something like I believe a great example would be like a Kroger so there's no question. That's there going to be a significant player it's also interesting though a little bit off of Amazon but, many listeners may know when you you know well Lidl is is has said they're coming into the u.s. and they're going to open 100 stores in the near-term primarily in the east coast and in a very targeted area, there's going to be continued transformation in the grocery retail space. Far beyond just the the Amazon facts I think they'll be a little effective and some others. Jason:  [28:39] Yeah it's I think the grocery space in fresh in particular is going to be super interesting to watch because that feels like a space that no one has really wrapped up yet like you know Amazon has. [28:51] His head the pilots with fresh for a long time but you know isn't. [28:54] In that many markets yet we just seen Walmart put a lot of weight behind digital fresh Kroger but your point like. [29:04] All the I think it said there's they're going to spend four billion dollars incrementally in in the u.s. to grow their grocery business and I think those Weedle stores I think the first grand openings are today. [29:16] Down in the east coast so that seems like a. [29:20] An area where we can see a lot of new store openings and I guess what I'm curious I've heard some people say that. [29:28] Grocery is already more like the the density per capita of grocery is even more over stored than retailing General in the US so does that mean. [29:39] A ton of traditional grocery is going to close to make way for these guys you think that they're going to evolve you think we're the markets going to be able to tolerate. [29:48] All these German Grocers coming in and in serving customers in new ways. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [29:54] Yeah I think my answer would be I think it's going to get to, the in-store experience that in-store experience can be different depending on who the consumer is it could be on the value end. Or it will be on the premium experience and thinking of, the Wegmans of the world are the ages of the world and the Publix where you know when you're in the store is it it is it can often be you know an extraordinary pleasing experience so, look who it is no question their razor-thin margins in grocery retail and it takes, almost Perfection which which several of the leading players on do do quite well but that tells you though there's. There has to be some disruption to come there, Ellen with the growth of online whether it be Amazon or jet.com or now is the German grocer isn't and you know some of the existing players you're not done growing whether you know whether it be. Trader Joe's of the world or some of the regional and National Brands ghetto Kroger and others continue. To transform their stores and do exceptionally well. Jason:  [31:10] Yep I think for listeners it's going to be interesting you know traditionally the way we do retail is like the super premium in-store experiences, what for super premium products you know so Byron mention the Gucci example earlier right in the super you know value products tended to come with pretty. [31:29] A value oriented experiences of wheedle is going to be an interesting blend because they're a super low price points which means, the store experience is No Frills you bag your own groceries you have to pay a deposit for the shopping cart cuz they want to make sure you return the shopping cart so they don't have to pay a guy to go get it, but then they're going to have very high quality organic. [31:52] Produce in there and so it it if that's an interesting interesting trade-off to say hey get the high-quality products in the No-Frills environment so I'm going to be watching. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [32:02] I think about yeah but think about what you just said in that which I think Mary's with what Steve was saying earlier their systems mirror their delivery. And so their price point is complemented by what they do versus what the consumer does in order to get that price and I'm going to guess that their systems and become extremely sophisticated on sku management. To know what's going to sell when and so they very cleverly marry a systems and process and experience. [32:34] To the consumers expectation because the consumer pretty much knows what that bargain is when they walk in the store. Jason:  [32:41] No and I think you're exactly right Brian Byron there. [32:44] Probably the most quantitative retailer out there in terms of measuring the efficiency of everything. [32:54] Tut in and building the systems and processes to be highly optimized for the experience and value proposition they think customers want so I mean the only question is going to be whether American consumers, want with what with their offering because they're very good at delivering what they offer. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [33:11] Sure it's with an contrast that with the grocery store as a spiritual or Community experience where you go do everything from your wine shopping to your Fresh Foods to that evenings Gourmet takeaway to flowers to a massage. I think I think what what we're seeing is. Experience offerings that fit the taste and budget of the buyer in different location. Jason:  [33:36] That makes perfect sense. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [33:38] Steven know it's early yet but your your holiday forecast is widely read and can you give our listeners a little taste of what you're thinking about for holiday this year here here we are in June so I'm asking you about holiday well here we are in June and I will tell you we actually are about, to Launch. Are our first Global holiday survey so you're you're not asking too early here's what I can tell you about holiday in advance I it was interesting two years ago. For our press release when we lost our holiday survey which usually comes out in early October two years ago we we had a message that said, you know an overall same-store sales increase and I know it just simply was a measure, did not matter and it fell flat and I was very surprised that it fell flat so last year. We should have walked away from that but I'm going to go back to it this year because it's simply doesn't matter I'm, I am insanely bored with the holiday forecast to come out and and, you know it comes out from a wide range of constituencies it safe overall holiday sales are going to be up 3 or 4% because that's that's what they say every year when you deal go down earlier, and you take what happened last holiday wear overalls you know online was up 27% but like I said earlier we saw some key players Pro. In the 40 and 50% so I think the there there we should come up with new measures that matter and one of them will be another continued growth. [35:17] Of online which I continue to believe will grow somewhere overall near 20% but even that is is a measure that, blind to the fact that a few folks will continue to grow at a 40 to 50% clip with, with their online offering the other thing is I think we're we continue to be in a mode where consumers are going to spend a portion of their holiday budget especially Millennials on, themselves and on experience friends and family I'm going to a show, or a concert or the like so when we think about holiday I don't think it's right anymore just to look at retail sales but we really need to look at experience and then I think we're going to, pull into our holiday Outlook the growth of post travel airplane travel and Automobiles and so holiday now is, far, a far bigger picture than just retail sales but no question we'll see significant online gross I'm a little bit concerned here in June and we'll see we'll see how right I am that retailers are seeing, there I left and desirable results for year-to-date and that they're going to be, very tight in there ordering for holiday ends over the years my clients you know you never know what the weather's going to be like and you never know what, geopolitical or other events may occur but if we end up having a strong holiday but they were extremely conservative on their ordering they actually may miss on opportunities that the flip side of that is when we seen bad weather and other things. [37:00] When there's too much than they go Promotional and they go promotional early. It really wipes wipes out their holiday self retailers have it have a dilemma because of they look in their crystal ball you know is the glass half-full or half-empty. And we'll see but I do feel good about digital and online continuing to lead the way. [37:25] And I will save some of that contextual I just returned this week from the real estate Round Table in DC which is the Gathering of. 250 of the nation's real-estate CEOs and we had one presentation by a former fed governor and he said the bridge between where we are and holiday is it relates to that ending level is going to be confident. And so when we digest what it's going to take to inspire additional confidence we have to really analyze everything in the. Geopolitical jobs and and mood of the buyer to determine how bullish they will be come November December. Jason:  [38:04] Yeah you know what I think there's going to be another one of these interesting ones to watch I think traditionally that's always been true and the consumer spending has index very closely to consumer confidence but it it seems like we're seeing a lot more standard deviation in that that correlation the last couple of years, and I'll be on some other things I'm really nervous about for this holiday season Steve I think you're exactly right, nervous retailers are going to go in with tight inventory but I think one of the other impacts is. [38:35] If 7700 stores truly close before holiday this year that means our friends at Gordon brothers are going to liquidate 7700 stores worth of inventory and, you know that that's going to have an impact on on prices and consumer demand as we as we hit holiday. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [39:00] Is you know not only the Gordon Brothers on the liquidation but for some of the, banners and brands that are continuing but perhaps having to go to the off-price channel to sort of the, today action Ross stores we may see some some really really tremendous deals from a consumer perspective in in the value Channel. Jason:  [39:25] And I'm sorry Byron you were going to say something as well. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [39:28] Everyone loves a bargain I'll give her just reminds me of of Stanley Tangers quote years ago and good times people still want to bargain and bad times they need a bargain. And So It Goes liquidations May draw people out to spend in a way that inspires additional confidence so if that is going to be one worth watching because I think there will be a lot of closings and liquidations that. Put some Bargains in the market to get people out to experience those. Jason:  [39:54] Yep and I think there was one quarter Larry on that that quote though everyone loves a bargain except for the manufacturers. [40:03] So I didn't want to change topics another topic we have on the show a lot is mobile and. [40:13] In particular you know if. [40:15] If e-commerce is a you know small sliver of total retail sales but it's the fastest growing then you know mobile is a small sliver of digital sales but you know the fastest-growing and you know we've been talking loud about brick and mortar stores. [40:30] What are the things that's really interesting to me about mobile and brick-and-mortar is we've got all these consumers they may be our only spending 10% of their stuff online but. [40:39] 50% of their purchases are being influenced by digital so they're getting used to having all this digital information when they make purchases in the the obvious way to give him that digital information when they make purchases in brick-and-mortar stores is on mobile phone so I guess I'm curious, Evite. [40:56] You guys are seeing anything interesting happening in Mobile and you know if there any experiences that you've that you've seen or that you're optimistic about in terms of Mobile use in stores. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [41:08] It's Steve and there's there's no question that the phrase we often uses is a mobile matters and, Siena resting to Think Through the story I told her earlier in the podcast around how the stores need to transform to keep up with. Digital the same thing is true with respect to mobile and what I mean by that is it's only, a year or two ago and it's unfortunately true for a few retailers today where if I'm in store and I want to use my mobile device. I really get, small version of their website and it's not a mobile design website but the leading retailers have now taken it to one click capabilities, and so those folks that are transforming the mobile experience I had my own personal experience where I will I won't name the retailer but I was at an outdoor retailer and the particular, shoe was on sale I wanted to have that shoe they didn't have it in stock the sale ended that day, they didn't have the in-store capabilities to take care of me so I wanted to buy a my mobile and I was typing on this small keyboard and it was incredibly painful I was able to complete the transaction but there was nothing user-friendly about it, that same retailer is now transformed their mobile site and with one click and using. [42:38] In one of and Apple pay Samsung pay type options truly I think in, two or three very quick clicks, I'm able now to complete the same transaction if all retailers can get to that stage we're going to see explosive growth in Mobile, especially as Millennials and gen Z years continue to take up a larger portion of of the demographic of of the act of shoppers. [43:08] Byron any thoughts on mobile I know I just think alongside that comes the ability to fulfill the order as promised and then make the returns easy if it doesn't work. I think a lot of folks are still working on their systems not only in the handheld convenience that Steve was just referring to but on fulfillment and returns as well. [43:29] Call Ann on the film inside, there's some data out there that indicates UPS and FedEx or not able to keep up with with the demand is that something easier view of thought about and kind of corollary to that is is I've kind of been a long time believer that the Amazons eventually going to, directly compete with those guys would love to hear your thoughts on that too. [43:50] I think it's overwhelming I had to do a return last week and it was a rather large item and I had to get the house and I asked for the time band which is usually 2 hours and it was eight hours and I inquired with the customer service. Representative why is the band eight hours and she started laughing mr. we've got a lot of stuff to pick up today. And we just don't know when we're going to be in your neighborhood and I thought that was you know it was honest but it was also I think indicative of what you were saying. [44:22] Yeah and I don't have any specific use not a specific area of expertise for me but I you know I do believe extraordinary companies find ways to transform themselves in. And I certainly believe all of the companies in the category especially the leading players. They're going to come well prepared for in the context of holiday but overall they're actively transforming their businesses and. Absolutely no question. I think we're in for front floor for quite a battle, quitbit it back to mobile Steve the last year you know we saw for, so two years ago we saw Africa Millennial kind of oriented folks traffic going over 50% last year we saw transactions get there for the millennial kind of audience and, other folks are kind of the past half traffic and getting towards 50% transactions sounds like you follow Alibaba I think there are like north of 80% transactional volume coming from mobile do you think this is another holiday where we kind of Step function up, midnighter is the US going to look different I do think we like to think we stepped up and, I'll put a Shameless plug in for our holiday survey how about we. [45:55] Think about getting back to you in October when we went when we haven't released but it's an area of specific Focus for our upcoming, holiday survey which which I said it being launched and why like I do expect that Trend will be exactly as as you said we'll look forward to sharing our holiday Outlook late September early October. Jason:  [46:19] We will certainly take you up on that. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [46:22] Similarly will be releasing emerging Trends in real estate for 2018 and it will have a significant dedication to what's happening in retail that maybe we should maybe we should do a rematch of this in October. Jason:  [46:36] That would be terrific let's do this until we get to October where is we're coming up to the end of the show, if you had a you know 30 seconds in the elevator with the CEO of your favorite retailer what's the number one piece of a go to advice you have for retailers this year. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [46:56] Mine would be make the visit special yeah and NN mine would be. [47:06] Focus on the consumer which clearly many of them are doing but in the end if you're taking care of the consumer I think the rest of it will find a way to take care of itself. Jason:  [47:20] Yep and then flipping it around what about to the the CEOs of the brands. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [47:29] Yeah and I'll I'll take this one first plan I would say innovate and personalize. And I think if if they're able to if you think of the leading brand whether it be on the electronic side in the Footwear & Apparel side there's no question the leading brands that are. Constantly innovating and focusing on personalization are the clear winners. [47:59] I have to agree 100% with that comment so let's take it out further so we were kind of looking six months for, what's kind of you guys have been in the industry for a while so let's project out to 3 or 5 years what is retail look like you know do we have are we all sitting in our dark basements with VR goggles on like but Jason's doing or are we know what does that experience like are drones to like dropping things we have to catch him, I would love to hear your thoughts Byron let's start with you. [48:31] I think there's some of that that's all I was I was at a luncheon in Dallas couple of weeks ago where Ross Perot Jr shared with us that he has agreed with Uber, to be a pilot for their new Uber Elevate drone system which will be people people delivery and package delivery in and they'll be parking there drones in. In in Dallas and so he feels a little bit like The Jetsons but I think it's a promise just like driverless cars are upon us, and they'll change the way we live the way we do our errands the way we receive our Goods I don't think it'll be overnight but I think it's gradual and will be here before we know it and the groundwork is already being laid for that. [49:16] Yeah and what and what I might add I would show you I just did a market tour to New York and visited the World Trade Center and made a trip up to Columbus Circle so that included, the Apple Store. It at the World Trade Center the Amazon store Columbus Circle and I live in San Francisco and in the Embarcadero Center offices. They've opened a new Sephora store and there was one thing in common from all three of those examples stores were completely full. And the reason the stores were completely false is because they have extraordinary offerings they have exceptional Associates. Innovative products so I believe in three to five years the retailers that continue to do those things are going to continue to have those full stores that we saw and we're going to continue to see them being extremely relevant. Jason:  [50:16] Well guys that is a perfect place to leave off I, couldn't agree more and it is happen again we've wasted a perfectly good hour of our listeners time, don't forget listeners you're always welcome to continue the dialogue on her Facebook page and if you like today show feel free to leave us a review on iTunes Steve Byron very grateful for you taking the time to share your insights with us in the listeners. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [50:43] Thank you very much for having us it was a pleasure to join you and I look forward to listening to your next podcast, awesome and just briefly how can people find out more about your your thoughts so you know we talked about the holiday preview that you guys do so would love to if you direct folks there, and any other writing that you guys do that you think would be interesting if you if you have a place people can find that where do they look for you online. [51:12] Www.twc.com. Yeah you can do that and then I occasionally contribute to Forbes probably not as often as I should but I do and I find and I do try to release retail trends, on Twitter and you can find me on my name and then like Byron said that Peter bc.com and we have landing pages both for our real estate practice and also for, our consumer Market practice which includes the retail practice and we'd love to hear from you directly or, folks want to follow us in any one of those medium we'd be thrilled to the follow along with you Ausable position it's. Jason:  [51:57] We sure will until next time happy commercing.

The Tuesday Podcast with Lian Dolan and Julie Dolan! We take a break from the chaos to go deep on shallow topics. First up, Julie's home organizing fail. She is not a hoarder, people! PlusFlying Cars in Dallas. Will Julie take Uber Elevate for a ride? Pippa Middleton's Pre-Wedding Shape-Up. Julie thinks she needs a break from the pressure. Lian is not too sure about the two-outfit wedding rule for Pippa's nuptials. Open Marriages: From the New York Times. No judgement, but plenty of opinions on this New York Times cover story on Open MarriagesThe Best Healthcare Solution: Daughters Yes, forget long term health insurance, get yourself an adult daughter if you want good care at a reasonable cost- but the situation comes with financial repercussions. Read the article here. Lesley Stahl lets us know that the Boomers are going to be The Best Grandparents Ever!!! Read her piece here.Is Avocado Toast the financial ruin for Millenials? We support toast, but not at $22 a pop. Article here.

Episodio original: http://cuonda.com/binarios/32-fake-news-y-fake-fruit-con-rosa-jimenez-cano Más episodios: http://cuonda.com/binarios Rosa Jiménez Cano (@petezin https://twitter.com/petezin) ha estado en todos los eventos importantes de las últimas dos semanas: F8, ISOJ y Uber Elevate. Ahora vuelve a Binarios para contarnos lo más interesante de todos ellos. Hablamos también de éxodo de las conferencias tecnológicas de San Francisco a San José y de su nuevo proyecto: Soy Silicio.   Enlaces de Interés: Soy Silicio https://silicio.soy Silicon Valley se harta de San Francisco http://tecnologia.elpais.com/tecnologia/2017/04/23/soy_techie/1492925716_804364.html Facebook pasa de la realidad virtual a la realidad aumentada http://epv.elpais.com/epv/2017/04/19/categoria_tecnologia/1492593156_680181.html El coche volador de Uber llegará a Dallas y Dubai en 2020 http://tecnologia.elpais.com/tecnologia/2017/04/25/actualidad/1493143697_626006.html

Self-driving cars is creating a lot of frenzy within many industries to prepare us for this new trend in travel, but what about flying cars?  When can we see that? George Jetson will be very happy to hear that we are on the verge of making flying cars a reality. This story and more in this episode of WRLWND Radio  Flying Cars There are a few companies, including aircraft maker Airbus who are competing to be the first to develop vehicles with wings that take off and land vertically – which is in reality a smaller version of helicopters. Think about the enormous impact of these vehicles, once they of course become a reality, they  could change the way we travel dramatically due to their small size and flying capability.  It probably would be easy to operate and control. But, since we are accustomed to driving on a flat solid surface, handling a vehicle in the air would pose a great challenge to many of us. Just think about some of the driving we see around us today, are we going to feel safe driving in a flying car, how should I put it, with distracted and risky drivers around and even above us? But before we get flying cars, there are many obstacles that must be overcome. Is it safe? Regulators will have to be convinced that these cars are safe. Then there is the obstacle of how to handle thousands of new low-flying aircraft over cities without colliding with each other or crashing into buildings and then batteries, how long will it last and what will happen if it’s out of power in the air. So how close are we to this? Zach Lovering, who heads the Airbus project to develop a flying taxi called the Vahana believes that this will become a reality in 10 years. Now, let’s take a look at some of the flying cars already in design and testing phase: Vahana Made by Airbus, Vahana is a vertical takeoff-landing, all-electric aircraft that is mounted on a sled with propellers in front and back. Airbus plans to test a prototype before the end of 2017, and to have the first Vahanas ready for production by 2020. Comorant This is from Israeli tech firm Urban Aeronautics which takes off vertically and has a standard helicopter engine, but no large main rotor. It can fly between buildings and below power lines, attain speeds up to 115 mph, stay in the air for an hour and carry up to 1,100 pounds. Lilium Jet German technology company Lil-ium Aviation is working on a two-seater aircraft that will take off vertically using 36 electric fan engines along its wings. The company has been flight-testing small scale models. The aircraft will have an estimated cruising speed of up to 190 mph and a range of 190 miles. AeroMobil 3.0 The Slovakian company AeroMobil has developed a car with wings that unfold for flight. It uses regular gasoline and fits into standard parking spaces. It can also take off from airports or any grass strip or paved surface just a few hundred meters long. EHang 184 Chinese drone maker EHang has been flight-testing a person-carrying drone in Nevada. The vehicle is a cockpit with four arms equipped with rotors. Takeoff and landing targets are pre-programmed. A command station in China will be able to monitor and control the aircraft anywhere in the world. S2 Joby Aviation of Santa Cruz, California is developing a two-seat, all-electric plane with 12 tilt rotors arrayed along its wings and tail. The aircraft takes off and lands vertically and can achieve speeds up to 200 mph.  Transition/TF-X Terrafugia, based in Massachusetts, began working a decade ago on a car folding wings that can fly or be driven on roads that's called the Transition. They plan to begin production in 2019. Volocopter This two-seater, electric multicopter from the German company e-volo, it has 18-rotors and looks like a cross between a helicopter and a drone. It is controlled from the ground, eliminating the need for a pilot license.  Passenger Drones I came across a story from TechCrunch, “Forget flying cars — passenger drones are the future” The writer of this piece makes the point that since Tesla, Google, Uber and other autonomous car makers are within three to five years of commercializing self-driving cars, cars that require no human oversight. Then, all the machine learning algorithms, sensors and safety systems from self driving cars will help to push passenger drones to become a reality. He argues that compared to cars, drones will face fewer obstacles in the sky and have far more options for evading accidents. The way these taxis or ride sharing services will work is, just like the Uber app, the passenger will book a drone, which will then fly to the pickup location to get the rider, it will land and take off vertically and then fly to the destination. This passenger-drone development is further along than we realize. The Chinese company EHang as I highlighted in the first story received clearance from Nevada in June 2016 to test the world’s first passenger drone. The drone can fly at up to 11,500 feet at 63 mph, but only for 23 minutes. A rather short time, but still a good start which will only continue to progress with time. Now, Uber believes that Uber Elevate, which is an on-demand air transportation service, will be here within a decade to request electric Vertical Take-off and Landing aircraft (VTOLs). This prediction from Uber will definitely push other drone makers like Amazon to get into the race of passenger drones. Now, even if we don’t get the flying cars, it looks like we will get the passenger drone, hey Uber send me my drone.   Tap and go with sunglasses Soon it appears you can tap and go with your sunglasses, well, not the sunglasses you have right now but ones with WaveShades. WaveShades is a new contactless payment system built into sunglasses. This new venture was started with Australian startup company Inamo, the sunglasses-maker Local Supply and Visa. The prototype tap-and-go sunglasses are being rolled out ahead of Australia's Laneway music festivals. So Australians don’t have to worry about taking cards, cash or their wallets with them to the festival. Local Supply has provided the sunglasses and Inamo has provided the secure NFC payment chip, built into the arm of the glasses.  But before you poke fun at the tap-and-go sunglasses, every time you pay for something, you can be like Horatio Caine "CSI: Miami"-style. Or you may have an excuse to wear sunglasses at night. This new payment system makes sense for those attending the music festival or hitting the beach and can be very handy for those travelling or vacationing.